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Reaping the benefits of tragedy

People like Dr. Phil and Jack Thompson feel the need to put themselves in the public eye by espousing ridiculous opinions meant to inflame people and get support for their money making endeavors. I have NO idea where these con artists get the idea that if there weren't violent video games and movies this kind of thing wouldn't happen. Was there anything like modern media around when the largest mass murder in a school happened? The Bath Disaster occurred On May 18, 1927, when 45 people, mostly children, were killed and 58 were injured when disgruntled and demented school board member Andrew…

Theme of the Day Two - Tech Augmented Cognition

The first story is from Wired and focusses on the use of neuroscience techniques (fMRI, EEG, etc.) to help soldiers be more effective killers. Since 2000, Darpa, the Pentagon's blue-sky research arm, has spearheaded a far-flung, nearly $70 million effort to build prototype cockpits, missile control stations and infantry trainers that can sense what's occupying their operators' attention, and adjust how they present information, accordingly. Similar technologies are being employed to help intelligence analysts find targets easier by tapping their unconscious reactions. It's all part of a…

A Morning PHONE CHAT with Junk Raft!

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. They're doing great! They've been at sea for about two weeks now (while they left Long Beach on June 1, they ended up spending over a week at San Nicholas Island waiting out a storm). The raft is performing perfectly. They had added two smaller sails that enable them to make 90 degrees against…

"Expelled" Box Office vs. Home DVD

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 guy who sold the Coen Brother's first film, "Blood Simple," and they based the Jeff Bridges character, "The Dude," in "The Big Lebowski," on him. Two things that Jeff said from the outset, over and over again, is that first, "home DVD is your cash cow -- its the biggest revenue stream for most any…

Good Fish, Bad Fish

I was recently interviewed for an article for the new Granville magazine here in Vancouver (I enjoyed the experience and odd coincidence that I was also born and raised in Granville, Ohio). The author, Isabelle Groc, did a great job exploring the complications of sustainable seafood in an information era. She touches on the fact that sustainable seafood is currently only for yuppies (a waitress she quries about sustainable seafood tells Groc she might have better luck "at the more fancy restaurants") and that seafood is wildlife (a chef she interviews says, "[Salmon are] not like cattle. It…

Dissent on Manufacturing Dissent

Stand on the shoulders of giants. Or stomp on them. That seemed to be the only way Canadian filmmakers Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine were going to make a film suited for the big screen. So they made Manufacturing Dissent about documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, which I just saw in London. The film explores Michael Moore's background and incendiary nature (being fired from Mother Jones after working as Editor for only five months, for instance). And of course, there is the dull irony that the pair (represented onscreen by Debbie Melnyk) was never able to land Moore for an interview (not…

From Randy Olson: Hollywood Premiere of Leonardo DiCaprio's The 11th Hour, featuring Dr. Jeremy Jackson (and 53 other experts)

For five years I've been trying to tell everyone that someday Dr. Jeremy Jackson needs to give a talk about the oceans in which he is dressed up as the grim reaper, complete with black hood and scythe. Well, my dream almost came true last night at the premiere of Leonardo DiCaprio's new movie The 11th Hour as the good Doctor Jackson pretty much stole the show (in my biased opinion) with the grimmest pronouncement of the entire movie. The Grim Reaper, Dr. Jeremy Jackson, brings the voice of doom to the green carpet at The 11th Hour premiere It's actually an excellent sequence. The film has…

Politics Tuesday: Bad Tidings for Red Tide = Good Tidings for the Oceans

Posted by Jack Sterne, jack@oceanchampions.org Well how about some good news for a change? Last week Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fl) pushed through the House an amendment to authorize $90 million over three years for research into the causes of red tide and other harmful algal blooms (HAB). Here's our press release. Red tide is a huge problem in coastal areas, causing everything from fish kills to severe allergic reactions in some people. These impacts can have pretty negative economic repercussions, especially for tourist-dependent economies. The most disturbing consequences though, are what…

Captive-Bred Fish: More on Creating a Market

Every day planes leave Kona, Hawaii with live yellow tangs loaded in the cargo hold, most of them destined for a U.S. aquarium. Craig Schmarr of Ocean Riders Seahorse Farm believes the "self-regulating fishery" is a threat to Hawaiian reefs.There is now a market for captive-bred, eco-friendly seahorses for private aquarists in the U.S., but this message has not been taken onboard by public aquaria. Nor has captive-bred production been considered for many other reef fish victims of live fish trade, such as the yellow tang. The live fish trade--as 'bushmeat of the sea' and as ornamentals for…

Politics Tuesday: Can Ocean Conservation Outrun Ocean Decline?

