rolson

When Oppenheimer watched the atomic bomb go off he felt he had played a part in the destruction of humanity. I know the feeling. Last week I got a nice email from a group of graduate students in marine ecology at Northeastern University who apparently are losing their minds as badly as I did in the…

...That's what you get when the ocean is infer-e-yah. We sang about it six years ago. In 2002 we made a Flash video in which we said, "A new term for the new millennium:  Jellyfish blooms." And now our dire predictions appear to be coming true, around the world. They'll sting your knees, and…

This is rather distressing. It doesn't sound like there has been any sort of major, published, peer-reviewed, quantitative documentation of this yet. But that said, something is not right when so many sport divers not only count dozens of dead or dying eels (the diver on this blog itemized in…

This is how it's done in this country.

On the morning after our east coast premiere of "Sizzle" at the Woods Hole Film Festival on July 26 we had a really good panel discussion which WGBH video taped and has just posted. Andy Revkin (of the NY Times) and Naomi Oreskes (star of "Sizzle") are both excellent. Scott Doney doesn't quite…

Now it's time to share the truth. Back in the first week of June the Junk Raft expedition faced some very dark days. When they were first towed out to the Channel Islands one of the pontoons broke apart, forcing them to stop and gather the plastic bottles that came loose. Then, a day later they…

Here we have it now, pretty much formalized. We spotted the pattern last November in our first test screenings of non-science friends in Hollywood vs. scientist friends. As the Sizzle Tuesday reviews popped up, Chad Orzel noted it among the Science Bloggers. Then Chris Mooney identified the…

We're in the middle of the Outfest Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. I've been to four of their parties now. I have to say, these are the nicest, most supportive, most polite, most fun, most open, most down home, most un-pretentious filmmakers I have ever met in nearly 20 years of going to film…

The world has changed. Sometimes its hard to notice. This is what "shifting baselines" is about. And this is also what an excellent article this month's Atlantic Monthly titled Is Google Making Us Stupid is about. Much more than just the idea of getting lazy and using Google to remember things for…

As far as anyone that I've spoken with in Hollywood knows, this has never been done before. No one has ever organized 50 bloggers to post their reviews of a small movie all on the same day, which is what will happen next Tuesday, July 15, for my new film Sizzle. Turns out it's an interesting idea…

They're making progress. Check out the map. They're halfway down Baja and a couple hundred miles out to sea. As you're reading this right now, Dr. Marcus Ericksen and Joel Paschal are bobbing on the surface, eating their beans, corn and fish, and calling attention to the sad situation of…

My phone rang at 8 this morning and the caller I.D. said, "Out of Area." That was an understatement. It was Marcus Eriksen, calling on the satellite phone on board Junk Raft, from 5 miles south of Guadalupe Island, which is about halfway down the Baja Penninsula. We talked for about 15 minutes…

Last year Jeremy Jackson went to South Africa to collect a big prize at a conference. While there he met a young nature writer/photographer named Adam Welz. A few weeks ago Adam was ambling down the west coast of the U.S. and stopped by to visit for a day. In addition to breaking the news to me…

I put together this short video of yesterday's departure of Junk Raft. An amazing fellow showed up for the festivities--Redondo Beach resident Don McFarland who in 1958 sailed a similar sized raft along the same course from LA to Hawaii with three other men. Two of them were mormons and did it to…

Environmentalism needs what Dr. Marcus Eriksen is embarking upon this Sunday. When I first saw the photo of their raft, I balked. I thought to myself "Doesn't that look a little risky?" and "What if the raft should be lost at sea?" So I sat down with him and asked ten simple questions addressing…

Okay, I'm going to give this one last shot. Regardless of whether I know what I'm doing as a filmmaker, what I do know is that in the spring of 2006 I spent two weeks at the Tribeca Film Festvial meeting with theatrical and home DVD distributors along with my sales agent, Jeff "The Dude" Dowd, the…

For anyone who knows me, you know that's the highest compliment I could ever pay a communicator. There are two fundamental errors to consider in the mass communication of science: errors of inaccuracy, and errors of boredom. It's a lot like Type I and Type II errors in statistics. And just like…

This is such a great article. It's about the gargantuan con job advertisers have pulled on the American public over the past four decades. For those of us who grew up in the sixties and drank water from supposedly dangerous public water fountains (like the author of the essay), it will remain…

A six-week drift to Hawaii will call attention to plastics in the sea Yesterday Dr. Marcus Eriksen, his expedition partner Joel Paschal, and their land-based support coordinator (and fiancee of Dr. Eriksen) Anna Cummins took the newly built "Junk Raft" on a trial run to Catalina and back. All…

How bad is the situation with plastics in the ocean? Bad enough that the staff of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation are building "Junkraft," a raft made of 20,000 discarded plastic bottles for sailing the 2100 miles from California to Hawaii to call attention to it. I stopped by to check…

Shouldn't someone just send up the white flag?

It's a dark day for the subject of evolution in the U.S. Two years ago I made a pro-evolution movie, "Flock of Dodos," trying to warn the evolution community they are not good with mass communication, and that the people behind the attacks on evolution are VERY, VERY good. This weekend Ben Stein'…

bellwether - a person or thing that assumes the leadership or forefront, as of a profession or industry: Paris is a bellwether of the fashion industry. I can't say enough good things about what the Science Debate 2008 group has managed to achieve so far. And enough bad things about some of the…