Dear Annie: My teenage son hangs around with a young lady, Berta, who seems interested in him. She is a little on the quiet side but seems pleasant and would be pretty if she would only brush her teeth. She has not brushed them in over a year. Berta'...
What makes the sun shine? For a lot of folks, this is the kind of thing that doesn't even require explanation: it just does. But just being a commonplace phenomenon in no way explains it. Something must cause the sun to shine. And, in fact, there is...
Used detergent labels and toothpaste tubes from Indonesia are going from landfills to fashion frills on bags and wallets sold in Singapore, Australia and the United States. The fad known as trashion has gained mainstream acceptance with chic, urban d...
Ya?l: Hey, Don, How come a rooster is fancier than a hen? Don: Ummm! I dunno, Ya?l. So drivers can see it when it crosses the road. Y: Nice try, but males birds are more brightly colored and have more ornamented feathers than females for two reasons....
Israeli scientists have succeeded in getting a 2,000-year-old date seed to sprout and grow into a palm of a native type that had been extinct for hundreds of years. That, they say, makes it the oldest known seed ever germinated. The seed was found in...
The plot of WALLE may be about a steaming heap of garbage, but the film is a garden of unearthly delights. Set in a future where the Earth has become covered in trash, swept by monstrous, rumbling dust storms and whose only bona fide wildlife is the...
Kung Fu Panda, directed by John Stevenson and Mark Osborne, is as much fun as can be had at the movies right now. Jack Black is the obvious choice for Po the Panda-a vocal embodiment of the lazy dreamer, whose character's elaborate dream life is fa...
Ya?l: Welcome to another episode of Lunch with Don and Ya?l. So, Don, what are you eating today? Don: Nothing. Y: Nothing!?! Are you on a diet or something? D: Not by choice. To be honest, I'm trying to save money by buying less food. Y: Why? D: Beca...
A team of U.S. Navy audiologists conducted a hearing test on a rare beaked whale convalescing at a marine mammal rehabilitation center in the Florida Keys. The mature female whale has been tentatively identified as a Gervais' beaked whale or a Sowerb...
When you have an itch, you scratch it. What could be more simple than that? Scratching itches is one of our most basic instincts, one which we share with many other animals. Have you ever stopped to wonder, mid-scratch, exactly why scratching is so e...
Don: It's time once again to go to the A Moment of Science Mailbag . . . Ya?l: A listener writers in: Dear AMOS: Why does it seem like guys are into video games way more than women? Is there a scientific explanation for this? D: Great question. And i...
The star, Will Smith, is sprawled on a Los Angeles bench. Dirty, disheveled, in full distressed costume and character, he looks lost and alone, much like the bums in every city that go unnoticed. But there's no ignoring Hancock, who has amazing power...
One of the birthplaces of cinema, Germany today possesses huge film archives crammed with 150,000 movies found on 1 million rolls of film. The film heritage is preserved by the Federal Film Archives, which operates from Berlin and six other cities. O...
We keep pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and the earth keeps warming. Climate scientists have predicted that the consequences of unchecked warming could result in everything from catastrophic flooding to larger and more deadly hurricanes. S...
Ya?l: Today on A Moment of Science, global warming . . . D: Uhm, right . . . Y: That's your cue, Don. D: I know, Ya?l . . . but . . . Y: What's wrong? D: Well, we're a science program, right? And I know that the accepted scientific wisdom is that hum...