They often say that the pen is mightier than the sword and, yet, there is very little jail time associated with carrying a biro in your pocket. Recently I was wondering if the same can be said to be true of that which is written online. In the past I’ve written about scale free networks in relation to the Internet and you can see how anything written by a big...

I was idly tootling around Wikipedia tonight. I started reading about a person and then clicked on a link about another person in the article and so on until I was nowhere near where I started. It’s amazing where you can end up. Just don’t click on Kevin Bacon. If you do that’s game over and you can never play again. And starting on Kevin Bacon is...

I have a weird conundrum when I fly. I love planes and flying but, having done it so much, familiarly and boredom bring a weird kind of tension. Usually, as I am on approach to Edinburgh airport, I gaze fixedly out the windows for landmarks and make sure we’re heading for some appropriate strip of of tarmac. Not so last Thursday night. As we were turning over...

As we look back in history we interpret the scratches and debris left on the earth to determine as much as we can about their lives, loves and labours. This reveals much about the ingenuity of the people who, before the industrial revolution, devised a myriad of ways to survive in a far harsher world. Most of these skills are already lost to most of us, cosseted as...

When we looked at the route of our recent drive across Europe we realised that a visit to Krakow created the possibility of a stop at Auschwitz. This was something that we were all very keen to do and, despite a difficult week leading up to that point and a very long drive ahead of us, we committed to making the stop and taking the time. I’m very glad we...