Posted by Dr. David Wilmot, dave@oceanchampions.org I just arrived in Washington, DC. I'm back for another round of meetings with members of Congress (and to attend fundraisers for a couple Ocean Champions.) As the plane touched down, I found my thoughts drifting from Capitol Hill back to the North Shore of O'ahu. I recently returned from a trip to Hawaii (a little work and a lot of play), where some local activists inspired me. A small group of individuals have spent the past 22 years fighting to protect a swath of land that sits above Sunset Beach and Pipeline on O'ahu's famed North Shore…

Jellyfish Bloom and Gloom

Jeremy Jackson calls it "The Rise of Slime". Daniel Pauly sees a future in jellyfish burgers. And given that this week is the 2nd International Jellyfish Bloom Symposium--where D. Pauly will deliver the keynote address (having not been able to attend the 1st symposium in Alabama in 2002)--it seemed fitting this week should be dedicated to jellyfish bloom and gloom. Jellyfish, given their lowly position on the marine food chain and their penchant for degraded ecosystems, are, after all, the darlings of shifting baselines. They are the reality of our marine future unless we decide to change…

A Day in the Life: A Galapagos 'Pepinero'

Let's call him Marco. Marco came from outside the moutainous city of Quito to work on a boat as a 'pepinero' (a sea cucumber fisherman) back in 2003 (though it is illegal to hire outsiders as fishermen). He had never been diving before, but the other fishermen gave him a crash course. He stuck the regulator in his mouth and went underwater for a number of hours (some fishermen dive more than 8 hours in one day) searching for Stichopus fuscus. Marco made fast ascents (more than twice as fast as the recommended rate), stayed underwater way too long, and got really cold. He also suffered…

Recommended Galapagos Readings

The Voyage of the Beagle by The Man Himself. I look forward to the Galapagos with more interest than any other part of the voyage, wrote Darwin. And he was not disappointed. Darwin gives lots of anecdotes from the Beagle about the abundant life in the Galapagos: The Bay swarmed with animals; Fish, Shark & Turtles were popping their heads up in all parts. In fact, Galapagos tortoises were then so numerous that Darwin knew of one ship that caught 500-800 in only a short time. Darwin's Fishes by Daniel Pauly. Darwin's keen interest in Galapagos fish is detailed in this encylopedia (due…

Tiny Stroke Ends a Druggie's Addiction

You don't see this every day: Jake at Pure Pedantry draws due attention to an incredible case report in the American Journal of Psychiatry showing that a lesion in a patient's brain cured the patient's drug addiction, apparently by knocking out the reward circuit that made the addiction pleasurable. (It also made the man badly depressed.) A stroke that destroyed parts of a drug addict's globus pallidus (pale areas) left him depressed but ended his addiction. Neither drugs nor (alas) wine gave him pleasure any longer. The article, unfortunately, is pay-per-view, but Jake's summary is…

Of Mice and Moms (and the Snowball Effect of Stress)

One of the pleasures of following science is seeing how researchers use old, simple tools to test new questions. In a nice piece of work published in Nature Neuroscience, University of Oklahoma researchers Stephanie Moriceau and Regina Sullivan used learned-fear association in mice to reveal how the stress of maternal abandonment raised rat pups' sensitivity to threats. As ScientificAmerican.com describes the experiment,. Moriceau and Sullivan tested how baby rats responded to the pairing of an unfamiliar odor--peppermint--and a weak electric shock to their tails. The charge-laced scent…

Save monk seals or stop poachers?

National Geographic has chosen two noble causes for this year's Expedition Granted. The one who wins will get $10,000 to help fight for the cause they are most passionate about. This is what Nat Geo has to say about the contestants: For Dash, that means saving the population of monk seals from extinction. Today, less than 1 in 5 monk seal pups survive to adulthood. Despite this decline, there is one small population of monk seals in the Main Hawaiian Island that is thriving. Dash hopes to fully understand what has allowed this particular population of monk seals to succeed, and how this…

Cruisin'....

