Instead, I quietly excused myself and went to the bar, to commune with spirits I know how to relate to.
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'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...
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...
The slang for the rectum is prison wallet.
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...
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...
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...
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.)
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.
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...
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...
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.
Heroism doesn’t always happen in a burst of glory. Sometimes small triumphs and large hearts change the course of history. Sometimes a chicken can save a man’s life. ___________
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...
Homo sapiens is one of the few species on earth that care if they’re seen having sex. The impala is unconcerned. The dingo roundly flaunts it. A masturbating chimpanzee will stare straight at you. To...
Expert economics coming to the assistance of ambitious unintelligence. Let them chew cake.