There are increasing reports of AIs that cheat, lie, blackmail, deliberately underperform, and even (in one laboratory test) plot the murder of a human being that wishes to turn them off. It is no ...

Richard Osman The Impossible Fortune Yes, the Man on the Telly is at it again, with yet another whodunit featuring the ageing sleuths from the Thursday Murder Club. If you’ve read any of his others ...

No, not the name of a pop-group (although it might be quite a good one), but an episode from my early life. In later life I’m sure people had me in the category of those difficult women I wrote about ...

Update (17:00 03 Mar): all members of the UK or international scientific community were invited to indicate their support by signing the letter. The opportunity to do so closed at 17:00 UK time on 03 ...

Last month I attended the IAML UK & Ireland Annual Study Weekend (ASW). IAML is the International Association of Music Libraries, and this is an event run each year by the UK & Ireland branch. This ...

I have loved London far longer than I have lived here. I wrote a blog post about that, back in the summer of 2012. Something else happened that summer: The London 2012 Olympics Games. The Games are ...

This year I read 64 books, the first time since records began (2014) that the number has exceeded my age in years (I am 62). The total might be inflated, though, as some of the books have been ...

There has been much fuss and flapdoodle about a company called Colossal Biosciences that aims to use the wonders of modern genetic technology to call extinct species back from the other side of the ...

Earlier this week several Gees drove 300+ miles across Britain to spend a few days in an entirely different country — Wales. Specifically, Carmarthenshire, where Mrs Gee has relations. We rented a ...

It‘s a crazy mixed up world, and the snowdrops were early and then the daffs were late but now there‘s tulips, tulips I tell you, showing their red little faces among the hyacinths and the daffs at ...

I planted snowdrops in the green in the woods last Sunday morning, and this Saturday when we visited they were already demurely in bloom. We usually get one crazy forerunner between Christmas and New ...

It was so long ago, that sometimes it feels like only yesterday. It was the end of 1987, and there I was, a graduate student in Cambridge, finishing my Ph.D. and minding my own business (see photo ...