ANONYMITY
Anonymity can be a powerful tool, as well as a description of non-existence. “How effective would anonymity be as a punishment, compared with regular judicial …
MALARIA
I reported a while ago on the development of a vaccine against malaria, and the fact that the search for such a life-saving solution to …
REDONDA
Redonda is a tiny lump of rock in the Caribbean, located almost equidistant from Antigua, St. Kitts and Monserrat. I have flown over that area …
BEARS
The history of my interest in bears was, until recently, confined to “Rupert Bear” when I was child (a stuffed animal), and various National Geographic …
ZEALANDIA
In February 2021, I wrote a blog about the “discovery” of Zealandia, the eighth continent that many had predicted to exist, but nobody had found. …
GENDER EQUALITY
How is the world doing on gender equality? According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the picture is mixed. The needle is moving in the …
LENAT
“Writer of common sense into computers” was the header of an obituary I read in The Economist this week for Douglas Lenat. I don’t generally …
RUSSIAN SPIES
I have tended to think that worrying about Russian spies was a remnant of the old Cold War. It has certainly faded from the news …
RICHARD DREYFUSS
We are sending badly educated people to Washington DC to form the government that is supposed to represent us in the American experiment of democracy. …
TOO MANY HATS
“Too many hats” sounds like an admonition of a person who takes on so many different roles that they perform all of them badly. Equally, …