[We continue to mark Darwin’s bicentennial by serializing my talk on the cultural impact of his work.  So far, we’ve touched on some of the popular misconceptions of his ideas, and on the flurry of legislation leading up to the Scopes Trial in the U.S.] Meanwhile, paleontologists, like dirty little kids, had been scrabbling in […]

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[We resume the serialization of my talk on the cultural hurly-burly that greeted Darwin’s theories.  As we open this section, our animal friends are really going at it.] Lions and tigers make ligers and tigons; camels and llamas make camas; antelopes give taxonomists nightmares.  Mules have been known to foal baby mules; yaks, bison, and […]

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[It’s the Darwin bicentennial; it’s time to party like primates.  I’ll tip my bit into the punchbowl by serializing, sip by sip, a talk I gave at the 2006 “Fortean Times” UnCon and the 2007 INFO (International Fortean Organization) FortFest.  It’s mostly about the confused interbreeding of evolution and American culture.  I’ll update it a bit as I post it; […]

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English has no names for the toes.  Each finger has a name; the fifth has at least three: little, pinky, and auricular.  But the toes are anonymous. English isn’t alone in this; most languages see no reason to name toes.  The only exception I know of is Swedish, which, thanks to a nursery rhyme, lists […]

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(I delivered something like the following at an event called “Bigfoot Night,” curated by Kevin Maher and Meg Sweeney Lawless, at the Sci Fi Screening Room in NYC, 11/17/08.)

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In 1923, the USSR was established; the earworm “Yes, we have no bananas” was released; Firestone began selling inflatable tires; a ‘talkie’ made its first public debut; New York revoked Prohibition; insulin became widely available; the Walt Disney Company was founded; the first planetarium opened in Munich; the first electric shaver was patented (by Jacob […]

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The sonnet is a neglected form these days.  Verse of all stripes is unpopular — at least under that name, although it still defines popular music.  It’s all in the branding, I suppose. And current taste often brands the sonnet as precious, artificial, or old-fashioned.  Fair enough; although you could tar most American entertainment genres with […]

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Edgar Wilson “Bill” Nye (1850-1896) was, in his time, a popular humorist, both as journalist and lecturer.  He’s not much read now, but I suggest that he’s still worth a look.  Here, for example, is a slice from an essay on the future.  Edison, by the way, was indeed working on a thought-recording machine. “In fact, Mr. […]

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We offer here my talk on school lunches, from “Through the Blackboard.”  It’s stored on another page, so as not to clog the home page.  Happy reading! (Posted by Doug Skinner)

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We welcome you to “Through the Blackboard,” the Ullage Group’s third cornucopia of oddball stuff — this time devoted to the theme of education. “Ullage” is a winemakers’ term; it means both the air at the top of the bottle, and the sediment at the bottom.  It’s sometines defined as “deficiency,” or “lack”; in the […]

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