Science
If you want a play that brings girls into science, commission a man: Jina and the STEM Sisters reviewed
Jina and the STEM Sisters is a blatant act of propaganda. And its intentions are excellent. This is a musical…
Letters: What really irritates Meghan’s critics
Meghan’s adroitness Sir: Tanya Gold suggests that people criticise Meghan Markle because she is mixed race and a woman, and…
Grotesquely plodding: Late Night Staring At High Res Pixels reviewed
The Finborough’s new show is a love story with the male partner absent. Two women, one Irish and one American,…
The poetic beauty of science
Safe spaces, diversity quotas, gender-neutral pronouns, culturally relative facts, heteronormative hegemony. Are my right-on credentials right on enough? Am I…
The Egyptians knew the value of accidental discoveries
The government has plans to fund a new research agency to back ‘cutting-edge science’. Ptolemaios (Ptolemy) I (367-282 bc), the…
Memory – and the stuff of dreams
Can you remember when you heard about 9/11? Chances are you’ll be flooded instantly with memories — not only where…
Letters: Is cycling really conservative?
Veritas vincit Sir: Professor Dawkins eloquently and engagingly defines true truth for us (‘Matters of fact’, 19 December). It seems…
The insidious attacks on scientific truth
What is truth? You can speak of moral truths and aesthetic truths but I’m not concerned with those here, important…
A singular mind: Roger Penrose on his Nobel Prize
Roger Penrose on his Nobel Prize, the beauty of physics – and why AI is nothing to fear
Christiaan Huygens – hero of time and space
This book, soaked like the Dutch Republic itself ‘in ink and paint’, is enchanting to the point of escapism. The…
Unpleasant smells can actually enhance pleasure
Harold McGee’s Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World’s Smells is an ambitious and enormous work. Indeed it’s so…
The solving of a biological mystery
DNA is the blueprint that encodes the instructions to make proteins. Proteins are the building blocks and the machines that…
The dangers of unconscious bias training
Diversity training doesn’t work
Why I will wear a face mask
We are enjoined by certain experts to wear face masks while having sexual intercourse. No change there, then, for me.…
How we can overcome Britain's problem with scientific illiteracy
It occurs to me that one of the most important lessons we’ve learnt so far during this time of plague…
Do face masks work? A note on the evidence
Should we, or should we not be compelled to wear face masks during a virus epidemic? It sounds a simple…
The evidence on Covid-19 is not as clear as we think
There is still plenty we don’t understand about the virus
How British science can flourish after Brexit
How British science can flourish after Brexit
A book that could save lives: Adam Rutherford’s How to Argue with a Racist reviewed
In the award-winning musical Avenue Q, filthy-minded puppets sang about schadenfreude, internet porn, loud sex, the uselessness of an English…
How close is humanity to destroying itself?
Humanity has come startlingly close to destroying itself in the 75 or so years in which it has had the…
Babies are aware of bilingualism from birth — if not before
Probably most of the world is bilingual, or more than bilingual. It is common in many countries to speak a…
It’s science, not protest, that will save the planet
One might expect that the challenge of climate change would encourage many young people to take up Stem (science, technology,…
Radio 4’s The Art of Innovation is a series that — for once — deserves the label ‘landmark’
Radio 4, how do I love thee? Rather as one loves the flocked wallpaper that came with the house. It…
Business is the only area of human activity where you get paid to change your mind
In 1891, a 29-year-old man moved from Philadelphia to Chicago intending to start a business. With $32 to his name,…
Earth dying in five billion years I can deal with, but not a world-weary Brian Cox
When you see the opening caption ‘4.6 billion years ago’, it’s a pretty safe bet that you’re watching a programme…
