The main expressed goal for oceanographers during International Geophysical Year, 1957/8, was to study the use of ocean depths for the dumping of radioactive wastes. This wasn’t a secret assignment, y...
The favourite activity is drinking a lot of beer and the second is throwing it up again)
The books tell you that if the grizzly comes for you, on no account should you run. This is the sort of advice you get from someone who is sitting at a keyboard when he gives it. Take it from me, if y...
The Pilgrims didn’t have to learn Algonquian for the happy and convenient reason that Samoset and Squanto spoke English—Samoset only a little, but Squanto with total assurance (and some Spanish into t...
Space being spacious, the average distance between any two of these civilizations is reckoned to be at least two hundred light years, which is a great deal more than merely saying it makes it sound.
Significance), 600,000 known archaeological sites (and more being found every day; more being lost, too), 3,500 historic cemeteries, 70,000 war memorials, 4,000 sites of special scientific interest, 1...
Replica. Properly, a replica is an exact copy, built to the same scale as the original and using the same materials. To use the word when you might better use ‘model’, ‘miniature’, ‘copy’ or ‘reproduc...
Quarks, a collective term that encompasses all particles that are governed by the strong nuclear force.
Plan ahead. ‘[The] keys to success are to plan ahead, to choose manageable recipes and to cook in batches’ (The New York Times). Always tautological. Would you plan behind?
Pharmaceutical industry hasn’t given us an entirely new antibiotic since the 1970s. Our
Lunar material, it is thought, came from the Earth’s crust, not its core, which is why the Moon has so little iron while we have a lot.
Life wants to be; life doesn’t always want to be much; life from time to time goes extinct. To this we may add a fourth: life goes on.
It occurred to me with a certain uncomfortable forcefulness that I didn’t know the first thing about the only planet I was ever going to live on.
In the words of the physicist Michio Kaku, who goes on: In some sense, gravity does not exist; what moves the planets and stars is the distortion of space and time. Of
If. Problems often arise in deciding whether if is introducing a subjunctive clause (‘If I were …’) or an indicative one (‘If I was …’). The distinction is straightforward. When if introduces a notion...
Headed instead across the field to the Magna Carta memorial, a little open-air rotunda erected in 1957 by the American Bar Association and memorable today as the only decent thing ever done by lawyers...
Hadrons—a collective term used by physicists for protons, neutrons and other particles governed by the strong nuclear force.
Future. As an adjective, the word is often used unnecessarily: ‘He refused to say what his future plans were’ (Daily Telegraph); ‘The parties are prepared to say little about how they see their future...
Fours
Clearly no thinking presence behind any of the actions of the cells. It all just happens, smoothly and repeatedly and so reliably