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Roger Martin

Reading aloud offers plenty of benefits
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Last month, the novel "Don Quixote" was read aloud at a public event in Madrid. It was a birthday present to the book, which had just turned 400.

Worms move earth beneath our feet
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Charles Darwin saved his last book for animals that were, in his opinion, among the most significant in world history.

Flexibility required to survive globalization
Sunday, April 3, 2005
The book "Future Shock" was written 35 years ago, but author Alvin Toffler has never stopped making bold pronouncements.

Bird flu raises concern
Sunday, March 20, 2005
The Spanish flu of 1918 killed between 40 million and 75 million people worldwide. In the United States, 600,000 died. In Africa, no one kept count.

Subscription costs soaring for journals
Sunday, March 6, 2005
Remember Lorenzo? The little kid with the wasting genetic disease in the 1992 movie "Lorenzo's Oil"?

Longer days arouse animals in Lawrence
Sunday, February 13, 2005
I've braced for months against the cold and been sobered by the long, dark nights.

‘Eureka moment' prompts authors to tweak book
Sunday, January 30, 2005
We call human beings Homo sapiens, but I think there might be more than one species of us.

Poe edition divulges sources of ideas
Sunday, January 16, 2005
If you remember Edgar Allan Poe, it's probably because of these lines from his poem "The Raven":

Making science sexy should be goal in '05
Sunday, January 2, 2005
I have some New Year's resolutions to suggest. They're not for myself but for the nation -- pardon the grandiosity.

Discovery of burial sites can provide window into past
Sunday, December 19, 2004
Three years ago, Chris Widga found bones and tools that had spilled out of a grave and down a slope.

Altruism alluring to do-gooders
Sunday, December 5, 2004
I ran into this biologist the other day at the library. We've both worked at Kansas University for decades, and I've interviewed him several times about dragonflies, midges and that sort of thing.

Therapy helps counter trauma
Sunday, November 21, 2004
Some kids are more easily traumatized by shocking events than others. This raises two questions.

Glacial melting on the increase, study shows
Sunday, November 7, 2004
I have some bad news, good news and bad news.

Commentary: Arbus' creepy family photos reflect wartime stress
Sunday, October 24, 2004
"Family" is a wonderfully pliable word, referring both to a group of people living under one roof and, more broadly, to any group of things that are more or less alike.

Women scientists faced barriers, blazed trails
Sunday, October 10, 2004
Mary Creese just finished the second volume of a study on a thousand 19th-century women of science.

Signals can help employees predict layoffs
Sunday, October 3, 2004
Your job is not secure. A change of management or a reorganization may knock you off your perch. Shrinking consumer demand or an angry supervisor could do you in.

Scientific victories can be hard to swallow
Sunday, September 12, 2004
It was an ugly win. That's how a former Kansas University basketball coach put it when little went right but his team still came away with a victory.

Assumptions have history of trumping law in rape cases
Sunday, August 29, 2004
All the questions typical of date-rape cases are hovering around the criminal trial of Los Angeles Lakers' star Kobe Bryant.

Commentary: Automobiles made tourism accessible to Americans
Sunday, August 15, 2004
The summer my family finally got a car, I was 14. We strapped a johnboat to the roof, threw a five-horsepower motor in the trunk and meandered hundreds of miles over Missouri roads.

Martin: Literacy helps people celebrate differences, honor commonalities
Sunday, July 18, 2004
Literacy ain't what it used to be. I'm serious.

Martin: Juneteenth calls for celebration of many freedoms
Sunday, June 20, 2004
Maybe you've heard June 19 is a holiday but don't know why.

Martin: KU researcher untangling confusion of wireless world
Sunday, June 6, 2004
Psychologist William James wrote in 1890 that a baby experiences the world as a "blooming, buzzing confusion."

Martin: Wisdom difficult to define, attain
Sunday, May 23, 2004
One day, somebody said, "I enjoy reading your column, but I'm not always sure what it does for the university."

Martin: Preserving water means preserving our essence
Sunday, March 28, 2004
The Earth's surface is 70 percent water. But it's hidden water that matters most to people who live on the Great Plains. Between 1940 and 2000, Texas and Kansas headed a list of eight states that tap into this hidden water, which is found in the sand and gravel deposits of the Ogallala Aquifer.

