By Dr. Robert Thorson Looking for a stunning example of ludicrous government policy? Consider what the U.S. Bureau of Land Management does with its so-called wild horses, as reported by a Policy Forum in the August Science magazine. It turns out that the bureau boards out more “wild” horses to Midwestern farmers than they allow […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Does “climategate” (the fuss about e-mails stolen from the desktop of climate researcher Phil Jones at the University of East Anglia) sum up to something significant? Or is the media frenzy little more than a mountain made from a molehill by naysayer scientists, media corporations and blowhard politicians? Based on a […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Last night, my son and I watched the cult classic “Dumb and Dumber” as part of my research for this column. I wanted to make sure that nothing in the movie was dumber than what I saw in the baking aisle of the grocery store last week. I’m referring to official […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Last year was the year I became an old fart, in the best sense of the term. I learned that the adage “you’re as young as you feel” is mere gloss on the more important realization that people my age are incorrigibly hard-wired to an earlier era. Yes, some of our […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Geologists just learned that the greatest extinction of life on Earth was aided and abetted by the burning of coal. Though this material has been a great boon for humans since the 18th century, it was a bane beyond measure for nearly every living thing during the 2,519,410th century B.C. Why […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Consider the sampling of biodiversity at a Thanksgiving feast. The humans, the turkey, the potatoes, the cranberries and the pumpkin. All came from a physical cradle of life, the Earth. This year, the changing Earth is getting serious respect for being the prime mover of organic evolution. For this I am […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson More than a thousand geologists were swarming the streets of Hartford earlier this week during the 47th annual meeting of the Northeastern Section of the Geological Society of America, held at the Marriott Hotel Downtown. Hardly anyone seems to have noticed. Of course, they weren’t here for the attention. They were […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson I have a new argument for federal aid to Eastern cities. It comes not from the human instincts for fairness, charity and power, but from earth science. The eastern United States is water-rich and land-poor, whereas the West is water-poor and land-rich. For years, federal dollars have been flowing west-by-southwest to […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Last weekend was magically beautiful. Mother’s Day, spring flowers, songbirds in chorus, students graduating, baby animals and the solstice still ahead. What a wonderful time to be alive! Given my mood, the opinion columnist in me refused to cooperate. My “seek-and-point-out-someproblem” module was offline. So, I decided to celebrate my springtime […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson I have a new argument for federal aid to Eastern cities. It comes not from the human instincts for fairness, charity and power, but from earth science. The eastern United States is water-rich and land-poor, whereas the West is water-poor and land-rich. For years, federal dollars have been flowing west-by-southwest to […]