The Pneumatic Institute

Science was surely never as much fun as it was in the 1790s, when Humphry Davy and various poets were experimenting with laughing gas at the Pneumatic Institute... Nitrous Oxide - 'laughing gas' - is in fashion again for recreational purposes, just as it was back in the 1790s, though it was ... Read More...

The Sokal Affair

When scientists decide to troll each other, things can get messy. The Wikiworm trawls the weirdest Wikipedia articles on the web to find out more... The Sokal affair, also called the Sokal hoax, was a publishing hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University. In 1996, Sokal submitted an article to Social Text, an academic journal of postmodern cultural ... Read More...

Unobtainium

Imaginary minerals are the topic of today's bizarre Wikipedia article, brought to you by the Wikiworm, ceaseless miner of useless knowledge... Unobtainium is a word used in engineering, fiction, and thought experiments, to describe any fictional, extremely rare, costly, or impossible material, or (less commonly) device needed to fulfill a given design for a ... Read More...

The Boy Who Never Saw Pictures

In the early 1960s two behavioural psychologists attempted to bring up a child in an environment devoid of pictures. But what, exactly, did they prove?... Imagine if, in infancy, your parents made every effort to ensure that you never saw a picture. This is what happened to the anonymous subject of ... Read More...

The Life of the Robin

Nige rediscovers a pioneering work of English natural history... The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied and contemplated by man: 'tis the debt of our reason we owe unto God, and the homage we pay for not being beasts. Without this, the world is still as though ... Read More...

Triangular Pie Nucleus. Etc.

Frank discovers a remarkable science book that could transform the standards of education in our state schools... On those occasions – and God knows they are legion! - when I feel the need to dose myself with unlikely wisdom, there is a particular book I turn to. Actually, “booklet” would be ... Read More...

The brain is weirder than the sky…

We've been marking the launch of occasional Dabbler Bryan Appleyard's new book The Brain is Wider than the Sky with a mini-Appleyardfest (read Brit's review here and an exclusive Q&A with the author here). To conclude it, here's Elberry on the human imagination... Signed copy competition winners - congratulations to Dabbler ... Read More...

Author Q&A: Bryan Appleyard

Author and Sunday Times journalist Bryan Appleyard - whose acclaimed new book The Brain is Wider Than the Sky was reviewed by Brit here - talks exclusively to The Dabbler about technology, David Hockney, blogging and the increasing polarisation of culture... Why did you decide to write The Brain is Wider ... Read More...