In my evolution course, I note that "Darwin spent 20 years working out his ideas and gathering evidence" before releasing On the Origin of Species in 1859. I don't say he "delayed" publication…

My Dear Sir,-- The accompanying papers, which we have the honour of communicating to the Linnean Society, and which all relate to the same subject, viz. the Laws which affect the Production of…

Thoughts of Encouragement are always helpful. I would like to tell you a story of hope. It’s really a simple story. It was a dark day in my life when my mother died and our father left us. I was four…

I had a series of posts on Ye Olde Genomicron about what people actually said regarding "junk DNA" and non-function in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. I have been meaning to repackage this material for a…

Scientific wordsmith Carl Zimmer, most recently the author of the widely touted book Microcosm, has left Scienceblogs (the blog network by Seed Magazine) and taken up a new post as blogger and…

A large scrap item has fallen from astronomy's cutting table! Although, it is not something essential for our understanding of all that is within spacetime's fabric, nor is it critical to any…

OK, I am getting worried. As I wrote a few weeks ago, there is a new movie coming out supposedly next year called "The Tree of Life" starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and others. Well, the movie sounds…

From "The End of Theory over at Wired This is a world where massive amounts of data and applied mathematics replace every other tool that might be brought to bear. Out with every theory of human…

It is common practice in Medicine to put patients on combinations of drugs. The vast majority of these combinations of drugs (especially where 3 or more drugs are involved) have never been studied at…

The current edition of Tangled Bank, the blog carnival about evolution, is now up at Wheat-dogg's World. It includes a mention of Jill Smith's bat genome talk at Evolution 2008. I bet she didn't…

Senator John McCain's exuberant proposal that the U.S. government fund a massive X-prize style research push for a efficient automobile-scale electric battery points up several problems with the way…

Today I have published on my youtube account two new lessons in my series on quantum theory. In my continued attempts to explain ever more complex concepts in Quantum Physics I have defined all the…

Apparently Gordy Slack, author of a book on the Dover trial, has written a piece in The Scientist discussing (in his opinion) What neo-creationists get right. I can't access the article for some…

Many scientists are frustrated by the way scientific studies are reported in the media. However, in many cases I think I and others have unfairly lumped the majority of science writers together,…

Data from Google Trends is being used in Pensacola, FL to settle a legal question in an obscenity trial; the argument raised by the defense is that if Google's data shows that the term (for instance…

Gordy Slack, writing in The Scientist seems to think so. First things first, I am not in the camp that looks on honest questions as deserving of a declaration of war in that sort of 'you are with…

I hesitate to scoop Jonathan Eisen by commenting on a news item verging on "Genomics by Press Release" (he is, after all, the one quoted about this in a prestigious publication), but this is worth…

Multitasking is detrimental to how we learn according to two interesting pieces which discuss recent neurological studies of multitasking, in The Atlantis, and in The Atlantic (yes, those are two…

A new report at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars has some recommendations about science advice for the next president. The rationale for this report is that: The next President…

We talk a lot about science education here and of course we all try to do our part by donating time writing in the name of science outreach but we're not the only ones doing something positive that's…