Category Archives: Fun Facts

A Novel Way To Reduce Stress

Did you ever wish you were someone else?  There is new evidence that such wishes may be the key to reducing stress in your life. An article “To De-stress, Try Talking About Yourself in the Third Person” by Breena Kerr reports on some new research into this area. In a study recently published in the

Read More

Happy Birthday — Supermarket

Picture grocery shopping about a hundred years ago.   A customer handed a list of wanted items to a clerk, who disappeared to find everything, then came back to calculate the bill.  There must be a better way. A former clerk named Clarence Saunders thought so, too.  On September 6, 1916, he opened the first self-service

Read More

Science On A Budget

Like many college professors, my brother gets involved in scientific research.  When I’ve visited him and toured one of his university’s laboratories, I’m always confronted by delicate and expensive scientific equipment.  If such a lab is necessary for science, how does a third-world country keep current and compete? How about with “frugal science”?  Manu Prakash

Read More

Can You Really Learn In Your Sleep?

Just like electricity, we humans always look to take the path of least resistance.  For example, there must be an easier way to learn besides studying.  Like listening to tapes while we sleep. There’s actually a term for it — hypnopedia, or sleep learning.  Unfortunately, the thought that we could learn something substantive while we

Read More

Why Do We Lie?

You may remember the 2009 movie The Invention of Lying starring Ricky Gervais.   It was an ironic commentary on human behavior.  But it does beg the question of why people lie in the first place.  The June 2017 issue of National Geographic magazine addresses that subject in its cover story, “Why We Lie” by Yudhijit

Read More

When The Press Hijacks Your Life

You may remember seeing the original headline  — “First Female Gondolier”.  After over 900 years, the canal-laced city of Venice, Italy could claim its first woman gondolier.  Or could it? “What happens when doing what you want to do means giving up who you really are? … On the winding canals in the hidden parts of

Read More

What Causes Brain Freeze?

Life is full of everyday mysteries.  Like why do you get a headache when you quickly eat something cold? Popularly called “brain freeze”, this condition is found in the International Classifications of Headache Disorders as an official type of headache.  The key is introduction of any cold substance (think ice cream) behind the nose and

Read More

What Are The Greatest Modern Innovations?

A quick way to start an argument is to ask what were the most important innovations in human history.  Lots of opinions have been published.  I recently found an interesting take on this in the June 2017 issue of National Geographic magazine.  In a short article entitled “Big Advances”, U.S. librarian of Congress Carla Hayden

Read More

A Solution For Senior Housing?

As a senior citizen, I’m always concerned about my long-term future.  How much longer will I be able to live by myself in a large house?  (It had better be a very long time because you won’t believe the stuff I’ve accumulated over the years.)  This is why I was intrigued by a TV news

Read More

Food You Can Wear

We’ve been hearing a lot about sustainability and recycling as a way to conserve resources.  How far could we take this if we put our minds to it? Pretty far.  One of the more novel ideas I’ve heard regarding recycling the byproducts of food production comes from designer Sacha Laurin.  Her career began as a

Read More