Study | How certain plants survive mass extinction events
We often read about Earth’s mass extinction events and how they wiped out vast numbers of animal species, leaving…
Insight | Life as an Orchestrator
As far back as I remember I’ve loved the different sounds of my favourite classical composers. Early on I became…
Reflection | Out of the Mouths of Babes
I am neither a scientist nor a mathematician, preferring to understand the Cosmos through poetry. Einstein and Stephen Hawking baffle…
Idea | Advocating for more science in public places
What do we see when we look around a public place? On those rare occasions when we can carelessly observe…
Music | Zohra, the Afghan women’s orchestra
Hailing from a variety of towns and regions in Afghanistan, Zohra isn’t your average orchestra – in fact one would…
Investigation | Could the Antarctic ice sheet really collapse?
Antarctica is on the move. Enough ice to rise global sea level by almost sixty meters – nearly two hundred…
Poetry | Home for the funeral
In memory of our friend Ciarán Duffy Reverting to type we talk as in the long ago Schoolboys meeting outside…
Insight | Misrepresented fundamentalism and the war on political correctness
During the second and third US Presidential debates last year, the then Republican nominee and current President Donald Trump raised the…
Insight | No Country for Southern Men
Breaking up is hard to do, especially when it comes to nation states. With Europe reeling from the results of…
Music | Ireland’s greatest ever punk track?
Between 2002 and 2009 a band unknown in most circles blistered through the Irish underground scene with riotous gigs and…
Insight | How the Irish government began its anti-traveller movement
The recent burkini ban in France, and today’s announcement by Angela Merkel to support a partial ban on the burqa…
Opinion | Fidel Castro, megalomaniac with a heart
Consensus today after Castro’s death will be predictably whittled down to soundbites. Some on the left see him as a…
Investigation | Are we looking for missing flight MH370 in the right place?
The search for missing flight MH370 has so far been focused on a 120,000 square kilometre region south west of…
Idea | Death of the joke, rise of the factoid
See: my uncle was once a contestant on Mastermind. Early eighties, height of The Troubles, and, believe it or believe…
Opinion | Elite origin of the Irish language revival is hindering learning
On the 25 November 1892, when Douglas Hyde – he who later became the first president of the Irish Republic…
In-depth | Artificial Intelligence: the creative processor?
If AI machines can only learn from what has come before, how can they instigate a paradigm shift in creative…