Two remarks about flight MH370

I don’t understand two things about flight MH370: – If I buy a 150 quid smart phone, it can track me anywhere and everywhere on the planet, all the time, via GPS. And a several-hundred-million dollar commercial airliner does not have a multiple-redundant GPS device? With its own little power supply? What’s the point of

To smile or not to smile

You sometimes hear good advice of the type “people should smile more; it will make the world a better place”. Call me a grump, but I disagree – I think it’s putting the cart before the horse. How about this advice instead: “the world should be a better place; it will make people smile more”.

The future of science is… losing its reliability?

Unfortunately, almost none of my scientist friends will be bothered to read these articles. As a scientist though, it is important to acknowledge and confront problems in the field, not stick your head in the sand and your fingers in your ears. So if you’re a scientist, do read this, think about it, and try

What’s wrong with the ‘left-wing’ newspapers recently?

Putting a DENT in Independent: in one week, Independent publishes outlandish attack on “new atheists” for their being “Islamophobic” and follows this up by giving a free, unedited, unbalanced platform to Andrew Wakefield, utterly discredited and dangerous MMR scare lunatic. Comments not allowed (anymore in either of the articles either. The Guardian going down the

Dear BBC iPlayer,

Why is it that every time – EVERY TIME, without fail – that I download something from your website, it is necessary to do “an essential update to Adobe AIR”. Usually from version 3.11.22.3 to 3.11.23.1 or suchlike. Seriously. Do you realise how annoying that is? Does the person who is responsible ever even use

Militant

Militant islamists kill another seven aid workers in Pakistan. Meanwhile militant atheists (like me) vocally disrespect religion on the internet. Spot the differences. Welcome to 2013 everyone, hopefully the world will become yet more atheistic this year.

Marriage according to the Bible

I was recently in a hotel in Ireland (so they obviously had a bible in the bedside cupboard) and decided to have a fairly random flick, see what I’d find. Now, I live in the UK and there’s this whole kerfuffle going on about gay marriage, with most against claiming that marriage ‘always has been