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They just can’t help it
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1–2 minutes·
1 comment on They just can’t help itThey just can’t help it – an article about the differences between the male and female brain by my old university psychology supervisor, Prof. Simon Baron-Cohen. Interesting and controversial stuff; I saw a lecture that he gave about this topic a few months ago (not via Metafilter – I read it in the Guardian myself…
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SARS as a weapon
There is some talk on the Internet about SARS being a Russian or Chinese biological weapon. I am not particularly convinced, and I certainly don’t think it’s a helpful suggestion given that there’s plenty of worry going on at the moment. Of course it could be a biological weapon; there are plenty of research labs…
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Pinker on the Stand
Pinker on the stand – a transcript of talk and discussion given by Steve Pinker on ‘Human Nature and Its Future’. I can’t say I learned anything particularly new from the talk itself, but Pinker receives a real roasting in the discussion about the concepts of criminal justice and what implications our new understanding of…
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We’ve never had it so good
We’ve never had it so good – and it’s all thanks to science – Matt Ridley gets it damn straight in this column in the Guardian. Enough of European techno-pessimism and anti-GM fanatics!
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Guardian sees the light
Guardian launches new science section – and not a moment too soon, either. British science reporting is woefully poor (with the exception of the BBC) and often completely exaggerated (Sunday Times, anyone). I’m happy to see that the Guardian recognises the importance of decent science reporting.
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Life in the Lab
Scene: A moderately untidy lab in a university with stacks of papers on tables and computers humming away to themselves. One person, G, is building a couple of computers and taking apart two others. S watches by. Another, R, is working on a paper. G holds up a dusty-looking computer card. G: R, what should…
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Speed
Yesterday I had an interesting debate about whether science is suffering from diminishing returns these days; i.e. that it costs more than it used to to get answers. On the face of it, this seems true; we spend billions on particle accelerators, space telescopes and medical research programmes. We never spent that amount of money…
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Sonic Boom!
Sonic boom video – a jet fighter causes a particularly impressive shockwave during a sonic boom (thanks Charlie!)
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Artificial hippocampus
There’s a fair amount of excitement on the Internet about efforts to make an artifical rat hippocampus. This idea strikes me as, well, pretty weird. I am a little doubtful as to whether it could work (I can think of a lot of reasons why it wouldn’t) but to be honest, it doesn’t matter whether…
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Multiverse
Just been to a very interesting talk by Prof. Hugh Mellor on the subject of the Multiverse. The idea* behind the Multiverse is that there are uncountable numbers of other universes out there that have slightly different properties to ours, owing to different initial conditions. We can never see any of the other universes in…
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