John Derbyshire’s cuts to the chase in his commentary on D’Souza’s new book. To judge from the extracts — and of course, if this is the kind of thing that interests you, you should read the whole book — D’Souza seems to … Continue reading →

Olivia Judson explains that science is not a succession of facts, facts facts and why Rosalind Franklin did not discover the structure of DNA. She had the data. Why didn’t she reach the solution? There are several answers to this; … Continue reading →

What should a government do if science shows that its policies are misguided? Why, fire the scientists of course! Professor Nutt was the British government’s chief advisor on the harm caused by illegal drugs and he wrote a paper showing … Continue reading →

There a tiny storm in my corner of the interwebs. Bob Wright wrote a book – The Evolution of God – and Jerry Coyne wrote a review trashing it. Then Coyne and Jim Manzi got into a blogs ‘n’ handbags … Continue reading →

Those people protesting the death panels that will be deciding whether your grandma will have to be put down should be thankful that they don’t live in socialist Denmark where your grandma’s body parts might be recycled or used to … Continue reading →

650 Million Years In 1:20 Min.by xchristox

Just how beautiful is everyone’s second favourite planet? The BBC has the answer: a lot.

The Edge has an article describing research into how the brain reconstructs the passage of time from imperfect clues from the senses. This is the problem of temporal binding: the assignment of the correct timing of events in the world. … Continue reading →

Best Ted Talk so far this year:

“Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several … Continue reading →