Sharing Science With Wisconsin
For November 28, 2018 Hi WN@TL Fans, Mr. Magoo’s superb rendition of Scrooge from 1962 wrecked me for all other versions of Dickens’ most enduring character. His impact was matched in fearsome factor by the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Be in its deathly hood and wretched crooked finger pointing, pointing, pointing at the …
For November 21, 2018 Hi WN@TL Fans and UW Science Alliance, WN@TL goes dark tonight. This afternoon is an apt time for some affirmative appreciation of the good people, places and programs in science outreach that help make WN@TL possible and that enrich the constellation of science outreach opportunities all across UW–Madison. WN@TL is possible because …
For November 14, 2018 Hi WN@TL Fans, Well, that was a weekend of astonishing images to commemorate the end of The Great War. Growing up, I didn’t know much about it. My Grandpa Zinnen was in the Army in 1918 and I think he fought the battle of Camp Funston, the one in …
For November 7, 2018 Hi WN@TL Fans, Elections have consequences, as the saying goes. Sometimes, the drivers of elections seem to spiral along in a repeating helix of history. In 1916 Woodrow Wilson was re-elected President after running on a promise to keep the US out of the European War. In …
For October 31, 2018 Hi WN@TL Fans, I was cued up last week to cite my two favorite trees, the key ones in the Garden of Eden—The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil—and then came on Saturday the news of the slaughter of 11 Jewish worshipers at the Tree of …
For October 24, 2018 Hi WN@TL Fans, Corn is astonishing, corn is astounding, corn is amazing. Corn has separate flowers, male and female, with the golden tassel on top and the silky ear on the side. Separate flowers make it possible to easily produce hybrid seed through detasseling. Corn is the USA’s most …
For October 17, 2018 Hi WN@TL Fans, I first heard of ‘The Wisconsin Idea’ from Prof Jim Holler, my mycology teacher at UW-Platteville, in a conversation with him in Room 303 Boebel Hall in about 1978. He was incredulous: had I never heard of the Wisconsin Idea, that the boundaries of the university …
For October 10, 2018 To paraphrase Ted Sorensen: Ask not what the flu can do to you, Ask what you can do to fight the flu. Actually, it’s a good idea to ask what the flu can do to you. As with the age-old old-age question of “Boxers or Briefs?”, the answer …
For October 3, 2018 I can’t remember when I first heard that along with the Great War which killed some 20 million people came a Great Plague—the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919—that killed an estimated 50 million. The pandemic was certainly part of Professor Marilyn Tufte’s bacteriology class at UW-Platteville in the spring of 1977. That was the class in …
For September 26, 2018 “Mosquitoes troublesome” is one of the most frequently-repeated phrases in the journals of Lewis & Clark. Things have not changed much since 1804: mosquitoes still suck. And therein lies the rub. For mosquitoes are more than trouble: they’re deadly. They carry diseases like yellow fever to humans and encephalitis …