This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Under footage — The green-and-white sign you see here is plastered on the floor of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts. It says: “MAINTAIN 6 FEET THANK YOU”.Upon inquiry, Feedback was told that no, the sign is […]
Anyone with cheese problems might consider reading the book Cheese Problems Solved, edited by Paul L.H. McSweeney, published by Elsevier in 2007. McSweeney is a Professor of Food Chemistry in the Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences, University College, Cork, Ireland. Readers of cheese detective stories might especially relish the report “How May the ‘Toad-Skin’ and Cat-Hair’ Defects […]
John Fleck explains how big and little problems can get tangled in one’s mind. His essay is called “Nestlé, Phoenix water, and the bicycle shed problem“: “Back in my errant youth, when I worked as a volunteer documentation writer for the big free software GNOME project, I became intimately familiar with what we called ‘bicycle shed’ discussions, […]
If you are one of the rare people who have no problems and who also, for whatever reason, want one, here’s a list to choose from. You can find details, and even solutions, at David Morin [pictured here]’s Problem-of-the-Week list on the Harvard physics department web site. There are 90 problems there. Among them: Leaving the […]