What Thanksgiving Day is complete without potatoes? Boiled, mashed, roasted, and puréed, sweet or savory, rare will be the Thanksgiving feast that lacks one or more of these varieties. Like the turkey, also a New World endemic species, potatoes are certain to have made a vital contribution to the Pilgrims’ diet on their arrival to […]
Three rabbis walk into a bar… -coding lab. I had received the worried call from Rabbi Chaim Loike of the Orthodox Union only a few days before. Increasingly of late, congregants had been reporting worms in their fish – mostly canned sardines and fish eggs – notwithstanding that all had been certified as Kosher Pareve
Biotechnology, barcoding and dag (דג) DNA: is it kosher? Read More »
Next week, Floridians are in for an astronomical treat. Two of them in fact – though it will take some effort and a little lack of sleep to experience both. The rise of a Supermoon in the East on May 26 at 9:00 pm will be followed by a partial lunar eclipse as the moon
When the Moon Hits Your Eye… Read More »
Parade Magazine used to arrive in one of the local papers in Toronto when I was a grad student. At the time, I was busy trying to write new statistical software for problems for which there were as-yet no statistical solutions (minimum spanning trees, coevolution, etc). Famously, in 1990, Marilyn vos Savant answered a Parade
Vaccines and “The Monty Hall Problem” Read More »
I can’t be the only one who’s done this, so I do not pretend that what follows is definitive. However, I am a decent cook, and I quietly pride myself on something close to what insecure musicians brag about when claiming “perfect pitch” – for me, it’s taste. What’s more, I am genome biologist, and
To Impossible and Beyond! Read More »
There is a terrific video bit done by Penn and Teller explaining the benefits of vaccines versus the non-existent risk of autism. They throw grapefruits at miniature bowling pins arranged on the floor. Penn’s side has a big plexiglass screen representing vaccines. The grapefruits bounce off. On Teller’s side, the helpless unprotected children are decimated
Vaccination is protection, not a force field Read More »
TRIGGER WARNING: This post has pictures of delicious animal meat. So, I’ve been “cooking for one” for about half of my time these last 2 weeks. That “one” being me, of course. “Cooking for one” can be a form of self care – a reason for being, and a place to focus positive energy. It
Self care in cooking for one: a burger build Read More »
What was that big empty orange thing we carved up this year for Hallowe’en? One might be forgiven for calling it a “pumpkin,” were it not devoid of any pumpkin flavor. After all, it was grown in a pumpkin patch, sold as a pumpkin, carved, rotted and tossed like millions of other pumpkins. Close to
A patch for the kabocha pumpkin Read More »
Wednesday morning was cold. Just above freezing at 8:30 am. I wandered past the old apartment building at 88th and Amsterdam to witness an already-formed queue of mostly Hispanic people. The CitiMD on Broadway had only opened a half hour earlier and yet the covid testing line wrapped around the block. Just a block away
two lines and two neighborhoods Read More »
I’m not really on Twitter anymore. I think Stephen Fry got it right. After having been put under the microscope himself, he was done with that “stalking ground for the sanctimoniously self-righteous”. Certainly, that was my experience back in 2016 and, tragically, much more recently too. More on that later. However, I did check Twitter
Putting a headline under the microscope Read More »
