Occasional reflections on science, technology, medicine and culture by William Hoffman

Galileo in the News       November 16, 1998
[The newspaper, Harrison Salisbury, the Web, MBBNet]

Discovery Genomics Tools Up for Gene Therapy    May 26, 2003
[Human chromosomes, genomic geography, Perry Hackett, transgenic fish, Land O'Lakes, Tim Pawlenty, Barbara McClintock, transposons, "Sleeping Beauty," chromatin]

Land of the Morning Calm Revisited    February 19, 2003
[Mount Soyosan, North Korea, kimchi, Neal L. Gault, Jr., Ho-Wang Lee, Hantaan virus, broadband heaven, Andrew Odlyzko, Norbert Vollertsen]

The Fort Above the River    January 22, 2003
[Fort Snelling, frontier medicine, smallpox, Wounded Knee, Ohiyesa, Perry Millard, Medtronic, Paul Wellstone, Stephen N. Oesterle, MD.]

Professor Porter Goes to Washington    December 31, 2001
[Washington, DC, Michael Porter, Machiavelli, clusters and innovation, Jefferson Smith, John Engler, ants and cities, Paul Ormerod, Steven Johnson]

Some Thoughts on Terror From the Sidewalks of Paris    October 22, 2001
[Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, S.O.S. ATTENTATS, Le Monde, Louis Pasteur, anthrax, bioterrorism, Michael Osterholm, Patrick Schlievert, Nobel Prize, University of Wine]

Lives of the Stem Cell    August 24, 2001
[Alexis Carrel, aging cells, Leonard Hayflick, telomerase, James Thomson, Geron, WARF, effigy mounds]

The House on Bryant Street    August 6, 2001
[California Gold Rush, Edwin Bryant, Multimedia Gulch, Mission Yuppie Eradication Project, HIV/AIDS, Paul Volberding, Mount Tamalpais]

Isle of Man Eyes Minnesota's Medical Might    July 9, 2001
[Minnesota & Manx, Skip Humphrey, an E-Society, Vice President Cheney, John Lennon, Rushen Abbey, Manannan]

Hubert Humphrey: Retrospective of a Living Room Shoot-out    April 3, 2001
[Hubert H. Humphrey, Allan Spear, McCain-Feingold, Durham-Humphrey, secundum artem, Mulford Q. Sibley, Lyndon Johnson]

Surveys of Nature and Distant Connections    February 27, 2001
[The transcontinental railroad, Leland Stanford, land-grant universities, Michael Porter, C. Peter Magrath, a transatlantic link]

Einstein's First Job    December 30, 1999
[Albert Einstein, The Technikum Winterthur, Thomas Mann, tuberculosis, The Mayo Clinic, Feldman & Hinshaw, James Joyce, The Zürich Network]

Three Steps to Oz    October 26, 1999
[silver slippers, the transistor, wireless, Tesla vs. Marconi, Ray Kurzweil, neural implants, Kansas, moon rocks]

Railroads to Oblivion    September 6, 1999
[Leadville, Lanesboro, Dow & Jones, Buffalo Bill, ghost towns, David Broder, the farm crisis, Joseph Amato, the bicycle]

Shoestrings, Telomeres, and the Great Chain of Being    August 31, 1999
[aging, chromosome caps, Elizabeth Blackburn, Maureen Dowd, Thomas Cech, cellular immotality, Robert Weinberg, superstring theory]

A Heart Operation: Perspective from a Playground    July 12, 1999
[C. Walton Lillehei, open-heart surgery, the pacemaker, Elton John, Lewis Thomas, biomedical technology, "Into the Heart"]

Library Journeys in the Era of E-Books    July 8, 1999
[early printing, e-books, Anna Quindlen, Pierce Butler, library science, William Wulf, digital archives, David McCullough]

"Technopolis" Is Bold Step Toward a Wired Windy City    June 1, 1999
[Technopolis Evanston, the Great Northern Railway, ChicagoNet, Northern Lights GigaPoP, Thomas Friedman, Tiananmen, "cybertribes"]

Neighborhood Outposts on the Economic Frontier    April 5, 1999
[Starbuck's, economic geography, Paul Krugman, morphogenesis, Alan Turing, the Game of Life]

March 1849    March 21, 1999
[the potato, genetic engineering of food, Arpad Pusztai, the famine, Máighréad Medbh, Luther Burbank]

Creature Clones from Dark and Stormy Nights    March 15, 1999
[cloning, Earl Bakken, developmental biology, Mary Shelley, bioethics, Arthur Caplan, Michael Crichton]

Fairy Tales Can Come True    February 22, 1999
[the modern university, the Brothers von Humbolt, the Brothers Grimm, myth and enterprise, Jack Zipes, Judy Garland, Bill Gates]

Disease the Victor in the Decline of Physician-Scientists    February 12, 1999
[Jonas Salk, Patch Adams, scientific medicine, from bench to bedside, Lewis Thomas]

The Knowledge Economy Comes Knocking    February 1, 1999
[Alfred Marshall, "the entrepreneurial spirit," knowledge workers, competitiveness indicators, economic development]

Girls + Math: An Empirical Home Study    January 26, 1999
[math role models, programming & punch cards, the Analytical Engine, the Jacquard loom, AAUW, Girl Tech, Sherry Turkle]

The Library of Infinity Is Opening Near You    January 18, 1999
[millennium II redux, Jorge Luis Borges, symbolic analysts, George Gilder, the telecosm, Internet timescapes]

Evolving Brainscapes in an Electronic Age    January 11, 1999
[brain evolution & child development, Mr. Chips, Robokoneko, TV & video games, neuroscience & behavior]

Grist for a Greener Revolution    January 4, 1999
[David Tilman, Norman Borlaug, vanishing farms, sustainable agriculture, microbial genomics]

The Long View from the Watonwan River    December 28, 1998
[The Mayo Clinic, Henry Wellcome, Human Genome Project, a pharmaceutical pioneer, millenarianism, Beowulf Genomics]

A Flight to Eternity    December 16, 1998
[Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, early aviation, technology and the spirit, Bill Gates]

Xanadu at the Millennium    December 9, 1998
[Kubla Khan, opium addiction, The Biotech Century, eugenics, Silent Spring, genealogy]

High-Tech Heebie-Jeebies    December 2, 1998
[tech cities, Silicon Valley, industrial clusters, innovation, venture capital]

Connecting Points: A Pilot and a Surgeon    November 30, 1998
[Charles Lindbergh & Alexis Carrel, organ perfusion, tissue culture, transplants, gene therapy]

"Behold, This Dreamer Cometh"    November 24, 1998
[epilepsy]

Prophets Under Siege    November 20, 1998
[Judah Folkman, cancer, celebrity science, fragile chromosomes, folic acid, cancer prevention]