Oct 31, 2008

Five-leaf Clovers

Posted in Health at 8:30 am by David Bradley -- 30 Comments; add yours

An anonymous visitor to the site emailed me: “I found a 5 leaf clover… do you know anything about it? Is it good luck or bad luck?”

It’s just a mutation, like the four-leaf clover, of course. The four-leaf mutation is quite rare occurring once in about 10,000 specimens. Five is rarer still. But, according to this site: Five-leaf Clovers bring extra good luck and attracts money.

Nice, I wonder why …

30 Comments; add yours

Oct 29, 2008

Revolutionary Solids

Posted in Science at 1:00 pm by David Bradley -- 3 Comments; add yours

History teachers can always turn to the significant figures and battles to enliven their lessons, biology education has the enormously diverse range of species to point to, and even physics can pull in metaphors and anecdotes for the more esoteric aspects, try teaching gravity without mentioning Galileo and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. But, teachers of mathematics have it tough. They can describes solids and …

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Oct 27, 2008

Ayurvedic Heavy Metal

Posted in Science at 1:00 pm by David Bradley -- 9 Comments; add yours

Before reading on, and specifically before asking why I’ve used a picture of Buddha in an article about Ayurveda…it’s not Buddha, it’s Nagarjuna, redactor of the Sushruta Samhita a sixth century BCE text on surgery, the only treatise for two of the eight branches of Ayurveda. The snake is part of Nagarjuna and is usually depicted as a protective canopy, I’ve never seen Buddha depicted …

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