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Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) released his “ Wastebook ” a week ago – a list of 100 government-funded projects that are supposedly a waste of money. Every campaign season, quite predictably, someone from the GOP makes a document like this, listing examples of spending that, in their view, represents the most egregious excesses of governmental spending. Counting on their voters not to know or understand anything about these projects (especially the way these are carefully framed) and aware that nobody in the mainstream media will be pointing and laughing at them, they push these memes onto the unsuspecting public

The eastern grey tree frog [sound] looks exactly like the closely related Cope’s grey tree frog [sound]. The big difference between the two species is beneath the surface--the eastern has twice the number of chromosomes as does the Cope’s. [More]

More than a third of adults in the U.S. are obese. And many of those already overweight continue to put on even more pounds.

The moon has been with us for billions of years, almost since the formation of Earth.

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but when he returned from 'cross the seas, did he bring with him a new disease? [More]

We lie to ourselves all the time. We tell ourselves that we are better than average -- that we are more moral, more capable, less likely to become sick or suffer an accident.

Dear EarthTalk : I've heard of the slow food movement, but what is “slow money” all about? [More]

Bad science papers can have lasting effects. Consider the 1998 paper in the journal The Lancet that linked autism to the MMR vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella

By Christopher Mims Bones have amazing electrical conductivity properties and, as one artist recently found out, can vibrate at the right frequencies to make a lovely macabre speaker set. Turned on its head, bone's response to physical stress can be used to produce music---or at least musical tones.

Help with the identification and management of non-native invasive species in Texas [More]

For what must have felt like an interminable six months back in 2007, Sabine Begall spent her evenings at her computer, staring at photographs of grazing cattle. She would download a satellite image of a cattle range from Google Earth, tag the cows one by one, then pull up the next image.

Over a two-year period, photographer Jamey Stillings documented the transformation of an American landmark. The building of the structure that connects the Arizona and Nevada sides of a concrete arch appears in a coffee table book called The Bridge at Hoover Dam ( [More]

The 1936 film Reefer Madness developed a cult following because of its over-the-top depiction of the evils of marijuana. Getting stoned and going to a midnight showing became a ritual for many college students. [More]

If you have never watched bees carefully, you are missing out.

When then Harvard University president Lawrence Summers suggested in 2005 that innate differences between men and women may account for the lack of women in top science and engineering positions (and subsequently resigned), he was referring to the greater male variability hypothesis. Women, it holds, are on average as mathematically competent as men, but there is a greater innate spread in math ability among men. In other words, a higher proportion of men stumble mathematically, but an equally high proportion excel because of something in the way male brains develop