These are all just informed guesses.
There was so much unrecognized novelty in the collection that at one point18 upon opening a new drawer Conway Morris famously was heard to mutter, ‘Oh fuck, not another phylum.’ The
There seemed to be a mystifying universal conspiracy among textbook authors to make certain the material they dealt with never strayed too near the realm of the mildly interesting and was always at le...
There isn't a landscape in the world that is more artfully worked, more lovely to behold, more comfortable to be in, than the countryside of Great Britain. It is the world's largest park, its most per...
There is something about the pace and scale of British life - an appreciation of small pleasures, a kind of restraint with respect to greed, generally speaking - that makes life strangely agreeable. T...
There is simply no compelling reason we know of to explain why human brains got large,’ says Tattersall. Huge brains are demanding organs: they make up only 2 per cent of the body’s mass, but devour 2...
There is no question that a Neanderthal could easily beat us up. So, too, presumably could their women, which may be why we are only 2 percent Neanderthal instead of 50 percent. Those bitches were too...
There is no law that requires the universe to fill itself with small particles of matter or to produce light and gravity and the other properties on which our existence hinges.
There is actually a certain value in not finding anything,’ he said. ‘It helps cosmologists to work out the rate at which galaxies are evolving. It’s one of those rare areas where the absence of evide...
There are really only two ways to get hit on the head by a parking barrier. One is to stand underneath a raised barrier and purposely allow it to fall on you. That is the easy way, obviously. The othe...
There are loads of people like us. We are all here because we like it here or are married to Britons or both. If I may say so, you are a little more cosmopolitan, possibly even a little more dynamic a...
Then, about seven million years ago, something major happened. A group of new beings emerged from the tropical forests of Africa and began to move about on the open savanna. These
Then much later—about four or five years ago—I was on a long flight across the Pacific, staring idly out the window at moonlit ocean, when it occurred to me with a certain uncomfortable forcefulness t...
The wind’s on the wold And the night is a-cold, And Thames runs chill Twixt mead and hill, But kind and dear Is the old house here, And my heart is warm Midst winter’s harm …
The tearoom lady called me love. All the shop ladies called me love and most of the men called me mate. I hadn't been here twelve hours and already they loved me.
The remote valley of Lake Turkana (formerly Lake Rudolf) in Kenya is now one of the world’s most productive sites for early human remains,
The reason for this is that the universe bends, in a way we can’t adequately imagine,
The proportions of these salts and minerals in our tissues are uncannily similar to those in sea water—we sweat and cry sea water, as Margulis and Sagan have put it—but curiously we cannot tolerate th...
The positive side of thinking you are about to die is that it does make you glad of the little life that is left to you.
The patients on Tuke Ward were a pleasant and tractable bunch and practised insanity with a certain elan.