So, you may have heard this rumor that I, on occasion, do things other than blog, tweet, or facebook. It may seem shocking, but I do have a day job (if you can call it that - a graduate student's job never seems to be restricted by sunlight). For the past couple weeks, I've been getting my butt kicked into super shape by an intense 2-week scientific diver certification course, which covers from open water to master scuba diver at warp speed. It was intense, physically exhausting, and mentally draining. But it was well worth it, because now, I can do something even more intense, physically…

Weekly Dose of Cute: Bunnies

What's cuter than bunnies? Pygmy bunnies! What's cuter than pygmy bunnies? Baby pygmy bunnies! While they're unbelievably cute, these little guys are more than just adorable - they're the last remaining hope for their local population. Pygmy rabbits were once found throughout the Northwestern United States in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, California, and Nevada. In 1990, declining populations due to habitat loss led to the rabbits being listed as threatened, and further decline placed them on the federal endangered species list in 2003. Recently, searches for wild…

Caffeine Really Is A Drug!

I've been essentially caffeine-free for about five years now. After my stroke, when the migraines got progressively worse, all sorts of things that never bothered me before suddenly began serving as migraine triggers. Peanut butter. Bananas. Yoghurt. Onions. And caffeine. Now, caffeinated soft drinks I can do without. In fact, I can do without soft drinks altogether. But I love, love, love coffee. So, I switched to decaf, 'cause I couldn't go without. Over the past five years - no regular coffee, no caffeinated soft drinks, very rarely here and there a cup of tea. I know there…

Women With Their Sexy Hawt Bodies: How's A Man To Look Away?

A reader named Paul Murray left this comment on a older blog post of mine: The comments on tit-staring make me wish the women could occupy a man's body for a day. Ignoring tits in your visual field is as easy as it is for a woman to simply ignore a cute baby in the vicinity. I was flabbergasted, to say the least. What to be more annoyed at? The suggestion that women are somehow programmed - biologically, of course, I am sure - with some sort of infant-adoration module? Or Mr. Murray's casual insult to his fellow men, that they are simply incapable of behaving decently? That's quite some…

Learning about the Messenger

Today's big science news is the Messenger flyby of Mercury. The Messenger spacecraft is scheduled to do a flyby of the planet about four hours from now, en route to it's final destination - Mercury - which it will reach in 2011, after completing additional flybys of the planet Mercury in October, and the planet Mercury in 2009. (Apparently, the orbital dynamics of getting a spacecraft into orbit around a relatively small planet that's relatively close to a star are a bit complex.) The main part of the scientific mission might not start for another few years, but there are still going to be…

California: The Saga Continues

From the archives - the following article was originally posted on my old blog back in August of 2005. For reasons that will become clear shortly, I've been reposting this series of stories over here. This is the final old post, and I'll have a follow-up post on more current events going up shortly. In that post, I will respond to the comment that someone from the Association for Christian Schools International just left on two of the reposted articles. As I continued my review of the complaint filed in the California creationist lawsuit, I came to a passage that was completely stunning…

Chess and Artificial Intelligence

Daniel Dennett just wrote an article on chess-playing computers and Artificial Intelligence, and a few bloggers are already talking about it. I'm sort of surprised that the concept is getting so much attention. To me, the answer to the question, "does a computer that can play chess demonstrate artificial intelligence" is obvious: it does, but only in a very trivial sense. Discussions of the methods used by chess-playing computers and how they compare (or don't) to the way(s) that the human brain plays chess are interesting, but I don't really find them all that relevant to the whole "…

End Up Like A Dog That's Been Beat Too Much.

From Paul Kane's column in today's WaPo: Throughout the spring newly empowered Democrats watched their approval ratings plummet, with a liberal base upset at their inability to stop the Iraq war and independents complaining that not enough meaningful legislation was being passed. Gee, I guess that makes me an independent member of the liberal base, then, because I'm pissed as hell at them for both reasons. They didn't do enough on Iraq, and I do not for one second accept the weak-assed argument that they couldn't. That's just plain bull. Yes, the President vetoed their measure. Yes, they…

