Google Europe managed to generate $7 billion in profits yet paid tax on only $50+ million.  How is that possible?   They're headquartered in Ireland to take advantage of its low 12.5% tax…

Nares Ice Bridge Breakup The ice bridge in Nares Strait at the Kane Basin outlet to Baffin Bay has begun to break up. There was a plug of consolidated ice solidly wedged across the channel. …

“Auntie”, better known as the BBC, has just treated us to a two-parter, Everything and Nothing, by Jim Al-Khalili.  He thoroughly knows his history of science, rather than…

Why should technology not go on and accelerate like it has before? Why should humanoids not get ever brighter; why should democracy not grow until true communism emerges? Techno-progressives emanate…

More Americans work for the government than in manufacturing, farming, fishing, forestry, mining and utilities combined. The number one in employer in Silicon Valley, the home of high technology for…

More Americans work for the government than in manufacturing, farming, fishing, forestry, mining and utilities combined. The number one in employer in Silicon Valley, the home of high technology for…

Louis Farrakhan, the controversial Nation of Islam leader, defended Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and said demons were to blame for President Barack Obama's assault on Gadhafi. Sure, it can be…

Louis Farrakhan, the controversial Nation of Islam leader, defended Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and said demons were to blame for President Barack Obama's assault on Gadhafi. Sure, it can be…

Manchester Confidental postedd a rather creative April Fool's Day article called Squid ink is the new Garra fish. Garra is the genus of fish, sometimes called doctor fish, that will nibble all the…

Scientists are often portrayed as serious yet quirky, but many hide a prankish interior.  Here's a butcher's dozen of famous pranks by -- or at-- scientists. The best lecture never heard.…

Have you noticed that whenever a [natural]disaster strikes we quickly look around to find a guilty party? The first place we look is among politicians. The politicians are not to blame for the…

This is my last post of my blog. I have decided to totally quit my blogging activities after the last incident. My participation in the scientific collaborations CDF and CMS has always been a problem…

Relic Finds Reveal Zulu War Cover-Up Paleontologists searching for fossils in a remote area of South Africa were astonished to find spent bullets and cartridge case remnants in an area not previously…

This week's Friday Fossil is Arthropleura. "Calm down, dear!!" I'm about to pop off to the isle of Arran, the poster-child of British Geology. Not many countries can boast a handy island that has…

Gravity does funny things.   While the Earth looks rather round in pictures from space, the distortions that would have to occur in order to have uniform gravity everywhere would make it look…

In the 1970s, the federal government mandated that only universities that adhered to racial quotas could receive federal money - as a result, nearly all U.S. universities today receive federal…

Open access, where scientists pay a fee to publish so that the public and other scientists can read the study for free, is a negligible issue to most scientists, according to a new research report in…

An Arctic Decade 2001 - 2011 For thousands of years the Arctic has been covered in perennial ice with seasonal changes at the margins and some natural variation, seen as losses and recoveries of…

Earth's gravity revealed in unprecedented detail This latest news release from ESA, the European Space Agency, gives us the most accurate picture yet of the geoid, which is the surface of an ideal…

The eastern continental boundaries of America and Asia are colder than the same latitudes on their western boundaries -  no one thinks of Barcelona or London as colder than New York City but…