God’s Traitors by Jessie Childs

PAST PRESENT - What's new in History

Lively interest in the Tudor and Elizabethan ages have been stimulated in recent years by the histories and popularisations of David Starkey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Starkey) and Hilary Mantel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Mantel). Should you wish to immerse yourself further into this world you’ll find an excellent new book in God’s Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England.  The Catholics of Elizabethan England […]

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Trilobite!

EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE - Science & Technology

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

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The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence by Margaret Boden

EGGHEAD CHOICE - Crack open for a hard boiled think, EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE - Science & Technology

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

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Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language by Robin Dunbar

EGGHEAD CHOICE - Crack open for a hard boiled think, EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE - Science & Technology

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

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Spirals in Time

EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE - Science & Technology

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

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Memory Man

CRIMINALLY MINDED - Tales of the behaviourally challenged, FANTASTIC FICTION - Escapes to other places and other times

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,

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