Businessman Jim McCormick Guilty

Fake Bomb Detector Vendor Convicted For Fraud - Assets Seized

For some years now, scientists, science writers, bloggers and others have been writing about the bogus bomb detector scam perpetrated by Jim McCormick.  Now, at last, Britain's Crown Prosecution Service has done what it should have done sooner: put on its best hobnail boots and jumped all over the guy.


Image source: explosivedetectorfrauds.blogspot.co.uk

Widening The Net - The Capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Whenever there is a high profile criminal act like the Boston Marathon Attack, we usually hear from the media that "the net is closing" on a suspect.  In this age of rapid communication, surely it is more often the widening of the net that leads law enforcement agencies to the suspects.  Thanks to science, a communications net can be established very rapidly and globally.  Thanks to science there can be no hiding place for a high profile fugitive from justice.

The Dragnet

Ants and Earthquakes

A recent paper linking red wood ant behaviour to earthquakes has been widely reported but not widely discussed.  Such discussion and comment as there has been in the media has focused on the mechanism/s by which these ants might predict earthquakes.  I believe that there is an important question to be addressed which may help explain the evolution of quake-detection mechanisms.  Given that these ants seem to prefer to build their colonies along active faults, I suggest that the question to be addressed is: "why would any creature build its home on an active fault line?"