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Thoughts on what's going on online

John Tierney wonders whether doctors should be prosecuted for prescribing too much pain medication. Tierney makes some good points. One "warning sign" that a patient may be abusing drugs is that they come back for a refill early because their medicine has run out. Couldn't this also be a sign that the patient is in pain and needs more medication? There's tons of individual variation in sensitivity to pain. If the doctor believes the patient to be earnest, why is the doctor the one being prosecuted? Another good New York Times article. This one is about the limits of multitasking ability. The…

Mystery photos revealed!

Last week, we asked readers if they could tell which of these two photos, offering only 12 × 14 pixels of information apiece, represented a face: Nearly three-quarters of respondents accurately identified the photo on the right as a face. But what face? It only took 6 guesses for readers to guess that it's a picture of Greta. No one successfully identified the subject of the photo on the left, though. One thing a couple readers noticed as they participated is that blurring their vision or stepping back from their monitors helped them select the right picture. When I was creating the…

Faces, though more complex, are remembered better

How often do you see a face that you know you've seen before, but you simply can't connect a name to? If you're like me, it happens nearly every day. Face recognition experts know this is because our brains are hard-wired to recall specific faces. The semantic information about those faces is stored separately. But faces are complex -- especially when we need to remember enough about a face to distinguish it from others. If we're presented with just a glimpse of a face, is that enough to place it in memory? A new study by Kim Curby and Isabel Gauthier examined that question: Study…

Alcohol rarely mentioned in media reports on violence

Although alcohol consumption plays a role in about 31 percent of homicides, only 1.4 percent of TV news reports on murders mention alcohol. Only 12.8 percent of TV news stories on traffic accidents mention alcohol, while 34 percent of accidents involve drunk drivers. I've often wondered why people who've consumed many drinks still drive at high speeds, where at best they're likely to get caught for drunk driving, and perhaps this is part of the reason. An Ohio State press release describes the study, conducted by Michael Slater, Marilee Long, and Valerie Ford: They used statistics from the…

Hawking on King

Stephen Hawking was on Larry King Friday night, and here's a little video of the event. Through no fault of his own, Hawking isn't exactly a dynamic stage presence — he's a bag of bones in a wheelchair with a computer voice speaking for him — and Larry King is…well, King is a genuinely dumb interviewer whose weak-minded talents are better suited to celebrity airheads. That isn't the whole thing. There's also part 2 and part 3, which includes Leonard Mlodinow (who's good, but sucks up too much to the other panelists), and a couple of people whose intelligence is a better match to King's:…

Hurricanes: Grounded Research Flights, New Atlantic Predictions, and the Southern Hemisphere Peak

This is absolutely outrageous. It seems that hurricane research flights using NOAA's two P-3 "hurricane hunter" planes (pictured at left, image courtesy of NOAA) are set to be grounded due to a lack of federal funding. As Jeff Masters observes: "With zero money allocated to fund one of the most important types of hurricane research, one has to wonder--what are NOAA and Congress thinking?" What indeed. And this even as the latest forecast for the Atlantic in 2007, from Tropical Storm Risk (PDF), is yet again predicting a very active season: "There is a high (~80%) likelihood that activity…

Annals of Possible Cherry-Picking

A very interesting issue--discussed in comments here and here--has arisen over one aspect of Roger Pielke, Jr.'s testimony yesterday. In that testimony (PDF), Pielke suggested that Waxman's committee had cherry-picked science with the following statement in a memorandum (the original of which I have not been able to locate): ". . . recently published studies have suggested that the impacts [of global warming] include increases in the intensity of hurricanes and tropical storms, increases in wildfires, and loss of wildlife, such as polar bears and walruses." The above statement on hurricanes…

Unleash the Bulldog, and Let the Oversight Begin

I am a tad frustrated that I have probable jury duty next week. As result, I may have to miss Henry Waxman's January 30th scheduled hearing "regarding political interference in the work of government climate change scientists." I and many others have been pushing for the new Congress to use its investigative powers in this arena for some time, and I always knew that Waxman would make it happen. Get ready to watch the Bush administration squirm. In fact, you can already see how it's going to go down when you read Waxman's letter (PDF) to White House Council on Environmental Quality chair Jim…

Explaining the 2006 Hurricane Season

[Hurricane John of 2006 about to strike Baja California.] NASA has a new analysis of why the 2006 hurricane season in the Atlantic was much tamer than expected by seasonal forecasters. Interestingly, some of what the agency says contradicts what I've been hearing from other sources. Notably: 1. NASA says that El Nino quashed Atlantic storms in two ways: "a sinking motion in the middle and upper atmosphere and increased wind shear in the Caribbean." By contrast, earlier this week in a talk at the AMS meeting in San Antonio, National Hurricane Center forecaster James L. Franklin said that El…

Saunders Forecast Out; Predicts 16 TCs...

