If you haven’t seen this, you should:

Hat Tip: Bug Girl

When Life Nearly Died: The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time is a book by Michael Benton on the Permian Extinction now out in paperback. From the press release:

Today it is common knowledge that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteorite impact sixty-five million years ago, which killed half of all species then living.

Far less well-known is a much bigger catastrophe – the greatest mass extinction of all time – which occurred 251 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period. In this cataclysm, at least ninety per cent of life was destroyed, both on land, including sabre-toothed reptiles and their rhinoceros-sized prey, and in the sea.

After the event the Earth was a cold, airless place, with only one or two species eking out a poor existence. What caused destruction on such an unimaginable scale, and how did life recover?

Michael Benton’s book about this catastrophe – When Life Nearly Died: the greatest mass extinction of all time – has been published in paperback this week. Michael Benton is Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the University of Bristol.

James Lovelock said of the book: “Michael Benton’s book brings back to Earth Science a sense of adventure … it is both a wonderfully good read and a valued reference”.

When Life Nearly Died documents not only what happened 251 million years ago, but also the recent rekindling of the idea of catastrophism, after it was seemingly extinguished in a great battle of ideas in the early nineteenth century. Scientists have at last come to accept that the world has been subject to huge cataclysms in the past. For the end-Permian event the killing models are controversial – was the agent the impact of a huge meteorite or comet over ten kilometres in diameter, or prolonged volcanic eruption in Siberia? The evidence has been accumulating through the 1990s and into the new millennium, and Michael Benton gives his verdict at the very end of this book.

~ A repost for Back to School Special ~

My wife, a biology teacher, gets crazy in the biology classroom. She is famous for her interpretive dance renditions of numerous cellular processes. The students in the first class of the day reportedly stare in disbelief and roll their eyes, but the students in the other classes throughout the day seem to love it. Several of her students have taken to filming her pedagogical paroxysms, and you know that some day, Amanda will be a YouTube Star.
Continue reading Teachers Gone Wild →

is the title of a podcast in which Lynn Fellman interviews moi. Click here to experience the full multimedianess of it all.

Physics and marketing don’t seem to have much in common, but Dan Cobley is passionate about both. He brings these unlikely bedfellows together using Newton’s second law, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the scientific method and the second law of thermodynamics to explain the fundamental theories of branding.

Continue reading What physics taught me about marketing →

You’ve got to watch this video for the music if nothing else:

Continue reading Makin’ Bacon →

It’s that time of year again! Limber up your fingers, dig out the crowbar, charge the batteries in the camera; the famed International Rock Flipping Day is upon us!

Details.

Statistician Nic Marks asks why we measure a nation’s success by its productivity — instead of by the happiness and well-being of its people. He introduces the Happy Planet Index, which tracks national well-being against resource use (because a happy life doesn’t have to cost the earth). Which countries rank highest in the HPI? You might be surprised.

Continue reading The Happy Planet Index →

Really. If a dam is not an important current hydroelectric source, why not remove it next time it needs major renovation? Oh, and if you live downstream, move.

That’s my idea for World Rivers Day which is traditionally celebrated on the last Sunday in September. I’ll be at the river! Here’s the details.

That depends … on what X and Y are!

And if that does not come naturally to you, perhaps you should read The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Pre-Algebra by Amy Szczepanski and Andrew Kositsky.

The CIG to PA is built just like the other books in the Idiot’s series, using familiar conventions to keep the flow of the book smooth while providing additional ancillary information, and in the case of this text, practice problems (answers provided in the back). This book reminds me of a tired old reference I’ve got on my shelf called Technical Mathematics. Sometimes you just need a place to look up the formula for the volume of a cone.

Continue reading X + Y = WHAT??? →

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The Institute for Creation “Research” moved from California to Texas a few years ago in part, it is believed, to set up a masters program for teachers in life sciences. I’m guessing they figured they could get Texas to certify a bogus Masters program more easily than California. They did make some progress, but it went to court, and just recently they lost that case and had to give up on the idea.

Subsequently, they’ve pulled another rabbit out of the hat: A degree in “Christian Apologetics” which would serve a similar purpose as the Creationist MA (and it would have a “Creation ‘Science'” minor. This degree, they claim, is not subject to state certification because it is religious. But that may not, in fact, be the case. From the NCSE:

The Institute for Creation Research claims that its new School of Bible Apologetics is “exempt from licensing by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board” — but is it?

, and you can read more about it at Panda’s Thumb.

Live from Skeptrack at Dragon*Con, we talk to the women of skepticism about the contributions they’re making to science and critical thinking.

In this episode:

Panelists: Kylie Sturgess of The Token Skeptic, Robynn “Swoopy” McCarthy of Skepticality, and Heidi Anderson and Jenna Marie Griffith of SheThought.

Live on September 10th, as a podcast Sunday. Details here.

A documentary on education. And culture.

Continue reading Waiting for Superman →

The U.S. Army honors soldiers wounded or killed in combat with the Purple Heart, a powerful symbol designed to recognize their sacrifice and service.

Yet Army commanders have routinely denied Purple Hearts to soldiers who have sustained concussions in Iraq, despite regulations that make such wounds eligible for the medal, an investigation by NPR and ProPublica has found.