Human rights abuses are commonly associated with despotic, totalitarian regimes, not with weak and failing states. But Professor Neil Englehart’s recent study of 140 nations suggests that weak states…

We have just finished the second version of our environmental database. This database includes not only our own published work but hundreds of publications regarding Salmon, Habitat, Climate Change,…

New Scientist magazine has posted an eight-part article titled “Eight things you didn’t know about the internet”. As someone who knows about the Internet, I thought I’d comment on the various parts.…

Perhaps Hank is the smartest guy in the room (so was Enron), but while he and Bloggy are taking Manhattan (as did the Muppets, although apparently not well if it needs to be taken again), Teddy and I…

The journal Evolution: Education and Outreach has a great piece on the evolution of whales, complete with pictures. As the piece says, "cetacean origin is one of the best known examples of…

Scott Altman is a pretty cool guy.   He's the commander of the Atlantis mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope (and, as noted previously, astronaut John Grunsfeld is also carrying along…

Dark matter, dark energy and scalar tensor vector theories of gravity are widely thought of as at odds.  I have shown that if the scalar and vector fields common to alternative gravities are…

John Tierney wants to know - how widespread is the problem of unethical competition in science? Here's the problem explained by Dr Sean Cutler on Tierney's blog: Sadly, there is a lot of unethical…

The evolution game Spore was somewhat of a critical flop - especially among scientists. The game has glitzy graphics, but, for a game billed as being somehow connected to science, the science sucked.…

Radiation ! The word brings sudden silence and a feel of insecurity. The effect of  nuclear radiation brings the memory of  Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Everyone wishes  to escape from…

On my way back to CERN from Fermilab (yes, I am betting on two tables at a time these days, as our Poker-addict friend Garth Sundem suggests), I made a 7-hour stopover in New York. Originally this…

Chessplayers are a strange lot. Those who get attracted by the game and end up sticking to it, making it the game of their life, are typically intelligent, creative thinkers; yet among them one may…

No poll.

Astronomy and green space? Yes, indeed. As an astrophysicist I always find great pleasure in pointing out that the Earth is a planet, just like all the rest of the bunch orbiting our Sun and thus an…

I'm in New York City for a variety of meetings and, of course, I brought along Bloggy, the Scientific Blogging mascot.   I know how popularity works.  People don't concern themselves much…

When I became an amateur chess player and I enrolled in the "Esteban Canal" chess club in Venice, about a quarter of a century ago, I met and got to know personally dozens of people sharing my…

I have been putting together a free resource about evolution which I am proud to say is now up at www.evolverzone.com.

I've just wrapped up my time with another mission!  Can you match each satellite picture with its name? A B C  D E F Asca (Astro-D) RXTE (XTE) Astro-E SWIFT Suzaku (Astro…

The 66th Four Stone Hearth, a fortnightly collection of anthropology blogging is being hosted over at Aardvarcheology.  including a monster of a study on African population genetics. Excerpt:…

We Have Ways of Making You Conform Language is both a product and a process of evolution.  It has mechanisms by which its continuing evolution is kept from running out of control.  Those…