Discover your “Inner Ape”

This really fits in several Science Blog categories besides brain and behavior, since it is a review of an upcoming book (media and entertainment) about members of the animal kingdom, and it ultimately connects to understanding human culture (anthropology). Readers of all those sections will be interested in discovering Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are by Frans de Waal.

If you think gas is expensive now, just wait!

While browsing in my community library yesterday, I noticed that a book that I had reviewed a year ago, The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New Future by Paul Roberts, had come out in paperback with a new afterword.

As the book’s title and subtitle imply, experts now recognize that demand for oil may soon exceed the production capacity of even the largest suppliers. The world’s economy is heading for a painful transition, and Roberts makes the case that we are unprepared for it.

Thoughts on a rejection: Where will our future critical thinkers come from?

Again, I’m placing this entry in the “business & economy” category, because Science Blog has no place to discuss education directly. Since our future economy is at risk because of dangerous trends in our educational system, I hope this posting gets the attention of policymakers who can do something about the near elimination of critical thinking as an objective in education.

I’ve been writing long enough not to obsess over being turned down, especially when the editor is a long-time friend who takes the time to tell me why a book proposal doesn’t fit the publisher’s present plans. In this case, however, the reason for the turndown suggests that an organization that once took the lead in promoting innovative and critical thinking can no longer justify the risks in doing so.

Save our Science Teachers, part 2

Kansas Board OKs Evolution Knock is the headline of this CBS/AP story that begins: “The Kansas Board of Education voted 6-4 to include greater criticism of evolution in its school science standards, but it decided to send the standards to an outside academic for review before taking a final vote.”

Save Our Science Teachers

There is no Science Blog category for Education, so I’ve labeled this “Business and Economy,” which are two areas that are bound to suffer in the next several decades if we don’t do anything to reverse the disastrous direction that our education has taken under the misguided “No Child Left Behind” mantra.