fermions / molecules / substances
Baking soda is one of the most widely recognized chemicals in the world, and yet we don’t treat it like one. It is a relatively humble molecule: one atom each of sodium, hydrogen, and carbon, and three of oxygen. Unlike many other chemicals that have risen and fallen from public grace, baking soda has had a […]
Hot spring sunlight is beginning to appear in Vancouver. As the Earth spins 15 degrees per hour into early April, panels of fierce daylight are beginning to strafe across buildings and intersections, illuminating odd angles and skewing city lines. Increasingly, our inlets and mountaintops are awash in hot sun. Like many Vancouverites at this time […]
Many of us have woken up drunk as least once in their lives. You leap nimbly from your bed, blissfully unaware of the chemical mallet poised above your woozy brain. “Wow, I actually feel pretty good right now!” you say, unaware that you are drunk. For many, this utterance is the beginning of the end. […]
Knuckle-cracking Knuckle-cracking is a divisive ritual: some people do, some people cringe and don’t. I do- I began this satisfying staccato ritual in highschool, alongside other teen-angst palliatives like biting the inside of my cheek and making iron-on Smashing Pumpkin t-shirts. My brother Owen is one of the many who hates knuckle-cracking. I fondly remember irritating the bejesus […]
In a plaintive decry of the recent Supreme Court ruling that forced them to pay $15 billion dollars to Quebec smokers, three of the largest tobacco companies in Canada asserted that “Canadians have had a very high awareness of the health risks of smoking” since the 1950s. The companies’ (Imperial Tobacco, Rothmans Benson & Hedges and JTI-MacDonald) perfidious bleeting might […]