“It was a fantastic beast that looked like it was made up for a…Hindu mythology! It was as big as an elephant. It had saber teeth, gigantic fangs, but it was a plant eater, but had horns, six of them in two rows. It was unbelievable.” That’s a description from the paleontologist Bob Bakker,…
NCSE is seeking to hire a full-time summer intern to work on science education activism projects, with a particular focus on climate change education. This is a unique opportunity for someone with a science background to learn about science advocacy to support one of the most important…
Something for everyone this week—weird weather, bird phylogeny, amateur paleontology, dinosaur sex and more (including not one but two stories about microbes!). What’s not to love? Greenland Ice Loss Accelerates 110-Year-Old Record Reveals, Scientific American, December 17,…
Whose skull is this? If you think you know the answer, write it on a postcard or on the flyleaf of a first edition of On the Origin of Species, and mail it to NCSE, PO Box 9477, Berkeley CA 94709-0477. Or just leave a comment below…
NCSE recently learned that there was a new evolution game on the map: Go eXtinct! Of course we wanted to give it a whirl. But would playing it in the office, with a team of evolution experts, be the best way to review the game? Maybe not. We thought it might be fun to try it on people with less…
According (PDF) to the latest Monmouth University Poll, "a large majority of Americans acknowledge climate change is happening, although they are divided on whether human activity is mostly responsible for it." Monmouth University Urban Coast Institute Director Tony MacDonald commented, "The data…
Having lived in Boston most of my life, I am used to weird weather. Seventy degrees in the middle of January? I’ve experienced that. Soul-crushing 6-foot piles of snow? Been there. Two full months of non-stop rain? My regularly-flooded basement could tell you stories. So when the weather turned…
A young person of my acquaintance, reading Scott Westerfeld’s young-adult novel Peeps (2005)—which has a disturbing amount of scientific information about parasitism in it— drew my attention to the following passage: “Evolution is mostly about mutations that don’t work, sort…
Most New Year’s resolutions fail. We know that only about 1 in 8 people stick by their resolutions, we know why, and we know there are some tricks that can help you succeed. But still, most people fail. That said, the great John Cleese offers this resolution, one we should all make. I would…