A Look Back to Some Good Posts of the Past

For those of you who have only recently started reading this blog, I had some fantastic posts in 2012.

I took a long road trip from Oklahoma to California and back. One of the main purposes of this trip was to take photos and make videos to teach about evolution. I posted a series of “Evotour” essays, with photos. I saw some really interesting and thought-provoking things! The links are below:

• Eclipse of the Sun
• The Southwest Desert
• Parkfield Road, or, Skipping Across Crustal Plates. I visited the San Andreas Fault, where the Pacific Plate rubs up against the North American Plate. There is a bridge over it, labeled with signs, way out in the country!
• The Purisima Hills (with a remnant pine population and big lichens)
• The Transit of Venus, or, Guillame LeGentil Finally Gets Satisfaction. I saw the last Transit of Venus that any of us will ever see.
• Fire and Renewal in the California Mountains
• The Evolution of Christian Science. I visited a Christian Science church and tried to figure out how such a religion could ever have evolved.
• Feeling Small (in the presence of giant sequoias)
• Races of the Human Species: A Visit to Manzanar (a World War Two Japanese American internment camp)
• Among the Ancients (a visit to the oldest trees in the world)

I also posted a series about Religion and Science, The Vast Gulf. Science and religion differ markedly on such issues as:

• How to Find Things Out
• The Heavens (what are they?)
• Dust of the Ground
• You Are What You Eat
• Weather and Climate
• Continents
• Genetics
• Where Babies Come From
• Was the World Made for Man?
• The Future (this one was posted January 2013)

I also had a series of posts from the Oklahoma Evolution Workshop in October 2012. A stimulating experience, not to be forgotten!

I posted numerous free-standing essays, of which my best were:

Why Evolution Looks Like It Has an Overall Direction

Appealing to the Basest Instincts. This was about politicians, and it has suddenly become more relevant than ever!

Reality of Global Warming: The 2012 Phenology Conference.  Includes a part in which two scientists who consider global warming to be a gigantic problem were listed among the “3000 scientists who reject global warming.”

If you have time, take a look at these. I have left out essays which, however interesting, dealt with issues that were mainly relevant in 2012.