The Showtime program Years of Living Dangerously, which is now partly through its first and—given its low ratings—possibly only season, blends celebrity star power with insights and investigations into climate change. As to whether the show is able successfully to motivate people to…
Not the likeliest of pairings, of course, whatever the latter is supposed to be, but bear with me while I explain. Language Log, one of the few blogs that I read for pleasure, was founded by two linguists, Mark Liberman and Geoffrey Pullum, features posts by them and a handful of additional…
Photo Credit: Forest Clay via Compfight cc Last Friday, I shared a "green" fossil to celebrate "bike to work week". Many of you recognized this plant as an ancestral oak—but which one? There were many guesses: Red oak, black oak, turkey oak, pin oak, cherrybark oak, but none of these were…
This week’s Cosmos episode, “The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth,” was an extraordinary tour of geologic ideas, exposing television audiences to fascinating events most had probably never heard of. Neil deGrasse Tyson’s fact-rich explanations enlightened and informed even as they entertained…
NCSE is pleased to offer a free preview (PDF) of of Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Henry Holt and Co., 2014). The preview consists of a portion of chapter 11, "The Rhino Gets an Ultrasound," in which Kolbert discusses programs aimed at breeding the…
Now that spring has arrived, I thought I'd share a leaf that might seem a little too familiar! Well it should—it's from a genus that is found all over North America today. Its closest living species is still found in the Southeast. Can you tell me the modern species, as well as this…
A milestone: there are now over 60,000 fans of NCSE's Facebook page. Why not join them, by visiting the page and becoming a fan by clicking on the "Like" box by NCSE's name? You'll receive the latest NCSE news delivered straight to your Facebook Home page, as well as updates on evolution-related…
Last Sunday's Cosmos took on the related concepts of extinction and climate change, topics I’ve had on my mind since reviewing The Sixth Extinction and interviewing author Elizabeth Kolbert. Neil deGrasse Tyson walks us through many of the great extinctions in history, the…
In part 1, after a cryptic reference to The Mariner’s Mirror, I was discussing how, while writing a review of Eugene Byrne and Simon Gurr’s excellent Darwin: A Graphic Biography for Evolution: Education and Outreach, I became preoccupied with two questions of…