Gee-Whiz: Coffee
By O.E. MacDougal
May/June 2018, Backwoods Home
Every second of every day about 26,000 cups of coffee are drunk around the world. That’s about 2¼ billion cups a day. But it’s still not the most widely...
Theories of the universe
By Dave Duffy
Issue #66 • November/December, 2000
In a relatively short span of time, mankind has travelled from profound ignorance of our planet and the world in which we live to a rather detailed picture...
How big is the solar system?
By John Silveira
Issue #60 • November/December, 1999
In artists' renderings of the solar system we often see the sun represented by a small sphere with the planets drawn fairly close by. In truth, drawings like...
Three more ways the world can end … and I’m not kidding
By John Silveira
Issue #155 • September/October, 2015
"What are you doing?" a voice asked.
I looked up and saw O.E. MacDougal, Dave's poker-playing friend from Southern California, and he's now my friend, too. Accompanying him was...
Gee-Whiz: From Paper to Canning
By John Silveira (aka O.E. MacDougal)
May/June 2017 Backwoods Home
The greatest inventions in history are the ones we now take for granted. Fire and the wheel-axle combination are among them. If we weren’t taught in...
Can we make a Tyrannosaurus rex from a chicken?
By John Silveira
Issue #169 • January/February, 2018
Do you have chickens, ducks, turkeys, or geese in your yard? They’re not “just birds” because scientists now realize birds are dinosaurs. Real dinosaurs! For 150 million years,...
The threat of electromagnetic pulse!
By John Silveira
Issue #132 • November/December, 2011
I like "doomsday" scenarios even ridiculous ones, such as the supposed Mayan calendar prophecy for 2012 or what had been Y2K doom-and-gloom leading up to the year...
The MTHFR mutation and why it may matter to you
By John Silveira
Issue #170 • March/April, 2018
This is an article with both anecdotal evidence and science. It is about me, anxiety and depression, a gene mutation, and a 17-cent-a-day “treatment” that works (for me).
All...
The world is ending! … Again?
By John Silveira
Issue #85 • January/February, 2004
People love to talk about scary stuff. Especially when it's end-of-the-world scary, such as the big asteroid recently in the news that was supposed to hit Earth and...
Avian Flu — How afraid of this
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Avian Flu
How afraid of this chicken should you be?
By John Silveira
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Issue #97 • January/February, 2006
There's been a lot of talk in the mass media recently about Avian flu, also known as Bird flu and...
Gee-Whiz: Sleep
By O.E. MacDougal
November/December 2017, Backwoods Home
For thousands of years, sleep has been one of life’s great mysteries. As humans, we spend about one-third of our lives sleeping, though as babies we spent about 16...
Gee-Whiz: Bad Fish, Big Fish
By O.E. MacDougal
January/February 2015, Backwoods Home
Fish were the very first vertebrates. That is, they were the first animals with backbones, the purpose of which is to sheathe and protect the nerves in the spinal...
The world is coming to an end… and this time, I’m not kidding
By John Silveira
Issue #114 • November/December, 2008
If you haven't already heard, on September 10, 2008, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located on the border of France and Switzerland, was turned on for a test...
A doomsday scenario to sleep on
By John Silveira
Issue #109 • January/February, 2008
I once wrote a science fiction novel that I never tried to sell. Titled The Perfect Defense, its first chapter appeared in the premier issue of BHM in...
The many benefits of garlic
By Joe Knight
Issue #113 • September/October, 2008
Garlic, used throughout the world for the taste it adds to foods, is also well known for its medicinal benefits. Known as Allium sativum in the botanical world,...
The coming ice age
By John Silveira
Issue #86 • March/April, 2004
As little as 30 years ago the talk wasn't about global warming, it was about an imminent ice age. Is an ice age likely? Even possible? Consider this:...
