Before retirement Richard Fortey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Fortey) was Professor of Palaeontology at the Natural History Museum. He is a world expert on the trilobites, a group of ancient marine arthropods resembling woodlice which roamed the oceans for almost 300 million years. That’s three thousand times longer than Homo Sapiens have so far been on the planet. The study of these creatures has contributed hugely […]
There is much talk these days about artificial intelligence, and whether advanced computer systems could ever really ‘think’. Might they, after we have birthed them, go on to replicate and take over the world? This is not idle speculation, or the draft plot for a science fiction novel. Stephen Hawking is only one of many
The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence by Margaret Boden Read More »
Lindsay Hawdon (http://lhawdon.co.uk/www.lhawdon.co.uk/Home.html) is a writer of travel, adventure and fiction. She began travelling at the age of eighteen. After leaving school, she spent three years roaming around Europe, Africa and India. Her travel column, An Englishwoman Abroad, began in The Sunday Telegraph in 2000 and ran for seven years. Jakob’s Colours is her latest
I’m assuming you don’t spend a lot of time picking out unwanted insects from your best friend’s fur. Yet the function of that activity in apes is exactly what Robin Dunbar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Dunbar) believes language does for us. Apes and monkeys, humanity’s closest kin, differ from other animals in the intensity of their social relationships. All their
Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language by Robin Dunbar Read More »
Sometimes you just want to slough off the old world and dance around the bluebell wood in gay abandon. Anything new, anything fresh will do. Why not give Kirsty Logan (http://www.kirstylogan.com/) a go? The summary of her fantasy is as follows. As a ‘Gracekeeper’, Callanish administers shoreside burials, sending the dead to their final resting place in the
Anthony Doerr (http://www.anthonydoerr.com/biography/) was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He is the author of the story collections The Shell Collector and Memory Wall, the memoir Four Seasons in Rome, and the novels About Grace and All the Light We Cannot See, which was awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was a finalist for
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There is a delightful scene in the film Pretty Woman (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100405/?ref_=nv_sr_1) with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. Roberts plays a hooker who has been hired by Gere as an escort to accompany him to a business meeting dinner. She is beautifully presented in cocktail dress but lacks table manner etiquette. On been presented with escargots she is
David Baldacci (http://davidbaldacci.com/) began writing stories as a child, when his mother gave him a notebook in which to record them. He wrote for more than two decades, penning short stories and later screenplays without much success. While practicing law, he turned to novel writing, taking three years to write Absolute Power. Published in 1996,
The familiar call of the common cuckoo, “cuck-oo,” has been a harbinger of spring ever since our ancestors walked out of Africa many thousands of years ago. However, for naturalist and scientist Nick Davies, the call is an invitation to solve an enduring puzzle: how does the cuckoo get away with laying its eggs in