Christian romance novels can help repair ailing relations
Sunday, February 29, 2004
Most serious students of literature believe women who read romance novels are trying to fill a hole in their lives. The title of an essay by Canadian scholar Lillian S. Robinson sums up this contempt for romance novels. It's called "On Reading Trash."

Commentary: Christmas tree biology not all that glamorous
Sunday, December 21, 2003
Here I go again, not feeling Christmassy. Of course I'd like to feel Christmassy, just like all the other 57-year-old men who finally had an up year in the stock market and whose prostate exams and colonoscopies went well.

Cruel childhood illnesses can also bring families together
Sunday, December 7, 2003
Eighteen-year-old Nathan just had his fourth round of chemotherapy. His eyelashes and eyebrows have fallen out.

Kansas' relationship with water not resilient, expert says
Sunday, November 23, 2003
How could we Kansans have presumed to tame rivers and streams with dams? To turn arid lands into a garden by mining water from rock buried deep underground?

Golden Rule could help with cash struggles
Sunday, November 9, 2003
My mechanic, Gary, says people are bringing cars to his shop with five things wrong, but they can only afford to fix one of them. Some people are driving cars without brake pads, he says.

Architecture can infuse workplace with dignity
Sunday, October 26, 2003
The word "koyaanisqatsi" comes from the Hopi language. It means "life out of balance" -- a crazy life, one that calls for another way of living.

A cleaner world would improve our moods
Sunday, October 12, 2003
If you want to drive to work in clean clothes and a reasonably good mood, there's a price. Pollution. I'm not talking about auto emissions. I'm talking about the fact that to drive requires gasoline, to have clean clothes takes detergent and bleach and to be in a decent mood may be impossible without pharmaceutical drugs.

Psychology, spirituality ‘destined for partnership'
Sunday, September 28, 2003
Carl Jung believed religion was central to being human, while another 20th century giant in psychology, Sigmund Freud, thought religion a mass neurosis.

Seminar explores many meanings of ‘collection'
Sunday, September 14, 2003
"Collecting" is an odd word. When something collects dust, it's a random activity. When somebody collects garbage, it's a systematic gathering of what's undesirable. When somebody collects art, it's a gathering of what's desirable according to one person's taste. When a scientist collects specimens, it's a gathering for the entire scientific community.

Dream of flight persists
Sunday, August 31, 2003
Sometimes when I'm asleep, I know I'm dreaming. Then I look around for a cliff or rooftop to leap from. If I jump from high places in my dreams, I don't fall. I fly.

KU researcher gets buzz from ancient bee species
Sunday, August 17, 2003
The honeybee came from Europe to America with the first settlers. Indians always knew when the colonists were encroaching because their bees preceded them. That's why the Indians called them "white man's flies."

Researcher to follow flapjack flap with dog duel
Sunday, August 3, 2003
This just in. The Annals of Improbable Research reported last week that Kansas is flatter than a pancake. The finding is causing a flap and has drawn a rebuttal from a Kansas University geologist whose own research suggests that Texas is, in fact, smaller than a breadbox.

Hospital intervention could prevent injuries, death from domestic abuse
Sunday, July 20, 2003
An 11-year-old girl wakes up from surgery. Someone at home who's supposed to love her beat her up -- and killed her mother.

KU professor chronicles stories of slaves' lives
Sunday, July 6, 2003
Type the words "Born in Slavery" into a search engine and you'll find a link (<a href="http://memory.loc.gov/ammen/snhtml/" target="new">thttp://memory.loc.gov/ammen/snhtml/</a>) to more than 2,000 first-person accounts of life under slavery.

Martin: Good writing just as crucial as sound thinking
Sunday, June 22, 2003
A couple months back, I saw this headline: "Group calls for focus on writing."

Librarian's wit brightens already ‘dandy' St. Petersburg exhibition
Sunday, June 8, 2003
The exhibit budget of the Spencer Research Library at Kansas University has gone bust, but the show on display through July 3 is a dandy. Its subject is the 300-year history of St. Petersburg, Russia. The city, built by Peter the Great in a malarial flood plain, was designed with European cities in mind.

Math field ponders hard-to-fathom quandaries
Sunday, May 11, 2003
I hit a wall halfway through calculus. Saul Stahl, a Kansas University math professor, isn't surprised. He says, "Lots of people get lost halfway through calculus."

