I’m growing increasingly disappointed with the Large Hadron Collider. Not only has it failed to create any world-ending black holes, but now the damn thing is totally broken. Look, I know a machine that is 27Km long and accelerates protons to near-lightspeed is pretty complex. But surely you can keep the thing running for more [...]
In these troubled times, most people have accepted that our drinking water is less than pure. A few centuries of unbridled human industrial activity, and some schmutz is bound to get in there. But there’s a vague confidence that the powers-that-be are working to keep the really dangerous stuff from coming out of your tap. [...]
New research out this week indicates that people who startle easily and react strongly to spiders tend to favour public policies that emphasize law and order, fighting terrorism and restricting immigration. In short: the nervous and twitchy tend to vote conservative. From the US National Science Foundation: The study, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), tested [...]
French performance artist Don Jean Habrey, aka Hors Humain, claims he will reveal Nessie on December 24, 2008. But while other monster hunters have used sonar and underwater cameras to search for the legendary cryptid, HH will use “chants, drumming, burning flares and bonfires round the shore”. He calls the whole to-do a ‘sacred collision’. [...]
Never in the history of American presidential elections has a VP candidate so overshadowed her running mate. And overshadower-in-chief Sarah Palin seems to agree: A “Palin and McCain” administration? Probably a slip of the tongue, but it’s a fairly accurate representation of the current state of John McCain’s campaign. Even when those pesky social conservatives can’t get [...]
I’ve been saying it for months, but it’s nice to get some official, NGO confirmation. When it comes to democracy, the Chavez presidency has been a bad thing for Venezuela. A damning report by Human Rights Watch reveals that all those nice things about democratic governance – a free press, vibrant civil society, and indepedent courts [...]
The Obama campaign has rolled out it’s team of scientific advisors, and they seem like a pretty free-thinking bunch: Harold Varmus, a Nobel prize winner who headed the National Institutes of Health. He’s been active in tackling global health issues and defending the American Constitution from the religious right; Gilbert Omenn, a staunch defender of evolutionary [...]