That did it, if only by an inch. Damn! Two days ago, back from a 4-week vacation to Greece, I approached my faithful and precise scale with a clear, pre-determined thought in my mind: "If I am over…

J.L. Vernon echoes many of the points I made in Are Science Blogging Networks Dead? but also focuses on a distinct aspect, writing Just like the NBA, “Science” is a brand.  It's a message that…

I probably first heard of the McMahon Line in 1962, when there was a brief war between China and India for control of the Himalayan border between them.   My chief memory of this is a Giles…

Colin Schultz, a video journalist in Ontario, has some tips for aspiring science journalists.   Science readership is going up each year but science journalism jobs are decreasing.  How so?…

Vinay Deolalikar from HP Labs claims proof of Millenium Prize problem P=NP, and (potential) $1M prize (pending peer review)! This deceptively simple little bugger (think e=mc^2) has, until now,…

Historically, the medical approach to curing the incurable effects of tragic spinal cord injuries--such as the case made famous by America's classic super hero, Christopher Reeve--has been to affect…

This week will include the peak evenings for the annual Perseid meteor shower. Although sky watchers have already seen a few exciting fireballs already, August 12 and 13 are expected to be the…

"In whatever kind of a “race” life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist." -- Hitchens Emotions are quick, here and gone, but moods settle upon us like cloaks of fog, obscuring the true lay…

Science 2.0, being about openness and outreach and participation,  can attract its share of kooks.  Depending on the whims of the community moderators around that day, goofy, speculative…

People have been wondering where the Gulf of Mexico oil has gone. Some years ago our friend Dr Banwari Lal from TERI New Delhi has been working on some microorganisms that degrade the oil by eating…

Nature has evolved all strategies to combat heat and drought. Plants which look like stones store carbondioxide during night time in their cell vacuole in the form of malate derived from dark form of…

No, this is not about Physics. No, you are probably not interested. No, this blog is not only about science. I sometimes use it as -guess what- a log book, a diary. A habit I have learned five years…

Discover Magazine, both print and online, has been sold to Kalmbach Publishing, which owns publications like Astronomy, Trains and Birder's World. Price: $7 million, says MediaWeek, for a company…

I love Dropbox. I use it to back up and synchronize all my important files, and it has pretty much replaced my need for external hard drives and USB keys. I also use it to share specific folders…

Spitting On Graves There is science, there is bad science, there is propaganda and then there is spitting on graves. I recently wrote about Robert McClure, the man who finally proved the existence of…

Know why BetaMax didn't beat out VCRs even though it was better in every way?   The same reason more people have PCs than Apples.   Strangling the technology with one provider keeps the…

When thinking of M theory and how it's popularized so much is said about it's wild and wonderful predictions.  However their is not much said about how to think of the M branes themselves.…

We are driven (some of us more than others) to identify, classify, and organize. According to Baron-Cohen, individuals on the spectrum are extreme systemizers (with deficits in empathizing). He…

I'm in the process of developing a lesson plan on distracted driving for high school teachers. AAAS intends to put it up on its teacher web site, Science NetLinks. There are a handful of studies…

When I was a grad student, I installed SETI@home on a bunch of lab computers, which served as a screen saver and crunched data from scans of the sky in search of aliens whenever the computer was idle…