Sharing Science With Wisconsin
For March 20, 2019 (Two Weeks Until the 17th Annual UW Science Expeditions April 5-7) Hi WN@TL Fans, A few weeks ago one of my flat-nosed steel shovels went missing. It was one of those ergonomic jobs with a curved plastic handle. Great for spading through the chunky snow the city plow leaves …
For March 13, 2019 Hi WN@TL Fans, “I can’t breathe” are three and half of the scariest words a parent can hear their child speak. Luckily, I have never heard them spoken by my kids. But I think I can imagine the fear and the fright as someone you love fights …
Hi WN@TL Fans, The Scotsman Kenneth Grahame spoke for many a Sconnie when he pointed out that “there is nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” For some of us, it would have been just as true had he sung the delights of messing about in books. Boats, books: …
For February 27, 2019 Hi WN@TL Fans, The seal of the University of Wisconsin–Madison features an eye that is receiving (or perhaps emanating?) an arc of rays of light. The eye is the organ of sight; it is also a symbol of insight and providence. “To see” means not only to form an image of the world, but …
For February 20, 2019 Hi WN@TL Fans, A few years ago my family and I rode the ferry from Gill’s Rock to Washington Island in Door County. It was a chilly windy day in early April. I remember big waves, rocky shoals, and a small boat. Once underway, I quickly made …
For February 13, 2019 Hi WN@TL Fans, Two hundred and ten years ago Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on the same day (February 12) an ocean apart — and a mere nine days after Felix Mendelssohn. Lincoln went on to become an innovator of, among other things, a method for “buoying vessels …
For February 6, 2019 Hi WN@TL Fans, Twas a memorable Wednesday last week, with the mercury down to at least 28 below zero, and with the windchill a score or more degrees lower. As far as I know, it was the first time the university had ever closed for extreme cold …
For January 30, 2019 Hi WN@TL Fans, As Jack London nearly said, “Discretion is the better part of frostbite.” With projections of -60F windchills on Wednesday, and with the approval of Robert Lemanske, I have cancelled Wednesday Nite @ The Lab for January 30. Prof. Lemanske’s talk on “The Childhood Origins of Asthma” …
For January 23, 2019 Hi WN@TL Fans, Ice is civilization, as Paul Theroux oted, but glaciers are the sculptors of the face of the Earth. An advancing glacier is not just a tongue or a lobe; it is a chisel to rock and a gouge upon the land. Glacial ice flows—sometimes until …
For January 16, 2019 Hi WN@TL Fans, From the Psalmist to the Beatitudes, from Charles Dickens to John Steinbeck, from the Framers to the newborn Congress, the poor have always among us, with us, of us, or just plain us. We celebrate as public heroes characters like Ronald Reagan or Horatio Alger who bootstrap themselves up out of poverty. We reserve a …