If you have ever sat on a tack by mistake, you'll know that tacks are very sharp. Used correctly, they are quite useful for posting notices on bulletin boards, for example. However, if touched incorrectly, their sharpness can hurt you. When we say th...
The word bugs has been used for centuries to mean insects, and for about 80 years it has also meant germs. When the machine age began, mechanics who were not satisfied with the performance of some invention or contraption often spoke about getting th...
Except for the ruffling of waves, and the pull of the tides, you probably think of the ocean as pretty flat. You wouldn't expect it to have a geography, its waters piled up into lasting hills or sunk into valleys. Sea level ought to be pretty level,...
Children love sweet things to eat, and when mom or dad bakes some fresh cookies, it's a real treat. Of course, lots of cookies means some of them must be put away for later days. Many kitchens have a cookie jar for that purpose. Parents may warn thei...
A speech President Ma recently made at an educational center for the elderly reminded me not only of aging in general, but also of the importance of older people in our lives. Do I worry about growing old? Sure, I worry some about it. From where I st...
Your heart muscle does something truly incredibleit expands and contracts, non-stop, every moment of every day of your entire life. By comparison, if you tried to squeeze and release the muscles in your hand, they would grow fatigued and need to rest...
In the waning days of last semester, I asked a student of mine from Renmin University in China to try to round up a few other students from over there to talk with me about their experience as exchange students here on my campus. My student and her t...
Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly. At least that's usually the way it goes. In most showdowns between spiders and flies, the odds weigh heavily in the spider's favor. Today, however, we'll look at a few species of fly that manage to tur...
These days, we don't see many horse-drawn carriages in the streets, driven by coachmen who carry long whips. In the past, coach drivers used those whips to make their horses go faster. However, they did not let the whip lash actually touch or hurt th...
You've heard the stories: late at night a man is awakened in a state of unexpected anxiety, to find himself suddenly unable to move. Weird, humanoid-looking figures stand around, looking on while the terrified fellow is caught in an eerie state of im...
It's a common enough sound in summer, after the wind finally picks up on a hot and humid afternoon, as the rain starts spattering down in big, fat drops--you're in for a full-blown thunderstorm. It's much less common in winter, even during a snow sto...
Parents of East Asian, East African and Native American descent are not usually surprised when their babies are born with distinctive blueish-gray or blueish-green birthmarks on their backside. Eighty to ninety-five percent of infants from these ethn...
The deserts of the southwestern United States stretch, in an irregular pattern, from Oregon southward to beyond the Mexican border and from California to West Texas. Although they vary widely in terrain and temperature, these lands share one trait: e...
The polar oceans are not biological deserts after all. A marine census released recently documented 7,500 species living in the Antarctic and 5,500 in the Arctic, including several hundred that researchers believe could be new to science. Most of the...
Yal: So Don, did you always want to be a radio producer? Don: Well, not always, Yal. When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut. Y: Really? How cute! D: No, seriously. I've always dreamed of traveling in space, floating in zero gravity, gazing down...
