My brother and I went to this event at the Royal Society last night, because we had both read Diamond’s previous book Guns, Germs and Steel, and enjoyed it (although neither of us finished it, but hey). The lecture was introduced by the Preside[…]

Boy in the corner
Private Eye seem to have taken sides in the on-going “was Hawking wrong?” debate.[…]

“Clutt’ moi, phter Werune!”
Say something in Proto-Indo-European![…]

OWL. Is this Science or Engineering then?[…]

Great Words In Science Number One: Martingale
In modern probability theory, a martingale is a random process which has an expected value equal to its current value. So if you are betting on someone flipping a coin over and over again and you are give[…]

I have a slim vol on my bookshelf called Genes, People and Language by a fellow called Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza. Using genetic tests, one can draw trees which show how early man spread around the globe. Using linguistics, one can plot very similar t[…]

Further to Mark’s point b2 below: The visuals at one point were particularly noteworthy. Voiceover: Such-and-such spent ages looking for an equation. Cue pic of (absurdly handsome) actor leafing through a tome apparently at random, searching, a[…]

I think the boffins may have pranged a kite here.
In an attempt to define a unit of fame (the “Warhol” perhaps?) they seem to have neglected its overriding property – that fame is comparative. The fame of each participant affects t[…]

The earth spins faster in the middle than it does at the poles, where (in the limit) it doesn’t move at all. If a plane in the northern hemisphere is flying south, the earth’s movement from right to left beneath it will become faster as t[…]

As a student, I once went to a philosophy of science lecture, expecting that I might become a regular attendee. The nervous and ill-prepared lecturer was clearly a science fan, but revealed himself as a charlatan within fifteen minutes when, while ta[…]