Tom Lehrer's spring isn't complete without poisoning them in the park; Dick Dastardly dratted and double-dratted himself to near-oblivion chasing one. For the rest of us, it's become all too easy to vilify them as "rats with wings".
Biologist
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This will grow on you: Google Doodle celebrates 161st birthday of Julius Richard Petri - inventor of the Petri dish
Thursday 30 May 2013
Google is commemorating the achievements of the scientist Julius Richard Petri today with a Google Doodle that shows his invention - the Petri dish - in action.
Cheaper fish being passed off as cod and haddock
Tuesday 02 April 2013
Consumers are being routinely cheated when they buy cod and haddock, a study has found.
The God Argument, By AC Grayling
Friday 08 March 2013
Virtuous atheists may live well and do good – but can they give hope to the hopeless cases?
Animal kingdom is smaller than we thought (but that’s good news)
Thursday 24 January 2013
New, lower estimate means every plant and animal could be catalogued by the year 2100
Kevin Garside: Belief in fate and miracles belittles the coach's role
Sunday 23 December 2012
For the Higgs boson believers, and me, Celtic just got lucky against Barcelona
Steve Connor: Gurdon deserves his prize but UK can hope for more
Tuesday 09 October 2012
There can be no doubt that Sir John Gurdon deserves the greatest accolade in science. As a graduate student in Oxford in the late 1950s he showed that every cell of the body carries all the necessary genes for making an entire individual.
Television Choices: Using music to help foster harmonious relations
Saturday 28 July 2012
Barenboim on Beethoven: Nine Symphonies That Changed the World
Portfolio: Felix Davey
Sunday 17 June 2012
Water is not mere embellishment; it is the essence of my reverie." So says Felix Davey, a Belfast-born photographer so inspired by the sense of freedom he finds in all things aquatic that last year he was drawn to Scotland's west coast to seek out those he dubs the "Water Folk" – people for whom water is enmeshed in their lives. "These individuals' solitude and fortitude," he says, "speak of wild, beautiful places, and our place within them."
Follow @ProfBrianCox
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Two existential heavyweights in a gentle contest for your very soul
Friday 24 February 2012
Oxford University held its first debate on the subject of evolution in 1860, just months after the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species. Then, the Bishop of Winchester, Samuel Wilberforce, famously enquired of the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley whether it was through his grandmother or his grandfather that he traced his descent from a monkey.
Nature: All things bright and beautiful
Wednesday 22 February 2012
Scientists are arguing that dolphins are so clever they should be treated like humans. But why stop there? Simon Usborne salutes the smartest species
Natural History Museum attacked over links to 'illegal' Israeli company
Tuesday 17 January 2012
The Natural History Museum is today accused by a coalition of prominent academics and cultural figures of helping to break international law by leading a research project which involves an Israeli cosmetics company based in an “illegal” settlement in the occupied West Bank.
'Extinct' tortoise found living in the Galapagos
Tuesday 10 January 2012
A species of giant tortoise that disappeared after being heavily hunted in the Galapagos more than a century ago may still be living on an island 200 miles away, a study has found.
- 1 Is the Muslim call to prayer really such a menace?
- 2 Channel 4 to 'provoke' viewers who associate Islam with terrorism with live call to prayer during Ramadan
- 3 US army doctor returns arm to Vietnamese soldier fifty years after he took it as a souvenir
- 4 Police seize possessions of rough sleepers in crackdown on homelessness
- 5 Demand for food banks has nothing to do with benefits squeeze, says Work minister Lord Freud
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