Classic quotes: Hume on anthropomorphism

From David Hume's Natural History of Religion Sect III (found via Dennett's Breaking the Spell): There is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object, those qualities, with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious. We find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds; and by a natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and reflection, ascribe malice or good-will to every thing, that hurts or pleases us. Hence the frequency and beauty of the prosopopoeia in poetry; where trees,…

Outstanding topics

I have, I must confess, started a number of projects here that I haven't finished. Teaching is getting the better of me (and no, I'm not going to put my lectures down on cognitive science, as I do them "freeform",, so I'd have to do a lot of work to get them down in written form). Some of the things I intend to one day finish: The World According to Genesis. Reader Michael Gardner put in a lot of work doing the Abraham story outline for me, but to my shame I haven't had time to add my bits. Sorry Michael - you haven't been forgotten. I aim to cover the patriarchal stories pretty quickly…

[Philosophy of] science blogging

I've been pretty quiet of late. In part this is because I've been travelling with little internet access, but also it's because I'm teaching a subject I haven't studied in years, and because I was asked to write a popular essay for a magazine. It's COSMOS Magazine, an Australian popular science magazine, and what the editor wanted was something like my posts on philosophy of science as the ornithology of science. It takes effort to write clearly to a word limit (which is why I blog - I'm fundamentally lazy), but with the help of the editor, Tim Dean, I managed to say one thing rather than…

Mooney in Sydney

Chris Mooney, who is too damned young and handsome, was in Sydney yesterday (well for a few days before that) so I decided the decent thing was to fly down from Brisbane to meet him, given that he travelled across some small bit of water to get here. The astonishing thing was how much he found out about the best drinking spots in Sydney after only three days on his own! He probably knows the night spots of Melbourne better than I do, even though I grew up there. Anyway, Tim Lambert also dropped by, as did a friend of mine, Chris Ho-Stuart, who only had to come 2.5 hours by train from…

Cho, autism, bullying, and honour

Current media is reporting a relative of Cho, the VT murderer, as saying he was "autistic". I'd like to see a formal diagnosis, because the so-called "autism spectrum disorder" (ASD) scale is, in my view, a ragbag of etiologies based on an overall similarity of symptoms. But suppose he had something like high-function Asperger's... My son has this, and so do I. Both of us spent our school years being bullied and rejected by our peers, although he had it a lot worse than I did until fairly recently. And both of us tend, when the pressure is too great, to strike out to get away. I always hit…

Procastination Science Reading (June 12/2006)

I thought it would be kind of interesting to try and showcase a few links from the types of journals and publications that take less than academic stabs at science writing. It's the sort of stuff that interests me to no end, because if you read through "Public Understanding of Science" type studies (a really misfortune label since this causes the acronym PUS to be flitted around), you hear some negative stuff about how the scientific literacy of countries like the UK and USA generally hover around 20% or so. Now granted, defining scientific literacy is a weighted chore, and maybe something I…

Climatologists who are mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore

Randy Olson says: There comes a point where the public DOES want to see the science community stand up for themselves. And as if on cue comes the release of another round of once-private emails among members of one section of the National Academies of Sciences alerting us to efforts to do just that. The NY Times has a Greenwire story on it, but you need to read the actual emails. How can we sit back while many of our colleagues and science as a whole is under massive attack?" asks Paul Ehrlich. "People who have an open mind are wondering about the absence of any coordinated and publicized…

A Personal Story (Stolen) about the Heat Wave and Medicine

It is like sweat and balls hot out, so I have a little personal story -- or rather my Dad's personal story -- to tell about heat waves. My Dad is an Emergency Room doctor, and he has been working in CA this summer for reasons that are not relevant. Anyway, one day about a week ago he had two patients come in from one nursing home with heat stroke, one with a temperature of about 104 and one with like 112. At this point I was asking, "Can that even happen?" To which he responded, "Not if you plan to survive it." Unfortunately, that patient did not survive. My father, being suspicious that…

The Mass Libel Reform Blog — Fight for Free Speech!

