49 States Receive Snow!

After this week’s spate of snowstorms across the South, Midwest, and Great Plains, and seasonal snowfalls in the Rockies, Appalachians, Northeast, and elsewhere (including the Hawaiian mountains), 49 out of 50 states now have snow on the ground in one place or another. The only state to escape? Florida, but only by a few miles [...]

Obama Plans to Redirect the Mississippi; Restore Wetlands?

This might be one of the most astounding and positive things to come out of the Obama white house, that is, if it turns out this idea is more than just political posturing and an actual goal of the President. Long story short: the possibility of a “Gulf Recovery Act” on par with the Tennessee [...]

Hypocrisy Watch: ACORN Versus BP

“This is not an environmental disaster. And I will say that again and again, because it it a natural phenomenon” – Rep. Don Young (R-AK) How do you sleep at night, saying things like that? My personal guess is on a very comfortable mattress in a very nice home, tuckered out after counting your stacks [...]

Live Oil Spill Footage and Deja Vu

Thanks to Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA), you can now view live footage of the BP Oil Spill on the House website here. Oh, and looks like we had an incredibly similar spill event over 30 years ago, with the same leak-stopping techniques being employed. >.< And now that the top-kill seems to maybe have worked, [...]

Wetlands or Greed?

A lovely op-ed piece about the nature of the Gulf Coast oil spill, the untenable position of current regulation, and the inherent trade-off between the exploitation of natural resources and the preservation of our environment – and all the ecosystem services it provides. Coming from a state with an extensive (and some would say pristine) [...]

Darwin-Dissing Alert!!!

Today is the day that Ray Comfort, the creationist of hand-banana fame, will be distributing copies of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species at “the top 100 universities nationwide”. The catch? A 54-page introduction equating the theory of evolution with Nazism, and overall bashing the venerable Charles Darwin with lies and misinformation. The National Center [...]

Nifty New Fossils Clarify Evolution of Pterosaurs, Hominids

Two new fossil finds published this month have further clarified the outline of the tree of life. I love these kinds of stories! #1 – Darwinopterus modularis First, a new transitional pterosaur has provided evidence of the evolutionary connection between the two major groups of Mesozoic flying reptiles: the long-tailed basal ‘rhamphorinchoids’, and the more [...]

The Moon and the Nobel Peace Prize

Today was an eventful day! You may have heard that NASA launched a projectile into the moon, in an attempt to locate large deposits of water. Here are the facts: our national space agency sent a 2.2-ton empty rocket stage crashing into the south pole of the moon at twice the speed of a bullet, [...]

Texas Steps Backward on Science Standards

This week the Texas State Board of Education voted to place a fudgy ‘strengths and weaknesses’-like wording into the state science standards, using the language “all sides of scientific evidence”. This sort of wording allows for the introduction of all sorts of textbook wording that supports creationist-inspired tearing down of Evolution. Just look at the way [...]

Texas School Board Hilarity

It seems the Texas State Board of Education is at it again. The state science standards are up for review again, and some of the comments made by boardmembers are quite interesting. Keep in mind 7 out of the 15 board members are BIBLICAL-LITERALIST, YOUNG-EARTH CREATIONISTS: “If I can’t understand it, it’s not science.” – [...]