Surprised?

The view from my iPhone at the Indianapolis airport:

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is teaming up with Scholastic (which makes bajillions off textbooks and Harry Potter) to produce an “energy” curriculum–one that neglects environmental consequences and climate change, at least in the materials presented so far (PDF).

Scholastic also offers the “United States of Energy,” another lesson plan/educational program “brought to you” in part by the American Coal Foundation.

Meanwhile, in state after state, anti-evolutionists are arguing not only that we should “teach the controversy” around evolution, but that the same goes for other controversial topics as well–and then global warming inevitably gets roped in. And the strategy has been working.

In the most infamous case, legislators in South Dakota called for “balanced teaching” about global warming in their state. In one version, their bill justified this assault by noting, “there are a variety of climatological, meteorological, astrological, thermological, cosmological, and ecological dynamics that can effect world weather phenomena [and] the significance and interrelativity of these factors is largely speculative…”

Yeah. They did write that.

Is it time for the creation of an organization, like the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), that will be capable of countering these many and varied attempts to torque what children learn about climate and energy? Doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me. Here’s Eugenie Scott, of NCSE, discussing the idea:

I recently caught a clip of two women on The View discussing how they do not “believe” in evolution. Discouraging, but then I shouldn’t really be surprised. After all, as Chris and I reported in Unscientific America, 46 percent of Americans agree with them–and think the Earth is less than 10,000 years old. So what can we do about this kind of anti-science sentiment?

Brian Switek’s fascinating new book Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature is assuredly a part of the solution. I’ve long been a fan of Switek’s writing and follow his terrific blog Laelaps on the Wired Science network. This book is not only as good as I expected–it’s better.

For anyone interested in fossils, the history of science, and evolution, Written in Stone is a must read! Packed with the latest research and composed in an engaging style, it can be easily understood by scientists and laypeople alike. The book’s a unique mix of scientifically rigorous information and elegant accounts of life on our planet. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on fossil whales where Switek describes how researchers struggled to understand their ancestry. Parts of this book reads like a mystery while you also get historical tales from the field. There are many interesting characters as well and I really enjoyed the images included throughout.

Most of all, Written in Stone is important because it connects the dots on evolution. Switek provides a compelling narrative about the process of adaptation–including how we are part of the story. His prose is wonderful, and I especially love the ending–which I won’t give away here (but would like to!).

This excellent book is coming to a bookstore near you next week and should be of interest to everyone who possesses a natural curiosity about the world. So go buy it!

Recently in Hungary, I got to meet professor C.P. Kyriacou of the University of Leicester. We were both serving as pre-party entertainment for a recent Austria Biosciences postdoc retreat, and so we ended up hanging out a good bit together.

Anyways, not only is Kyriacou a marvelous guy, but after hearing my talk about the various wars on science and reason, he shared a quotation with me that he uses in a lecture on anti-evolutionism. It’s pretty hilarious. Here goes:

Several thousand years ago, a small tribe of ignorant near-savages wrote various collections of myths, wild tales, lies, and gibberish. Over the centuries, these stories were embroidered, garbled, mutilated, and torn into small pieces that were then repeatedly shuffled. Finally, this material was badly translated into several languages successively. The resultant text, creationists feel, is the best guide to this complex and technical subject.

– Tom Weller, Science Made Stupid, 1985

I did not know, when I recorded the last Point of Inquiry with Richard Wrangham, that his excellent book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human was soon to be out in paperback.

Otherwise I certainly would have flagged that, because it’s really one of the best pieces of popular science writing that I’ve come across in years.

If you haven’t gotten a copy already you should check it out. (And I swear, I’m not just saying this cause we have the same publisher, Basic Books.)

Meanwhile, I’ve been focusing on Hurricane Earl, but soon I want to blog some of the best parts of the recent show–particularly where Wrangham tells me why sushi can still make you fat (even though it’s raw), and why men who are married tend to put on a lot of poundage.

My latest hosted episode of Point of Inquiry just went up (stream here). It’s an interview with Harvard’s Richard Wrangham, who I also interviewed for the BBC’s “Culture Show.” Here’s the write up:

This is a show about evolution—but not, for once, about the evolution wars. Instead, it concerns one of the most intriguing ideas to emerge in quite some time about the evolution of humans.

In his much discussed book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham argues that we’ve been ignoring a critical catalyst in the creation of our species—a little technology called cooking.

Cooking was the game changer, says Wrangham. It upended everything. It altered how we obtained energy, which in turn morphed our anatomy and cranial capacity. Cooking even changed how we came to spend our days, and divide labor between the sexes.

According to Wrangham, learning to cook therefore ranks among the most important things that ever happened to our ancestors. In this episode of Point of Inquiry, he discusses why cooking was so pivotal—and why its role has so long been overlooked.

Richard Wrangham is the Ruth Moore professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University, and the author, with Dale Peterson, of Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. His new book is Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human.

Once again, the show is here, and you can stream it here.

About seven years ago, I reported regularly on the science of longevity, and the prospect of human life extension, for a site called Sage Crossroads. And then I stopped—pretty much dropping the topic for a while and going on to other things.

So when I attended the Techonomy session yesterday entitled “The Longevity Dividend,” it was a perfect chance to hear just how far scientists think their field has come since I last reported on it closely. And I have to say, I was struck by the difference in tone.

Seven years ago, scientists who study aging—so-called biogerontologists—already thought it was possible or even likely that at some point in the future, we would find a way to retard its rate in humans. After all, there were already numerous studies showing that genetic interventions could lengthen the lifespan of other species, particularly mice and roundworms. And caloric restriction—reducing dietary intake by about 1/3—had also been shown to extend lifespan in a number of animal species. (That’s why some humans themselves are already trying it.)

So there were reasons to think that human life extension was coming—and more specifically, that a means of slowing the rate of human aging would be possible. But most mainstream scientists weren’t so bullish then. So optimistic. In particular, they were very worried about giving false hope, and encouraging anti-aging quackery.

I detected a different tone yesterday….read on…

Tonight at 23:20 BST, on BBC 2′s “The Culture Show,” you can find me guest hosting a segment–the first time I’ve done major TV as a host, rather than guest. The occasion is the BBC’s annual Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, and I did the segment interviewing Harvard University’s Richard Wrangham, author of the fascinating book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human–which is quite a page-turner, actually, and one of six nominees for the prize (worth 20,000 pounds).

Alas, if you’re in the U.S., I don’t believe you can see The Culture Show, for complicated reasons that haven’t quite been explained to me. For those in the UK, though, check it out!

And meanwhile, for arguably one of the biggest ideas in evolution in quite some time, give Wrangham’s book a try….

P.S.: Video from the segment, and credits, are now here. Alas, it doesn’t play unless you’re in the UK….