Science and Education Archives - Backwoods Home Magazine

Gee-Whiz: Bad Fish, Big Fish

By O.E. MacDougal January/February 2015, Backwoods Home Fish were the very first vertebrates. That is, they were the first animals with backbones, the purpose of which is to sheathe and protect the nerves in the spinal...

The gee-whiz! page — Cats: Why they rule our world

By O. E. MacDougal Issue #170 • March/April, 2018 House cats A recent Gallup poll showed that cat ownership is pretty much evenly distributed between men and women, and that roughly 34 percent of all U.S. homes...

The world is coming to an end… and this time, I’m not kidding

By John Silveira Issue #114 • November/December, 2008 If you haven't already heard, on September 10, 2008, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located on the border of France and Switzerland, was turned on for a test...

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...

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: 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...

Avian Flu — How afraid of this

Issue #97 • January/February, 2006 There's been a lot of talk in the mass media recently about Avian flu, also known as Bird flu and...

Science and truth. Are they related?

By John Silveira Issue #46 • July/August, 1997 It was an argument about science. Dave and I were on one side, Dave's friends Tom and Bill, though curiously nonallied, were on the other. I say nonallied...

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...

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...

Gee-Whiz: Alcohol

By O.E. MacDougal Backwoods Home Did early man first cultivate grains just to get drunk? The brewing of beer is older than civilization and goes back at least 9,000, and perhaps more than 12,000, years. Evidence of...

Gee-Whiz: Sleep

By O.E. MacDougal November/December 2017, Backwoods Home For thousands of years, sleep has been one of life’s great mysteries. As humans, we spend about one-third of our lives sleeping, though as babies we spent about 16...

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...

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...

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...

Can we make a Tyrannosaurus rex from a chicken?

By John Silveira Issue #169 • January/February, 2018 Do you have chickens, ducks, turkeys, or geese in your yard? They’re not “just birds” because scientists now realize birds are dinosaurs. Real dinosaurs! For 150 million years,...