Well, 15.9 actually, 7.9 of them hurricanes and 3.5 of them intense hurricanes (Cat 3, 4, 5). See here (PDF). We can now do a comparison with the latest Klotzbach-Gray forecast, which is slighly lower: 15 storms, 7 hurricanes, 3 intense hurricanes. Really, the two aren't that far apart. What's most interesting perhaps is that while the Klotzbach-Gray forecast has clearly come down from numbers that were previously higher (i.e., 17, 9, and 5), the Saunders forecast has fluctuated up and down slightly but with no particular trend. In June, for example, Saunders forecast just 13.9 storms, so…

Tom Bethell on Global Warming: Some Choice Quotes

Seeing as I'm debating Bethell on NPR's Science Friday tomorrow, I thought I would begin the warm-up session here by posting some samples of what he's had to say about various scientific topics, starting with the biggie--global warming. I am not going to comment on these passages; I'm simply going to list three quotes, number them, and then leave the rest up to you folks. You were excellent when it came to helping me prep to debate Ron Bailey, so I'm sure you will be equally awesome this time around. Here goes: 1. It is often said: If we don't know whether to take an umbrella to work, how can…

An Unsound Article on "Sound Science"

I spent a fair amount of time last week talking to Iris Kuo, author of this Knight-Ridder story about the meaning of the phrase "sound science." I urged Kuo to check out my book--which contains one of the most extensive analyses of the "sound science" movement that I'm aware of--so that she could actually see that the term has a specific meaning on the political right, and that there are specific "sound science" policies that have been endorsed by conservatives that clearly seek to raise the scientific burden of proof before regulatory action can be achieved. Oh well. Instead, the frame of…

Darwin's Birdwatching

Talk about a perfect combination of topics that are of interest to Science Blogs readers. I just came across this starred review in Publisher's Weekly: January 30, 2006 Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent: The Importance of Everything and Other Lessons from Darwin's Lost Notebooks Lyanda Lynn Haupt. Little, Brown, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 0-316-83664-8 When Charles Darwin set out on his voyage of discovery aboard the Beagle in 1831, he was a naive naturalist. Upon his return to England five years later, as nature writer Haupt (Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds ) capably demonstrates, he was a…

Slamming Dennett

Everyone has been buzzing lately about Leon Wieseltier's nasty review of Daniel Dennett's new book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. I haven't read Dennett's new book yet, but having read and been impressed by his previous book Darwin's Dangerous Idea--and, furthermore, finding Wieseltier's take to be extremely nasty--I must confess my suspicion that the current review is unfair. But on at least one point, Dennett is getting what he deserves, I think. Wieseltier writes the following: If you disagree with what Dennett says, it is because you fear what he says. Any…

"60 Minutes" Rejects "Balance"

Brian Montopoli, of CBS's "Public Eye," talked with Scott Pelley recently about his "60 Minutes" global warming special. Pelley explains that he deliberately did not talk to those voices who remain skeptical of the science: "It would be irresponsible of us to go find some scientist somewhere who is not thought of as being eminent in the field and put him on television with these other guys to cast doubt on what they're saying." My own belief is that Pelley is being a tad too dismissive--a better approach might be to include the existence of the skeptics but also to contextualize their…

Did Bush Meet with Michael Crichton on Global Warming?

