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Noodly Parrot Festival (They Really ARE Psychic)

In honor of His affinity to parrots, Flying Spaghetti Monsterists hold a festival each year to honor the pirate's best friend and prophetic vessel. It is widely believed that the Flying Spaghetti Monster prefers followers who accessorize with parrots because they allow Him to communicate with them more easily. During this festival, several hundred million parrots are gathered in one spot and set free. This symbolizes spreading across the land, granting His followers a great boon, and his enemies a head topped with bird guano. For 3 days prior to their release, Flying Spaghetti Monsterists…

World's Fair Puzzle Cracked?

So, I was very intrigued by the little puzzle going on at the World's Fair. I was quite dubious that I would be able to crack it, but I'd like to propose a theory that may be atleast partially correct. If not, there's a lot of good coincidences. Unifying theme? Things that occured in 1962. The fish: In 1962 the US Toro (which is a name used for cowfish) made it's 11,000th dive while off Long Island The cow: The 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was to John Cowdry Kendrew Elvis: The movie depicted the Seattle World Fair which occured in 1962 The novel exerpt: The child suffered from polio---the…

Cyborg Pigeon Makes Debut in China

Chinese scientists have made a remote controlled pigeon. By planting micro electrodes in the pigeon's brain, the scientists can make the bird fly up, down, left or right."I'm looking for a boy named John Conner. Have you seen him?" Chief scientist Su Xuecheng explains, ""The implants stimulated different areas of the pigeon's brain according to electronic signals sent by the scientists via computer, mirroring natural signals generated by the brain." Whether or not the pigeon is going to defend the city of Detroit from a gang of criminal masterminds, who are headquartered in a toxic waste dump…

Neurophilosophy now hosted by The Guardian

AFTER four years here at ScienceBlogs.com, Neurophilosophy is moving to a new home. As of today, it will be hosted by The Guardian. During its time here, the blog has grown from strength to strength. It has received over 2.5 million page views, was featured regularly on the New York Times science page, and has been translated into about a dozen languages. It has also enabled me to earn a living as a freelance science writer for the past two years. Thanks to everyone here at ScienceBlogs and especially to all my readers. I hope you'll continue reading. The URL for the new blog is: http://www.…

Cutting out the stone of madness

At Bioephemera, Jessica has a fascinating post about depictions of madness in 15th-17th century art, during which time mental illness was popularly attributed to the presence of a "stone of madness" (or "stone of folly") in the head. One of the earliest depictions of this is found in the above painting, Hieronymous Bosch's The Cure of Folly (The Extraction of the Stone of Madness), and similar scenes were subsequently depicted by other Renaissance artists. As Jessica explains, historians of art and medicine are in dispute about the underlying meaning of the paintings. Were they depictions…

Only 50% of Americans Have a Favorable View of Al Gore

One of the reasons why Al Gore's communication campaign has had limited success in activating the American public on climate change is that only half of adults have a favorable opinion of the former Vice President. Not only do pre-conceived notions about Gore serve as a perceptual screen in interpreting his climate crisis message, such hardened opinions don't augur well for the many of us who have been hoping that Gore would run for president. Indeed, as a recent Gallup analysis reviews, polls from Marist and Pew indicate that half of Americans would never consider voting for Gore as…

Framing Science at Center for American Progress, June 19

In our last major talk of the summer here in DC, on Tues. June 19 we will be delivering our Speaking Science 2.0 presentation at the Center for American Progress. Breakfast is served at 830am. The talk and discussion follows from 10 to 1130am. The Center has all the details here. CAP senior fellow and former assistant Energy secretary Joseph Romm will be hosting the event. He's the author of the terrific new book Hell and High Water: Global Warming-The Solution and the Politics and also contributes the popular Climate Progress blog. As was the case earlier this month at the New York…

The Luntz Memo and the Framing of Climate Change

In a segment from the recent Frontline special "Hot Politics," GOP pollster Frank Luntz explains his 1997/1998 memo that became the playbook for how conservatives like President Bush and Senator James Inhofe redefined climate change as really a matter of "scientific uncertainty" and "unfair economic burden." We detail the strategy and its impact on public opinion in our Framing Science thesis and in our talks as part of the Speaking Science 2.0 national tour. Below you can watch a clip of Senator Inhofe's appearance on Fox & Friends the week of the release of this year's first IPCC…

