Lessons for leftists in the health care reform debate

The slow blogging has been very slow lately, due to a series of deadlines, voyages, and distractions, not to mention a rethink about what this blog s…

Alice Greenfield McGrath, R.I.P.

My good friend Alice Greenfield McGrath died yesterday, age 92. A fighter against injustice all her life, she is probably best known as the model for…

Is the Catholic clergy a glorified pedophile ring?

Whenever issues of alleged "morality" are being discussed, the Catholic Church seems to be front and center: Abortion, birth control, homos…

Will Afghanistan be Obama's undoing?

Early next week, according to all the news reports we have seen, President Obama will announce a major escalation of troop numbers in Afghanistan. Th…

Jeanne-Claude, R.I.P.

Balter speaks!

If you are in the vicinity of Brunswick, Maine on Monday, I will be speaking at Bowdoin College on the topic of "What Made Humans Modern: The Or…

Washington daze

Hello to all, I've spent the week in Our National's Capital having meetings, lunches and dinners with some of science journalism's finest…

Dolphin slaughter in Denmark

Those who receive this blog by direct email will find the previous post empty, because the photos of this dolphin slaughter in Denmark did not come t…

Massacre at Fort Hood

Americans have choices about how they react to the terrible, tragic massacre that took place yesterday. They can simply condemn it and feel morally s…

The Holy Land

National Geographic has just published a special issue on The Holy Land, with a lead off essay by yours truly, entitled "In the Beginning.&qu…

Claude Lévi-Strauss est Mort

A great man is gone. R.I.P. More about him . From my Science colleague Constance Holden.

Too much money for "glamorous" diseases?

I hope that Mickey Chopra, chief of health at Unicef, is being misquoted in the following lead of a story in the International Herald Tribune today…

Does Grandma play favorites?

On Science 's online news service, ScienceNOW, I report on a very interesting paper from Leslie Knapp of the University of Cambridge and her col…

More proof that the private health insurance industry is full of shit

Not that we really need it, but do read this Los Angeles Times story about how Anthem Blue Cross denies coverage to some people for pre-existing co…

Israel rations Palestinians to trickle of water, says Amnesty International

This is a headline news story on the BBC, but don't count on hearing much about it in the U.S. press. Amnesty's press release, and the full …

Primatologists Go Ape Over "Ardi"

Today on Science 's Origins blog, I report on the first public debate over the significance of Ardipithecus ramidus , the candidate human ancest…

In Defense of the 'Balloon Boy' Dad

Please DO NOT miss Frank Rich's column in today's New York Times , one of his wisest and most insightful ever into the warped perspectives o…

Louis Leakey speaks at UCLA

Okay, I have a confession to make: Despite more than a decade covering human evolution for Science and other publications, it has taken me until thi…

Innocence is no excuse in death penalty cases

I hope everyone is following the controversy in Texas over Governor Rick Perry's attempt to cover up his role in the execution of an apparently …

CNN: Dump Dobbs

A friend has asked me to pass the following on, and I am happy to do so. Lou Dobbs is the worst kind of racist scumbag, and I think it's just a m…

Health Insurers Emerge as Obama's Top Foe in Reform Effort

That's the headline of a story in the Washington Post today. Duh! But certainly just as well. Perhaps it will make the issues clearer, that thi…

Let Rush Limbaugh buy the Rams

I see in today's New York Times that the Reverend Al Sharpton is urging opposition to Rush buying the St. Louis Rams. My first thought is that …

What, me worry about Pakistan's nukes?

Let's see, "militants" can invade the Pakistan Army headquarters and take dozens of hostages, but no need to worry about the security …

Goodbye to Tarragona

On my way back to Paris via Barcelona, but had a chance this morning to run around Tarragona with my camera. Well worth a visit. The inhabitants live…

Flapping mouths won't bring peace

It's times like these that I get pretty fed up with the blogosphere, the punditosphere, and all the other spheres of empty talk. The Nobel commit…

Greetings from Tarragona

I've been on the road for the past week, attending a meeting in this archaeologically rich city (won't tell you now which meeting.) But here …

When is a war crime not a war crime?

When everyone decides to look the other way, that's when. Sadly, even the Palestinians have chosen to go this route, at least temporarily, accord…

La Bohème in the suburbs

We've had a heavy dose of science and politics on this blog these past days, now for some culture. Last Tuesday, September 29, the French-German …

The Yes Men Fix the World

"Comedic vigilante justice!" - USA Today "Hilarious, therapeutic, inspiring." - Naomi Klein , autho…

Ardi!

By now many of you will have heard about the publication in Science of a series of long awaited papers on the 4.4 million year old Ardipithecus rami…

No special treatment for Polanski

I don't usually weigh in on cases like this, but those who think that the charges against Polanski should be dropped without him showing up in co…

Iraq war resister Ehren Watada finally allowed to resign from the Army

Finally, an end , or at least a new chapter, in the saga of this brave young man . The U.S. Army, having failed to convict him by court-martial and h…

Netanyahu cheapens the Holocaust

Why is it that you have to go to the Israeli press to find good sense about the Israel-Palestine conflict? Gideon Levy provides a little balance to B…

When Darwin met a Neandertal

As many readers will know if they have been paying attention during this 150th anniversary of its publication, On the Origin of Species makes no men…

Obama and the burqas

I see an interesting juxtaposition between two news stories published in the past 24 hours. The first, a piece in yesterday's New York Times by…

Does "Creation" lack the spark of genius?

That's the conclusion my colleague John Travis, European Editor of Science , comes to about this otherwise laudable attempt to portray the human …

A Sunday in Ronda, Spain

I'm on my way home from a meeting in Gibraltar, so stopped off for a day in this southern Spanish town nestled in Andalusia's rugged Serrania…

Uninsured at higher risk of death

It might seem intuitively likely that people without health insurance are at a higher risk of death, but here is a new study in the American Journal…