TWITTERFIGHT #don’tdoit

This first ran July 15, 2013. I was just learning to stay out of Twitter fights. I’ve needed to learn this several times since but I think I’ve about got it now. My reasons have changed though: not only the impossibility of a logical argument but also the improbability that everyone will understand the subtlety […]

Scooped

There’s a certain jolt that accompanies a good story idea. For me, it’s a physical sensation, as if I can feel my brain clicking all the right pieces into place. In a fleeting instant, I see the whole thing: the plot, the characters, the conflict, the brilliant overarching themes that really say something about our […]

Redux: The Beginning of the End of Science

Some things never change. And sometimes the things that never change still somehow change for the worse. This post originally ran on January 5, 2011—an anti-science era that now seems almost quaint. Those were the days! I blame David Letterman. Less than a month before the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, one of the guests on his show was the governor of Texas, George W. Bush. […]

It’s Time to Evolve. Yes, You Too.

A few years ago, I was driving back exhausted from a rock climbing trip in the mountains. My buddy Bryan Fong, was bored and feeling a little punchy. When he gets like this, he tends to bring up politically sensitive topics and starts looking for buttons to press. In this case, he honed in on […]

Guest Post: Put Your Money Where Darwin’s Mouth Is

In the fourteen years that I’ve been teaching high school biology, I’ve been asked a lot of weird questions about evolution. But, until recently, I’ve not been asked whether Charles Darwin could make you rich. Is evolution good for business? In a recent debate, Bill Nye, the popular science educator, argued it is. Actually, Nye […]

Guest Post: A geologist and a creationist walk into a store

It’s a sunny evening in Fairbourne, a coastal village in rural Wales. Inside a small food shop, I’m listening to the owner and his wife discussing the true nature of the holy spirit. I reach for a packet of breakfast cereal. “The woman just didn’t understand,” says the shopkeeper. I place a tin of tomatoes […]