Tonight

Tonight there are no less than three awesome science events happening on this tiny island. If only I could clone myself! But then I would inevitably end up on a rooftop somewhere and my mother or husband of 25 years would have to decide between me and the clone. She or he would probably pick the wrong one and that would be the end for me. So I suppose I'll just have to settle with going to one lecture tonight...

Here's a look at tonight's talks:

Giants Of Science: The Social Networks of Insects
I've been fascinated by ants and bees since I was a young girl on my ranch in Texas. I used to take sticks and excavate ant hills, looking at the extensive network of tunnels that the little guys built. Then I learned that the societies of ants and bees are ruled by women. How cool is that? Tonight Pulitzer Prize winners Edward O. Wilson and Bert Hoelldoebler will be discussing the crazy world of insects. They will talk about how these societies communicate and cooperate in order to thrive, and they will touch on how this relates to primate societies.

Communicating Science
When I taught 7th grade science, what I told my students wasn't necessarily what they heard or remembered. One time I taught them the mnemonic "Infants Poop More And Teethe" for the stages of mitosis. Instead of remembering the actual phases, they just talked about babies and their bowels a lot more often. So it's important to know how to communicate knowledge in an efficient and effective way. Tonight at NYAS, Dr. Matthew Nisbet will be giving pointers on how to accurately teach science to the public.

Carl Zimmer: The Darwin Beat
Author Carl Zimmer will be talking to the New York Skeptics Society tonight in a lecture titled The Darwin Beat: Reporting from the Frontiers of Evolution. As I've mentioned before, evolution is a topic that continues to draw heated opinions from all kinds of people. Zimmer is an author who has written for Discover, Scientific American, The New York Times, and others, so I am confident that he'll have an interesting take on the controversy.