Apparently he did, at least according to Fred Barnes' new book, Rebel-in-Chief: Inside the Bold and Controversial Presidency of George W. Bush. I haven't read Barnes' book; I'm relying on a review of it by Ronald Brownstein, which includes the following: Those who admire Bush will find plenty to celebrate in Barnes' portrayal of a president who is resolute and visionary, yet humble and pious. Perhaps inadvertently, Barnes also includes plenty of evidence likely to horrify those who oppose Bush (for instance, Barnes reports that the president fundamentally doesn't accept the theory of global…

Thank God the Creationists Haven't Learned Anything

I was watching CNN the other day, and saw a segment they had on the latest "intelligent design" case out of California (no link available). My impression? Whew: We're going to win this one easily if it goes to trial, because once again, the creationists aren't smart enough to cover their tracks. It was like Bill Buckingham and Alan Bonsell all over again. I went to Lexis-Nexis this morning to get the CNN segment transcript. In particular, CNN interviewed, on the air, a kid who had taken the notorious "philosophy" class that is at the center of the dispute. Wisely, CNN asked the twirp what he…

Political Arithmetic

Bush was in New Orleans yesterday, the day we learned that the federal budget deficit is going to be $ 60 billion more than expected, thanks to spending related to hurricane Katrina. Of course, that $ 60 billion hardly represents the only economic impact of the hurricane. For example, there are the insured and uninsured losses, which have been estimated at well over $ 100 billion. And then, of course, there's damage to the economy. Richard T. Carson, an economist at the University of California San Diego, has put the figure for that at around $ 1 trillion due to losses in shipping and tourism…

Casual Fridays: Tax procrastination edition

When I was in college, I put off everything until the last possible instant: I got out of bed just moments before class started; I finished papers minutes before they were due. But I rarely actually missed a deadline for a paper. Now most of my deadlines aren't nearly as firm as they were in college -- if I really need more time to complete a project, I can usually reason with my client and get more time. Just one deadline seems set in stone: the April 15 Income Tax deadline (though this year it's actually April 17, since the 15th is a weekend day). In fact, you can actually file for an…

Sadly, False Balance in the New York Times

It pains me to blog this. I think Andrew Revkin is one of our best science journalists, and I don't criticize him easily. That might also explain why my taking a stand here is a bit tardy. Nevertheless, I, like many others, think Revkin really blew it with this article, which begins with the following sentence--"In the effort to shape the public's views on global climate change, hyperbole is an ever-present temptation on all sides of the debate"--and then proceeds to draw a false equivalence between a minor, arguable slip-up by Al Gore and George Will's blatant, unrepentant strewing of…

George Will: He Isn't Even Phoning It In, He's Cutting and Pasting

I kinda suspected--but didn't bother to prove--that George Will was recycling parts of his anti-global warming balderdashery, particularly his strained paragraph about global cooling in the 1970s, replete with misleading references. Well, Brad Johnson has done the work: It appears Will has a rotating (and very limited) set of global warming talking points that date back to 1992. Once in a while, he simply rejiggers the column. Wow. The George Will scandal grows larger now. Not only is he not constrained by, or answerable to, facts; but for a national columnist, such recycling is pretty…

Thomas Kuhn on the Awesome Power of the Technical

Man, Copernicus has been kicking my butt. All the star tables, geometry, etc were turning me in to a pumpkin. So I pulled down a secondary source--Kuhn's The Copernican Revolution--and night became day. I honestly think one of the reasons that Kuhn's later and more famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, had such a dramatic impact is that the author wrote and expounded so clearly. I don't know what I was expecting from Copernicus, but Kuhn's book (so far) helpfully explains the relationship between the highly technical and the broad and general in the Copernican Revolution. As…

Large Hadron Collisions Between Science and Society

My latest Science Progress column just went up: It's about the controversies surrounding CERN's Large Hadron Collider, which many people crazily think is going to open up black holes, turn us all into strangelet particles, etc. There's no basis for it--but, there was a good deal of basis for scientists to expect this kind of public reaction. For the Large Hadron saga is, as I write, ...a particularly noteworthy example of what is today almost a general principle regarding major scientific events that draw mass attention. Members of the public, having scarcely followed the underlying research…

We are not #1, and we are getting worse

Be depressed. The reports are in, and American education sucks and is hurting our economy. Stagnant scientific education imperils U.S. economic leadership, says a report by leading business and science figures. Released Thursday at a congressional briefing attended by senators and congressmen of both parties, the report updates a 2005 science education report that led to moves to double federal research funding. Nevertheless, the "Rising Above the Gathering Storm" review finds little improvement in U.S. elementary and secondary technical education since then. "Our nation's outlook has…

