The unpronounceable Icelandic volcano has left my place of work quite empty. This last week was the largest demography conference of the yea...

It was only the second warm evening of the year and a Friday no less, so I came home at 5. Iris, having also noticed the weather, was up at ...

I"ve been posting not at all for a while; I have carpal tunnel syndrome, and can't easily type. However, over the next several days...

I've been asked to attend an upcoming workshop on modeling the evolution of aging. Modeling in this sense means building a computer mode...

For several years I've mused that if only we could find some efficient way to make ethanol from Kudzu (the incredibly fast growing inva...

In demography, we spend a lot of time thinking about how the risk of dying increases with age. Economics calls itself the dismal science, de...

Cold places tend to have fatty cuisines. The usual explanation for this, although I know of no rigorous test, is that cold weather requires ...

A cubic meter of fluffy freshly fallen snow weighs about 80kg, while a cubic meter of water weighs a metric ton, 1000kg. This implies that a...

In the last week I have agreed on two major collaborations (with a Harvard professor and the Director of a Max Planck Institute) ordered som...

It was -10C this morning, and fresh snow on ice made an unbroken expanse of flat whiteness where the harbor usually is. The small ferry cons...

I'm about ready to submit this paper, and I have very mixed feelings as to its chances of acceptance. I've shown it to two people wh...

I'm writing a paper on the choice male primates face between caring for the young they already have, and fighting other males for access...

The UnterWarnow is frozen, and snow is building up on the ice. Sunset will come 7 hours and 45 minutes after sunrise today. The crows and bl...

Snow Snow Mostly Cloudy Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow I must really love science, as I don't know what else would keep me in this s...

My work task for this weekend is making me aware of a gap in my education as a scientist. How does one decide which sources to cite when the...

jte asks: Is there reason to believe, or evidence to support, that the forms of evolution occurring among species during a period of abundan...

There is a class of "getting to know each other" games that organizers like to force upon groups of people meeting for the first t...

This attractive individual lives in the Zoo Basel . It shares a large enclosure with these two: As we gazed upon their toothy serenity, my w...

Pilatus is a minor alp at 2132m (7000ft), but impressive for its sheer ruggedness, and the way it hangs over Lucerne Switzerland and severa...

Note to world: the plural of octopus is octopuses, not octopi. I have discussed this with more than one expert on octopuses, and they consis...