Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

The moon has been with us for billions of years, almost since the formation of Earth.

We lie to ourselves all the time. We tell ourselves that we are better than average -- that we are more moral, more capable, less likely to become sick or suffer an accident.

Dear EarthTalk : I've heard of the slow food movement, but what is “slow money” all about? [More]

Bad science papers can have lasting effects. Consider the 1998 paper in the journal The Lancet that linked autism to the MMR vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella

By Christopher Mims Bones have amazing electrical conductivity properties and, as one artist recently found out, can vibrate at the right frequencies to make a lovely macabre speaker set. Turned on its head, bone's response to physical stress can be used to produce music---or at least musical tones.

Help with the identification and management of non-native invasive species in Texas [More]

Over a two-year period, photographer Jamey Stillings documented the transformation of an American landmark. The building of the structure that connects the Arizona and Nevada sides of a concrete arch appears in a coffee table book called The Bridge at Hoover Dam ( [More]

The 1936 film Reefer Madness developed a cult following because of its over-the-top depiction of the evils of marijuana. Getting stoned and going to a midnight showing became a ritual for many college students. [More]

If you have never watched bees carefully, you are missing out.

When then Harvard University president Lawrence Summers suggested in 2005 that innate differences between men and women may account for the lack of women in top science and engineering positions (and subsequently resigned), he was referring to the greater male variability hypothesis. Women, it holds, are on average as mathematically competent as men, but there is a greater innate spread in math ability among men. In other words, a higher proportion of men stumble mathematically, but an equally high proportion excel because of something in the way male brains develop

When it comes to science, temperature matters. And when it comes to Wisconsin, things get really, really cold.

There’s a scene in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird — one of my all-time favorite novels — where the little girl-narrator, Scout, sees pretty white snow flakes falling and assumes the world is ending. She’s never seen snow before, since it’s a very rare occurrence in rural Alabama. The world didn’t end then, and it’s not ending now, but it’s just one more bit of evidence that weather is a very wacky thing.

Sci is off to the frozen north to visit people for the holidays. She’ll be back very shortly, but in the meantime, here is a repost, to make us all feel a little warmer

Glowing genes: White arrows show hot spots of ADAR activation; courtesy of Reenan Lab/Brown University It’s a long way from gene to protein. The dogmatic scenario is: DNA gets transcribed into RNA, which gets translated into protein . But in real life, and in real living things, the workings aren’t quite that simple.

According to holiday lore, poor Rudolph was a victim of social exclusion because he was different from the rest of the reindeer. In a move that was lucky for nice (but not naughty) children everywhere, he was then approached by Santa, who asked him to guide the sleigh.