Posts

May 22, 2013

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If you are attending this year’s history of science and all the rest monster bean feast in Manchester in July and are holding a lecture there for the first time in your life at a major conference then I recommend … Continue reading →

May 21, 2013

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10:09 AM | Skeletons and monstrous lambs

The main aim of the early Fellows of the Royal Society was to enquire after ‘matters of fact’. They used...

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4:21 AM | The Kaye effect after dark!

I’ve talked in some detail before about the Kaye effect, in which a shear-thinning fluid such as shampoo or liquid soap can be made to “bounce.” Well, I did one final experiment with the Kaye effect, in order to show … Continue reading →

May 20, 2013

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9:01 PM | Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs (a Little Golden Book)

After so many trips back to the '80s and '90s, it's good to return to a book that's properly vintage. Dinosaurs was number 355 in the impressively diverse Little Golden Book series from Golden Press of New York, and was published in 1959. It was a simpler time, when a kids' dinosaur book could be purchased for a mere 25 cents, and palaeoart consisted of lush forests, erupting volcanoes, and giant lizards...all too literally.For you see, while the illustrator William de J. Rutherfoord was […]

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3:18 PM | The Phlogiston Theory is not equivalent to the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis.

In recent days the Internet science community has got its collective nickers in a mighty twist. The disciples of the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis (AAH) have dared to hold an international congress in London and the, oh so irresponsible, press has … Continue reading →

May 18, 2013

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3:35 PM | Physics Week in Review: May 18, 2013

So much science-y goodness this past week! First up: I have a post at the newly launched Nautilus on the physics of the blues, focusing on the work of J. Murray Gibson. It’s all about the development of the “blue note” and how music, and our perception of musical notes, can shed light on the [...]

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1:52 PM | AAARRRGGGHHHHH……

Crunch, Crunch, Crunch, Crunch, Crunch,… That’s the sound of me banging my head against a concrete wall to relieve the pain I suffered on reading the latest pearl of wisdom that world famous astrophysicist and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson … Continue reading →

May 17, 2013

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11:54 PM | C’mon Baby Light My (Magnetic) Fire

Living in Los Angeles for the last six years, I’ve become quite familiar with the spread of wildfires, with a corresponding deepening respect for Nature’s power. Given the devastation an out-of-control wildfire can cause, it’s not surprising that there’s been quite a bit of research into modeling the specifics of how forest fires spread over [...]

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12:11 AM | The Giant’s Shoulders #59 is out!

I hereby declare that the 59th edition of The Giant’s Shoulders, the history of science blog carnival, is up at Something by Virtue of Nothing! This edition, centered around the theme of the Antikythera Mechanism, includes posts about: Did Isaac Newton … Continue reading →

May 16, 2013

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4:47 PM | From compliance to partnership: a different type of patient journey

The BMJ has called for a patient revolution, a “fundamental shift in the power structure in healthcare” in which patients improve healthcare, and not just for themselves. This is not just about engaging patients with specific decisions affecting their care, moving away from the idea of doctors’ orders or compliance, in which patients take the […]

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4:45 PM | A gallery of my fantasy miniatures

Time for a little break from physics and fiction! Though I haven’t been very active recently, for many years I was a hardcore gamer, playing both role-playing game and board games. In fact, I credit much of my early aptitude … Continue reading →

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3:13 PM | A Bumper Crop: Giants’ Shoulders #59

After a long and, at times, bitter winter spring has finally sprung in the northern hemisphere. Everywhere plants, trees and bushes are exploding into bloom and the birds and the bees are doing their fertility dances in the sparkling sunshine. … Continue reading →

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10:00 AM | Carl Zimmer's Feather Evolution video

Science writer Carl Zimmer narrates a recent TED educational video summarizing our knowledge about the evolution of feathers. Part of a lesson at the TED-Ed site and animated by Armella Leung, it's a really well done crash course in current thinking on feather origins. Did you note the derivatives from different pieces of paleoart? The Epidexipteryx is clearly based on the Qiu Ji and Xing Lida reconstruction, and the displaying Caudipteryx is Sydney Mohr's. Those bits aside, I love the way the […]

May 15, 2013

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10:00 AM | Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaurs - A Picture Dictionary

Today's featured book is 1990's Dinosaurs: A Picture Dictionary. Featuring evocative artwork by Tessa Hamilton, it features a welcome variety of animals due to its alphabetical imperative - an organizing theme which also forgives some temporally and geographically questionable pairings of animals. It also just so happens to be the book I chose for Mike Keesey as his prize for his second place showing in the LITC All Yesterdays contest. It begins with a brief introduction to dinosaurs, set […]

May 14, 2013

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10:03 PM | Eating the Enemy: A Savage Act, But Not New

A Syrian rebel commander eats his enemy's heart as a show of dominance. The savage act has occurred before in many cultures. Continue reading →

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10:00 AM | Mesozoic Miscellany 59

Plenty of news about Jurassic Park 4 lately, with the latest latest news being that it might not be happening any time soon. Still, it's inspired a nice flurry of writing among our blogging comrades, and that's a good thing. Matt Martyniuk at DinoGoss wrote about it, with this nice turn of phrase: "it's a bit sad that JP has eaten its own tail and become the self-perpetuating font of inaccurate science the original film was designed to destroy." Andrea Cau doesn't really care either way, and […]

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3:34 AM | All about rainbows, double rainbows, circular rainbows!

Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an … Continue reading →

May 13, 2013

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5:35 PM | The Valley of Gwangi

I've been working off and on on this review for a while. Some of you will recall my occasional promises to have it up "soon," which you probably and reasonably disbelieved. But recently, we got some sad news: the death of one of special effects' greatest legends, a personal hero of mine, the affable and talented Ray Harryhausen. In recognition of his life and work, I leave the following for your perusal. Ray Harryhausen died May 7th, 2013, at the age of 91. This is one of the things […]

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5:20 PM | Romanov's Final Days Seen in Recovered Photos

The last Russian tsar helps his daughter enjoy a smoke in one of the newly revealed photographs from the slain family's final days. Continue reading →

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5:00 PM | The Romanovs -- As Never Seen Before: Photos

Photos of the last Russian tsar and his family were recently rediscovered in a small museum.

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2:48 PM | Get those submission in for Giant’s Shoulders #59!

Time flies! It seems to me that we have only just finished perusing the excellent Giant’s Shoulders #58 at Asylum Science and now there are only three days left to submit those history of science, history of technology and history … Continue reading →

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2:20 PM | Gopnik, Galileo and Ed Yong: Galileo not admitting to being wrong.

Ed Yong (@edyong209) is a well-known and highly respected science writer. At regular intervals he posts lists of links on his website, Not Exactly Rocket Science, of science stories that he has found interesting, a sort of one-man blog carnival. … Continue reading →

May 12, 2013

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4:42 PM | Idol Tweets: Mapping the Social Space with Twitter

Many viewers who tuned into American Idol on April 4th expected the dismissal of Lazaro Arbos, a likeable young man with an endearing stutter but marginal talent and an unfortunate tendency to forget lyrics. They were stunned when Burnell Taylor was eliminated instead. Arbos inexplicably wound up in the top three of the remaining contestants, [...]

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11:40 AM | May 12, 1931: Alfred Wegener’s last Journey

March 1929 the German meteorologists Alfred Wegener, Johannes Georgi (1888-1972), Fritz Loewe (1895-1974) and Ernst Sorge (1899-1946) arrived to Greenland, searching a site for a coastal base camp – a starting point for an ambitious expedition to the inner ice sheet – they found it in the Kamarujuk Fjord. One year later 18 scientists, 25 [...]

May 11, 2013

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5:39 AM | Physics Week in Review: May 11, 2013

It was a busy week! I hosted an hour-long discussion with Maria Konnikova, my SciAm bloggy sibling and author of Mastermind: How To Think Like Sherlock Holmes, in Second Life as part of Virtually Speaking Science. (If you missed it, I hosted astrophysicist Janna Levin back in April.) I also chatted with the folks at [...]

May 10, 2013

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9:00 PM | The Thecodontosaurus that Didn't

This was originally conceived around this time last year as my entry for Bristol Dinosaur Project's Thecodontosaurus Illustration Competition. Sadly (though perhaps predictably), I failed to make the competition deadline.Thecodontosaurus (with sphenodont). Sepia ink on Saunders Waterford hot pressed watercolour paper; 150 x 280mm. I've decided that her name is 'Thesis'. Yes.Details. Unfortunately, this illustration suffers somewhat from reduction, though it seems to withstand considerable […]

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6:58 PM | A Geologist´s Dream: The Lost Continent of Lemuria

“Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.” “A Dream Within A Dream” by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) There is lot fuzz about the discovery [...]

May 09, 2013

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9:09 PM | Vintage Dinosaur Art: Dinosaur Dream

In my last-but-one Vintage Dinosaur Art post - about three years ago now - I reviewed a book entitled Dreaming of Dinosaurs. While some commented that it wasn't very vintage, others (on Facebook, mostly) noted how its title reminded them of a different book that they treasured as a child - Dinosaur Dream. Well wouldn't you know, I've only gone and procured that one too! And no, as it's from 1990, it isn't very 'vintage' either. However, hopefully this will be forgiven on the grounds that it's […]

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11:02 AM | Miraculous surgery or mundane procedure?

Who, these days, hasn’t heard of someone having a little nip/tuck, a quick injection to get rid of impending wrinkles?...

May 08, 2013

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10:00 PM | Search on for Lindbergh's Lost French Rivals

French teams to converge on islands off Canadian coast to hunt for plane.