The American Geophysical Union just issued a press release in response to Bush’s comments about intelligent design. It’s not online at their web site yet, so I’ve posted it here. (Update: It’s on line now.) This is not the first time that the 43,000 members of the AGU have spoken out against creationism. They protested the sale of a creationist account of the Grand Canyon in National Park Service stores, and condemned the airing of a creationist movie about cosmology at the Smithsonian Institution. But this is the first time they’ve taken on the President.

Continue reading “43,000 Scientists: Bush Puts Schoolchildren At Risk” →

After a day-long road trip from Ohio, I finally had the chance to read the news that President Bush thinks that schools should discuss Intelligent Design alongside evolution, so that students can “understand what the debate is about.”

Continue reading “A Question For The President” →

I’ve been on hiatus for quite a while, in part because of some surgery (more on that later), but I just wanted to write a quick post to point you to my latest article in tomorrow’s New York Times, about how birds can sing like cricket. It’s a wonderful example of how sexual selection can alter bodies, not for simple survival but to lure the opposite sex.

Continue reading “Singing Wings, Or Natural Selection’s Lesser Known Sibling” →

I’ve got an article in today’s New York Times about one of my perennial fascinations—musical hallucinations. One of the reasons that I find this condition so interesting is that it gives us a look under the neurological hood. Our brains do not simply take in objective impressions of the world. They are continually coming up with theories, and they test them against perceptions every moment of our waking lives. It would be impossible to test them against a complete picture of reality, because the world is simply too complex and ever-changing. Instead, the brain makes quick judgments on scraps of information, revising bad theories that don’t make good predictions or using good theories as the basis for actions. Some scientists argue that musical hallucinations are evidence that our brains even make theories about music. When we hear stray sounds, we match them to tunes in our memory, in a sort of internal game of Name That Tune. Unfortunately, some people can’t test their theories well enough, it seems, and so they wind up thinking a church choir is singing in the next room, when in fact there is only silence.

Continue reading “An iPod in Your Head” →

I’ve been fascinated by this picture since I first saw it over the weekend. It’s a hint of how we may be visualizing life in years to come.

Continue reading “Tangling the Tree” →