KU researchers as tenacious as ancient subjects
Sunday, April 27, 2003
More than three decades ago, humans took a giant step -- into the lunar dust. It was further proof that our species excels at overcoming harsh environments. Consider the Aleutian Islands. They make a chain 1,800 miles long that runs between Asia and North America.

Eulogy writers employ diverse tactics
Sunday, April 13, 2003
The first full-length 9-11 movie is now being distributed. It's called "The Guys," and it tells the story of a New York journalist who helps a fire captain write eulogies.

‘Mysterious ladies' becoming less so
Sunday, March 30, 2003
Thirty years ago, scientists identified the sites in the brain where heroin and opium get processed.

Biographers uncover colorful character in Zora Hurston
Sunday, March 16, 2003
This is about a white man, a black woman, and a dead novelist whose writing spoke to them both. And this is about a job that passed from him to her: telling the novelist's life story.

Broad knowledge base an important tool
Sunday, March 2, 2003
I learned a great many things in schools. A lot of people would consider much of what I learned useless.

Research affects lives directly, dramatically
Sunday, February 16, 2003
Kansas University has taken a $19 million budget hit since last July. Collectively, the Board of Regents universities in Kansas have taken a $45 million hit.

Environmental costs of war can be high
Sunday, February 2, 2003
War has a look. It is the bloody and anonymous bodies. It is the billowy mushroom cloud, the wall of flame rising from a forest that's been napalmed, the sky of Kuwait blackened by oil fires.

Stayin' alive in Russia
Sunday, January 26, 2003
When I whined that I hated lima beans, mama brought out the heavy artillery: the starving people of India.

Researchers reveal little-known medical facts about King James
Sunday, January 5, 2003
King James I is best known for rounding up dozens of translators to produce the King James Version of the Bible. James, who ruled England from 1603 to 1625, wrote meditations on matters spiritual, as well as plenty of letters, poems -- even a colorful attack on smoking called a "Counterblast to Tobacco."

How to choose right religious text for holiday gift
Sunday, December 22, 2002
'Tis the season to recommend a book to buy, right? Well here's one way to think about it. There are 2 billion Christians, 1.2 billion Muslims and 800 million Hindus on Earth -- that's about half of its total population.

Kansas professor working to remove sulfate from waste
Sunday, December 8, 2002
We're doing a bang-up job of dismantling nuclear warheads. Between 1990 and next year, Russia and the United States will have reduced their stockpiles by two-thirds.

Kansas winds able to generate electricity
Sunday, November 10, 2002
A blacksmith once mounted a sail on a wagon hoping the wind would blow him across Kansas. He was finished off by a dust devil shy of the Colorado line.

KU ichthyologist tracking down snakehead fish
Sunday, September 1, 2002
From time to time, exotic species break loose inside our borders and start bullying their way around. The kudzu carpets every green thing in its path. Carp from Europe dominate in places where native buffalofish once swam.

Here are factoids for conversation
Sunday, August 25, 2002
The other day, I went out looking for an expert on the air-breathing snakehead fish, the one that can wriggle from pond to pond. All I found was a "gone swimming" sign on the fish expert's door.

KU professor trying to capture the essence of her subject
Sunday, June 30, 2002
By Roger Martin

I want you to slip into the black skin of Margaret Walker. You're now an African-American woman born in the South in 1915. Your mother's a classically trained musician, your father a formally educated Methodist minister.

Land mines have disappeared off public's radar
Sunday, June 16, 2002
By Roger Martin

Media folks have attention deficit disorder. In fact, maybe that's why they write about ADD so much — or will until they lose interest in it. We're forever fixating on some new threat to health, then dropping it. We can skip from sickle cell anemia to bubble boys in the blink of an eye.

Migraines aren't just in sufferers' heads
Sunday, June 2, 2002
By Roger Martin

It's bad enough to suffer. To have your suffering doubted is worse. That's how it's been for those with migraine headaches. Three quarters of the 28 million Americans who get migraines are women. And yet until recently a great many doctors have not believed migraine was a real disease.

