He sees our lineal success as a fortunate fluke: Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishing...
Hanged. ‘It was disclosed that a young white official had been found hanged to death in his cell …’ (The New York Times). ‘Hanged to death’ is redundant. So too, for that matter, are ‘starved to death...
Galaxies of the universe are racing away from us, but that they are doing so at a rate that is accelerating.
Fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a gentleman’s apparel is clearly asking to be mangled.
Disinterested, uninterested. ‘Gerulaitis, after appearing almost disinterested in the first set, took a 5–1 lead in the second’ (The New York Times). A participant in a tennis match might appear unint...
Dilemma. ‘The chief dilemma facing Mr Greenspan is whether or not to raise interest rates’ (Sunday Times). Dilemma does not mean just any difficulty or predicament. Strictly speaking, it applies only...
Can take up to ten million years to clean an ocean—but if you are not in a hurry it is marvellously efficient. Perhaps
Avenge, revenge. Generally, avenge indicates the settling of a score or the redressing of an injustice. It is more dispassionate than revenge, which indicates retaliation taken largely for the sake of...
All intents and purposes is colourless, redundant and hackneyed. Almost any other expression would be an improvement. ‘He is, to all intents and purposes, king of the island’ (Mail on Sunday) would be...
Affinity denotes a mutual relationship. Therefore, strictly speaking, one should not speak of someone or something having an affinity for another, but rather should speak of an affinity with or betwee...
You have your whole life ahead of you. But here's the thing to remember. You will always have your whole life ahead of you. That never stops and you shouldn't forget it.
Yet it would be nearly impossible to overstate Lyell’s influence. The Principles of Geology went through twelve editions in his lifetime and contained notions that shaped geological thinking far into...
Woods are not like other spaces. To begin with, they are cubic. Their trees surround you, loom over you, press in from all sides. Woods choke off views & leave you muddled & without bearings. They mak...
When you look at a lake, you are looking at a collection of molecules that have been there on average for about a decade.
When guys in camouflage pants and hunting hats sat around in the Four Aces Diner talking about fearsome things done out-of-doors, I would no longer have to feel like such a cupcake.
What on earth would I do if four bears came into my camp? Why, I would die, of course. Literally shit myself lifeless. I would blow my sphincter out my backside like one of those unrolling paper strea...
What if we are all getting stupid at more or less the same rate and we don’t realize it because we are all declining together? You might argue that we’d see a general fall in IQ scores, but what if it...
We’re going to stop this preposterous obsession with economic growth at the cost of all else. Great economic success doesn’t produce national happiness. It produces Republicans and Switzerland. So we’...
We have been spoiled by artists’ renderings into imagining a clarity of resolution that doesn’t exist in actual astronomy. Pluto in Christy’s photograph is faint and fuzzy—a piece of cosmic lint—and i...
We don’t know if he ever left England. We don’t know who his principal companions were or how he amused himself. His sexuality is an irreconcilable mystery. On only a handful of days in his life can w...