My column: 10 Amazing Things! Robot Fish! New species! Zoning out is your friend! (but you won't do it while reading this)

Garrison Keillor once wrote about a character in one of his novels that the man felt like his life was a script written by someone who didn't like him very much.

That's how I felt all week. I'm not even going to tell you about it because you've got troubles of your own...one day when they seem funnier I'll share. Until then I'm incredibly cheered up by all the cool things I find filed under "Science" on the web, so I hope you'll click on my Ten Amazing Things You Need to Know About This Week, including robot fish that detect pollution (pic below), why you seriously have to quit snoring, a metal coating that gives photodetectors a cloak of invisibility (ala Harry Potter), inflatable bike helmets, ten new species,  one little animal who we just discovered and might lose and why zoning out is much better for you than your boss would have you believe.

One promise: you won't zone out while reading this column.

In fact, if you enjoy it and there's information in it you'd like to pass on to other people, for their amusement, health & safety or just to cheer them the hell up, please do, whether it's by sending a link to this blog or directly from the Alternet page it's on. Everyone who knows me knows I'm no Pollyanna, but I started this column because I kept coming across stories of massively cool discoveries in the world of science that made me feel so excited that I wanted to pass them along. So I hope you'll do the same, partly because I want to get enough readers to keep this going and partly because it just freaking makes people feel better.
Anyway, as they say at Sirius Cybernetics, Share & Enjoy!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Day at the Races

Image
       So - has anything especially fast, slow, theatrical, queeny, nostalgic, crowd-pleasing, hot, aerodynamic, silly or record-breaking ever happened in your bed? I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say it has. So the difference between you and this event is that your spectacle (probably) didn’t happen in front of a mob of drunks on as glorious an April day as you could order out of a goddamn Hallmark calendar.       This was the scene at the    Fairvilla Megastore   Conch Republic Red Ribbon Bed Race  down Duval Street in Key West, a benefit for AIDS Help, which took place this past Saturday. More than 20 businesses participated in this charity goodf allism, racing real beds which must be a certain size, have a mattress, four wheels that touch the ground, four runners pushing and be manned or womaned by one person.             Once you get past the rules the cool thing is outfitting your bed for maximum creativity – there was a coffin bed and a bong bed, and pirate
Read more

Say Ahhhhh: Drive-Thru Pap Smears in the COVID era

Image
        Listening to my friends talk about the COVID-19 test I thought it was going to feel like getting a lobotomy.      “They stick a swab so far up your nose, I felt like it was going into the back of my eye,” one said, but when free drive-through testing was offered in my little Florida beach town I went. I can pinch a penny until Lincoln starts crying and if something is free, I’m going to get one, even if it means being skewered like a corn dog.  The test was mildly irritating. You tilt your head back and they do, indeed, poke a swab up your snoot farther than you’d expect it to go. It felt like I’d been bike riding and got ladybug stuck up my nose, a sensation which lasted about 45 minutes after the actual sticking. It wasn’t as bad as I anticipated, but I’d anticipated getting my eyeballs yoinked out through my nostrils.  Anything else was emotional found money. What left a more lasting impression than the test was the joy of drive-through medical service. Si
Read more

Buy my book: Crazy Little Thing: How Love and Sex Drive Us Mad

Image
       Carl von Cosel installed a phone in his dead wife's tomb so they could chat - he eventually just took her home.      Burt and Linda Pugach married after he did a prison sentence for sending thugs to 'scare' her and they blinded her with acid.     Love makes us all feel insane. If it hasn't knocked you on your ass you haven't been in it.       I wrote Crazy Little Thing: Why Love and Sex Drive Us Mad several years ago because I wanted to understand why romantic problems had such a stranglehold on me and how people's greatest happiness, the thing we all want, could lead to them killing each other. It was published by Viva Editions just before the explosion of true crime shows like Wives with Knives and Who the Bleep Did I Marry?      My hope for the book has always been that the interviews with everyone from psychologists to felons would help people understand themselves but also that it would be a good enough read to take them out  of themselves, which is
Read more