Dr. Daniel Freeman, professor of clinical psychology at Oxford, has good news if you believe women are more nuts than men: there is a 40% chance you are right. We know that discussing biological…

Compassion in Adversity It is not our petty squabbles that define what it is to be human: it is our compassion in the hour of adversity.  The Oklahoma tornado demonstrates this. "There are empty…

Fred Astaire is, of course, beyond compare. As a dancer, he had already set the bar for everyone and then he set it a lot higher when he appeared in 1951's "Royal Wedding" at age 52. Echoing a Voodoo…

If you live in California, you can never get too amazed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. If there is a progressive position that an activist court can take, they usually take it. If you can't go…

"New Physics can appear at any moment but it is now conceivable that no new physics will show up at the LHC" Guido Altarelli, LHC Nobel Symposium, May 15th 2013 It is funny reading the above quote if…

If you are a particle physicist, and not French, your career at Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire  - CERN, The European Organization for Nuclear Research and the world's largest…

Giant Leap Surplus To Requirements Say Evolution Scientists I must confess that to the best of my knowledge, no scientist used those precise words.  However, the research does indicate that what…

Not getting the message that emissions are bad?  A new paper claims that air pollution and emissions from coal-fired electricity plants are associated with higher suicide rates right along with…

The funniest thing I have read lately. Ben Elton's new Britcom 'The Wright Way' has been panned by critics.  It is about a health and safety team in the fictitious borough of Baselricky. One…

We, the people, have understood. We've got it. Too much CO2 is spewed out in the atmosphere!  The problem is that we, the people, understood this like 'a million' years ago. I wish those who…

The Atlantean Triangle Atlantis is in the news once more, and then some, so I thought I'd cash in on it analyse the stories scientifically to see what is being claimed. In a nutshell: the remains of…

In a world of missing links and UFOs, bimonthly instances of the apocalypse and scientific scare journalism about chemicals and biology, Atlantis still reigns supreme as the thing most often…

Well there's a new article "May Atheism Succeed Demographically" that has invoked another variant of social Darwinism, yet again. Certainly there are many situations in which one might utilize the…

The Authentic Biography OF H2O as told exclusively to this author Thanks to its marvellous memory, water tells some tales of its adventures down through the ages. It was somewhere between 20 and 40…

With the recent rescue of three young women in Cleveland, held for over a decade by a kidnapper, we are now subject to the useless speculations of the media. Why the news media feels compelled to ask…

In December, when a Republican berated the CDC for not finding links between vaccines and autism, science media was outraged.  Yet for years prior to that, Democrats had made the same claim with…

It isn’t Monday, but I’m puzzled every day of the week. Alice is puzzled too; she’s playing with a new tetrahedral die. Each face has a different positive integer on it, but the numbers are peculiar…

Richard Holmes - Falling Upwards Falling Upwards.  What a wonderful title for a history of ballooning. As someone with more than a slight interest in the history of science and technology*, I…

Compare the following situations: 1 - You dial the number of a call center, and the automated system informs you that the estimated waiting time is eight minutes. 2 - You dial the number of a call…

Two Armstrong EKG Readings - A Question Of Provenance [edit]This article has been updated - please see:One Small Step - Two Small Strips ( Or Maybe Three ) I recently posted an article: Neil…