It’s a scorching afternoon, still and sultry. A minute after putting in at Islip, I disturb a grey heron. It flaps a gawky take off across the river twenty metres ahead. Ten minutes after that I hear a tiny plash … Read More »
Needing spiritual refreshment after two months making repairs to my house in Sheffield (I let it out, and hand over the rent collected to my own landlord) and a recent flurry of posts on Julian Assange, I took the junior … Read More »
As lockdown closed sports stadiums across Britain, BBC rugby commentator Nick Heath took to our parks and streets with his smartphone, professional skills and quintessentially English wit. Try his instant classic, Two Lonely Blokes in a Park … … the … Read More »
It’s the last Thursday of June, the hottest day of the year so far. Patrolling the sky above Barton Broad a pair of common terns glide, hover and swoop for small fry. I’m in the shade of willow and alder, … Read More »
Mathematician and astronomer Fred Hoyle rejected the big bang theory (coining that term in a radio interview put-down) in favour not of creationism but of panspermia – the idea that life on earth originated in micro-organisms arriving from outer space. … Read More »
Spotted in today’s Economist … (Not that this is particularly French or particularly new …)
Snapped on Tuesday, on a day trip to Brancaster, east of Sandringham on the southern coast of the Wash. I can photograph terns any day of the week at Attenborough, a ten minute stroll from my door. But Norfolk’s a … Read More »
Yesterday my favourite water bird further endeared itself to me. At Colwick Country Park, where flooded gravel pits are topped up by the Trent a few miles downstream of Nottingham, a pair of great crested grebes were ferrying chicks on … Read More »
The thrust of my recent post, If only I wasn’t a commitment phobe, argued that the science and its underlying data are insufficiently developed or clear to support the levels of certainty professed on all sides of a somewhat tribalist … Read More »
Science matches theories with evidence and attempts to falsify them, so they can be refined to better match reality. A theory from a group of scientists is just that: a theory. Believing the opinion of that group without critical verification … Read More »