Archive for April, 2009
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009
Attack of the Evo Psychos
“In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.” Charles Darwin.
This quote appears toward the end of the [...]
10 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Saturday, April 18th, 2009
The Green Book Award
The Center for Science Writings created the Green Book Award in 2007 to honor books that address environmental issues in a compelling way. The annual award includes a payment of $5,000.
Turner Construction Company, the leading general and green builder in the U.S., has generously underwritten the first three years of the award.
The judges for the [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Green Book Award by Rand HOPPE
Friday, April 17th, 2009
“Optimism Engine” Jeffrey Sachs to Accept Green Book Award
Temperatures and sea levels are creeping up. Banks, auto-makers, companies of all kinds are falling down. More and more people in the U.S. and elsewhere lack jobs, homes, medical care, even food and clean water. Some are so crazed and desperate that they are shooting and bombing each other. The world is ending! Get what [...]
5 Comments » - Posted in Events, Green Book Award by John Horgan
Monday, April 13th, 2009
RIP John Maddox, Science-Lover
One of the toughest adversaries I’ve ever wrangled with is Sir John Maddox. He was hard-headed, scarily knowledgeable, hyper-articulate, unfailingly gracious even as he ripped you a new one. For 22 years John was the brilliantly quirky editor of Nature, which together with Science is the world’s pre-eminent science journal. Science was John’s passion, and [...]
No Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
A Brilliant Maverick Questions Global Warming
Science journalists, including me, love mavericks, who buck the scientific establishment. One of my favorite mavericks is Freeman Dyson, a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, who was profiled in a cover story in the March 29 New York Times Magazine. Titled “The Civil Heretic,” the profile focuses on Dyson’s rejection of [...]