Snowpocalypse 2010 and Global Warming.

The snowfall in my backyard the evening after the first storm.

The Washington DC area where I live is slowly beginning to recover from a record setting amount of snow that fell in two major storms between February 5th and 10th, 2010. I personally measured ~0.76 meters (30") of accumulation in my backyard, and in areas that were untouched by shovels there is still ~0.38 meters (15") left after five days of melting. Some of the mountains and piles formed from the drifts we experienced on Wednesday were over 1.5 meters tall.

Jurassic REBOOT!

The rumor mill about future/upcoming films is always working overtime, and sometimes people wait years, even decades, before a film they heard about actually comes to fruition on the big screen. But THIS is something that Universal Studios needs to jump on IMMEDIATELY.

I know that for most professional paleontologists, the original "Jurassic Park" film (not to mention the second and third) was somewhat torturous to get through. Even in my youth, I had a lot of problems with the science depicted in the film. But I'm sorry, the concept was still great, and I knew exactly how Dr. Alan Grant felt the minute we saw that first Brachiosaurus - or is it officially Giraffatitan brancai now (Taylor 2009)? It was a blockbuster film, and still remains a classic.

Ardipithecus ramifications. (Science in the media part II)

Back in October, I wrote the first post in a series on science, education, and the media. Needless to say, I never got around to finishing that series, or answering the initial question of my friend regarding my thoughts on the (then) recent publication of papers and news articles on Ardipithecus ramidus, and the interpretation of the fossils by the scientist who claims that "apes descended from humans".