I have just come across a new word – saxicavous, so I look it up in that well-known source of Truth and concise definition – Wik Dictionary. To discover a bald definition: “boring rocks“. Wonderful! This is a word I have been looking for all my professional […]
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Beneath the canopy it is dark and gloomy on the forest floor, the air heavy ahead of late-afternoon rain. I am alone in a remote spot on a remote island in a remote corner of the Pacific. Three men appear from the trees behind me. They are […]
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Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of uncertainty – some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.” – Richard Feynman, Theoretical Physicist and Nobel Laureate. “The unknown is the dark matter of all things, the greater part of the universe.” Geoffrey Weiss, 2021 […]
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As a 10-year-old in 1953, I migrated with my family to South Australia, and settled in to one of the fast-growing outer suburbs of Adelaide that were being rapidly built at that time to accommodate the post-war influx of migrants. I enrolled for the new term at […]
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The Problem Climate Change (CC) dominates today’s environmental concerns. We are daily bombarded with the message that it will lead to future catastrophe for humanity, if not for the planet. Human emissions of greenhouse gasses are the primary cause and only drastic societal change will enable us […]
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Early one summer’s evening in Exeter, having just dropped off a friend for his train at St David’s Station, I am returning to my car when I am hailed by an old acquaintance, Jack. Jack greets me effusively: Hi there. I’m glad I saw you. I just […]
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The Great Pandemic of 1889-1890 In the Northern winter of 1889 -1890, one of the deadliest pandemics since the Black Death of the mid 14th Century swept the world. Our forebears called it the Russian Flu. Where the Black Death took three years to spread from Constantinople […]
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The fashion for fact checking I’m preachin’ dis sermon to show It ain’t nessa, ain’t nessa ain’t nessa, ain’t nessa Ain’t necessarily so! (Porgy and Bess, 1935. Lyrics by Ira Gershwin) “Fact” and “Truth” are abstract ideals that you can seek, but never be certain to […]
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THE UNRAVELLING OF SCIENCE “Facts no longer made contact with the theory, which had risen above the facts on clouds of nonsense, rather like in a theological system. The point was not to believe the theory but to repeat it ritualistically and in such a way that […]
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