Why do diseases cause species decline?
Matt Ridley
My latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal is about the role of disease in species conservation: Some beekeepers, worried by the collapse of their bee colonies in recent years, are pointing a finger this month at a class of insecticide (neo-nicotinoids) that they think is responsible for lowering the insects’ resistance to […]
Matt Ridley
My latest Mind and Matter column for the Wall Street Journal is on gene-culture co-evolution: Human beings, we tend to think, are at the mercy of their genes. You either have blue eyes or you do not (barring contact lenses); no amount of therapy can change it. But genes are at the mercy of us, […]
Matt Ridley
I have a book review in the Wall Street Journal of Robert Laughlin’s book Powering the Future. These are the first two paragraphs: Many environmentalists believe that carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels will cause a climate crisis toward the end of this century. Environmentalists also raise the alarm that we have reached “peak oil” […]
Matt Ridley
Here is my latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal There are many mysteries about Ray, the 17-year-old English-speaking “forest boy” who walked into the city hall in Berlin on Sept. 5, claiming to have lived wild in the woods for five years with his father-until his father recently died in a fall. […]
Maybe we’re all conspiracy theorists
Matt Ridley
My latest Wall Street Journal Mind and Matter column discusses conspiracy theories. Michael Shermer, the founder and editor of Skeptic magazine, has never received so many angry letters as when he wrote a column for Scientific American debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories. Mr. Shermer found himself vilified, often in CAPITAL LETTERS, as a patsy of the […]
Where do carbon dioxide emissions come from?
Matt Ridley
My latest Mind and Matter column for the Wall Street Journal: I spent part of last week in Iceland, where the fragility of civilization’s veneer is all too evident in a violently volcanic landscape. Whereas in most countries geology amazes you with its age, in Iceland it stuns you with its youth. The country […]
The nature and nurture sport: talent versus effort
Matt Ridley
Latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal “It’s strange that I could become a professional athlete,” said the Australian winner of this summer’s Tour de France, Cadel Evans. “Physically, I was completely unsuitable for almost all Australian school sports. Nearly all Australian school sports require speed and/or size.” Sounds like a triumph of […]
Matt Ridley
The new Siberian hominids and the family tree Belatedly, here is last week’s Mind and Matter column from the Wall Street Journal. I once had a soft spot for the yeti, known in my youth as the “abominable snowman.” As a teenager I avidly devoured stories of hairy bipeds glimpsed through snowstorms, strange cries echoing […]
Matt Ridley
3D printing may one day work for stem-cell-derived kidneys and concrete building parts My l atest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal is on 3D printing: Serendipity works in curious ways. Earlier this month, on the day before I read news of the successful implanting of a synthetic windpipe grown with a […]
Eating your greenery — and having it too
Matt Ridley
My latest Mind and Matter column in the Wall Street Journal: Driving home the other day it occurred to me that almost none of the greenery I could see-trees, garden shrubs, grass shoulders on the highway-was going to be used by humans for food, fuel, clothing or shelter. That would not have been true 500 years […]
