What’s wrong with these pictures? Answer in the comments before you click on the pictures to find the real answers.

Seed Magazine has just announced the winners of a competition that invited contestants to answer the question:  What does it mean to be scientifically literate in the 21st Century? One of the winning essays, Camelot is only a model, praised … Continue reading →

An interesting paper in Seed magazine that suggests that the sudden emergence of language about 120,000 years ago is due to a mutation in a gene, FOXP2, that we share with most other organisms. Essentially, the paper says, most of … Continue reading →

Hey! Who’s that taking a corner? Why, it’s me! Tom and Gina came along to watch us get our arses whuped on Sunday and took lots of pictures to preserve the arse-whuping for posterity (haha!geddit?). In future, I will only … Continue reading →

If you are planning to write a Curriculum Vitae resume any time soon, read this first. Tip #5: Avoid Wank Words Wank Words are words that inflate your perceived importance (e.g. using “architected” rather than “designed”), or words that have … Continue reading →

In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.’ Stephen Jay Gould

The New York Times picked up the torch that Richard and I were carrying on Friday: Some experts on science education also point to the typical sequence of high school science instruction: biology, chemistry and then physics. It would make … Continue reading →

Way back in December, we had a pleasant discussion in the comments about the bible as literature. My original post, though, was about my fond memories of the Church of England: For me growing up, the Church of England was … Continue reading →