'In 1645, the twenty-seventh year of the Thirty Years War, Swedish armies inflicted a devastating blow to the Imperial forces in Bohemia and swept into Austria with the aim of capturing of Vienna. The Imperial capitol, was not prepared to give up easily. The Swedes soon found themselves digging in for a long seige, negotiating with allies for support, and building fortifications around the occupied countryside. Upriver from Vienna, in the Krems district, while digging trenches, a group of Swedish soldiers discovered the bones of a giant.... Discover the teeth of giants. And say Happy…

This just in from Jason at 350.org: Friends, The moment is here: about an hour ago, some of big oil's best paid Senators filed an amendment supporting construction of Keystone XL to the Senate's budget bill. Our goal today is to keep the Senate from forcing Obama to approve the pipeline. The oil industry is using all their money and might to push Keystone, but we've stopped them before, and we can do it again. Many of us called our Senators once already this week to stop the pipeline, and it made an impact on big oil's vote count. One of the people that big oil needs to support this bill is…

This is a hockey stick: This is the Grim Reaper's Scythe: This is global temperature over the last 10,000 years projected into the immediate future using good scientific estimates: You decide. Should the Hockey Stick be replaced with the Grim Reaper's Scythe? More information on the climate change graphic HERE. See more climate change graphics HERE. If you are not sure what any of this is about, you can read about the Hockey Stick thing here.

National Center for Science Education climate change policy director Mark McCaffrey talks about the history of climate change--and of climate change denial, doubt, and dismay at the Climate and Energy Literacy Forum, Washington, DC.

...there is a new study that has significant advantages of the Bumpus study, though the latter will still be useful in teaching about evolution because of its limitations and the questions it raises. The new study is about Cliff Swallows (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) in southwestern Nebraska. As you know, a lot of birds are killed in the U.S. because of collisions with vehicles. About 80 million, according to the Cliff Swallow study by Charles Brown and Mary Bomberger Brown. Brown and Brown examined the possibility that birds in a population subject to this particular form of mortality would…

You’ve heard of the The Crossley ID Guide: Eastern Birds (The Crossley ID Guides). It is a revolutionary new way to assemble a field guide, where each page has a drawing of what it would look like if suddenly outside your living room there was a full blown habitat for some species of bird, with individuals from that species flying or sitting all over the place in different positions, doing different things, and at different distances. These pages in the field guide almost give you the experience of having seen many of this partiuclar species of bird, like you were suddenly an experienced…

I'm not sure if it is really called "embalmed" when done to a tortoise, but it is the same idea. Lonesome George was a Galapagos Tortoise, Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii, who was known for some time a the last living individual of his subspecies. He lived on Pinta Island in the Galapagos. He died on my birthday last year at the age of "more than 100 years old." These tortoises numbered over a quarter of a million a few centuries to just a few thousand today. The latest news is that George will be embalmed, or preserved, at the Museum of Natural History in New York City and returned to the…

I put together a page of resources, just a few items but with a plan to grow it, HERE. This is for teachers and their allies, focusing on life science, an organized list of selected posts on this blog that should be of interest. Let me know if there is anything you'd like to see here sooner rather than later.

Fracking, or Hydraulic Fracturing, is a method of extracting hard-to-get oil and gas from shale. For the most part, fossil fuels originally formed in shale, which was in turn laid down by near surface life in anoxic seas. Sunlight powered a high turnover of near surface plankton, algae, and bacteria, but oxygen-poor conditions just a little deeper in the sea made it unlikely for much of that life to be recycled through other life forms. So, during periods of anoxic seas, which lasted for millions of years now and then in earth history, much of that organic material from near the surface of…

From Bloomberg President Barack Obama is preparing to tell all federal agencies for the first time that they have to consider the impact on global warming before approving major projects, from pipelines to highways. The result could be significant delays for natural gas- export facilities, ports for coal sales to Asia, and even new forest roads, industry lobbyists warn. “It’s got us very freaked out,” said Ross Eisenberg, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, a Washington-based group that represents 11,000 companies such as Exxon-Mobil Corp. (XOM) and Southern Co. (SO…

