2 TEDtalks came up with conflicting conclusions. Marc Pagel, a biologist, says that different languages come about as a way of protecting knowledge and skills from competing groups. If we want to deal with global problems, then we need a common language to enhance the speed at which we can share experience and solutions. But…

Student Paul Donnachie was found guilty on Tuesday in Cupar Sheriff Court of ‘racially aggravated conduct’ after showing contempt for an Israeli flag on the wall of a two-bed student residence shared by his friend and an American Zionist. The Sheriff did not allow expert witnesses from Scottish Jews for a Just Peace and the…

Looks a lot like cow parsley, rounder flower clusters.  Prob the most poisonous plant in Britain, cows sometimes die from it.  Responsible for the “sardonic grin” – in Phoenician Sardinia, old people (!) and criminals were killed with it, the grin was one of the effects of the toxin!

Having grown up next to a park full of oak trees, I was well aware of the brown lumps you find under the leaves, but never knew what they were.  Never asked anyone either…  I now know, courtesy of the Chatelherault visitors’ centre, that they are made by the larvae of tiny gall wasps. Courtesy…

Found often by rivers. Bark is dark grey and fissured, while the young branches are smooth and slightly green in colour. The twigs are sometimes sticky to the touch. Leaves are oval, almost circular, with shallow irregular teeth. Has catkins are that are dark yellow-brown and stubby. Flowers are found on the same tree, much…

Reuben loves playing with snails in the garden, but he also recently discovered an amazing iridescent green beetle.  My best guess is that it is a Thick Limbed Flower beetle – catchy name, eh? Beetles are the biggest single group of life forms on Earth, making up 40% of all insects, and 25% of all…

… “holds that people make rational decisions by assessing facts. All that has to be done to persuade people is to lay out the data: they will then use it to decide which options best support their interests and desires. “But a host of psychological experiments have shown that it simply doesn’t work like this.…

We forgive behaviours related to brain tumours because we can understand that a person may not be reponsible for their actions; but what if there are people with other, more subtle, perhaps developmental, structural abnormalities that affect behaviour? Martin Luther, when he resisted church orthodoxy, said he could not do differently – the strength of…

[Lionel Tiger] Now that for the first time in history one sex controls the fertility of species, the changes in the roles and status of men and women are not surprising. Income in urban young females now exceeds that of men. Female graduates outnumber male. It will be interesting to see how these successful professional…