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Oscars 2014: Metaprediction 23 Aug 2013 | 05:49 pm
I notice that the Oscar prediction season has started. I can understand why this is of no interest to many sane people, but I quite enjoy it. And I may enjoy it even more this year (though that will d...
Monocosms. They’re a thing now, apparently 22 Aug 2013 | 01:00 am
A colleague asked me today if there was a word for planets that only have one landscape — places like Trantor, the city-planet that ruled Isaac Asimov’s Galactic Empire, or Arrakis, the desert-planet ...
The Deep Summery 19 Aug 2013 | 12:28 am
One and half shots of Pincer botanical vodka Shot of fresh lime juice Half shot of St Germain Half shot of Gomme Syrup Dash of pastis (I used Henri Bardouin) Shake over ice, pour into a large win...
A sense of planet and a sense of place 26 Jul 2013 | 05:53 pm
I was touched and flattered to find myself recruited to the ranks of nature writers by their dean, Richard Mabey, in his defence of their genre against an attack by Steven Poole. Poole’s phrases “rec...
Nitrogen geoengineering 15 Jul 2013 | 07:02 pm
I have a paper up on the Geoengineering Our Climate site about “nitrogen geoengineering”. It argues that there is at least a case for seeing the human takeover of the nitrogen cycle as an act of geoen...
Climate geoengineering for natural disasters 31 Mar 2013 | 10:17 pm
You can imagine the start of a climate geoengineering programme in a number of ways. The way that most appeals to me is as part of a policy portfolio aimed at reducing the future risks of climate chan...
Joe Nocera doesn’t understand climate change 16 Mar 2013 | 06:20 pm
Not that he is alone in this, but he did make it rather glaringly obvious in his NYT column this morning. The column is on CCS, and in particular the new Summit energy plant outside Odessa, the Texas ...
Nate Silver-ing your Oscar predictions 28 Feb 2013 | 03:17 pm
This should be read in the context of an earlier post over at The Economist’s Prospero blog, a venue which very occasionally stoops to being an outlet for my filmic thought. I’d like to preface this ...
Glory of leaves 18 Nov 2012 | 09:42 pm
National Geographic has a nice, evocative piece about leaves by Rob Dunn (@RobDunn) along with a typically beautiful gallery. This particular image is by Carsten Peter (@carsten_peter)
“Tropes that have escaped into the real world” 4 Nov 2012 | 06:19 pm
For a while I’ve been meaning to write something – a post or a column or whatever – about the widespread fallacy that science fiction and the real world are in some way exclusive realms: that if somet...