This is a message from Simon Singh: This week is the first anniversary of the report Free Speech is Not for Sale, which highlighted the oppressive nature of English libel law. In short, the law is extremely hostile to writers, while being unreasonably friendly towards powerful corporations and individuals who want to silence critics. The English libel law is particular dangerous for bloggers, who are generally not backed by publishers, and who can end up being sued in London regardless of where the blog was posted. The internet allows bloggers to reach a global audience, but it also allows…

Resolved: religion is the greatest threat to scientific progress and rationality that we face today

The Nays won, narrowly, and the debate, between Daniel Dennett and Lord Robert Winston, will be available as a podcast here. A summary is here. One thing that I find interesting in these debates, which let's face it are more important for allowing people to vent than actually proving anything, is that those opposed to religion tend to think, as the Guardian commentator does, that anyone who has what I would think is a rational approach to belief, is a kind of "God-Lite", "an unthreatening and more-or-less rational - and private - approach. It's hard to object to that: practised in this way…

This is why we have the FDA

In a note of sad irony, I am finishing a chapter in Thomas Hager's excellent, The Demon Under The Microscope, on the elixir of sulfanilamide deaths in the US in 1937. A specific formulation of this truly miraculous antibiotic at the time was associated with over 100 deaths from renal failure. This formulation had used as a vehicle the solvent diethylene glycol, a relative of ethylene glycol used in antifreeze - a great solvent, but one that is metabolized to insoluble oxalate crystals that accumulate in the kidneys, causing virtually-irreversible renal failure and death. In this oft-told…

The Angry Pharmacist makes for good reading

Long ago in a place far away, I was a full-time pharmacy professor. I love pharmacy students, almost as much as I love medical and nursing students. But, to me, pharmacy students were special because they would one day be the frontline health professional seen first by the majority of the public. I took very seriously my responsibility to share with my students every known mechanism of drug action, why some drugs were better than others, and how some drugs interacted with others. I credit my pharmacy students with encouraging to develop my interest in herbal medicines, sifting the wheat…

The incredible, adaptable brain

Greta and I have been back from Europe for about 36 hours now, and we're slowly adapting to life back in the US. Sure, the olive oil's not as good, and wine costs a fortune, but amazingly we're finding that we're able to accommodate to these problems, as well as the 7-hour time shift from Athens to Charlotte. I suppose that shouldn't come as a surprise to us -- after all, the human brain is a remarkably adaptable organ. As many, many blogs have observed, a 44-year-old man, married with kids and holding a steady job, was found to have practically no brain matter in his skull: Corpus…

For people who worship the constitution, they sure don't know what is in it

Video is not Christine O'Donnell's friend — every time she opens her mouth she exposes her ugly, ignorant side. The latest faux pas comes from here performance in a debate with her opponent in which she reveals she hasn't read the first amendment, and is surprised by what's in it. Here's the relevant part: "Let me just clarify," O'Donnell pressed. "You're telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?" "The government shall make no establishment of religion," Coons said, summarizing the gist of the specific words in the First Amendment's establishment…

Some of the implications of high achievement for girls

Courtney Martin makes an interesting argument about the phenomenon she calls The Paradox of the Perfect Girl. It's the result of the recent upsurge of girls outperforming boys academically: The perfect girl is everywhere. She is your niece, your daughter, your friend's genius kid. She is the girl who makes the valedictorian speech at your son's graduation and the type-A class president in the skimpy black dress that he brings to the prom. The perfect girl is thin and hungry, not for food, but for honors, awards, scholarships, recognition. The Princeton Review book is the perfect girl's bible…

The Return of the Intersection, Part II

I've finally figured it out: This blog will be reborn circa Monday, January 15th, in San Antonio, TX, where I will be taking in the American Meteorological Society annual meeting, and focusing on the hurricane/global warming content presented there. There will be a whole series of talks focused on Climate Change Manifested by Changes in Weather, a both fascinating and fraught subject area. It's a perfect opportunity for me to finally start seriously blogging about the subject matter of my new book, after numerous fits and starts over the past year. See this panel in particular: 4:30 PM1.…

Industry's Science Games

I often get asked my opinion about who's "worse" when it comes to manipulating and undermining scientific information: corporate America, or the Christian right. My usual answer is the Christian right, because its attacks on science are far more sweeping in their implications, and have the potential to undermine the very nature of scientific knowledge itself. Industry, by contrast, doesn't want to change the definition of science to include the supernatural. It merely wants to conveniently attack and undermine certain isolated bits of scientifc information that have big potential economic…

Not Too "Bright"