Americans Now View the Environment as a Bigger Priority Than Energy Supplies

In conjunction with Earth Day, a number of major survey results have been released on global warming, energy, and the environment. The latest is a survey from Gallup that chronicles American views on energy, and the trade-offs between the environment and the economy. Of note, is the now striking gap of more than twenty points between giving preference as a priority to the environment over energy supplies. Also, below, is charted American views on energy as a problem. Note the startling spike in urgency felt by the public in 2001. As I detailed in a Science and Media column last year,…

Chimpanzees at Pre-School

There are few things as fascinating to me as the question of how our ancestors evolved from small-brained, tree-dwelling apes. But sometimes it all can feel a bit abstract. After all, we're talking about things that happened six million years ago. Recently, though, I had a weird experience that brought our evolutionary history smack into my face. Some Yale psychologists came to my daughter Charlotte's pre-school looking for volunteers for a study that would compare how children and young chimpanzees learn. It turns out that chimpanzees can be a lot more logical than children, Charlotte…

It's built now ...

Steven Colbert's commencement speech given at Knox College is here and there's partial video here. And when you enter the workforce, you will find competition from those crossing our all-too-porous borders. Now I know you're all going to say, "Stephen, Stephen, immigrants built America." Yes, but here's the thing--it's built now. I think it was finished in the mid-70s sometime. At this point it's a touch-up and repair job. But thankfully Congress is acting and soon English will be the official language of America. Because if we surrender the national anthem to Spanish, the next thing you know…

Naomi Klein Speaks at KlimaForum Peoples Climate Summit

Canadian journalist Naomi Klein, author of the international bestsellers The Shock Doctrine, No Logo, and the recent Rolling Stone article "Climate Rage," gave the following talks at the KlimaForum09 alternative climate conference in Copenhagen. As the US is insisting on a mere 17% reduction in carbon pollution based on 2005 levels (when the IPCC Working Group III Report calls for a minimum safe reduction of 25 - 40% from 1990 levels) she highlights how this conference will not come to an agreement that adequately meets the challenge we face. In order to do that, she argues, it will require…

House-eating snails?

Image of a Giant African land snail from a Florida Department of Agriculture Division of Plant Industry handout. Giant African land snails, like the one pictured above, are reportedly "one of the world's most destructive invasive species" as they not only consume over 500 plant species, they can actually eat stucco (apparently a good source of calcium). Therefore, I am sure you can imagine the damage they are causing in South Florida where they can grow as large as a rat. Since 2011 when the snail was first seen, more than 117,000 have been captured in Miami-Dade County. More problemmatic…

Amazing symbiotic relationship between algae and jellyfish

See the amazing symbiotic relationship that has evolved between jellyfish and algae. This relationship began 12,000 years ago when ocean levels were higher as a result of melting glaciers. With the higher ocean levels, creatures like the golden jellyfish trickled into an island lake. As the ocean levels dropped, the jellyfish became trapped and evolved a symbiotic relationship with algae that require sunlight for energy and, in turn, produce sugar that feeds the jellyfish. Because of the lack of predators, these jellyfish are now "stingless" and people from around the world travel to…

Things I don't understand (tenure edition)

Could somebody please explain to me why some senior faculty feel the need to treat the tenure process as a hazing?* Possible hypotheses: 1. These faculty members never quite got over the teasing and hijinks aimed at them in junior high/high school and are exacting revenge on a powerless faction (junior faculty). 2. Lack of social skills (= not good at giving feedback in a constructive way). 3. Sick notion of a rite of passage ("My life was hell as junior faculty, so your life better damn well be hell too!"). 4. Extreme need for milk and cookies/a nap/a glass of wine/a timeout. * I'm not…

Through the keyhole of self-awareness

I am sitting at the window seat of the Alitalia flight. It is flying over the Italian alps near Milan, few minutes away from landing. The sun is setting behind the alps creating a vast dynamic art that sweeps slowly across as the aircraft moves over the mountains; a small house besides a stream in the valley beneath, clouds resting halfway up the mountains. And, this is just in the tiny bit of earth and sky that I happened to pass through. Spectacular, sublime, artistic beyond human comprehension. What is Art? Can art be for itself, without a context, without a witness? Universe as an…

Poverty in early childhood poisons the brain

An FT article: Poverty in early childhood poisons the brain, the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston yesterday heard. Neuroscientists said many children growing up in very poor families with low social status experience unhealthy levels of stress hormones, which impair their neural development. That effect is on top of any damage caused by inadequate nutrition and exposure to environmental toxins. Studies by several US universities have revealed the pervasive harm done to the brain, particularly between the ages of six months and three years, from low socio-…

