homunculus

Buddha in oils? [This is the pre-edited version of my latest news story for Nature.] Painters on the Silk Road may have been way ahead of t...

Journeys in musical space [This is one of the most stimulating things I’ve read for some time (not my article below, published on Nature ’s ...

NASA loses its (science) head, Pfizer loses its case [ This is my Lab Report column for the May issue of Prospect. ] The resignation of NASA...

On their way to a bookshop near you Well look, you don't seriously think I'm going to go to all this effort if I do not allow myself...

Radio sweat gland - 90 GHz [ Given that part of the point of this blog is to add a bit of value to stuff I publish elsewhere, I thought it w...

Astrology’s myopia [Do I make rods for my own back? I suspect astrologers will respond to this piece, just published as a Muse column for N...

Medieval instrument suggests astronomical knowledge was widespread [Here’s a story I picked up on a recent visit to the wonderful Museum of ...

Science made simple Starting, I think, on 14 April, the UK's Independent newspaper is issuing a series of booklets called 'Science ...

On hobbits and Merlin [ This is my latest Lab Report column for Prospect. ] In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. But the rest of th...

More burning water [Here is my latest Crucible column for Chemistry World (April). I’m not sure if I’m one of the “unscientific critics who...

Enough theory One of the side-effects of James Wood’s widely reviewed book How Fiction Works (Jonathan Cape) is that it has renewed talk in...

Can a ‘green city’ in the Middle East live up to its claims? [Here’s my latest piece for Nature’s Muse column.] The United Arab Emirates ha...

Heart of Steel Birth of an Idea Chemical art with heart [ Here’s my latest Crucible column for Chemistry World , which appears in the March ...

Engineering for the better? [This is the pre-edited version of my latest Muse column for Nature News.] Many of the grand technological chal...

Ye Gods Yes, as the previous entry shows, I am reading Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods . Among the most trivial of the issues it makes m...

There’s no place like home … but that won’t stop us looking for it in our search for extraterrestrials. [This is the pre-edited version of m...

The hazards of saying what you mean It’s true, the archbishop of Canterbury talking about sharia law doesn’t have much to do with science. ...

Waste not, want not [This is my latest Muse column for Nature News.] We will now go to any extent to scavenge every last joule of energy fr...