Welcome to the Year of Science

The Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS) is spearheading a series of science-related public events throughout 2009, spending 12 months explaining to the public "How We Know What We Know." Each month will focus on a different scientific subject:

January - Process and Nature of Science; Communicating Science
February - Evolution
March - Physics and Technology
April - Energy Resources
May - Sustainability and the Environment
June - Ocean and Water
July - Astronomy
August - Weather and Climate
September - Biodiversity and Conservation
October - Geosciences and Planet Earth
November - Chemistry
December - Science and health

If I didn't have to work, I'd be at the launch event in Boston this weekend. But the week of January 12 I'll be doing my part to communicate science to the public, with the triumphant return of B-Movie Biology to Smith College this Interterm. Once again, I'll lecture (briefly) on an important biological concept, before we watch a film that rips the science to shreds. Once it's through, the knives come out. Films this year are

January 12: X-Men (2000); Genetics: Mutations and their effects on phenotype and physiology.
January 14: The Thing (1982): Development: Stem cells and cell differentiation.
January 16: Pitch Black (2000): Ecology: Food webs and resource partitioning.

The fun starts at 7:30 pm on the big screen in Seelye 106. If you're in Northampton, come and check it out.

Comments

[Thom H.]

>"Once it's through, the knives come out."

Cool. I like my science fiction to be at least plausible scientifically. Stuff that just totally flies in the face of science annoys me and pretty much ruins the story. Jurrasic Park was plausible, Alien less so.

[John]

Darwin plagiarizes to Pierre Tremaux?

I leave you the link to scientific paper that it affirms that to the idea of allopatric speciation borrow of a book of Pierre Tremaux.

Trémaux on species: A theory of allopatric speciation (and punctuated equilibrium) before Wagner

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00003806/

Tremaux's Book: Origine et transformations de l’homme et des autres êtres, 1865″ http://fon.gs/tremaux-book-google/