“Saul Bellow’s letters are to be published later this month, five years after his death. Letters to Philip Roth and Martin Amis provide a taster of the much-anticipated collection.”
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When Daedalus crafted wings of feathers and wax for his son Icarus, he included the warning to not fly too close to the sun. As anyone who knows Greek mythology […]
Every time I see a row of seaside lampposts, each with a single seagull perched on it, I wonder: Do those birds think we built the highway system for them? […]
This week’s theme is epistemological unease in the sciences: Complaints in a number of disciplines that studies didn’t really find the effects they’re reporting. One reason for these worries is […]
“Two new studies suggest that Twitter isn’t exactly a font of credibility as viewed by the general public.” Many users do not hold information from the site in high regard.
A new study of birds concludes that parents get more help when they are sexually faithful to each other and “leaves little doubt that promiscuity corrupts social life in birds.”
“Various efforts are underway to find a cheap, efficient and scalable way to recycle the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide back into the hydrocarbons that fuel civilization.”
Researchers have found that most migrating birds and other animals are just “following the leader”, which has serious ramifications as their habitats become more fragmented.
Every so often a meme comes along that reaffirms the positive potential of the Internet. Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better Project” is one such example. “When a 13 year-old kills […]
Tourists are creeping ever closer to the Eyjafjallajokull-Fimmvörduháls (at their own peril) and rumors of an eruption at Taal in the Philippines prove to be false.
111 years ago, San Francisco was almost wiped off the map
“A new study suggests that prayer can indeed guide people away from adulterous behavior.” The Economist explains that it is God who most effectively reproaches infidelity.
This week’s On the MediaspotlightsRushmore Drive, the new search engine marketed to African Americans (audio above). As the program describes, the search engine uses a unique algorithm to find those […]
Bird flu is suddenly back in the news as officials in Indonesia report new cases this week. In a spring 2006 Skeptical Inquirer Online column, after evaluating trends in reporting […]
n The German language describes the difference between two main types of federal states aptly and concisely as being between a Bundesstaat (1) and a Staatenbund (2). The European Union, […]
The calls of this bird vary regionally, as do the names people give them
“The search for artificial intelligence modelled on human brains has been a dismal failure. AI based on ant behaviour, though, is having some success.” Now engineers study ant collectives.
News bits from Chaiten, Soufriere Hills, Shiveluch and Alaska legislators wondering if airlines should pay for ash monitoring.
“Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the legendary totemic beings who had wandered over [Australia] in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything that crossed their path — birds, animals, […]
Over at the “ideas site” World Changing, David Zaks offers up an interview with the NY Times’ Andrew Revkin. As I’ve written on this blog before, Revkin is one of […]
Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai volcano has been putting on quite a show for people lucky (or unlucky) enough to be close enough to see it.
Tolkien himself wrote that “as for the shape of the world of the Third Age, I am afraid that was devised ‘dramatically’, rather than geologically, or paleontologically.”
Basketball games, elections and other head-to-head contests seem to affect the testosterone of people who care about them. Some studies have found that testosterone production goes down in fans of […]
Gore’s Live Earth concert series was supposed to catalyze American public attention around the problem of global warming, but did it? Polling data is not yet available regarding the concert’s […]
Birds do it. Bees do it. But primate species don’t sing and dance, except for Homo sapiens. Why is music-making part of human nature, then? Why do we enjoy singing […]
When I was in graduate school at Cornell, David Kirby was a course mate while he was working on a post-doc in science studies. Kirby was re-training from his former […]
Released just yesterday, Physics of the Future is my most ambitious book to date. Based on interviews with over three hundred of the world’s top scientists, who are already inventing the […]
Charlie Riedel of the Associated Press deserves a Pulitzer Prize for his photos of the oil-slicked pelicans of the Louisiana coast. It would be an unconventional choice. Human subjects have […]
“Scientists have questioned the assumption that a lack of exercise causes fatness in children.
The study suggests that physical inactivity appears to be the result of fatness, instead of its cause.”
Mass shootings are mercifully rare in Britain. “Gunman goes on killing spree” is a newspaper headline that one might expect to read every ten years or so. But none of […]