By Dr. Robert Thorson George W. Bush, I’m afraid, wants to be a space cowboy. How else can we explain his administration’s raid on NASA’s science budget to finance heroic manned missions back to the moon, then onward to Mars? Whoopee ti-yi-yo! Git along, little spacecraft! Ride ’em, astronauts! Lofty, seemingly impossible, dare-to-dream goals are […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Look carefully at the head of any U.S. nickel. The graven image of Thomas Jefferson is being forced to stare at the words “In God We Trust.” If Jefferson were with us today and able to inscribe his own coin, I think he would prefer “In Nature We Trust.” This would […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson It was the best of places. It was the worst of places. That’s what Charles Dickens might have said about wind power development in a tale of two landscapes, offshore Nantucket and the Berkshires, respectively. I’m in favor of the Cape Wind project near Nantucket, Mass., where developers hope to cluster […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson It’s an inconvenient truth that “An Inconvenient Truth” won this year’s Oscar for a documentary feature film. Though I liked the movie, it proves that that Hollywood has become an unofficial fourth branch of government, operating far beyond the reach of constitutional checks and balances. I’m worried because the majority of […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson What’s the biggest skeleton in UConn’s closet? It’s New England’s finest and oldest specimen of the American mastodon. In August 1913, a nearly complete skeleton of Mammut americanum was discovered on a magnificent country estate in Farmington, now called the Hill-Stead Museum. This was the home of Theodate Pope Riddle, Connecticut’s […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Memorial Day honored those human beings who gave their lives in service to our country. With no disrespect to veterans and their families, I recommend that we duplicate this idea for landscapes that have fallen in service to our nation. The idea of a memorial day for dead landscapes came to […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson I don’t understand the Base Realignment and Closure Commission process as it applies to the Naval Submarine Base at Groton. But first, here are three things about BRAC that I do understand. The military, like any large corporation, must always be looking for ways to do its job better. Tradition may […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Throughout the world, the forces of religious fundamentalism are challenging the forces of secular democracy. In the Middle East, the conflict boils into civil war. In the United States, the conflict merely simmers beneath recent Supreme Court rulings involving abortion and contraception making headline news. Consider the latest Gallup poll on […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson The Broadwater Energy corporation wants to build an enormous floating liquefied natural gas terminal in the middle of eastern Long Island Sound. Most of the gas will be used to generate electricity, mostly for the New York metropolitan area. Residents and regulators are hotly divided on this issue. I’m not. It’s […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson I may be one of the few people left on Planet Earth who shudders slightly whenever they hear the phrase “global warming.” Its mention triggers a flood of inconvenient thoughts that must be allowed to subside before I can proceed with logical thinking. Paraphrasing Elizabeth Barrett Browning: How do I misunderstand […]