I love Dropbox. I use it to back up and synchronize all my important files, and it has pretty much replaced my need for external hard drives and USB keys. I also use it to share specific folders…

Spitting On Graves There is science, there is bad science, there is propaganda and then there is spitting on graves. I recently wrote about Robert McClure, the man who finally proved the existence of…

Know why BetaMax didn't beat out VCRs even though it was better in every way?   The same reason more people have PCs than Apples.   Strangling the technology with one provider keeps the…

When I was a grad student, I installed SETI@home on a bunch of lab computers, which served as a screen saver and crunched data from scans of the sky in search of aliens whenever the computer was idle…

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying"Woody Allen

Aww. I cannot bring myself to enter the contest to win a month living in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. The website beckons: "Be the experiment. Eat. Sleep. Science."  But I am…

When I was studying, a long, long time ago I encountered the problem that I was busy with subjects that most of my friends did not understand. Still I considered those subjects so interesting that I…

Recently Elizabeth Cunningham Perkins brought us a Weedy Rumination on the Creeping Bellflower, Campanula rapunculoides. I will now tell you about a wildflower growing in my own garden, which is full…

Just a note here because I figured it is not clear - I am on vacation these days and, while I continue to post at a regular frequency, I am much more erratic than usual with answering comments in the…

BeautifulPeople.com, the dating site where ugly people need not apply, has launched a virtual sperm (and egg) bank for people who want to have beautiful babies.   Really.  They call it the…