Columnist finds himself in 'awe'
Sunday, May 19, 2002
By Roger Martin

I pass a stranger on the steps of the library. Her smile is bright, her greeting warm. She looks me firmly in the eyes, and her bravery is irresistible. I involuntarily smile back and say hello.

Ancestors' diet probably included termites, raw meat
Sunday, May 5, 2002
By Roger Martin

"A couple of things in this exhibit will floor you," David Frayer says, "unless you don't have blood going through your veins." Frayer is a Kansas University professor of anthropology, and we are at the KU Museum of Anthropology, eyeballing an exhibit that's up until late August.

Wishing for a Kansas downpour — soon
Sunday, April 21, 2002
By Roger Martin

You know this Kansas drought you've heard about? It's history. It'll be pouring outside by the time these words reach you. In sheets, in buckets. A gully washer, a toad strangler. I know this is so because droughts and stock market corrections don't exist to impoverish farmers and investors.

Babies may be able to perceive more than we think
Sunday, March 31, 2002
By Roger Martin

Until Seth, I'd never trucked with infants. I thought I might break one. And their moods swoop so hugely, you know? But then Seth's parents started dropping hints that I was supposed to respond to their bundle of joy with emotions other than fear and trembling.

Dead-cat bounce? Scientist is cautious about economy
Sunday, March 17, 2002
By Roger Martin

Thomas Malthus predicted a couple of centuries ago that population increases must eventually outrun food production, producing widespread famine. He wasn't just being grouchy when he said that. He was being an economist.

Chief of Dole Institute views U.S. presidency with scrutinizing eye
Sunday, February 17, 2002
By Roger Martin

As Richard Norton Smith tells it, there was this smug matron from Beacon Hill schmoozing President Calvin Coolidge. She shook his hand to death and gushed, "Oh, Mr. President, I'm from Boston."

An uncommon voice for the common people
Sunday, January 27, 2002
By Roger Martin

Wish Langston Hughes a happy birthday. If he were alive, he'd be 100 Friday. There's a big do in his honor at Kansas University next week. There's a big do in his honor at Kansas University next week. Among others, they're bringing in novelists Alice Walker and Ishmael Reed, poet Sonia Sanchez and playwright Amiri Baraka, aka LeRoi Jones.

Films about 'small lives' make lasting impression
Sunday, January 20, 2002
By Roger Martin

January's a good month to ponder movies. John Tibbetts, associate professor of theater and film at Kansas University, is right now putting together his list of the best and worst films of 2001 for the Kansas City Film Critics Circle awards.

Water drops may hold the key to the Earth's history
Sunday, January 6, 2002
By Roger Martin

Seawater knows how to hang around. Our human ancestors came from the oceans, and even today, about 70 percent of the human body is mildly salty water.

Buildings help us gain a sense of who we are
Sunday, December 16, 2001
By Roger Martin

I've been thinking a lot about America's physical identity — its commercial and residential look. This happened after I interviewed a geographer who's interested in how places preserve their identity.

New behavior drug being tested
Sunday, November 25, 2001
By Roger Martin

In the past, we treated some forms of upsetting human behavior in upsetting ways. We chained people up, put them in straitjackets, immersed them in icy baths, confined them to asylums.

As winter approaches, so does an urge to hunker down
Sunday, October 28, 2001
By Roger Martin

A line from a sad sonnet by William Wordsworth has been running through my head: "The world is too much with us." The terrorists and the anthrax are bad enough, but now the leaves are drizzling down, too. Can winter be far behind?

Putting thoughts on paper may help healing
Sunday, October 14, 2001
Writing can tame traumatizing memories. It also can help to recover the soul.
An African-American author named Richard Wright knew this. He said in his autobiography, "Black Boy," that life's meaning became most apparent to him at times when he was struggling to make meaning out of meaningless suffering.

Men become mute when it comes to matters of the heart
Sunday, September 23, 2001
By Roger Martin
Special to the Journal-World

I'm a sucker for self-help books, the kind that women read and then try to get the men folk to talk about. Topeka's Harriet Lerner writes books about relationships that both sexes can benefit from. She wrote "The Dance of Intimacy" and "The Dance of Anger." Her latest minuet is "The Dance of Connection."

Some diseases drain, bite by bite
Sunday, August 26, 2001
By Roger Martin

Alzheimer's and AIDS, cancer and heart disease grab the headlines, and they should. They're the King Kongs of disease.
But then there are the diseases that wreak slow havoc, working on you like the nibblings of ducks.