Orthodoxy and Contradictions

Noah Feldman on the contradictions of a religious community facing modernity in NY Times. If you read an essay on the contradictions of orthodoxy by anyone at any time in history, you will find the same themes discussed. Ignorance empowered by authority will always be at odds with Science, regardless of how well they've learnt to split hair and write finer points on the margins of oversized books. Couldn't the contradictory world from which we sprang be just as rich and productive as the contradictory life we actually live? Would it really, truly, have made all that much difference? Isn't…

Ubuntu updates. "Hello Mom"

So, you read my story a while back and want to know how are things now. Thanks for asking. Things have gone from 'no more tech support' to 'my mother does her own installation'. She has installed amsn to do video chat with us (take that Skype). amsn works across platforms and uses my iSight webcam just fine. Of course, I walked my mother through the installation. As she says, she didn't educate me for nothing. She hit all the right buttons on Synaptic ( and sometimes the wrong ones too - luckily with no harmful effects.). Hey Presto! She saw me digging my nose via iSight video and felt all…

NY Times - A Free-for-All on Science and Religion

A very readable article in NY Times on Science and Religion. Here's something that I find inane that touches upon meaning and purpose of life. "There are six billion people in the world," said Francisco J. Ayala, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Irvine, and a former Roman Catholic priest. "If we think that we are going to persuade them to live a rational life based on scientific knowledge, we are not only dreaming -- it is like believing in the fairy godmother." "People need to find meaning and purpose in life," he said. "I don't think we want to take that away from…

Gleanings: mayfly radar, tennis memoir, et alia

    Unbelieveble! Department, via SciencePunk:  Giant mayfly swarm caught on radar NYRB reviews what sounds like an especially moving memoir from Andre Agassi. Whatever It Takes Department, via Ed Yong: Superstitions can improve performance by boosting confidence. The climate-change doubt industry and its roots - http://bit.ly/an4cAr, via @stevesilberman RitaRubin: Study: Have bad habits? U r more likely 2 blame health problms on your genes. 'Cause u can't do anything 2 change them http://bit.ly/ad6iRy. Damned interesting if true. techreview: Genetic Testing Can Change Behavior http…

Now that's new media: Obama and his 11-year-old interviewer

Well here you go. An 11-year-old interviews Obama -- and if I may say so, does quite a bit better than some of his journalistic elders. Here's the vid, and some apt commentary from Tapped: Hey, remember Damon Weaver, the 11-year-old who interviewed Joe Biden back in September? Well, he finally scored a sit-down session with Barack Obama yesterday. Among the topics discussed: ways to improve school systems affected by budget cuts, Obama's attitude toward his critics, mangoes, basketball. Things not mentioned: the communist end of days, enchantment, swim trunks, death panels. --Alexandra…

Behavioral econ at work: Peter Orszag's training tips

Via Tyler Cohen's Marginal Revolution comes this amusing anecdote -- and, perhaps, helpful example -- from the life of Peter Orszag, Obama's very brainy budget director. To motivate himself to train for a marathon, he somehow set up a penalty if he didn't hit his training targets: His credit card would make a contribution to a charity or cause he hated: ]"If I didn't achieve what I wanted to, a very large contribution would automatically come out of my credit card and go to a charity that I very much didn't support," Orszag says of his training strategy. "So that was a very strong motivation…

The Future Stinks: A Scratch & Sniff Children's Book

I used to love scratch-n-sniff when I was little. I remember one about a little bear at Christmas and I could smell his hot chocolate, oranges, and pine trees. Well, that was then and this is now. My book about the little bear was really delightful. This new scratch-n-sniff book will not be really delightful. But it will be real and should be manufactured in bulk and distributed freely to all children that they may get an olfactory sense of what the future holds. In "The Future Stinks" children can scatch and sniff smells of garbage, factory farms, sewage effluent, factory farms, and…

Bipartisan Support for ScienceDebate2008

Great news! All the hard work by the team at the Intersection and beyond is paying off and there are now two Congressmen supporting the call for a debate. From the press release: NEW YORK - A Republican and a Democratic member of the United States Congress, who are each also scientists, are leading an effort to push for a presidential debate on science and technology policy. Congressman Vern Ehlers, R-MI, and congressman Rush Holt, D-NJ, have agreed to co-chair the non-partisan initiative, called ScienceDebate2008.com, whose signers also include fourteen Nobel laureates, several university…

