…but not a coffee break. According to the New Scientist, it’s bad for teamwork.

My favourite science/technology headline of the week.

Thanks to Maoi and the Cambridge University Filipino Students’ Society (don’t ask) for a tip-off to this story about how to get a paper in PNAS (a highly respected scientific journal—and I’m not being sarcastic for a change) by mathematically modelling the folding of fabrics. Incidentally, Maoi, I’ve just been to see Lost in Translation […]

Primates are human, too. Phone masts give you cancer, but sex with a middle-aged guru can cure it.

Jo pointed out to me today that, if you hurry over to visit the homepage of the International Conference on Animal Genetics 2004 (to be held in Tokyo) you will see a photograph of the longest cock on the Web.

On the basis of an article I’d written, I was asked to contribute to a book today. This sounds impressive until I add that I had never heard of the publisher. Checking out their list, I followed up the name of one of their authors who had written some computational biology stuff for them. He […]

Whizzed down to Imperial yesterday evening to see the author of this book lecture on The Evolution of Female Promiscuity. The talk was clear, thoroughly prepared and elegantly constructed, if a little over-performed. While she insisted on drawing attention to some of her clunkier jokes, some of the funniest remarks Dr Judson made were those […]

A scientist friend who wishes to remain anonymous (do you have a naughty lab head by any chance?) tipped me off to two stories about plagiarism in Nature. This brief summary on SciDev.Net has links to the original stories in the journal.

Some “boffins” at my and Wiqqi’s other alma mater think they might have located a fat gene. Here’s the press release, the news story, and the science [the journal’s Website is currently overloaded again so you’ll have to be patient if you want to download the PDF of the original paper].

Someone called Demir Baser kindly emailed a bioinformatics mailing list at work over the weekend to let us poor scientists know that Darwin was wrong because Harun Yahya says so. Thanks, Harun. I can’t wait to read your other “works on Zionism and Freemasonry and their negative effects on world history and politics”. We misguided […]

The real news is terrible right now, so here is a random science story from September 2001. Sexual selection is a fascinating little cupboard of biology. My previous boss started out as a biologist working on sperm competition. As a full professor he amusingly listed one of his interests as “spermatogenesis”. He worked on mice, […]

Crikey. PooterGeek generated some controversy with my work colleagues today. You devote whole posts to attacking Robbie Williams and Oasis and the kids stay silent. Link to an analytical Marxist at a redbrick university or disrespec’ Wittgenstein in passing and they’re bursting into your office demanding satisfaction. The point that I was making about Wittgenstein […]

The Today Programme this morning broadcast a classic debate of its kind: ignorant rich-boy activist “Zac” Goldsmith argued for immediate restrictions on nanotechnology while northern working-class Nobel Laureate Prof Harry Kroto, patiently explained that it’s just chemistry. “Zac” buttressed his case with the support of speculation by experts in the field like Michael Crichton. If […]

Yes, I know, I still haven't put up my "Scientific Myths" page. Looking for a quick-and-dirty approach to the problem?