Study looks at aging of Mennonites
Sunday, July 29, 2001
By Roger Martin

I didn't quit smoking and start exercising overnight. But when I did, it was a conversion experience. "You've got to quit," I said to my brother. "Got to start working out." He shot back: "Yeah, but remember that marathon runner, what's his name, who keeled over? When your time's up, your time's up."

World's fair exhibit at Spencer Library takes viewers back in time
Sunday, July 8, 2001
By Roger Martin

It's 1851. You're in London, strolling along a grand hallway in a building made largely of glass — almost a million square feet of it. The glass is held in place by 4,000 tons of iron and 202 miles of wooden bars. At one point, this house of glass vaults upward more than 100 feet, enough to accommodate some full-grown elm trees.

Learning to listen, learning to love
Sunday, June 17, 2001
By Roger Martin

June is the month of brides, grooms and love, sweet love. Emily Dickinson called love "the exponent of breath." If I remember my algebra, that means love is breath squared, breath cubed, breath to the power of 10, 100, 1,000! But then comes the ticklish question: Once you get past the pretty figures of speech, what is this thing called love, anyway?

Atlas on Kansas birds causes writer's imagination to fly
Sunday, May 27, 2001
By Roger Martin

My yard is scarred by an ugly brown patch, a place where the grass was killed off last winter. One recent morning I discovered the greater good the patch serves. A robin plucked some dead grass from it, then flew off with a bundle.

Lecture series addresses big questions
Sunday, April 22, 2001
By Roger Martin

Question 1: Whatever happened to liberalism in America? Question 2: What forces eroded our sense of good and evil in the 20th century? I like it that two Kansas University professors are addressing those grand questions. This spring, they and some other academics are talking to audiences at Unity Temple in Kansas City, Mo., as part of a "Whatever Happened to …" lecture series organized by KU's Hall Center for the Humanities.

Harvestable perennials may be in the future
Sunday, March 25, 2001
What does Craig Freeman see outside his office window? "Electrical transformers," he laughs. What a waste. Freeman could name just about any flower, grass, tree or other plant he saw out there.

Slips of the tongue spark smiles
Sunday, February 25, 2001
By Roger Martin

I've been writing too many heavy commentaries lately. This winter's been so ugly that people might just start jumping out of windows if I keep going in this vein.

Placentas help researchers study proteins
Sunday, January 28, 2001
It was down in the alley with the neighborhood boys where I first heard the word "afterbirth." Saying the word led to the kind of nervous giggles that come from little boys when they speak of matters — especially about women — that they're anxious to hide their ignorance of.

Resolution: To be more Brianlike
Sunday, December 31, 2000
By Roger Martin

Resolution: I will be more like Brian Doyle in the year 2001. Brian is editor of Portland, the alumni magazine of the University of Portland, and is very Catholic, married, with kids.

Just how much can a snake swallow?
Sunday, November 19, 2000
By Roger Martin

It's a fake, snake experts say. The pythons, the anacondas, the quicksand pits — they used to scare the daylights out of me in the old jungle movie. Quicksand you could escape; an article in Reader's Digest showed how to do that. But the big snakes were another story.

Several treatments show promise, but research is key
Saturday, August 26, 2000
By Roger Martin

Aunt Norma was going to Arcadia, California, to visit a friend. She and my mother were waiting in the car for the bus to arrive. "When it came," my mother says, "I opened the car door to get out. Aunt Norma didn't. She looked at me and said, 'I can't move. My body's frozen.'"

Alphabet of creation gives writer new insight
Sunday, July 16, 2000
Roger Martin
Kansas University Center for Research

When the scientist from Northwestern University said that our week in the laboratory might lead us to a religious experience, I snapped to attention. In a question session that followed, I asked the scientist, Rex Chisholm, for details. He smiled and said, "Over a beer, maybe."

Happiness is state of mind
Monday, April 10, 2000
I'm betting you're the kind of person who doesn't have to worry about scorpions in the vase on the dresser, jihads or ethnic cleansing, dengue fever or multiyear droughts. I bet you're warm right now. Bet you own a TV, have a reasonably full tummy. Now a question. Given all this, why aren't you happier?