On saturday, a couple of thousand nerds gathered outside the treasury to be noisy, and to argue the case that science is vital. The scientists are getting their contribution in early ahead of the “comprehensive spending review” that is to be announced this month. Having been accused by their secretary […]
The “I Pay Road Tax” campaign has done an excellent job of reaching out to cyclists. Every cyclist now knows that “road tax” was abolished in the 1930s, that what motorists pay is “vehicle excise duty”, and that VED goes to the treasury and not directly to the highways agencies. […]
On the London Cyclist thread “is there anything super about the Cycle Superhighways?,” we hear Chinese whispers on the reason why TfL decided against making real superhighways and instead came up with the overpriced and failed PR exercise that are the blue lines on the side of the road: “TfL […]
This is another archival repost first written for the old blog in 2007. On Monday I mentioned John Maynard Smith’s videos at People’s Archive. They really are marvelous, and you should watch them all. One of the topics he discusses is horizontal gene transfer in bacteria, a subject I discussed […]