By Dr. Robert Thorson When celebrating the birthday of a 2-year-old, parents usually light two candles on the cake. When celebrating Darwin’s bicentennial birthday, it makes sense to write two columns. Here’s my second metaphorical candle written in his honor. According to the latest national Gallup Poll on evolution (2007), nearly half of all Americans […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson The importance of young artists to society is underappreciated. Their lives provide a model where hope transcends reality, a necessary counterweight for lives where hope is subsumed by financial imperative. Young artists also provide the cultural novelty that allows art to evolve. As with organic evolution, most novelties don’t get a […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson `This is our tsunami.” That was the haunting phrase of Biloxi’s mayor, which I read beneath the televised images of destruction from Hurricane Katrina. But the comparison between the late August Mississippi Gulf Coast storm and last December’s Indonesian tsunami is terribly inadequate – – even misleading — with respect to […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson The “mad scientist” is a staple of American culture. Brilliant, driven and wielding great power, he works in secret laboratories until he launches various nightmares: Dr. Frankenstein’s stitchedtogether monster; Dr. Strangelove’s atomic bomb; and, as some would argue, Dr. Jerry Yang’s three generations of cloned cows, which could have a family […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Someone’s idea of beauty has escaped from a private home, sneaked up behind me, and bit me where it hurts, my wallet. I’m not referring to the 4-foot-long spiked iguana that went missing after escaping from a private home last summer in East Lyme. Instead, I mean the spread of aquatic […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Albert Einstein strengthened science through his contributions, but he may have inadvertently crippled science education through his example. This notion is supported by an editorial, “Redefining Science Education,” published in January by Bruce Alberts, editor in chief of the journal Science. His main concern is that “many college-educated adults in the […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson As the only working scientist writing regularly for The Courant’s Other Opinion page, I feel it’s my responsibility to speak out when another scientist crosses the line between science and racism. I refer to James Watson, the pioneering geneticist and Nobel Prize winner who was recently quoted by London’s The Sunday […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson `Why are there are so many stone walls around New England cemeteries?” That was one of the most challenging questions I’ve ever been asked as a speaker. It wasn’t that I couldn’t come up with an answer. It was because six answers bubbled up into my consciousness, all at once. Sacred […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson When it’s cold, you can argue that global warming isn’t so bad after all. But global drowning? Now that’s a climate-change problem of a different color, a universally negative concept for creatures with lungs like us. That’s what’s now underway, thanks to irreversible trends in ice sheet decay. When you’re looking […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson The true purpose of the New Year’s holiday is to contemplate the flow of time through our lives. Charles Dickens captured this theme in “A Christmas Carol,” arguably the most beloved story about the winter solstice season. Though the pivotal day in the story is Christmas Eve, the pivotal idea parallels […]