Gee-Whiz: Insects
By O. E. MacDougal
November/December 2015, Backwoods Home
Some 400 million years ago, in the Devonian Period, insects evolved from crustaceans. Since that time, they have been one of the most successful life forms on the...
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,...
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...
The ‘risks’ with Swine Flu
By John Silveira
Issue #118 • July/August, 2009
Do we have anything to worry about the reemergence of Swine Flu Novel Influenza A (H1N1) this fall? The short answer is: Probably not. There are...
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...
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:...
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...
Gee-Whiz: Presidents
By O.E. MacDougal
November/December 2016, Backwoods Home
I could spend all day coming up with interesting trivia about the Presidents and those who surround them — wives, children, assassins, etc. I could literally fill this magazine...
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...
Testing Soil
By Tom Kovach
Issue #119 • September/October, 2009
Testing the soil content of a garden is very important and is quite easy to do. Soil tests are needed because some plants prefer slightly acidic soil, while...
Gee-Whiz: Ice Ages, Past and Future
By O. E. MacDougal
January/February 2016, Backwoods Home
Most people don’t know that we’re currently in an ice age and have been for the last 2.58 million years. It’s called the Quaternary Ice Age. Again and...
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...
A brief history of health and medicine
By John Silveira
Issue #100 • July/August, 2006
As little as a century ago, the average life span in the United States was 49 years. Today it is 77. Fifty years ago, the average life span...
Gee-Whiz: Time
By O.E. MacDougal
July/August 2016, Backwoods Home
Time. We can’t see, feel, hear, smell, or taste it, but we can measure it and we break it up into smaller and smaller increments. We’ll probably never know...
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 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...
