One of those areas that always fascinated me was looking at historical figures and events and trying to figure out the science behind it.  For example, I had a genetics professor in college…

An article entitled "Children unaffected by smoking ban consequences" points to a new study indicating that children's exposure to second hand smoke is unaffected by the smoking ban in Wales. We…

FOXP2 is known as “the language gene.” When it goes wrong, as it famously did for a family in England, it can cause severe deficits in language ability. In the “KE family" in England, for…

Pinker goes after Gladwell, for doing a sloppy job on picking and analyzing the research he uses, and then does it himself in his critique of Gladwell. Ooops! By now many of you may have read Steven…

What do rock climbing, book clubs, and sci fi have in common? The answer is they all help an astrophysicist with job hunting. Read on for why and how! Back on May 1st, 6 months ago, I decided to…

This is a question to the many readers of science and technology articles and publications.  What are you seeing out there happening to engineering and science education where you come from?…

The 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species is coming up next week, and even the creationists are celebrating. In fact one of them is giving out free copies of Darwin's seminal…

A recent article, "Cloned Cows: Less In, More Out" raised the question of food safety, since its sale was approved by the FDA last year. However, my concerns are much more fundamental.  The…

Gross generalizations about atheists remain in style. A letter in response to a Sunday New York Times article in the Week in Review section, by Nicholas Wade. Dear Mr. Wade, While I always enjoy -…

In a review of Gladwell's new book: An eclectic essayist is necessarily a dilettante, which is not in itself a bad thing. But Gladwell frequently holds forth about statistics and psychology, and his…