Routine Order

PopSci contributing editor Theodore Gray has been fascinated with the Periodic Table of Elements. So much so that he has been spending a few years now collecting real-life samples of the elements, or when that is not available, samples of things that include rare elements.

I read in Oliver Sacks’s Uncle Tungsten that Sacks liked to […]

‘Cause the Beeb says so! Scientists agree that if a kangaroo laid an egg from which an ostrich hatches, then it would be an ostrich egg and not a kangaroo egg. QED.

If you have some time to spend, read this list of 100 things we humans learnt/realized in the last year. The egg-fact comes from […]

Sexual Anhedonia is the condition where you ejaculate while having sex, but don’t have an orgasm — think poker player having sex - straight face and all, all throughout the event.

Sexual anhedonia is known as ‘ejaculatory anhedonia’. This rare condition means that the person will ejaculate with no accompanying sense of pleasure. This condition is […]

∃xistential Type » Research versus engineering

You know you’re doing research when you spend today undoing nearly everything you did yesterday.
Right said!

How does one fail a gender test? And really, how hard could it be to assess someone’s gender? I agree if could be more challenging if the doctor cannot pull the patient’s pants down, but since we all know doctors can do that, how hard can it be?
Santhi Soundararajan, an erstwhile female athlete who was […]

So apparently the tone and sound of the Stradivari violins are due to the chemicals used to treat the wood the violins were made of. I do not envy the scientist who spent 30 years proving his hypothesis that the unique and rich sound of the violins derive from the treatment done to the wood. […]

I have often wondered what life would be like as a Synesthetic
Synesthesia (also spelled synæsthesia or synaesthesia, plural synesthesiae) is a neurological condition in which two or more bodily senses are coupled

Wouldn’t it be fun if you could see different digits (numerals) in different colors, or if you could “see” sounds and “smell” colors. I […]

Man has driven yet another large mammal to extinction. Extinction is such a sad thing - the generations to follow will never know what they lost to the fullest.

The Baiji, or Chinese freshwater river dolphins are almost blind and were driven to extinction by ships which interfere with their sonar, pollution, fishing and such. The […]

A list and explanation of some of the more famous paradoxes. Of course, most of these are also on wikipedia, but this is a site you can spend a couple of hours on, if you so desire.

Logical Paradoxes .info
This site explains many of the classic paradoxes, including Achilles and the Tortoise, The Paradox of the […]

PLoS Computational Biology - Ten Simple Rules for Selecting a Postdoctoral Position

You are a PhD candidate and your thesis defense is already in sight. You have decided you would like to continue with a postdoctoral position rather than moving into industry as the next step in your career (that decision should be the subject of […]