Test Tube Trout

Remember the good old days when salmon would court one another in the eddies of rivers? After a long song and dance, the females would flap their tales and dig their nests by moving the gravel (some as big as oranges) before releasing thousands of pea-sized orange eggs for the chosen male to fertilize them. Voila! Baby fish. But more and more salmonids face extinction. Often, we preserve the genetic material from endangered species by freezing it. But salmon eggs are to big and fatty to freeze. So researchers have figured out a way to produce sperm and eggs of rainbow trout within a…

'U.S. News' College Rankings Sees Drop in Participation

And some good news, from Inside Higher Ed: 'U.S. News' Sees Drop in Participation Even though many colleges will boast today about their placement in the annual rankings by U.S. News & World Report, more colleges than ever are declining to participate in the survey that makes up the single largest part of the magazine's formula. Only 46 percent of colleges returned the "reputational" survey, where presidents rate similar institutions. This peer survey is particularly controversial because it is viewed as unscientific and likely to reward colleges that had great reputations in the past.…

Math Prof Jobs Go Unfilled (sort of)

And not-so-good news. As much of the math instruction in my own hometown school district (which was recently ranked as one of the best in the nation) is abysmal, news about poor math skills and instruction catches my eye. The news below, from Science, adds to the growing pile.  U.S. HIGHER EDUCATION: Departments Scramble to Find Math Education Faculty Jeffrey Mervis According to a recent survey, 60% of 128 tenure-track academic jobs advertised last year in mathematics education went unfilled. Although that may be good news for job-seekers, it's another impediment for…

Friday Cephalopod: Octopus in disguise

Knobby Argonaut, Argonauta nodosa Also, what's Brian Switek doing, writing about cephalopods? He's supposed to be writing about dinosaurs ! But first impressions can be deceiving. In truth, as I later learned from Klug, the paper nautilus is not a close relative of today’s pearly nautilus, nor is it an echo of the long-lost ammonoids. The creature that had ensnared my mind is totally different. The argonaut is an octopus, and its prehistoric look is created by the way the squishy creature reproduces. The “shell,” Klug says, “is actually an egg case secreted by two specialized arms,” and…

Have Cash, Will Pay For Truthiness

Low on cash? Need to repay student loans? Not bothered by morals or respect for reality? Then the American Enterprise Institute has a deal for you! ... according to an article in The Guardian, a British newspaper [the AEI], a right-leaning think tank that has received more than $1.6-million from Exxon Mobil, wrote letters to scientists asking for essays that "thoughtfully explore the limitations of climate model outputs," The Guardian reported. All you have to do is write a "critical review" of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. Serve up a little truthiness and $10,000…

Evolutionary Biology Resurrected on the Third Day

Last Tuesday's the Chronicle of Higher Education reported that evolutionary biology, you will recall, had been left off a list of eligible science majors for students applying for federal SMART grants. A Department of Education spokeswoman had assured us this was only due to a "clerical consolidation" and not any nefarious intent of minions from the Ministry of Science and Culture. But the prayers of the science community have been answered, the Chronicle reports today. For on the third day, which was last Friday, the Department of Education announced that evolutionary biology had…

Creative Commons and textbooks

Anyone who has had to order textbooks for students knows how expensive they are. Here's something that I hope may end up a trend amongst academics: Creative Commons licensed texts. P.D. Magnus wrote a logic textbook, forall x, which he made available under the CC license; and now David Morris of the University of Lethbridge has used it as the basis on which to write an abstract mathematics textbook, Proofs and Concepts. With luck, this is a new dynamic of the new media, that will benefit education even if it takes away some revenue from academic publishers. For work that is fully created (…

Philosophy of Ecology podcasts

If you go here you will find downloadable podcasts of this conference: Second Queensland Biohumanities Conference, Philosophy of Ecology, held 29-30th June, 2006: Introduction by Prof. Paul Griffiths, and Mathematical Models in Ecology and Conservation Biology: Mark Colyvan The Agony of Community Ecology: Greg Cooper (not recorded, due to an equipment failure) Seeing the Forest and the Trees: On the Very Idea of an Ecological Community: Jay Odenbaugh Local Ecological Communities: Kim Sterelny The Problem with Environmental Problem Formulation: Hugh Possingham Toward a General Theory of…

We are SCARY here in Aus!

