Some Observations On Book Learning First you learn the rules of words, But next you unlearn all that guff, And wierd your words into absurds, It's much more fun than grammar stuff. Baby's First…

3 NASA employees out of the 22,000 people about to lose their jobs sat in a room full of loyal Democrats and listened to President Barack Obama talk about how much he loved NASA.  Then he talked…

As we’ve just had income tax time in the U.S., I’ve been hearing a bunch of silliness associated with it. I thought I’d talk about two of my favourite (well, for some value of “favourite”) tax…

Eyjafjallajökull - Thats Easy For You To Say ! Eyja   fjalla   jökull It's not LL as in miller. It's TL as in antler. Stress is on syllables shown in bold. "Eyja" - island - ayuh…

"The common curse of mankind - folly and ignorance." - Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida "And of all plagues with which mankind are cursed, ecclesiastical tyranny's the worst." - Daniel Defoe, Jure…

Researchers say they have found another potential risk factor for breast cancer--Grandma's diet. Georgetown University scientists say that pregnant rats that ate a high fat diet not only increased…

NASA's Terra satellite has captured another image of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull-Fimmvörduháls volcano ash cloud, now moving into Germany. Eyjafjallajökull continues to spew ash into the air and the…

Moral behavior may increase our capacity for willpower and physical endurance, according to new research from Harvard University. Participants in the new study who did good deeds -- or even just…

A common treatment for patients with type 2 diabetes could one day help smokers avoid lung cancer, say scientists at the National Cancer Institute. Metformin decreases levels of insulin-like growth…

Many Americans go to foreign news sources for coverage of the war in Iraq and Palestinian-Israeli conflict because western media outlets censor gruesome war-time images, according to a study in Media…

In 2009, the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company launched a dissolvable nicotine product called Camel Orbs. The mint look-a-likes are intended as a temporary form of nicotine for smokers in settings where…

Researchers from the University of Gothenburg have discovered a brand new species of bacterium found only in the Gullmarsfjord north of Gothenburg in Sweden. The new species has been dubbed…

Paleontologists have discovered a plant-eating dinosaur that live 70 to 80 million years ago. The new species, Texacephale langstoni,  was about as big as a medium sized dog. The discovery…

A new study in the Journal of Geophysical Research suggest that solar wind may charge polar lunar craters to hundreds of volts as it flows over natural obstructions on the moon. The findings are…

Attempting to eradicate disease is not a good use of public health dollars, say researchers writing in Proceedings of The Royal Society B. Instead, the emphasis should be placed on reducing the…

I garden for a living, besides writing. My last blog referred to bamboo growing in a rock garden outside my back door. But my urban gardening mentor has informed me this plant is not bamboo.  It…

Possibly some of the more hotly contested fishing grounds in the world occur around the Falkland Islands, just off the Atlantic coast of South America. The islands themselves are a point of…

Arctic Tipping Points - #4: The Broken Bridges Of Nares This series is a follow-on to my 3-part series Arctic Ice 2010.  It began with part #1: Background And Recent History.  In Arctic…

Selective hearing- How many times have you heard that term? It might be totally false!  We are, as humans simply thinking in pictures. I know none of this has been in a text book before, the…

Selective hearing- How many times have you heard that term? It might be totally false!  We are, as humans simply thinking in pictures. I know none of this has been in a text book before, the…