This post originally appeared April 19, 2019 My first encounter with the word “hysteresis” was ten years ago when I was editing a particularly difficult electrical engineering feature. That story was one of my favourite I’ve ever worked on, the wild first-person account of the researcher who had unearthed an ancient prediction of a fourth circuit […]
Sally
Look, no one is trying to get a dick joke into the human genome. If it happens, it won’t be by design. No one even really thought it was a possibility until the late 1990s, when the physical chemistry professor Paul W. May was having a beer with some other science friends and they got […]
There are well-known differences between the drugs you can get over the counter in the UK and the ones you can get in any US drugstore. Got period cramps in the UK? How about some Feminax – it’s got codeine! Cough? Codeine linctus. Aches? Pains? Co-codamol (codeine mixed with paracetamol, known to Americans as Tylenol). […]
May 20, 2020, is our anniversary, and we celebrated by writing postcards to ourselves in May 20, 2010. Today, Craig, Emily, and Helen reassure their 10-years-younger selves. And Sally…I wouldn’t call it reassuring exactly? Craig Childs You don’t want to know. You’d overthink it and plan inappropriately. Let it come. You’re getting back from the […]
Several years ago the Economist published a chart for American expats in the UK. It disambiguated what British people say from what Americans hear them say. For example, “you’re very brave” does not mean “I think you are brave” when a Brit says it. It is more likely to mean “you are insane.” I had […]
Who doesn’t love nominative determinism? The idea that your name plays a significant role in shaping your career or even your destiny is irresistible, especially with a steady supply of examples so copious you could trip over them, and even some science to support the idea. But it got me wondering – what if your […]
As we entered the third decade of the third millennium, many of the science and tech words and phrases in popular circulation had lost all meaning. “AI”, “machine learning” and their newer synonym, “cognitive technology”, for example, had joined the pantheon of synonyms for “snake oil“. Or at least they were becoming placeholders for anything […]
If there’s any animal that could use a new PR agency, it’s got to be the electric eel. I mean, think about it – what other animal doesn’t even have its own correct name? You’ve probably heard that an electric “eel” is no eel at all but rather a fish (a knifefish, to be exact). From this […]