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Certain brain lobes are bigger in those with more friends My latest Mind and Matter column from the Wall Street Journal is on Dunbar’s number.   As far as scientific accolades go, a Nobel Prize is rare, a law named after you is rarer, your own unit of measurement is more elusive still, but the most […]

I was on BBC Radio 4’s programme A Good Read (the link allows you to listen again) this week, where I recommended the book that was my favourite as a child, and probably still is: My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell. The others chose A Game of Hide and Seek and Great Expectations.  

Latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal, on `unlearning’: For adults, one of the most important lessons to learn in life is the necessity of unlearning. We all think that we know certain things to be true beyond doubt, but these things often turn out to be false and, until we unlearn them, […]

A debate on Al Jazeera I took part in a debate on whether we can feed the world on Al Jazeera television with Dvaid Frost. Video here.

We keep hearing that there is a consensus about climate change, but it includes a wide range of possibilities Simon Singh and James Delingpole, both of whom I know, like and respect as fine writers, have been disagreeing about climate change. Beneath Simon’s latest blog on the subject there is a debate in which several very sensible […]

Prospect magazine has published my review of Hugh-Aldersey-Williams’s delightful chemistry book,  Periodic Tales. Here is an extract in which I was struck by the parallels between finding specialised jobs for the metals and finding specialised roles for individuals in society: The best science writing emulates fiction, creating plots, surprises and characters out of its esoteric material. […]

Britain’s Forestry Commission is a walking conflict of interest I have an op-ed in today’s Times about nationalised forestry in the UK: Since its plans to sell off much of the Forestry Commission’s land were leaked the press last October, the government has found itself subject to a sustained lobbying campaign. The commission has wheeled […]

Monbiotic logic: call for peaceful debate and for people to die George Monbiot is advertising a speaking tour with a poster of himself as a boxer about to hit somebody. And yet he  says in the Guardian: Let’s debate the issues and argue over the facts. But let’s drop the vitriolic abuse, and stop suggesting […]

From the Wall Street Journal, my latest Mind and Matter on stability, the moon and aliens   This month saw the discovery of the first small and “rocky” planet like ours outside the solar system, Kepler 10b, orbiting a star more than 500 light years away. This month also saw terrible floods in part of Australia. […]

Some people think I am obsessed by the shale gas revolution and that I might be exaggerating its significance. Well, if anything I’m underplaying it. The International Energy Agency says so. Here’s what it says (from UPI): “Production of ‘unconventional’ gas in the U.S. has rocketed in the past few years, going beyond even the most […]