Latest posts

A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Prejudice Go Down

Posted on 17 April 2014 by Athene Donald

I wasn’t really paying attention to the radio. I was busy cooking, but it sounded to me as if the question Clive Anderson asked the film-maker Andrea Calderwood on Saturday’s episode of Loose Ends amounted to ‘how come a nice woman like you is making films about the nasty episode that was the Biafran civil war?’. Of course h Continue reading →

Posted in Equality, interviews, Jenny Saul, Unconscious bias, Women in science | Comments Off on A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Prejudice Go Down

The Bearding

Posted on 16 April 2014 by Henry Gee

How is variation maintained in populations? This is a bit of a poser for evolutionary theory, especially in the realm of sexual selection. If males or females of a certain type always score highest in contests of mate choice, genes underlying that particular type will go to fixation and variation will be expunged.

One solution is called negative fr Continue reading →

Posted in barnaby dixson, beards, biology letters, evolution, face fungus, facial hair, guppies, handlebars, illustrated london news, mate choice, mutton chops, negative frequency dependent selection, nigel barber, Research, sexual selection, whiskers | Comments Off on The Bearding

Why this night is no different than any other – vile anti-semitism persists

Posted on 15 April 2014 by Steve Caplan

Tonight, I know, is the first night of Pesach-Passover, the Jewish festive celebration of the historic/mythical tale of escape from slavery in Egypt. Being an atheist with a complete lack of interest in any religious or pseudo-religious customs, Passover has never been a holiday that I’ve really celebrated. In fact, I don’t celebrate mu Continue reading →

Posted in antisemitism, Jew, Jewish Community Center, Kansas City, murder, Nazi, Passover, Pesach, racist, treason, white supremacist | Comments Off on Why this night is no different than any other – vile anti-semitism persists

Mosaic is the New Savanna

Posted on 14 April 2014 by Henry Gee

Time was when the model of human evolution went something like this: our ancestors essentially evolved to climb and live in trees, but with the general drying and cooling of the Earth’s climate over the past few million years, the great African forests shrank, to be replaced with the kind of tropical grassland known as savanna. Our ancestors Continue reading →

Posted in AAPA, American Association of Physical Anthropologists, Amy L Rector, Calgary, Cromer, Cromer East Beach, habitat, habitat heterogeneity, human evolution, Kaye Reed, mosaic, patchiness, Research, savanna, Yohannes Haile-Selassie | Comments Off on Mosaic is the New Savanna

On the connection between (April) fools and trolls

Posted on 12 April 2014 by Steve Caplan

Trolls seldom have anything worthwhile to say. They twist, bully, rant and rave and insult, putting forth their worst drivel to provoke a response. All behind a cloak of anonymity. That is the nature of a troll; inevitably a loser who dares not show his face. So when such a troll spouts outright lies that can easily be refuted, there is seldom any Continue reading →

Posted in April Fools, education, grant, humor, laboratory, proposal, Research, science, students, training, troll | Comments Off on On the connection between (April) fools and trolls

The Stuff of Brains

Posted on 12 April 2014 by Athene Donald

That migraine I was waiting for finally struck this week. Amazingly it didn’t throw my life into disarray, because it hit me during a week I was supposed to be having ‘off’. Consequently it only spoiled a day of relaxation, the day I intended to sort out and take a bag of old clothes to the Oxfam shop and do otherwise virtuous but Continue reading →

Posted in cognitive illusion, Daniel Kahneman, Matthew Lieberman, neuroscience, self-affirmation | Comments Off on The Stuff of Brains

Therianthropic

Posted on 9 April 2014 by Henry Gee

BONE JACKSet somewhere in the north of England where ancient shadows hover just beyond glimpsing, teen novel Bone Jack by Sara Crowe shows that fiction for young readers needn’t stint on horror and darkness – and can cleave to much more genuinely rooted ancient wisdom than you’ll ever find in burlesques about schoolboy wizards and high-sch Continue reading →

Posted in Alan garner, bone jack, dark fantasy, Jonathan strange and me Norell, Sara crowe, The Hunger Games, Writing & Reading, young adult fiction | Comments Off on Therianthropic

Science and Nerves at the BBC

Posted on 6 April 2014 by Athene Donald

Last week you would have found three professors gathered nervously together in the depths of (Old) Broadcasting House waiting for the studio to be ready to air the week’s broadcast of In Our Time. Three professors who had never met before but who instantly got onto the subject of nerves in the face of the coming performance. I was one of the Continue reading →

Posted in Andrea Sella, BBC, Communicating Science, education, In Our Time, Justin Wark, Melvyn Bragg | Comments Off on Science and Nerves at the BBC

Volcanoes

Posted on 5 April 2014 by Steve Caplan

Many geologists and climatologists believe that global warming aside, the next major global climate issues are most likely to come from the explosion of a super-volcano; after all, just look at what an isolated Icelandic volcano did to air traffic across the globe recently.

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The Arenal stratovolcano in Costa Rica. Dormant since 2009, it has a frigh Continue reading →

Posted in Arena, Costa Rica, eruption, La Fortuna, science, supervolcano, Tabicon, tragedy, volcano | Comments Off on Volcanoes

Adiabatic

Posted on 3 April 2014 by Henry Gee

Britain is presently swaddled under a thick cloud of pollution. This, we are told, has been caused by a mixture of regular industrial and motor exhaust, spiked with a lot of sand from the Sahara Desert.

Yesterday Cromer laboured under a light fog, but the air was fresh – no more than the sea-fret one expects from time to time.

Continue reading →
Posted in climate, Cromer East Beach, Domesticrox, sand, weather | Comments Off on Adiabatic