Category Archive for Science

Future of Science Interviews

The video interviews we conducted at the Future of Science Conference in Venice, Italy are now available on the Tech Museum’s Understanding Genetics site and on iTunes as a video podcast. We discussed issues surrounding human evolution and genetics with Peter Atkins, Daniel Dennett, Marc Hauser, and Ian Tattersall. Along with traveling to Venice, one the great pleasures of this project was preparing for the interviews. All four of these scientists are accomplished authors and I can enthusiastically…

The Future of Intelligence: The Final Day of the Conference

Yesterday we interviewed Daniel Dennett and Ian Tattersall, here at the Future of Science Conference. Both interviews, I’m happy to say went extremely well and as I mentioned in a post yesterday, they will be available on the Tech Museum’s Understanding Genetics website and through iTunes as a video podcast. Yesterday, I attended a press lunch in which many of the speakers answered questions. Interestingly, there was an extended discussion on intelligent design and some debate about how…

More on the Future of Science Conference

We’re scheduled to interview Ian Tattersall and Daniel Dennett later this afternoon! (All of these interviews will be available in coming weeks on The Tech Museum of Innovation’s Understanding Genetics website.) As I mentioned in my last post, Ian Tattersall is the curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He’s also the author of several books. I’ve been reading Becoming Human: Evolution and Human Uniqueness, which is fascinating. Some of the subjects covered in the book…

The Biological Future of Humanity

I’ve just arrived at the Future of Science conference here in Venice and The Evolution of Life session is underway. Ian Tattersall, curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York will be speaking shortly. I hope to interview him and others later today. This is from today’s press release… “The human brain has enlarged three-fold over the last two million years, and that has surely had important survival value,” according to Ian Tattersall, “Human evolution is…

The Future of Science

Next week, I’ll be attending the Future of Science Conference in Venice, Italy (September 20-23). The conference theme is Evolution and we’ll be covering the Evolution of Life: Darwinism in the light of modern genetics session. The plan is to interview some of the speakers and panel participants. It’s an incredible line up; Peter Atkins, Ian Tattersall, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Daniel Dennett, Marc Hauser, Steven Pinker, among others. We’ll be posting interviews to the Tech Museum’s Understanding Genetics website later in the…

The Weather Makers

I just finished reading Tim Flannery’s excellent book, The Weather Makers. For those of you not familiar with Tim Flannery he’s a scientist, conservationist, a writer, and is the director of the South Australian Museum. A very busy guy. I read one of his earlier books, the Future Eaters, a number of years ago while in Australia and really enjoyed it. The Weather Makers outlines the history of climate change focusing on many high-profile weather events such as powerful hurricanes in the…

Earth Observatory and NEO

I just returned from Washington D.C. where I was involved in a series of meetings at the Association of Science-Technology Centers. In one of the meetings, I had an opportunity to meet David Herring from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He helps coordinate NASA’s Earth Observatory website. Launched in 1998, the Earth Observatory has been one of the best spots on the Internet for learning about our planet’s dynamic systems. The site is nominated (again) for a Webby Award as Best…

The “e word”

If anyone doubts that there is a “War on Science” in the United States just read The Missing Link article from the Arkansas Times. A teacher at a “science education institution that serves several Arkansas public school districts” explained to the author of the article… Teachers at his facility are forbidden to use the ‘e-word’? (evolution) with the kids. They are permitted to use the word ‘adaptation’? but only to refer to a current characteristic of an organism, not as a product of evolutionary…