We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget.
It's called the FATLOSE trail. FATLOSE stands for 'Fecal Administration To LOSE weight,' an example of PLEASE— Pretty Lame Excuse for an Acronym, Scientists and Experimenters.
The point is that no matter what you choose to do with your body when you die, it won't, ultimately, be very appealing. If you are inclined to donate yourself to science, you should not let images of...
I am very much out of my element here. There are moments, listening to the conversations going on around me, when I feel I am going to lose my mind. Earlier today, I heard someone say the words, I fel...
I agree with Dr. Makris. Does that mean I would let someone blow up my dead foot to help save the feet of NATO land mine clearers? It does. And would I let someone shoot my dead face with a nonlethal...
I've always been a bit of a space geek. I wrote an article years ago about the neutral buoyancy tank, which is this biblically sized pool where they train astronauts. And it was just the coolest thing...
Where do you find a stomach on a Thursday afternoon in Reno? Chinatown? suggests someone. Costco? Butcher Boys. Tracy pulls his phone from a pocket. Hello, I'm from the university - the catchall pream...
Pet foods come in a variety of flavors because that’s what we humans like,† and we assume our pets like what we like. We have that wrong. For cats especially, Moeller says, change is often more diffic...
Taste - as in personal preference, discernment - is subjective. It's emphemeral, shaped by trends and fads. It's one part mouth and nose, two parts ego.
Interpreting animals’ eating behaviors is tricky. By way of example, one of the highest compliments a dog can pay its food is to vomit. When a gulper, to use Pat Moeller’s terminology, is excited by t...
The slang for the rectum is prison wallet.
Gravity is why there are suns and planets in the first place. It is practically God.
Many space psychology experiments these days focus on ways to detect stress or depression in a person who doesn’t intend to tell you about it.
NASA didn't invent Tang, but their Gemini and Apollo astronauts made it famous. (Kraft Foods invented it, in 1957.) NASA still uses Tang, despite periodic bouts of bad publicity. In 2006, terrorists m...
I will tell you sincerely and without exaggeration that the best part of lunch today at the NASA Ames cafeteria is the urine. It is clear and sweet, though not in the way mountain streams are said to...
Expert economics coming to the assistance of ambitious unintelligence. Let them chew cake.
According to the Kind & Knox Web site, other products made with cow-bone-and-pigskin-based gelatin include marshmallows, nougat-type candy bar fillings, liquorice, Gummi Bears, caramels, sports drinks...
To keep your he-man jaw muscles from smashing your precious teeth, the only set you have, the body evolved an automated braking system faster and more sophisticated than anything on a Lexus. The jaw k...
The simplest strategy for bouts of noxious flatus is to not care. Or perhaps to take advantage of a gastroenterologist I know: get a dog. (To blame.)
It is astounding to me, and achingly sad, that with eighty thousand people on the waiting list for donated hearts and livers and kidneys, with sixteen a day dying there on that list, that more than ha...