By Dr. Robert Thorson Henry David Thoreau went to Walden to live deeply and to find out if life was mean or sublime. He found it to be sublime. But what is sublime in the grand scheme of things can be mean at the local level. In a recent case involving protected species vs. private […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Boulder, Colorado. Both of these names derive from torrential river flows. So why the media hysteria about the floods there last month? The city of Boulder was named for Boulder Creek, which was named for the abundance of large boulders. How did they get there? By torrential stream flows giving rise […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Spring is the time for the musical ensemble of singing birds, chattering chipmunks and peeping frogs. As we progress toward summer, however, I expect to hear fewer of these wildlife sounds due to predation by bored housecats, who hunt them for sport. According to the American Bird Conservancy, “There are more […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Cold hard cash. The almighty dollar. Market value. Money, money, money. What a lousy way to measure wealth.In his poem “Wealth,” Ralph Waldo Emerson clearly identified the true source of riches in early America. It wasn’t our great cod fishery, tall timber, animal pelts, whale oil or veins of gold. It […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Venture’s bones are no more. Nor are there any teeth or personal artifacts that might have told us more about this legendary 19th- century slave whose grave was recently excavated in East Haddam. Time has turned them all to dust. But we should not forget about the injunction filed by Nancy […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson A legal certificate is issued for each live birth. Should one also be issued to the grieving parents of a stillborn birth? Yes, as a gesture of human support and as clinical documentation of a natural event. Stillborn deaths often happen mysteriously, with no apparent cause. What we must keep in […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Political theater is usually easy to see through. But last week it was so dark at the bottom of the abyss at the top of the world that no one could see the stage. I refer to the absurdity of planting a titanium Russian flag beneath the North Pole on Aug. […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson ‘Why does public conflict over societal risks persist in the face of compelling and widely accessible scientific evidence?” asks a new study by the Cultural Cognition Project at Yale University, which should be required reading for all members of the U.S. “do-nothing” Congress. Psychologist Dan M. Kahan and his colleagues proved […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Everyone should see the film “An Inconvenient Truth.” Its message is in its medium. The content, as you probably know, concerns the science of climate change, with particular attention to the melting of polar ice. On this subject, I have neither quibble nor comment. What I found fascinating about this movie […]

By Dr. Robert Thorson Philosopher Will Durant remarked on something that few people wish to dwell on: “Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.” Nowhere is his aphorism truer than in modern Haiti. This patch of dry land exists because of tectonic pressure. The veneer of Western civilization above it was changed […]