You know about the Atheists Nightmare, right? Also known as the Evolutionists Nightmare. No? It goes like this: That's pretty darn convincing. Until someone opens up some closed thing and there is some new species in there, then EVOLUTION IS MADE UP!!!1!!! Well, it turns out, Evolution is True. Some guy on the internet opened up an Oreo Cookie and inside was a new organism that could only be there IF IT EVOVED IN SIDE THE COOKIE!!1!! Look here's a picture: PROOF THAT EVOLUTION IS TRUE: This spider evolved inside this Oreo Cookie! A fake you say? A falsehood you say? Sorry, but Snopes…

The Republican dominated Minnesota Legislature got almost nothing done over the last two years that they were in power. But they did manage to put two boneheaded constitutional amendments on the ballot for last November, one to restrict voting rights in a way that Republicans would have a better chance of winning, the other making it unconstitutional for same sex couples to marry. Same sex marriage was already illegal in the state, but the GOP saw the handwriting on the wall and knew that this legal restriction would not last, so they imposed the amendment on us. Both of those amendments…

As you know, I write now and then for the Minnesota Progressive Project. I should do more there, I know, and I try. But anyway, the MPP has a new blog layout which preserves the Kos-esque diary thingie but loads faster and is easier to navigate, with a few cool "discoverability" features that link readers to writing about key issues and candidates. Please go check it out. While you are there check out the right sidebar for a place to click to sign a petition to encourage our state legislature to support same sex marriage by passing a bill that is right now before them.

In response to a comment on my blog, I issued a snarky tweet (and repeated it on Facebook) to the effect that if your argument involves the phrase "World View" you might be wrong. This led to a number of light hearted but snarky, and often helpful, responses on Facebook and Twitter indicating that the term "World View" could mean a lot of different things, such as opinion, paradigm, or point of view. So I thought I'd expand on the concept a bit. In short, "World View" does not mean any of those things, and is in fact a term with a very weighty and rather specific meaning. The term is an…

Today, the Christian Science Monitor published on their web site a piece, Global luke-warming: Is the threat of climate change overstated? by James Stafford. It is an interview with climate science denialist Anthony Watts, in which Watts gives his usual argument that climate change is not important. Well, not his actual usual argument, because he has several different conflicting things to say about climate change, ranging from it isn't happening it's actually cooling to it is only warming a little to yeah, it's warming a lot but we'll adapt. The thing is, interviewing a denialist like…

This is an event some of you in the Twin Cities may be interested in attending Viewing of American Meat at the Bell Museum "A fabulous panel of dedicated agri-food issue talkers have agreed to walk us through this conversation with the film’s director after the film, all with tremendous credentials relating to supportive critique of issues we need to face in the food system (panel listed below!)" Wednesday, March 13, 6 p.m. Reception, 7 p.m. Film with panel discussion to follow Bell Museum Auditorium, free and open to the public Panel: Jan Joannides, of Renewing the Countryside, is a key…

The Crossley ID Guide: Raptors is just now coming out. I was able to spend a little time with it a few weeks ago, though my official copy has not arrived yet. But Princeton (the publisher) is organizing a major blog hoopla over the publication of this new book, and I've signed on to participate. Starting yesterday a number of bird-related blogs are producing posts related to this book. My post comes out next Tuesday and it will consist of a quiz, a bird quiz. Anyone who gets the quiz right will be eligible for random selection, and whoever gets randomly selected will be hooked up with…

Gun ownership rates in the US have been declining in recent decades. The National Rifle Association has started to produce denialist rhetoric to obscure this well documented fact. One of the reasons there is less gun ownership is because of changes in the demography of the US population; Angry white men whose recent ancestors were angry white men are declining in numbers and less paranoid and less violent browninsh people often with recent ancestors from other, non gun-happy countries are becoming more common. You've heard about the rush to buy guns that happens every time Obama mentions…

This is a must watch video from the US Senate: I'm pretty sure I heard once that there is a rule in the Senate that you can't call another Senator a liar using that word (lier). So when you see Senator Whitehouse not using that word, that may be why.

A representative of the conservative group gets it wrong while smirking at Bill Nye at the same time: Read all about it here at Media Matters.