The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) famously offers $1000000 to anyone who can demonstrate paranormal abilities.  Its has helped to stem the spread of pseudoscience.  The Quantum…

How cheaply can you build a supercomputer?  A group from the University of Southampton just made one using 64 Raspberry Pi ARM GNU/Linux boxes ($25 each) and Lego blocks. The machine,…

A set of fossil footprints in Joggins, Nova Scotia have been identified as the world’s smallest - among vertebrates to-date, anyway. The footprints were found at Joggins Fossil Cliffs. A fossil…

Science Left Behind is out tomorrow and there is no question it will be fighting an uphill battle in the science community.  Obviously a book that makes fun of anti-science progressives isn't…

Science Left Behind is out tomorrow and there is no question it will be fighting an uphill battle in the science community.  Obviously a book that makes fun of anti-science progressives isn't…

It sometimes happens that my comments in the threads of my own blog get long and detailed (do not take this as me boasting about anything - it is just a fact). When that happens, I reason that they…

When Western scrub jays summon others to screech over the body of a dead jay, they come a'runnin', and those 'funerals' can last for up to half an hour. But why? Western scrub jays live in…

Progressives love to get celebrity endorsements for their beliefs, and for good reason; while the right is stuck with Clint Eastwood wandering around unintelligibly - and he disagrees with about half…

Researchers have discovered how to store diverse forms of artificial short-term memories - in isolated brain tissue. Memories are often grouped into two categories: declarative memory, the short and…

It seems silly that in 2012, along with Bigfoot we are still having to debunk the notion that someone becomes pro-science when they vote Democrat or, even sillier, that pro-science people have a…

It seems silly that in 2012, along with Bigfoot we are still having to debunk the notion that someone becomes pro-science when they vote Democrat or, even sillier, that pro-science people have a…

Last Saturday night Gian Francesco Giudice and I discussed the discovery of the Higgs boson and its aftermath in front of a wide audience gathered in the Aula Magna of Mantova University. The event…

Last week, a meta-analysis from a highly credible academic source (Stanford University, its medical school and nearby institutions), raised serious questions about the often-touted nutritional…

Fifty years ago, marine biologist Rachel Carson ignited the modern environmental movement with the publication of Silent Spring. It was an ecological alarm call – an attack on what she believed was…

We are in a new space revolution, and in the past two years, several people have used the Kickstarter crowd-funding platform  to try to get into space.  Not all succeeded.  Let's look…

Instead of getting any public support, increasingly the mob starts to get out their pitchforks. Now I came across this gem over at the FQXi site – it is down on the comment thread, but it is written…

      Genome: A genome is all the DNA in anorganism, including its genes. •       Comparative Sequence Sizes (Bases) •     …

It would be idiotic to claim that quantum mechanics just follows from getting stoned and blurting “everything is possible”. One of the difficulties with understanding the derivation of quantum…

Since it's the weekend and you are reading this, you are intellectually curious about science, which means there is also a statistical likelihood you enjoy beer. Because of the natural confluence of…

“Under what conditions can we engage in a meaningful, expressive interaction with an electronic device?” Say, for example, by ‘tickling’ a robot? This question is examined in a recent article by…