It will enrage our fellow Californians, who regard the wholesomeness and warmth of the in-home hearth as akin to fratricide, but when it comes down to it, people in the Third World, like the US is…

Cars that drive themselves?   Being cut up by some remote hand that never touches you?  It's not a Stephen King novel, it's the latest in robotics and it's coming to a Senate floor near you…

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) discovered that the Earth orbits the Sun, thus paving the way for our modern view of the world.  It took a few hundred years for religion to apologize for the…

Australia's top models are going to be on the main stage in Cairns this week but don't get too excited.   They're only here to show new ways to understand climate change, improve air safety and…

Climate science is tricky business because the atmosphere and Mother Earth are an eloborate, complex system no one understands.   So how much Earth's climate will warm due to carbon emissions is…

Ancient nomadic hominids moved from place to place but often how has been subject to speculation.   Now researchers think they have one answer, using the dental fossils of animals eaten by Homo…

Is it a magic trick?   A man takes a paper clip and bends it so that it is just a crooked piece of wire, then he throws it into a bowl of hot water and instantly the metal wire returns to the…

This is my observation. Intelligent people are a minority.    There is an abundance of businesses, causes, and charities that are addressing problems. Addressing and milking them for every…

The Voynich Manuscript : An Enigma, Part #1 There are many unsolved mysteries in this world.  A web search for 'greatest mysteries', 'unsolved mysteries', 'world's greatest mysteries' and…

Does fasting lead to a longer life?   You never see any really old fat people but that has more to do with other issues than starvation.    Some studies indicate that caloric…

A good video laying out how climate scientists think: There are problems that attract a different kind of thinker: really complex problems such as the human body, or an individual cell, or the…

(This is the first in what I anticipate to be a series of three essays on moral inquiry. The second will be a survey of some traditional themes and their contemporary applications, and the third will…

I've never been a shark guy, I will confess that to you.   Actually, I have never been an animal guy of any kind.   When I was a wee scientist / media guru / journalist / game show host,…

I can relate to what Isis is saying When I first told a more senior colleague what I was up to, he told me, "Isis, I don't care if you are building model trains in your spare time and then blowing…

OK, I agree lectures aren't the best format, but Google and Wikipedia aren't a substitute: The old-style lecture, with the professor standing at the podium in front of a large group of students, is…

A few weeks ago, I got a text message on my mobile. It said it was from my credit card company (and it had the right one). It said they had to talk with me urgently about my account, and I should…

There are things or entities in or on an object that could be present and be proven to exist by experiments and yet one can not see because they are too small to be seen by our naked eyes or some…

Designing a new hydroelectric power station can be a laborious task - the pressures, temperatures and fluid flows can be simulated but the actual results outside FEA showbiz graphics will still…

There's a bipolar force with a repulsive side that doesn't involve cosmic opera or wooden acting - it's light.  And it can be used to control components on silicon microchips, meaning future…

University of Denver researchers say that couples who live together before they are engaged have a higher chance of getting divorced than those who wait until they are married to cohabitate. In…