Wired Geoengineering Feature Now Online

You can read it here. It starts like this: It was one of the largest public demonstrations in US history. On June 12, 1982, an estimated 750,000 protesters thronged Central Park in New York City, chanting "No nukes!" and bearing signs reading "Reagan is a bomb -- both should be banned" and "Arms are for embracing." Some demonstrators called for unilateral US disarmament, others for renewing arms control talks with the Soviet Union. It was a diverse coalition that had been pulled together by Ken Caldeira, a 25-year-old activist and computer geek. Back then he was paying the rent doing…

All Quiet On The Eastern Front

The Wall Street Journal has an article by David Baltimore and Ahmen Zewail about the Science Debate that didn't happen today at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia: All three candidates declined. Apparently the top contenders for our nation's highest elective office have better things to do than explain to the public their views on securing America's future. The piece lays out what we--America--must do to re-energize our commitment to being the world's leader in science and technology: We need a president who moves science back into the White House. Today we do not have a presidential…

TimeTree

People are always asking me for the source of those nice t-shirts that illustrate how long we've diverged from a given species. I think the name must be hard to remember: they're at evogeneao.com. Now there's a little software widget that will be just as neat-o. Look up TimeTree, and remember to show it to the kids. This is a page with a simple premise: type in the name of two taxa (it will accept common names, but may give you a list of scientific names to narrow the search), and then it looks them up in the public gene databases and gives you a best estimate of how long ago their last…

The Church of Mac and Apple Fundamentalism

I need a new computer. So readers, Mac or PC? The thing is Mac users sometimes scare me just a little... Really. It's as if they've been converted to the Church of Macintosh. Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon? Now admittedly, my dad is a Mac user and mom's set on her PC, so it's possible that's why I'm now at this crossroads questioning my faith over at Correlations... Mac users generally strike me akin to missionaries. I've recently dubbed them the 'Cult of Apple'. Why? Well, it's not enough that they love the camera, the screen, the bubbly icons at the bottom of their desktop…

The Crazy North Indian Cyclone Season of 2007

It is important to remember--as I note in my latest Daily Green item--that Cyclone Sidr isn't the first staggering storm in the North Indian Ocean basin this year. Indeed, you could argue that 2007 has been the worst year on record for intense North Indian cyclones; and before Sidr came Cyclone Gonu, the first Category 5 ever observed in the Arabian Sea. Sidr turned out to be the bigger tragedy, but Gonu, pictured above, was certainly in the running for a while. The storm caused some $ 4 billion in damage to Oman, and it could have been worse. If Gonu had stayed intense for longer, and…

I don't care about a mosque/community center in New York

I really don't, in any specific way—I have a general distrust of the waste of effort building temples anywhere, but I see nothing unusual or untoward about Muslims (who do live in New York, and may be citizens of this country) building a goofy ol' religious building in downtown Manhattan…except, of course, with property values being so high there it seems like a poor investment. When I first heard right-wingers yammering about prohibiting the construction of Islamic buildings anywhere near the crater of the 9/11 terrorist act, my first thought was that would only be acceptable if they…

Which pop sci pubs do you read?

The due date for Written in Stone is still nine months away, but I have already started to compose a list of potential op-eds, essays, and articles that will help promote its release. They range from summaries of the book's premise to stories that were hacked out during the editing process, but the question is where I should pitch these ideas. There are only a limited number of popular science publications now in operation, and even among this small pool there are some that cannot pay writers and others that do not accept unsolicited proposals. As you can guess, trying to be a freelance…

Science Blogger Appreciation Day

Science blogging is hard work. Everyone has their own style and motivations, but in general it can be said that it takes a lot of effort to write about science with the frequency and skill that many bloggers do. With this in mind, and given the positive response these two posts have received, I thought it would be fitting to take a moment to express my thanks to one of my favorite science bloggers. I admire the work of many science bloggers, but if I tried to list them all I would no doubt leave someone out. Fortunately for me there is one that really stands out from the rest. Scicurious, who…

Happy anniversary to us

If it were not for my wife, Tracey, this blog would probably not exist. What you see here every day are the end-products of my efforts. What you do not see are the hours of research and writing that go into producing that material, and I could not do it without Tracey. She usually hears my ideas first, be it about an exciting new discovery or some scientific statement that has ruffled my feathers, and I truly cherish the fact that we can "speak geek" to one another. She also gives me the space to write and has not tried to discourage me from turning our apartment into a small library. More…

Hillary Clinton Week at the Intersection

So: Sheril and I have decided to do something special this week. You see, as the author of a recent Seed cover story on how the presidential candidates need to demonstrate scientific leadership, I was pleasantly surprised to find Hillary Clinton seize this very issue last week, with an inspiring speech and the release of a detailed list of policy proposals. Both bear further analysis...and that's what we're going to be doing here this week. Point by point, if you will. True, Sheril is still allowed to blog about other stuff, and so am I. But as we swing into full campaign season, we couldn't…

I Just Married My Brother!

