Matt's Sci/Tech Blog

This is a very unusual case. I don't know how broad the ramifications are. But having a physical type specimen was always a requirement ...

Amid the stunning carnage of 9-11, what I remember most is a human moment. I'd returned home after a short workday, somewhat stunned, an...

Various attempts to classify giraffe species and subspecies have been made, based on location, coat patterns, number of horns, etc., but zoo...

The Earth's largest modern marsupial predator was declared extinct 80 years ago today. I'm quite certain it lingered a couple more d...

Sex in the Sea : Our Intimate Connection with Sex-Changing Fish, Romantic Lobsters, Kinky Squid, and Other Salty Erotica of the Deep   b...

I write often in this space about how we need a better understanding of cetaceans, their habitats, and their needs if we are to conserve the...

James Rollins The Bone Labyrinth I like to review novels that lean a lot on science and technology and tease out fact vs. fiction. The thr...

My day-job company was nice enough to fund a look at what space-based resources cab do for whale and dolphin conservation and science.  Proj...

In nature, large animals tend to be long-lived.  There are exceptions (sponges and clams are among the oldest living animals, and some coral...

Australian scientists are on the verge of pinning down two new species in the Solomon Islands: a previously undiscovered member of the grou...

Shame on me. Neil Armstrong was born on August 5, 1930, and died August 25, 2012. He's obviously most famous for his time with NASA as a...

Herman Melville was born 1 August 1840. He was, of course, the sperm whale's great popularizer. He also recorded much of what was known ...

Arcane Radio is a program focused mainly on the paranormal, but I'll happily go anywhere to talk about the discoveries and mysteries of ...

A new species of whale has been discovered based on a body, 7.3m long, that floated ashore on the Pribilof Islands.  This is just marvelous...

But is it in time? The U.S. and Mexican governments have agreed to permanently ban gillnetting throughout the range of the world's sm...

How many kinds of sharks inhabit the oceans? When I was reading everything I could find about nature as a kid in the 1970s, I remember seei...

And so we look back 47 years and marvel at Apollo 11 . The courage, the ingenuity, the engineering and organizational genius that was Apoll...

Geoff Robertson's great version of John Stewart's Armstrong . Stewart, one of America's great songwriters. has explained that he...

47 years ago today, my father rented a small plane from the Piper Aircraft plant where he worked and flew my brother and I north to Cape Can...

In honor of the Juno probe, here's Cheryl Wheeler's wonderful song  Orbiting Jupiter .