From the front page of an operational circular of the CERN laboratories: In the interest of readability, this circular has been drafted using the masculine gender only. However, use of the masculine…

The 50th anniversary of C.P. Snow's famous Rede lecture on the "Two Cultures" has been marked this year, around the web and sometimes in real life too, with various symposia and blogfests.…

During the middle Eocene, 45-50 m.y.a., a number of freshwater lakes appeared in an arc extending from Smithers, through the modern Cariboo, to Kamloops, the Nicola Valley, Princeton, and Republic,…

The tuna sandwich has been the staple of the snatched office lunch for a generation. But our favourite fish filling could soon vanish from the high street. Sandwich chain Pret a Manger yesterday…

When the 47million-year-old fossil dubbed 'Ida' was revealed to the world, attention soon turned to the anonymous German shale pit where it was first unearthed. The astonishingly well-preserved…

One story goes that long ago, after the ice receded and the floodwaters lowered, Raven walked along a beach in Haida Gwaii, looking for occupation. He found some creatures in a shell and convinced…

Bounty draws a crowd. Fossil enthusiasts will be heading up to Cache Creek, the gateway to B.C.'s Cariboo Country for a weekend of riding, big, open fields, cowboys and the Eocene fossil beds…

The arrival of cedar, called “Tsuuaay” by the Haida, had profound effects on the material culture of the Haida (Approx 4000 BC). Once they were able to build canoes to fish year round (Halibut, Red…

The Queen Charlotte Islands form part of Wrangellia, an exotic tectonostratiphic terrane, that includes parts of western British Columbia, Vancouver Island and Alaska. I'll be bringing my rock…

It is a well-known fact that it is much easier to measure a physical quantity than to correctly assess the magnitude of the uncertainty on the measurement: the uncertainty is everything! A trivial…

Random Reward Schedules and the Ambiguity of Language. I had the clue from Pavlov: control your conditions and you will see order. B.F. Skinner, A Case History In Scientific Method. Skinner…

According to research presented on Monday, June 8 at SLEEP 2009, in the presence of free access to food, sleep restricted subjects reported decrease in appetite, food cravings and food consumption;…

Trains, planes, buses and automobiles are more than just exhaust, when it comes to the full scope of environmental damage. There is a full life-cycle of processes associated with getting from Point A…

Both boys and girls have issues but boys are  getting a raw deal, according to Judith Kleinfeld, professor of psychology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in the US. It's commonplace to…

Activists tend to point to someone else's job and say it's for the good of the planet that it disappear.   But everyone need to cut back, including climate scientists, says a researcher who,…

If you live in California, Bakersfield is just a place where farming mega-corporations grow a lot of stuff.  If you're remotely literate, you remember it as the 'Promised Land' the "Okies" left…

A recent survey of 'dark' gamma-ray bursts, which are bright in gamma- and X-ray emissions, but have little or no visible light, are giving us a look into the dusty corners of otherwise dust-free…

Who doesn't every elderly person have a cognitive function decline as they age?   Elderly people who exercise at least once a week, have at least a high school education and a ninth grade…

If you’re not familiar with the work of Dr. Rupert Sheldrake it may help to know that his most popular experiments were featured on British television in the form of specials that you can view, at…

The Intelligence in the Chinese Room. In my  article Digging Beneath the Surface of Grammar, I wrote:     It may be noted in passing that Searle's Chinese Room argument fails to…