I didn't mean to launch a name game yesterday with my remarks about Daniel Dennett and the "brights" label, but that's what seems to have happened. More than fifty comments came in, many of them suggesting various ways in which atheists ought to be relabled: "humanist," "freethinker," and many others, including some amusing ones like "Godless Smartboys" (which, it was quickly pointed out, excludes female atheists). What was missing to all of this excitement, of course, was anything other than a gut feeling as to what would work, and what wouldn't work, from a public relations standpoint.…

Edited NASA Press Releases

The Boulder Daily Camera has the latest on NASA PR flacks torquing findings in the field of climate science. It seems that sea ice experts at the University of Colorado are angry about the way NASA altered a press release announcing the results of their research--which, of course, showed declining sea ice extent and warned about feedbacks that could lead to still more rapid melting: NASA and the CU data center had agreed to issue a joint press release. But NASA's release, which appeared several hours after CU's, differed in tone and content. Scambos' quotation about rapid ice decline did not…

A surprising Nobel

I would never have guessed this one. The Nobel Prize in Medicine has gone to Robert G. Edwards for his pioneering work in in vitro fertilization. It surprises me because it's almost ancient history — he is being rewarded for work done over 30 years ago. It's also very applied research — this was not work that greatly advanced our understanding of basic phenomena in biology, because IVF was already being done in animals. This was just the extension of a technique to one peculiar species, ours. I don't begrudge him the award, though, because the other special property of his research was that…

I applaud Language Log's bold new policy

Bravo! A blog about language gets, as you might expect, a few fairly repetitive responses to common issues, and Language Log gets lots of unimaginative comments about ending a sentence with a preposition…and they've reached the limits of their patience. Unable to bear any longer the tedious work of seeking out all the instances of these two dopey comment types and deleting them, I have decided that from now on I will hunt down the relevant commenters and kill them. I realize that it is unusual for a popular science blog to launch upon a policy of killing its own readers. That is why I…

My Washington Post Answer to George Will

As any reader of this blog knows, I was for a while very critical of the Washington Post editorial page amid the George Will affair. Now, my view has changed. Today the Post publishes, replete with links to many scientific sources, my op-ed answering three claims Will made in his now infamous "Dark Green Doomsayers" column, and also making a broader point about why we need standards in science-centered journalism and commentary. I'm extremely heartened that the Post ran the piece, and has at least allowed me to correct Will--or, to "debate" him. Without further ado, the oped begins like this…

What Is Scientific Literacy?

Yesterday, we considered the meaning of scientific literacy in America... or lack thereof. So let's take this discussion one step further as it's a particularly interesting topic. According to the National Academies: Scientific literacy is the knowledge and understanding of scientific concepts and processes required for personal decision making, participation in civic and cultural affairs, and economic productivity. It also includes specific types of abilities. In the National Science Education Standards, the content standards define scientific literacy. Scientific literacy means that a…

Framing Science REDUX

I enjoy receiving email and appreciate all of the feedback, links, and comments that have hit my inbox since Saturday's panel with Jennifer and Chris on Framing Science. While the focus of my portion highlighted ScienceDebate2008, several readers have written with specific questions on Framing itself--and you bet I have some strong opinions! So it's a good time to round up some of ye ol' posts from my first week at The Intersection and revisit these ideas eight months later. I'm interested to hear how readers feel about the way we convey science to those residing both in and outside of…

Santa Claus Makes Green Decisions (Just in Time for Christmas)

Student Post by Wayneho Kam and Waynekid Kam If Santa Claus came out with a "naughty or nice" list based on how well people treated the environment, who will be on the "nice" list? Who will be on the "naughty"? Have you ever wondered? You can count on Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to be up there on the "nice" list this year. As the Nobel Foundation puts it, IPCC and Gore both did a phenomenal job regarding "their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change." Perhaps Bill Clinton will see his name on the "nice" list as…

Return of the 'Montauk Monster' (or 'How freaky is a rotting raccoon?')

A close-up of the rare, terrifying Montauk Monster, otherwise known as a raccoon. From Wikipedia. Skeletons can be funny things. If you take a familiar animal like a horse, strip it of its flesh, and put the bones on display many people may have some trouble identifying what sort of animal it was. Skeletons can be even more unfamiliar when they are draped in the putrid and tattered remains of the soft parts of the animal, and it is no surprise that rotting carcasses of common animals are often said to be monsters. Such was the case with the 'Montauk Monster', otherwise known as a raccoon (…