Sandwalk

Today is the 50th anniversary of my Ph.D. oral defense. The event took place in the Department of Biochemical Sciences at Princeton Universi...

Today is the 75th anniversary of D-Day—the day British, Canadian, and American troops landed on the beaches of Normandy. 1 For us baby bo...

Blogging was light last year because I was busy with other things and because the popularity of blogs is declining rapidly. The most popular...

I was looking at some of my posts from the past few years and wondered which ones were the most popular. I had previously identified the mos...

This is the latest update from Ancestry.com. Their algorithms are getting better and better. This corresponds very closely to what I know of...

A friend has a neighbor who's in possession of a pamphlet from 1863 on the Owen vs Huxley debate. The text of the pamphlet is here: A Re...

It's Bruce Alberts' 80th birthday party in San Francisco. There will be food, wine, cake, and (probably) dancing but first you go t...

Charles Darwin , the greatest scientist who ever lived, was born on this day in 1809 [ Darwin still spurs tributes, debates ] [ Happy Darwin...

I'm working (slowly) on a book called What's in Your Genome?: 90% of your genome is junk! The first chapter is an introduction to g...

Now that I'm officially retired I've been cleaning out my office at the university and transferring all the important stuff to my ho...

The newsgroup talk.origins was created more than 30 years ago. It's been a moderated newsgroup for the past twenty years. The moderator...

Today is the Fête Nationale in France known also as "le quatorze juillet" or Bastille Day . This is the day in 1789 when French ci...

Some of my former students were able to come to my retirement reception yesterday: Sean Blaine (left), Anna Gagliardi, Marc Perry.

I love hot "cross" buns but now we buy the atheist version.

... but it was a rather special book ...

A long time ago I used to belong to the Royal Astronomical Society (amateur astronomers) in Ottawa (Canada). That's me on the right with...

Today is anniversary of D-Day—the day British, Canadian, and American troops landed on the beaches of Normandy. 1 For baby boomers it mea...

We had a great time last night discussing Can You Tell Real Science News from Fake News?

You can tell we are scientists because we're all wearing lab coats. Left to right: David Isenman, Larry Moran, Marc Perry, Kim Elliso...