Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616) is generally credited with writing the first modern novel, his famous Don Quixote. The story of the addle-brained old gentleman who decides to become a knight and recruits his gullible neighbour as his squire has appealed to the imaginations of generations of readers ever since it was published over 400
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Earlier this year, James Powell produced a new version of his telling pie-chart about global warming consensus. For the first version he reviewed the body of peer-reviewed literature from 1991 through 2012 about global warming, to see whether there was any consensus among the scientific community on the matter. He was driven to this experiment
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All of life, since its beginnings, has used DNA to encode genetic information. This code provides a blueprint for proteins, molecules that perform an enormous range of functions in an organism’s cells, and is passed on to the organism’s offspring when it reproduces. DNA can be recombined and mutated to allow for evolution of the
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Today a friend of mine – a bibliophile like myself – was rummaging through my old books. I was trying to find the books that contain those old weather forecasts I wrote about some time ago, to show them off. I couldn’t find one of the books, which I seemed to have misplaced. (Don’t worry;
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I recently read The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. It’s a delightful murder mystery, revolving around books and set in a beautifully rendered medieval world. I love a good historical novel and this one certainly pushed quite a few buttons. The fourteenth century is not a period I’m overly familiar with, and Eco’s
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Part 2? Yes, Sir. Now that I’m what’s considered a professional scientist, I’m apparently also a target for crackpots. Last month I received an e-mail from one Gabor Fekete, an Hungarian gentleman who has doubts about the veracity of the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider. He began as follows: While
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It is generally assumed that, once the zombie apocalypse hits, our societies will crumble into anarchy; and that those who survive the initial panic will be reduced to fighting for their bare necessities. We will be scavenging for food and supplies, and fending off the undead hordes and the darkest excesses of human nature, which
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Ah, Pope Formosus. This must be, by far, the most ridiculous episode in the history of the Catholic Church. However, before we get to the juicy bits, let’s have a bit of background. Nine Centuries of Catholic Church Formosus was Pope from 891 to 896, square in the middle of a most turbulent time in
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Just as a heads up, this post will probably not make a great deal of sense if you don’t know the book at all; it also may contain minor plot spoilers. Still here? Let’s dive in! J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye has left generations of readers divided. On one hand, it has
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Today a find that was, at least to me, completely unexpected. It was well hidden and I only happened to notice it because I was wondering, for some reason I don’t recall, what my book looked like underneath its dust jacket. Here’s the book in question: a fairly worn copy of Bertrand Russell’s A History
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