Mark Collard

@TLNewmanMTL It's hard to believe it's gotten as bad as it has.

I don't recognize my country anymore

A Hasidc Jew gets hit by a bus in Montreal. Look at the comments.

@MisterG_BE As in 'a fire has damaged the castle'?

@profmarkcollard There’s a fire now in the castle

Runneburg Castle, Weißensee, Germany. Initially constructed in 1168.

@NGMcLaughlin Thanks, Neil.

@profmarkcollard So sorry for your, and the department's loss..

It's been a rough few weeks in the SFU Department of Archaeology. We lost our founding chair, Prof. Roy Carlson, at the end of February, and yesterday we lost our primatological superstar, Prof. Birute Galdikas. Birute's life was a remarkable one. Her impact on orangutan research and, perhaps more importantly, on orangutan conservation was enormous. She was also a dearly loved teacher. Every SFU undergrad who took her courses seems to have come away enthused about Birute and her stories from the field. Such an impressive legacy.

Dogs were widely distributed across western Eurasia during the Palaeolithic nature.com/articles/s4158…

Well, well, D'Artagnan was real. I had no idea.

University leaders should think carefully before making political comments that could be taken to speak for their institutions, according to Professor Arif Ahmed, the Office for Students’ director for freedom of speech and academic freedom. Speaking at a Westminster Education Forum conference, Ahmed drew a distinction between the rights of individual academics and the position of senior leaders or institutions themselves. Academics, he said, “absolutely have the right to express political views”, which are “essential for a university to function”. But different considerations apply where senior management teams, or universities in their institutional capacity, make public interventions on politically contested matters. Full story: afcomm.org.uk/2026/03/25/ari…

@yuanyi_z Have you reverted to ‘pants’ since moving to the Netherlands?

Had a dream wherein I was trying to get on the cadidates' list for the House of Commons but I was missing pants. Maybe my brain is trying to tell me something.

Excellent, albeit sad, work. RIP Private Detmold.

"MattGPT" had me chortling but otherwise this was pretty bloody depressing read. If our decision-makers' decisions are terrible now, what on earth are they going to be like once AI has properly taken hold of the public square? unherd.com/2026/03/matt-g…

@StephenReich Sadly, I probably won't be back in the UK until after July. I'll let you know if plans change, though.

@StephenReich It serves good beer and, more importantly for present purposes, is part of the story of the discovery of the structure of DNA.

Filed under "tooting one's own horn," I was just accepted to present and publish a paper at Cambridge University this summer. My presentation is: "If Education is About Knowledge Acquisition and Application, Why is it so Resistant to Insights from Cognitive Science?" Excited and honoured. @researchED1 @researchEDCan @OISEUofT

Tucker Carlson Loses On ‘Wheel Of Fortune’ After Guessing ‘Israel' On Every Puzzle buff.ly/5jiSFz1

A review of European Middle Pleistocene hominin evolution sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

For biologists and archaeologists studying the peopling of the western Pacific, the remote archipelago of Palau has long posed a vexing puzzle. About 3200 years ago, Southeast Asian seafarers known as the Lapita pushed east into the tropical islands of the Pacific Ocean, hitting nearly every habitable isle in that corner of the globe from New Guinea to Fiji and Tonga. As they did so, they left behind artifacts of their culture, including pottery stamped with distinctive geometric patterns. But on Palau, there’s not a single shard of Lapita pottery—and the island’s inhabitants speak a language that’s distinct from the tongues spoken on other Pacific islands. So who were the first Palauans, and where did they come from? A new study suggests an answer. Learn more: scim.ag/3PqCkqS

West of Eden: pioneers and colonising farmers in early Neolithic western Europe sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Modern human origins: Do we know what we're looking for? sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Re: the Starmer-Mandelson scandal, I’m on the committee that selects honorary degree recipients for my university and I’m confident there’s no way Peter Mandelson would have made it through our selection process. Colleagues on the committee would be concerned about his worthiness AND the risk of reputational damage to the institution, and I just can’t see him getting through the first cut, let alone our ‘due diligence check’. Too many red flags even without the Epstein link. That the honorary degree committee of a mid-size Canadian university takes the vetting process more seriously than the prime minister of a G7 nation when appointing the country’s most important ambassador is pretty bloody wild. thetimes.com/article/870b62…

The England rugby team visited an orphanage in Paris today. "It's sad to see the lack of hope on their faces" said Jean-Luc, aged 6