As we parted at the Natural History Museum in London, I asked Richard Fortey how science ensures that when one person goes there's someone ready to take his place.He chuckled rather heartily at my nai...
As many as one-third of all stair accidents occur on the first or last step, and two-thirds occur on the first or last three steps.
And there was this jerk named Dwayne who kept saying, 'Go on, have a beer. You know you want one. One little beer's not going to hurt ya. You haven't had a drink for three years. You can handle it.' H...
To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for gr...
What moves the planets and stars is the distortion of space and time. Of
When we reflect upon the works of William Shakespeare it is of course an amazement to consider that one man could have produced such a sumptuous, wise, varied, thrilling, ever-delighting body of work,...
When the poet Paul Valery once asked Albert Einstein if he kept a notebook to record his ideas, Einstein looked at him with mild but genuine surprise. Oh, that's not necessary, he replied . It's so se...
When a prominent Puritan named (all too appropriately, it would seem) John Stubbs criticized the queen’s mooted marriage to a French Catholic, the Duke of Alençon, his right hand was cut off.*
When I awoke it was daylight. The inside of my tent was coated in a curious flaky rime, which I realized after a moment was all of my nighttime snores, condensed and frozen and pasted to the fabric, a...
We were idiots really, but awfully happy, too.
WHEN I was brand new to Britain and everything was still a mystery to me, I went with an English friend to Brighton for the day, and there I saw my first seaside pier. The idea of constructing a runwa...
Unluckier still was Guillaume Le Gentil, whose experiences are wonderfully summarized by Timothy Ferris in Coming of Age in the Milky Way . Le Gentil set off from France a year ahead of time to observ...
Today’s mathematics is intimately bound up with two key areas of human knowledge and activity: the natural world, and the society in which we live.
To tell you the truth, I'm amazed we've come this far, he said, and I agreed. We had hiked 500 miles, a million and a quarter steps, since setting off from Amicalola. We had grounds to be proud. We we...
To my mind, the only possible pet is a cow. Cows love you. They are harmless, they look nice, they don’t need a box to crap in, they keep the grass down, and they are so trusting and stupid that you c...
The number of chemicals in use in the developed world was more than 82,000 at the last count, and most of them – 86 per cent, according to one estimate – have never been tested for their effects on hu...
The hard and unexpected part is the realization not just that my son is not here but that the boy he was is gone forever. I would give anything to have them both back. But of course that cannot be. Li...
The Earth at last had a position in space.
That is the problem with Scotland, I find. You never know whether the next person you meet is going to offer you his bone marrow or nut you with his forehead. Afterward
Silbury Hill in Wiltshire