Science & Society

Survivalism, British Style John Christopher’s 1956 No Blade of Grass is an extremely compelling page turner that portrays our moral traditions and social glue as being so fragile that they can be…

I happened to be reading Howard Bloom's book The Genius of the Beast when I saw something odd happening in social media - there was a minor blow up on a science blogging site called Scienceblogs.com…

Mercola, webster of woo, he of the get your vitamin D through our tanning bed fame, has a new post up at Huffington Post. I tell you, I find it endlessly comforting to know that these medically-…

Post-apocalyptic Fundamentalism Leigh Brackett's The Long Tomorrow is one of many post-apocalyptic novels that envision society returned to a 19th century agrarian state. The rural settings of these…

Nature is never inexplicable For 1954, we’re discussing the first vampire/zombie apocalypse in a series, Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend. This is a significant subgenre in End of the World fiction,…

As a younger, unmarried man I wanted to visit Sweden, but more for the volleyball team than for the science(1), but since I don't want to find out if there 'are other fish in the sea' these days I…

Alien Invasion and Evolutionary Succession The possibility of human extinction in End of the World sci-fi is sometimes paired with a consideration of our next evolutionary step - a concept that is…

A survey taken by the Science and Technology Facilities Council says their funded PhD students have high employment rates and above average salaries. Since 2007, STFC has funded over 250 new…

Frustrated in dealing with the public?   You are not alone.   It may seem to researchers that the public is either stupid or intentionally ignoring evidence but it's not that one-sided,…

Post-Holocaust Noble Savages I’ve read three 1952 post-apocalyptic novels for this series - The Long Loud Silence, and two books that are so similar that they can be dealt with in a single post: Star…