Grace, of Will and Grace refuses to swim in Australian waters for a miniseries she (sorry, Debra Messing, the actor) is filming here. She's freaking out because of how Irwin died. It's OK GraceDebra. You will ... probably ... survive the experience. Despite our having a multitude of poisonous snakes, spiders, mammals, octopuses, jellyfish and the odd shark here or there, oddly enough very few Australians die in the water apart from by drowning. We like to scare you visiting folk, and one of our favourite stories is the drop bear, but actually it's pretty safe here if you don't camp under a…

Powerpoint: Love it or hate it, it's not going to go away

So I'm a teacher type right? And what do I think of powerpoint? Well, it's certainly convenient, although to be honest, I'm partial to good old real time pen and projector or chalk and blackboard lectures (a good way to pace yourself). Anyway, I've had ongoing requests to put up some of the powerpoint slides I've presented previously, so I figured maybe this blog is a good place to bank some of my more interesting slides. In the meantime, this has to be one of the funniest uses of powerpoint I seen in a while. Good song too (from Wholphin, song by Cantinero, video/powerpoint by Mad…

ER-bound men postone going until after sporting events

Unbelievable: Not even a medical emergency can pull some men away from a television showing their favorite sports teams, a U.S. study has determined. University of Maryland emergency physician David Jerrard tracked nearly 800 regular season college and professional football, baseball and basketball games in the state over three years and found there always was an increase in the number of men who checked into emergency rooms after these events. Jerrard's study, to be presented on Sunday at the annual meeting of the American College of Emergency Physicians Research Forum in New Orleans, showed…

Nobel Prize Gossip: Why Did Greg Hannon Not Win?

I was just thinking about something. The Nobel Committee is usually mysterious in how they pick the winners, but why did Greg Hannon not win the Nobel with the others? My understanding was that he was sort of the guy for RNA interference. In fact, the review that I cited in my last post came from him because I know that he has written all kinds of reviews about it. Also, a lab mate of mine mentioned this: why did they win Medicine and not Chemistry? Because RNAi treatments have ended up being such loads of hype. It has ended up being such a load because no one can get enough of it into a…

A good start

Mark Isaak has opened a discussion on The Panda's Thumb about The Larger Issue of Bad Religion. It's good to discuss the problem of religion, but my main complaint is the attempt to separate 'good religion' from 'bad religion', and suggesting that we should be lauding those 'good religionists' to win them over to our side. Unfortunately, we don't have a criterion to distinguish the two, and I fear that if we did define them, those practitioners of 'good religion' would be vanishingly small, and not particularly strongly associated with any particular sect. I'd suggest that 'good religion' is…

Farewell, Caribbean monk seal

In a move that will come as no surprise to pinnipedalists (those who pedal seals and sea lions), the Caribbean monk seal Monachus tropicalis has been declared officially extinct. It hasn't been seen in the wild for over 50 years, and the US National Marine Fisheries Service declared them extinct on Friday. This is sad, of course, but they were extinguished (by human hunting) before very many people cared about them. They had been declared extinct in 194, but the Fisheries Service is influential (and, it seems, very conservative). Two other monk seals, the Mediterranean and the Hawaiian are…

Consider Humanism

The American Humanist Association is starting a new campaign to increase awareness of reasonable values: Consider Humanism. They have adds that contrast Christian sentiments with humanist ideals, like this one: Consider Humanism - Richard Dawkins from American Humanist Association on Vimeo. Probably too shrill and militant, huh? I swear, I heard the horses whinny and stampede at that voice, and I don't know how I'm going to clean up all the saliva and blood splattered all over the inside of my video display after playing that. Actually, I think it strikes a nice balance of calmly pointing…

Martin Luther King Day link to Mike

I couldn't think of much to write today until I saw Mike The Mad Biologist post a speech from Dr King to striking Memphis sanitation workers in 1968. Economic justice is the general theme, but there is little more moving than the oratory of Dr King. Mike didn't highlight this quote, but let me do so here: We are going to also say, "You are even unjustly spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill a single Vietcong soldier, while you spend only fifty-three dollars a year per person for everybody categorized as poverty-stricken." Instead of spending thirty-five billion dollars every year…

Casual Fridays: Do music and color go together?

