It is remarkable to think that we have had electric lights and telephones for about as long as we have known that germs kill people.
It is entirely possible that some terrestrial microbes are the products of different biogenesis events, in effect ‘alien organisms’, constituting a type of shadow biosphere
It is curious to reflect that we have computers that can effortlessly compute pi to 5,000 places and yet cannot be made to understand that there is a difference between time flies like an arrow and fr...
It is a natural human impulse to think of evolution as a long chain of improvements, of a never-ending advance towards largeness and complexity – in a word, towards us. We flatter ourselves. Most of t...
It is a curious feature of our existence that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguishing it.
It is a curious feature of our existance that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguishing it.
Incidentally, disturbance from cosmic background radiation is something we have all experienced. Tune your television to any channel it doesn't receive, and about 1 percent of the dancing static you s...
In the morning I awoke early and experienced that sinking sensation that overcomes you when you first open your eyes and realize that instead of a normal day ahead of you, with its scatterings of simp...
In nearly every year for at least 250 years, deaths outnumbered births in London.
In fact, overwhelmingly museum displays are artificial.
In countless small ways the world around us grows gradually shittier. Well, I don’t like it at all.
If there is one thing the AT teaches, it is low-level ecstasy—something we could all do with more of in our lives.
If there is one thing certain about English pronunciation it is that there is almost nothing certain about it. No other language in the world has more words spelled the same way and yet pronounced dif...
I'm quite certain that if the rest of the world vanished overnight and the development of cricket were left in Australian hands, within a generation, the players would be wearing shorts and using the...
I took a train to Liverpool. they were having a festival when I arrived. Citizens had taken time off from their busy activities to add crisp packets, empty cigarette boxes and carrier-bags to the othe...
I remember once reading that the tenth Duke of Marlborough, on a visit to one of his daughter’s homes, announced in consternation from the top of the stairs that his toothbrush wasn’t foaming properly...
I passed the time browsing in the windows of the many tourists shops that stand along it, reflecting on what a lot of things the Scots have given the world—kilts, bagpipes, tam-o’-shanters, tins of oa...
Holmes laid out a continental drift theory that was in its fundamentals the theory that prevails today. It was still a radical proposition for the time and widely criticized, particularly in the Unite...
Generally speaking – which is of course always a dangerous thing to do, generally speaking – Americans revere the past only as long as there is some money in it somewhere and it doesn’t mean going wit...
For reasons that are still poorly understood, at depths beyond about 30 metres nitrogen becomes a powerful intoxicant. Under its influence divers had been known to offer their air hoses to passing fis...