The unprecedented popularity of my recent “Cold Comfort” post was all down to StumbleUpon. For three days, I was in seventh heaven as more and more friendly Stumblers helped my page hits escalate into the thousands — and then along came a reviewer who stopped my party in its tracks. I’ve written before about the [...]

My wife Marcy sent me this joke the other day. Had me laughing out loud.

Got this one from

What sort of consequences will we have to endure if, as I suspect, our weather starts to turn really cold in the near future? Hopefully, none of us will have to go through this Austrian resident’s unsettling experience … “I was sitting on the toilet in my apartment,” Martin Bierbauer told reporters in Eisenstadt, “when [...]

It’s been talked about for years, and now it’s really happening — methane, a global warming gas far more deadly than carbon dioxide, is escaping from the Arctic seabed in vast quantities, adding to the atmospheric burden. What effect will it have on our planet’s climate? UK newspaper The Independent led with what it described [...]

Reading the latest Fortean Times magazine (FT241, October 2008), I had a sense of deja vu: a letter featured on the It Happened To Me page seemed uncannily familiar. Then I realised it was an item I’d posted on the FT Bulletin Board two years previously! There’s been a blog entry about it here for [...]

Having recently passed the period of maximum retreat, the Arctic sea ice melt this year just missed beating last year’s record — but there’s little to celebrate. On Tuesday 16th September 2008, BBC News reported that according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), the ice covered 4.5 million sq km (1.7 [...]

The things they say … McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton was stripped of a dramatic victory in the Belgian Grand Prix after stewards handed him a 25-second post-race penalty. The Englishman was demoted to third place behind Ferrari’s Felipe Massa and BMW Sauber’s Nick Heidfeld … [The stewards'] decision is likely to be greeted with cynicism as [...]

The current Solar Cycle — an indicator of the sun’s magnetic activity, which in turn is believed to influence our planet’s climate — is confounding astronomers by resolutely refusing to conform to predictions. There should be increasing numbers of sunspots blemishing the sun’s surface by now, but there are none. What does this trend indicate [...]

I live in the UK, where the ISP Pipex has been providing my broadband connection since January 2004. Prior to that date, Pipex had provided my dial-up connection for a number of years. Generally speaking, the service I’ve received has been good — I’ve not suffered the disconnections, flakey speeds, billing inconsistencies and poor customer [...]