• Why are some animals so smart? Why humans? What favored the evolution of such distinctive brainpower in humans or, more precisely, in our hominid ancestors?

• A chat with the science-savvy writers behind The Simpsons and Futurama. via.

• An insult to paganism? Creationism dismissed as “a kind of paganism” by Vatican’s astronomer. via.

• I cannot pretend to know how writing ought to be done, or what a wise critic would advise me to do with a view to improving my own writing. The most that I can do is to relate some things about my own attempts. How I write, by Bertrand Russell.

• Me no monster. Me OK guy. Me OK guy who eat cookies.

• These unripe things are now read by me in vain, Oy! Interesting post at Laputan Logic on some of the coded scientific pronouncements of Galileo and Huygens.