Sharing Science With Wisconsin
For Wednesday 30 August 2023 Hi WN@TL Fans, Origins are of the essence: there’s good reason Genesis opens The Book. We use origin stories to help explain how we are today and where we’re heading tomorrow. The stories of the origins & migrations of humans can be empirically revealed in several ways, including …
On August 23 Kurt Kotenberg from the National Weather Service in Green Bay will be here to alert, watch & warn us about “Wisconsin Weather Safety & You.” Description: From blizzards to tornadoes to derechos, the weather in Wisconsin can be quite active (and sometimes dangerous!) all year around. In this talk, we’ll take a detailed …
Hi WN@TL Fans, If one subscribes to the astronomical definition of summer, the first couple of weeks of August is high summer when we’re about halfway from the solstice to the equinox. In the US, it’s a melancholy and anxious time of year, with pangs for the past and anticipation for what’s next, especially …
Hi WN@TL Fans, As I was happily reminded last week by nearly every license plate in Montreal, “Je me souviens” is the motto of the province of Quebec. It is a phrase poetically plump with ambiguity and nuance. Mr. Higby at Dixon High School taught me that one need say only “je souviens” to …
Hi WN@TL Fans, I’m in Montreal this week. I first visited in 1992, driving my 1988 GMC S15 pickup with a tin topper and my Trek bike in the back. I parked on the MacDonald Campus of McGill University in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue at the far western end of the island of Montreal, and cycled east …
Hi WN@TL Fans, When the Babcock Dairy Store rolled out its new logo earlier this year, the press release announcing the occasion noted that the logo included icons of three signature dairy products: cheese, ice cream, and milk. For current-day accuracy, it’s spot on: these are key items from the store. But from the point of view …
Hi WN@TL Fans, Aristotle was not hostile to investigations of both Nature and Society. In founding his Lyceum he pioneered the liberal arts university as an enterprise that raised high the idea of original empirical inquiry built on prior scholarship. While many of his works are lost, we have in hand books on philosophy and ethics, on the natural …
Hi WN@TL Fans, I will miss this week’s talk, but I hope you won’t. This was my second trip to Senegal, nearly 20 years after my first one. A score of years enables some piercing perspective on what in my observations are similar and what’s blow-me-out-of-the-water changed. And since this week’s WN@TL topic is energy, …
“Wednesday Nite @ The Lab” Public Science Talks Wednesdays at 7pm CT Room 1111 Genetics Biotech Center, 425 Henry Mall, Madison WI, or Zoom at https://go.wisc.edu/240r59 or Stream at https://www.youtube.com/@wednesdaynitethelab8948 For Wednesday 5 July 2023 Hi WN@TL Fans, How we see our world, how we understand our university, depends in part on the spectrum of the light we can …
For Wednesday, June 21, 2023 Hi WN@TL Fans, It’s the Summer Solstice, a good day to make like the Sun and stand still for a moment–while the Sun radiates, we reflect. If we circumspect, we see the first few volleys of orange daylilies bursting in the morning and shriveling by the gloaming. Out on …