homunculus

Nature versus naturoid [This is my Materials Witness column for the January 2009 issue of Nature Materials .] Are there metameric devices in...

Dark matter and DIY genomics [This is my column for the January 2009 issue of Prospect .] Physicists’ understandable embarrassment that we...

Who knows what ET is thinking? [My early New Year resolution is to stop giving my Nature colleagues a hard time by forcing them to edit sto...

Una poca lettura For any of you who reads Italian (I am sure there are many), there is a little essay of mine up on the Italian science ...

DIY economics There I am, performing a bit of rotary sanding on top of a piece of the newspaper that I’d considered disposable (the Business...

What you don’t learn at school about the economy [Why, you might wonder, would I want to expose myself to more flak from economists by writ...

Epidemics, tipping points and phase transitions I just came across this comment in the FT about the kind of social dynamics I discussed in...

Fractal calligraphy Everyone got very excited several years ago when some guys claimed that Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings were fractals ...

The drip, drip, drip of environmental change [You know how I like to give you added value here, which is to say, the full-blown (who said o...

Opening the door to Hogwarts [This is how I originally wrote my latest story for Nature ’s online news. It is about another piece of creati...

Don't mention the 'C' word I’m beginning to wonder whether I should be expecting the science police to come knocking on my door....

Intelligence and design Little did I realise when I became a target of criticism from Steve Fuller of Warwick University that I would be ab...

Why less is more in government [This is the pre-edited version of my latest Muse for Nature ’s online news.] In committees and organization...

Crime and punishment in the lab [This is the uncut version of my latest Muse article for Nature’s online news.] Before we ask whether scien...

Who is Karl Neder? ‘ These people tend to define themselves by what they don’t like, which is usually much the same: relativity, the Big Ban...

Might religion be good for your health? [Here is the uncut version of my latest Muse for Nature news online.] Religion is not a disease, a ...