Sex, Genes & Rock ‘n’ Roll: How Evolution has shaped the modern world will be published as a hardcover and ebook in North America in March 2012. They have recently posted the details and the cover image on their website.…
Harold Camping is back in the news, but for partly the right reasons. If you’ve blocked the sheer banal stupidity from your mind, you might recall that Camping was the American preacher who predicted that the world would end on…
The Victorian era (1837–1901) delivered explosive progress in technology and agriculture, transcendent changes in art and literature, and profound growth in rational and progressive thought. Important foundations of modern utilitarianism, feminism, socialism, and democracy were laid in Victorian England. And…
I first published this piece in The Conversation on 1 November 2011 as part of their series on the world’s population reaching 7 billion. I had better write fast. Sometime between my deadline to submit this story and the time…
Bob Beale wrote this press release for a paper by SEX LAB scientists Dr Alex Jordan and Prof Rob Brooks, recently published in the journal Evolution. It is a paper from Alex’s recent PhD. Males decide how much effort they put into…
This article first appeared in The Conversationon 16 September 2011, under the headline “Men are better at spatial reasoning? Erm, you might want to think again.” A stroll down the personal growth aisle of the bookstore tells us, among other things,…
ABC-TV’s Big Ideas program, UNSWTV, the RiAus and the UNSW Faculty of Science are presenting the following panel discussion on Wednesday 14 September in the Ritchie Theatre, Scientia Building at UNSW. REGISTER HERE FOR THIS EVENT Modern technology is rearranging…
You’ve no doubt heard that girls are entering puberty earlier than they ever have before. It’s one of those science-lite stories beloved of tabloid papers and current affairs programs. One recent article had 10 to 15 percent of American 7…
This article was first published in the Sydney Morning Herald under the erroneous headline “Choosing baby’s gender threatens to skew society’s sex ratio”. (The article isn’t about “choosing gender” but rather about tests to find out the sex of…
Rob is appearing at a workshop on Dissecting Gender as part of the 2011 Melbourne Writer’s Festival, on Sunday 28 August, 4-5pm. The other panellists are Jane McCredie and Cordelia Fine, and the session is to be moderated by Monica Dux. The Event description…