Science Scribe – Page 2 – Keiran's World

Gadget rich and money poor, British Columbians increase household debt

23. December 2015 · Write a comment · Categories: Science Scribe, Victoria Times Colonist · Tags: Black Friday, BMO, credit card debt, Cyber Monday, debt, gadgets, holiday season, holiday spending, household debt, household debt in BC 2014, marketing pressure, personal debt, retail analysis, seasonal holidays, Victoria Times Colonist

Gadget frenzy. Photo © Roland Moriz, via flickr/Creative Commons

A relative remarked to me recently about a particular couple of our mutual acquaintance.

“They both have good jobs. They have a beautiful house. They have no kids. They travel. They drive expensive cars. They heat their garage throughout the winter. Oh, and you should see all the gadgets and electronics they have—all top of the line. Those two are rolling in money.”

Of course, as we know, a person may have all the trappings of a good income, and still have little unspoken-for cash. They may, instead, be house poor, gadget rich, and rolling in debt. More »

Ghosts of seasons past appear in many guises

21. December 2015 · Write a comment · Categories: Victoria Times Colonist · Tags: Christmas sweaters, family, feasts, friends, ghosts of Christmases past, sharing, table linens, ugly Christmas sweaters, Victoria Times Colonist

Christmas sweaters get respect. Photo © UglySweaterShop-com via flickr/Creative Commons

During this season of celebrations, seasonal concerts and parties, the subject of holiday traditions inevitably comes up. At a recent party, a friend admitted she had a number of tangible Christmas memories hanging around her place.

“I think of them more like skeletons,” she said. “In the closet.”

Her closet Christmas skeletons comprise a collection of Christmas sweaters. Her husband’s mother gave him a new one every year for years—the tackier, the better, of course—alongside a nice bottle of something and a nice box of something else. More »

Hollywood dramas influence real-world medical practice

Seeing a patient. Photo © Seattle Municipal Archives

I recently asked Nature Boy when he had last seen a doctor.

He answered, “Not since the final season of House M.D.”

Other British Columbians share a similar rate of exposure to medical practice. Most of us are more familiar with characters who take medical license on TV than with doctors licensed by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of B.C.

Television physicians, after all, make weekly house calls to our living rooms. That practice has largely disappeared in the real world. More »

Dr. Michael Wrinch, P.Eng., FEC: The professions make the world a safer, better place

30. November 2015 · Write a comment · Categories: EGBC Innovation

When APEGBC’s President for 2015/2016 was seven years old, his mother made a deal with a local TV repair shop to drop off unfixable TVs for him to take apart. It was a dream come true, and at that moment, Michael Wrinch—not yet P.Eng., FEC—knew he wanted to be a TV repair man.

A decade later, however, his career choice was not well received by his parents.

“It was suggested that I consider engineering, where I could design the TVs,” Wrinch says. “I protested the idea of going to university, so my mother got me my first, real job. For the summer, I worked at the local fish factory, where I cleaned the chimneys and delivered fish guts to the fish fertilizer-processing company. After two summers, I retired from the factory and promptly applied to go to university.”

We obsess over celebrities’ tribulations and ignore widespread horrors

The killing of Cecil the Lion by big-game hunters in June outraged the world.

Thirteen-year-old Cecil lived in Hwanga National Park, Zimbabwe, where he was a major attraction for wildlife tourists. He may have been lured out of the park prior to being killed.

Yet this is one animal, albeit a charismatic, celebrity critter. Thousands of wildlife crimes occur every year. The World Wildlife Fund estimates, for example, that customs officials intercept ivory from only about 11 per cent of the 50,000 African elephants poached every year.

Here in B.C., officials have helped uncover some wildlife crimes recently. More »

Poppies stay in style year round

11. November 2015 · Write a comment · Categories: 14 Column Inches, Folio, Keiran's World, Victoria Times Colonist · Tags: Christmas, fashion, Hallowe'en, November 11, Poppy Campaign, poppy pins, Remembrance Day, Royal Canadian Legion, season, Victoria Times Colonist

http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/columnists/monique-keiran-wearing-a-poppy-is-never-unfashionable-1.2106214

I recently visited the Jimmy Choo and Christian Laboutin footwear displays in a much-trumpeted Lower Mainland department store.

When a staff person approached me, I expected the usual “Can I help you?” Instead, the young man gestured at the poppy on my lapel. “This is the earliest I’ve ever seen anyone wear one of those,” he said. More »

Subjective time moves at its own pace

08. November 2015 · Write a comment · Categories: Victoria Times Colonist · Tags: biological clock, Einstein, internal clock, neuroscience, psychology, relative time, subjective time, Victoria Times Colonist

Time runs differently when you're vacationing in Paris. Sculpture at Gare St-Lazare, Paris. Photo © David McSpadden, via flickr and creative commons

‘When I play Candy Land with my five-year-old, time creeps,” she says. “A game lasts only 10 minutes, but it feels like two hours to me.”

My friend is describing her experience of subjective time. The clock in her phone steadily marks the minutes, no matter what she does. Yet while she plays Candy Land— a board game that requires no reading, minimal counting skills, and is popular with young children—her brain measures time in a decidedly Dali-esque way. It perceives each second as stretching and warping around the experience of the game. Compared to the experience of time during the game, she finds time compresses and races before and after playing.

“My daughter finds the 10 minutes flash by like lightening.” More »

Pace of modern communications outstrips what the modern human brain evolved to deal with

Social media have democratized publishing. Now, anybody can spontaneously share their thoughts, opinions, photos, witticisms and criticisms, as well as what they ate for breakfast, with the world.

This accessibility has permitted new voices to emerge, quiet voices to be heard, and the previously unspoken to be said. More »

Keiran's World

Gadget rich and money poor, British Columbians increase household debt

Hollywood dramas influence real-world medical practice

Dr. Michael Wrinch, P.Eng., FEC: The professions make the world a safer, better place

We obsess over celebrities’ tribulations and ignore widespread horrors

Poppies stay in style year round

Subjective time moves at its own pace

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