Dear Annie: An employee of a local firm invited my husband and me to a very nice restaurant. This was definitely a business dinner. It turned out that one of our hosts couldn't attend and instead allowed the employee and his girlfriend to bring her d...
Bringing The Dead Back To Life? Is it possible to bring the dead back to life? Maybe not, but scientists at Penn State University have done the next best thing. They found a tiny bacterium thats been trapped miles below Greenland ice sheets for the p...
Spoonerism: Darn Boor At some point, everyone has transposed the first letters in two words and came up with a nonsense phrase. You might mean to say barn door, but it comes out darn boor. These slips of the tongue are called spoonerisms，and Cognit...
Blackcaps Change Their Migration PatternsBut Why? Blackcaps are small songbirds that breed in Central Europe. Fifty years ago, most blackcaps went south for the winter to Spain or Portugal. But since the 1960s more and more blackcaps have started win...
Taiwan will host a National Basketball Association (NBA) game for the first time when the Denver Nuggets and Indiana Pacers play an exhibition game at the Taipei Arena on Oct. 8, a breakthrough for a country in which the NBA has a devoted following....
Mike: Is that the Backstreet Boys you're listening to? Amanda: No way, they're so outdated now. I'm listening to a parody of them, by Weird Al Yankovic. It's called The eBay Song and it makes fun of I Want it That Way. It's hilarious. Mike: Their mus...
Mike: What are you so upset about? Amanda: It's my neighbors. They pay me to weed their garden once a year, but I can't stand what they do to it. They have a fish pond, but they never clean it out and they won't buy a filter because they say it's too...
Mike: Hi, Amanda. What do you think of my new sneakers? I just bought them at Wufenpu a few days ago. Amanda: They look pretty snazzy, Mike. I especially like that color-what a striking shade of blue! How much did you end up paying for them? Mike: We...
I've recently spoken very directly with a few of my students about a malady that afflicts a certain small percentage of students in that final run of days that lead to the big one: GRADUATION DAY. That malady is not the dreaded H1N1 virus, nor bronch...
'Stop Beating Kids!' read the darkly inked headline. After studying the results of a survey it conducted among 250 schools and 1,550 students, the Humanistic Education Foundation (HEF) found as many as 88% of our junior high schools still use some fo...
Food Chain Regulation Biologists who study natures food chain agree about the basic links in the chain: sunlight provides fuel for plants, plants are consumed by herbivores, and herbivores are eaten by carnivores. But researchers arent sure about all...
Blood, directed by Chris Nahon and starring Korean actress Gianna Jun, is an expansion of the 48-minute animated film of the same name. In the movie, Saya (Gianna Jun), a 400-year-old half-human half-vampire, cooperates with a secretive organization...
The Hammerheads Hammerhead These unique sharks have heads resembling flattened, T shaped hammers. But how would such a weird head evolve? One hypothesis is that having their eyes spaced far apart might give these sharks better 3D vision. Another hypo...
Spacesuits are the ultimate in couture. Think about it: Custom-fit garments, dozens of layers deep, made from innovative textiles that can run US$5,000 per square foot, with eye-catching accessories. Gemini suits, moon-dust-coated boots and Neil Arms...
Bird Communication Through Song Bird song is lovely to hear, a romantic addition to any landscape, but what exactly does it mean? Just like we must learn to talk, birds learn to sing. They listen to their parents and try to imitate them, often stumbl...
