Often in science, there are baseline variables that come with the scenario that people do not consider changing. For example it is taken as read that the glassware used un test tubes is inert to the experiment going on and contributes nothing but con[…]

Bees prefer pictures of flowers. Even if they have never seen a flower before. This is because bees are more a fan of pictorially representative art, rather than abstract art, as they have very little capacity for extrapolating the way they feel abou[…]

Animals have regional accents. This is taken as gospel around here, due to the groundbreaking work of Dr Quack. However this does not seem to be complete scientific wisdom, as there is much surprise over a Norfolk species of frog with a distinctive a[…]

Most weeks something pops up on the information superhighway about a project to hack some old technology into new, that you could make one up and someone has either done it or is working on it. Here I’ll make up: MAME emulator on the Nintendo D[…]

NASA only had so much time to play with. Yes there were problems with the Space Shuttle Discovery, and they had to make sure everything was safe. On the other hand, Commander Eileen Collins had run out of hair relaxant and the rest of the crew were w[…]

Says the irradiated mammals were plenty of fun to look at, but if that beach ball of uranium were to bounce over the cage, or one of the seals played the wrong tune on its horn, a disaster might occur.
Actually, they don’t say that at all. This[…]

Except for the woman who made it to 122, but is dead now. Even the Dutch supercentenarian who is the current world’s oldest person is five years off Sean William Scott’s life expectancy of around 120? Why do I make this claim about the ac[…]

An experiment to determine which decade produced the best cult comedy radio programmes
Apparatus
BitTorrent
iPod
Time spent travelling on public transport and not otherwise reading books and news or listening to new music.
Method
BitTorrent is a marv[…]

Got a cough?
Slime it away!
I am not sure of the efficacy of using snail slime in cough mixture. But I am certainly not sure that Strawberry and Avocado is a proper flavour for a linctus. But further research shows that action the snails trail is a r[…]

A standard Tuesday afternoon discussion of the correct spelling of humous (humus/hummus/houmous…) threw up this gastronomic delight. Worm Humus. Like standard, or even low-fat humus, worm humus is described as “grow media” and furth[…]