Especially for Teachers
Teachers Under Fire
Is Blood Ever Blue? Science Teachers Want to Know!
Teachers Gone Wild

Resources (documents)

Bill Foster’s Letter
The Grubbs and Gibbs Memorandum: Require A Religious Reading of the Evolutionary Record in Public Schools

Education and Public Science: Creationism, Intelligent Design, Home Schooling
The Myers - Rue Debate And Why They Had to Taser Me
The Bible-Thumping Grinch […]

It is generally assumed that if a woman breast feeds, she will experience enhanced or more rapid than normal breast ptosis (that’s science for breast “sagging”). Phear of Ptosis is often cited as a possible reason to either not breast feed, or a reason to stop breast feeding sooner than otherwise ideal. (I quickly […]

Oreotragus oreotragus, or Klipspringer. Klipspringer is Afrikaans for “Rock Jumper. Also known as mvundla (derived from Xhosa for rabbit).
The Klippie is an antelope. Meaning, its in the Subfamily Antilopinae, with the dik-diks, gazelles, steenbok, and so on, as distinct from the other groups that include other creatures also called antelopes, […]

Please go here to read this post on my new blog at Scienceblogs.com

One day, about six thousand years ago (or more like 15 thousand … the timing of this is disputed) a volcano in the vicinity of Mwea, Uganda blasted a huge volume of stuff into the air, covering the surrounding landscape and choking off […]

Rock Dasssie, Procavia capensis. It hangs out on rocks, dens in convenient mini-caves, mainly eats grass, and has habitual “toilet areas” … which can develop quite a smell, and in time, can serve as a paleoclimate indicator. You are looking at a photograph of one day’s food supply for the nearest […]

A hurricane lamp. Photo from China Trader.
This is for all your nascent researchers about to head off to remote places to engage in your very first fieldwork, and for all you eco-tourists or educational travelers about to embark on a trip through strange lands afar.
When I was preparing to start […]

If you are under the age of about 40 or 50 and raised in the United States, then part of your culture is the belief in the power of Market Forces. Think tanks and departments of economics, journalists and writers have been discussing Market Forces for years now, and unless you are self-consciously critical […]

The Ebola Virus
It has been confirmed that Ebola is behind the recent outbreak in the Congo. More than 160 people so far have died so far. This is happening in an area of south or southwestern Congo, an area that is rural but also with some diamond mining. Since most of the […]

The African cycad Encephalartos friderici-guilielmi Zamiaceae
An interesting twist on OpenSource publishing, according to Plant News:

The Journal of Experimental Botany has provided open access to papers if the authors’ institutions subscribe to the journal. Other authors who want their papers to be freely accessible will have to pay the full cost of publication […]

Color is funny. Anthropologists have long known that different cultures have different relationships, linguistically and in day to day practice, to the color spectrum. For example, the Efe Pygmy Hunter-Gatherers of the Ituri Forest describe things as white, black, or red, and that’s it. They live in a world of green. […]

Greetings.
I have returned from South Africa, and I’m now resting up from a busy trip in a cabin on a lake in in the North Country. From where I’m sitting, I can watch as three seagulls and two crows harass one of the two Bald Eagles that nest a few hundred meters from here. […]

Bernarda:
I am having trouble getting this comment to stick to Pharyngula. Some kind of technical problem at scienceblogs.com. So, go read the blogpost about the NEA, note the comments on the history of education, ending with Bernarda’s,
… and then pick up the thread here:
There are a number of African “books of […]

The NYT is running a piece discussing the domestication of the cat.
I love watching wild cats. It is fairly easy to see them in the Kalahari, where the population of cats is almost certainly untouched by genetics of any domesticated form. Despite the kitty-osity shown in the photograph provided with the […]

Expensive, obnoxious, and it won’t work at the cabin.
I’m sure the iPhone is a brilliant idea and I probably want one. But… The American system of telecom is deeply flawed in such a way that many, many people should not buy an iPhone even if they like the technology. More importantly, though, […]