Over the months I've been blogging at The Intersection, I've shared a little bit about myself here... Readers may remember I'm drummer in a girl band, have a strange affinity for sea cucumbers, and a habit of pulling crazy stunts as a radio personality. What you may not know is it also happens I can legally preside over weddings. Just another little thing I do. This past Sunday, family, friends, and community from all over the world and all walks of life converged in the misty mountains of western Massachusetts for three days of celebrating the marriage of my big brother, Seth, and new…

Getting Ready for the Second Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

We are going to hear a lot on this subject as August 29--the day two years ago that Hurricane Katrina made its final landfall, as a Category 3 storm, near the Mississippi/Louisiana border--approaches. I plan to blog continuously about the upcoming anniversary from now until the actual date. To that end--and to set the tone--I'd like to start off by quoting the powerful opening paragraph of Michael Grunwald's recent Time magazine cover story about the continuing vulnerability of New Orleans and the many pathetic failures of the Corps of Engineers (and their congressional supervisors). The…

Promising Bipartisan Proposal in Congress to Deal With Climate Change.. REALLY!

Exciting news in the world of climate policy.. a proposal that's not only progressive and practical, it's possible! You've likely heard a bit lately about carbon caps and carbon trading. These programs set overall authorized caps on emissions and allow the buying and selling of emissions credits. While Europe has been at this for a while, there's talk of establishing a US equivalent to place value on CO2 and other carbon pollutants. Senators Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and John Warner (R-Va.) have put together a bill in consultation with the…

The Al Gore Experience: What Would You Do?

Last Friday in NYC, I found myself reliving the Al Gore experience.. only this time without sustainable planning. I was at an event where dinner was (gulp) Chilean Sea Bass. Given the fallout last week over that infamous meal, I had to wonder.. Do individual choices matter in a society that is generally governed by the 'no day but today' mentality? Tolkien and Galadriel taught us that even the smallest person can change the course of the future, but would my decision to forgo the fish in question have any bearing whatsoever on the survival of the species? Furthermore, would anyone in the…

Of Thingamabobbercanes and Stormy Worlds

I was going to comment on Chris' post, and then thought to myself, "Am I a co-blogger, or what?" So I'm sitting here in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, amid a whirlwind of conservation biologists with very little battery remaining on my laptop -- pausing to provide my perspective on the book that kept me in good company during a 15 hour flight here from DC. Storm World is a thought-provoking piece of work. My co-blogger (there, conflict of interest disclosed!) has successfully managed to craft an interesting and honest account of the history of hurricanes and climate science, but what makes…

Reconstructing EBM before Things Fall Apart

For a few years now, folks have been up in arms trying to come up with a universally accepted definition for Ecosystem Based Management - a goal about as realistic as an episode of Laguna Beach. At best, it's a theoretical approach, so instead of debating what it means, we should be asking how to implement strategies that incorporate the broad principles of this concept. At the '07 Society for Conservation Biology conference next month, I'll be speaking about just that - moving from theory to practice. Allow me to elaborate.. The green and blue planet where we live is a very complicated…

1.0 part Grammy, 1.0 part PhD.. Framing The Perfect Political Cocktail

posted by Sheril R. Kirshenbaum We all know music is powerful. It moves and motivates us. Makes us feel something. The latest issue of Vanity Fair features Bono as guest editor and draws attention to AIDS, genocide, and poverty in Africa. Folks at the magazine seem to be getting accustomed to framing important social and environmental issues by way of celebrity icons in order to reach out to a broad demographic. They've also figured out that a social conscience is more fashionable and profitable these days than even the latest from Manolo. Just weeks ago we saw Leo and Knut the polar…

A New Think Tank Attack on Gore

Via Guns, Germs, & Steeled, I just noticed that Steven Hawyard of the American Enterprise Instiute and Pacific Research Institute has released a rather tacky parody movie of Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. I just watched it; you can do so here. In general, Hayward is trying to position himself as a moderate, someone who accepts some human caused global warming but who isn't an alarmist like Al Gore and those wacky environmentalists. There's just one problem with this stance: Hayward was aiming straight at the scientific consensus as recently as two years ago: What do we actually know? The…