A while back we did a little non-scientific study on whether people experience different colors based on their emotions, and indeed found a very small effect. For this week's study, we thought we'd see if we could extend those results to music. All we're asking you to do is listen to eight short audio clips, then say what color you associate the clips with. Click here to participate As usual, the study is short, with just 8 questions. The 8 clips range from 10 seconds to 70 seconds long. Most are shorter than one minute, so the whole thing should take less than 10 minutes to complete. You…

Correction

A reader pointed out to me that Schultze's 1978 study did not find a bias to hear a fast tempo as speeding up and slow tempo as slowing down. In fact, Schultze found that we were remarkably accurate at detecting tempo changes. So we do replicate Schultze! A misreading on my part of Quinn and Watt led to the confusion. However, Quinn and Watt do cite a 1997 article which claims to find the bias I describe in the post from yesterday and the day before. I haven't been able to get my hands on the article, but here's the reference: Vos, P. G., van Assen, M., & Fraiiek, M. (1997) Perceived…

The myth of a Christian nation

Smithsonian has a fine article on the real history behind America's status as a "Christian nation": it just isn't so. Religion is a poison our European ancestors brought to these shores, and it's been a source of trouble and stupidity since the beginning. From the earliest arrival of Europeans on America's shores, religion has often been a cudgel, used to discriminate, suppress and even kill the foreign, the "heretic" and the "unbeliever"—including the "heathen" natives already here. Moreover, while it is true that the vast majority of early-generation Americans were Christian, the pitched…

Can we edit our own memories?

So, researchers have found a way to "edit" the memories of rats. Rats can easily be trained to avoid an electrically charged region of their cages. Then researchers injected a chemical into the rats' memory centers, and successfully "erased" the memory, so the rats no longer knew to avoid getting shocked. This brings up the question: can we change our own memories in a similar manner? Could we conveniently be made to forget a traumatic event from childhood or war? Could we add new memories of events that never occurred, artificial memories as vivid as the real thing? The Ledger has exciting…

Test your happiness

The BBC has a very simple test to determine how happy you are. I took it and got the following assessment: Satisfied People who score in this range like their lives and feel that things are going well. Of course your life is not perfect, but you feel that things are mostly good. Furthermore, just because you are satisfied does not mean you are complacent. In fact, growth and challenge might be part of the reason you are satisfied. For most people in this high-scoring range, life is enjoyable, and the major domains of life are going well - work or school, family, friends, leisure, and personal…

Here They Come

First, the good news: Favio has weakened back down to Category 3 as it approaches landfall in Mozambique. Certainly no one is out of the woods yet; but there no longer seems much chance of a Category 4 landfall in the next 24-36 hours. That's the good news. However, as we get into the peak time for Southern Hemisphere cyclone activity, you can see from the image above (courtesy of Meteo-France) that not one but two new storms have now formed in the Indian Ocean, and both are tracking west. The middle storm, just named Gamede, is on a course that could take it to Madagascar. Both storms are…

Missing the Waxman Hearing

Oh well. There's a very important politicization of science hearing (PDF) on the Hill this morning in about an hour, and jury duty is going to prevent me from going. I haven't been picked for a trial yet, but my last "voir dire" also didn't end by the end of the day yesterday...and the Superior Court has some bizarre rule about not being able to pay staff for any overtime hours. So all the potential jurors have to come back and finish the selection process today instead. Maybe I'll make it over for the end of the Waxman hearing if by some miracle I get off early. In any event, it looks…

Gained in Translation

I was just reading a report (PDF) about the damages caused by Hurricane Catarina, a very anomalous event, to Brazil in 2004. The report is written in English but reading through, I rather doubt that's the first language of its authors. I was amused to come across this paragraph in particular: The impact was intense over the fauna. Coastal birds were blown towards the valleys and the mountain range situated 40 km from the coast. Many birds died and sickened due to virus infection and inadequate feeding. It was also noticed an increase on the number and aggressiveness of mosquitoes, and farm…

New Orleans Talk: Big Success

Well, I was thrilled last night when my very first ever New Orleans event was totally packed. I estimate about 80 people showed up at the Garden District Book Shop uptown for wine, food, and then a lecture by yours truly. I had actually had a beer beforehand, breaking one of my cardinal rules of public speaking, but it seemed appropriate for a New Orleans crowd. In my audience were old high school teachers, high school friends, and their familes, as well as members of the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association, which helped cosponsor the event. Now it's off to Houston, where I'm speaking…