homunculus

Lucky Jim runs out of luck (at last) [This is also posted on the Prospect blog .] Jim Watson seems to be genuinely taken aback by the furor...

Swiss elections get spooky [This is my latest column for muse@nature.com.] High-profile applications of quantum trickery raise the question ...

How tortoises turn right-side up [This is a story I’ve just written for Nature ’s news site. But the deadline was such that we couldn’t incl...

We’ll never know how we began [ This is the pre-edited text of my Crucible column for the November issue of Chemistry World. ] Oddly, it is ...

Time to rethink the Outer Space Treaty [This article on Nature ’s news site formed part of the journal’s “Sputnik package”.] An agreement fo...

Yet more memory of water This month’s issue of Chemistry World carries a letter from Martin Chaplin and Peter Fisher in response to my colu...

What’s God got to do with it There’s a curious article in the September issue of the New Humanist by Yves Gingras, a historian and sociolo...

Space experiments should be a cheap shot [This is the pre-edited version of my latest article for muse@nature.com - with some added comment ...

Hybrids and helium [This is the pre-edited version of my Lab Report column for the October issue of Prospect .] It’s not obvious that, when ...

Burning water and other myths [Here is my latest piece for muse@nature. This stuff dismays and delights me in equal measure. Dismays, becaus...

Arthur Eddington was innocent! [This is, pre-edited as usual, my latest article for muse@nature. I wonder whether I have been a little guilt...

Singing sands find a new tune [Here’s the unedited version of my latest article for news@nature, which has a few more comments from the rese...

Letter to Prospect: a response My column for the June issue of Prospect (available in the archives here) can be seen as somewhat sceptical ...

Check out those Victorian shades, dude For people interested in the cultural histories of materials, there is a lovely paper by Bill Brock ...