Responding to PZ (and Others) in The Washington Post

Following the Science piece, there has been a great need for Nisbet and I to expand upon our arguments regarding "framing." Matt did so the other day on NPR, and now we have a joint piece in the latest Washington Post outlook section that goes further. In the Post, we focus on one of the most obvious examples of badly framing the defense of evolution--tying it to criticism of religion. Richard Dawkins is the most prominent example in this regard, and we single him out accordingly. I want to emphasize that I grew up on Dawkins' books; they really helped me figure out who I am. But…

More on Perceptual Restoration

Last week's post on perceptual restoration in toddlers brought a lot of speculation from commenters. To answer some of the questions, I thought I'd elaborate a bit here on the phenomenon and how I created the demo. First, here's the original recording again, with me saying "dinosaur" three times: In the first case, I edited out the "s" sound, and everyone with normal hearing can hear that. The last "dinosaur" is complete. Did I edit out the "s" in the middle dinosaur? Most adults believe they hear the "s" sound in cases like this, even if the sound has been edited out: the perceptual system…

What's better for heating a mug of water: The stove or the microwave?

I know CogDaily is supposed to be a psychology web site, but sometimes, you have a question you simply must know the answer to. I frequently need to boil a mug of water, and I've often wondered what the most energy-efficient method is. Is it the microwave, or the good-old-fashioned teakettle on the cooktop? In these days of global warming, it's an important question. So I finally decided to do the experiment. Method and results: I filled a ScienceBlogs mug with 300 ml tap water at 62° Fahrenheit. Then I heated it at 30-second intervals in a 900-watt GE microwave oven. Results are…

Kiss space goodbye

Charlie Stross examines the economics and physics of colonizing other planets, and he isn't at all optimistic. Forget going to planets around other stars — the distances are absurdly excessive. But also forget about colonizing planets in our solar system: not only is it ridiculously expensive just to put a human being on another planet, it isn't even an attractive proposition. When we look at the rest of the solar system, the picture is even bleaker. Mars is ... well, the phrase "tourist resort" springs to mind, and is promptly filed in the same corner as "Gobi desert". As Bruce Sterling has…

If you want to see Laelaps in print...

...then I need your help. Yesterday, after being inspired by the announcement of Ed's book, I broached the concept of there being a "best of" Laelaps collection. A few of you have voiced your encouragement, and I am definitely considering producing a collection of my work in print form. I'm probably the worst person to ask to choose what posts are best, particularly since I've been a little down lately, so I need you to pick your favorite Laelaps posts. All you have to do is let me know which posts you would like to see in print in the comments. You don't even need to send me a link (a short…

Give me a hand with the 2008 Blogging Scholarship!

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I had entered myself as a contestant for the 3rd annual College Blogging Scholarship. I wasn't too optimistic about my chances, but much to my surprise I got an e-mail Friday evening letting me know that I made the final 20! I am proud to say I'm in the running for $10,000 that will help finance my last semesters and pay down the debt I have accrued over the last few years. (Sorry I did not put something up about this sooner; a scheduled post didn't go up for some reason.) Now comes the tricky part. The next round of the contest is determined by voting, and I…

Book Progress #43

I am actually starting to feel optimistic about meeting my self-imposed mini-deadline. It took me a few days, but I was able to go through what I had previously written for the human evolution chapter once. It let me regain my bearings and straighten things up a bit, even if I ended up adding as much as I deleted. (It now stands at 25 pages, which will have to be severely condensed.) As far as the historical narrative, I have now reached the part when Piltdown was unveiled as a fraud and W.E. le Gros Clark convinced his colleagues that Australopithecus was relevant to human evolution after…

Book Progress #42

After putting it off for too long, I finally began my re-write of the human evolution chapter today. I feared what I would find when I began working with it again. I had written about 25 pages, but that was back in April, May at the latest, and I knew that a lot of it would have to be thrown out. I am not exactly starting from scratch, though. Instead of starting with a blank sheet I decided to re-mold what I had already put down, injecting new ideas and examples as I go along. Not all my prose is horrific, and to an extent I am mining what the Brian of last spring wrote for whatever useful…