If there is one thing that scientists and science writers alike get fed up of saying it's that correlation is not causality. Yet what do we find on the BBC Top Comment podcast? Sigh... brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/03/do-w... #podcasts #causality #assumptions
Small (no, no-existent) prize for naming the lighthouse in the picture, and why it is significant, without reading the article first...
Review (mystery): Blackstone Fell - Martin Edwards **** - a distinctly slow start to this Pennine-set mystery, but once Savernake gets properly on the case, from a seance to a locked room, it's impressively tangled: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/03/blac... #bookreview #murdermystery #periodnovel
Is this the royal 'we'. I have certainly never drawn parallels between ants and humans, or compared them to computers. I am yet to see an ant with a decent GUI.
We all know that the Nobel science prizes are awarded for remarkable work. But just occasionally they raise an eyebrow. I highlight two particularly weird ones - one funny, the other shocking (and, yes, one involved lighthouses): brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-... #nobelprize #prizesurprise
Time to think about thinking...
Time Travel has made for fun SF since the early days - here's a new take on it:
Review: The AI Paradox: Virginia Dignum **** - Brilliant assessment of the problems and opportunities arising from the AI paradox (see review for definition), despite reading too much like a government report. popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-... #bookreview #AI
Review: The AI Paradox: Virginia Dignum **** - Brilliant assessment of the problems and opportunities arising from the AI paradox (see review for definition), despite reading to much like a government report. popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-... #bookreview #AI
Interview: Astrobiologist Caleb Scharf @calebscharf.bsky.social tells us why he sees science as a contemplative discipline, the link between space exploration and evolution, and how AI can be involved in space. popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2026/02/cale... #spaceexploration #astrobiology #AI
I would strongly recommend the authors read Virginia Dignum's The AI Paradox (my review due next week but you can get a feel from the Amazon page amzn.to/4aNn7r7) which makes it pretty clear that AI's intelligence can not sensibly be considered human level.
Here's a question. How many senses do humans have? If your response is five (and it's hard not come up with this knee-jerk response even if you know better), you are way out. Time to think again: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/02/sens... #humansenses #fivesenses #schoolerrors
In a revisit of a post from 2016 I try to understand and explain with an analogy why string theory excited so many theoretical physicists (and still clings on to this day) brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/02/stri... #stringtheory #theoreticalphysics #drivenbymaths
Interesting timey-wimey (which my computer keeps wanting to correct to timey-wimpy, a well known term) stuff...
Anotnia is a serious condition where a sufferer is unable to take notes. Please consider giving generously to the Anotnia Society, as much further research is required to find a cure.
Review: The Laws of Thought: Tom Griffiths ***** - The best I've seen at helping the reader understand how we think, and how technology produces similar results to intelligence without any understanding of what's involved. popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-... #bookreview #popularscience #AI
The Third Rule of Time Travel: Philip Fracassi (SF) **** - A clever take on a time travel story. What first appears little more than a story of a technology producing a lived memory kicks up a gear as things begin to go wrong. popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-... #bookreview #sciencefiction
Review (Crime): Murder on the Levels - David Hodges *** - more a thriller than a murder mystery. The police come out very badly (in a book by an ex-Detective Superintendent) but an interesting twist and a tensely horrible ending brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/02/murd... #bookreview #thriller
Let me just make a few little adjustments to that title…
“How a scientist with a PhD in Geology and 25 years of experience is helping lead California’s earthquake work”
Way to devalue my experience.
There are at least three things wrong here...
In reacting to a complaint that people misuse the term 'paradox' I discover that the 'misused' definitions are by far the oldest, so arguably perfectly acceptable: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/02/what... #logic #paradoxes
SF as pure vehicle for ideas - remarkable reading:
Review: Reaching for the Extreme: Ian Stewart **** - The UK's best raconteur of mathematics takes on some of the extremes of the mathematical world, and in doing so gives us some real insights into what makes mathematicians tick. popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2026/02/reac... #bookreview #popularmaths
I suppose the Italian review doesn't say 'I'd love this book, why isn't it published in Italy'?
I have a bit of a rant faced with a TV drama in which this photo of an alleged London terminus in 1957 just didn't ring true: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/02/peri... - why can't film and TV makers put as much effort into trains as they do clothes and cars? #TVanachronism #historicalinaccuracy
Review (SF): There is No Antimemetics Division: qntm ***** - Some of the most original ideas in SF in the work of the Antimemetics Division facing the impossible task of dealing with concepts and entities that we can't remember popsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2026/02/ther... #bookreview #sciencefiction
A photo taken many years ago when I looked out of the bedroom window and saw something decidedly unexpected:
Just like we are here due to the extreme lack of rain.
Got that miserable drizzly Saturday feeling...
The other day I said 'Ask the oracle,' meaning a search engine or AI (not the kind pictured). It struck me that Oracle bagging the name early was a bit of a shame... which leads onto my own experience of having a three letter URL: brianclegg.blogspot.com/2026/02/bein... #naming #earlyadoption
