 Communications with the living world.
By Jesse Smith |
| Sunday in the Park with Georgia National parks get all the glory, but the state parks present a much more complex identity. And they need help.
|
| Slick Reporting News of every oil spill is illustrated with pictures of dead or oily animals. This is good for the animal, but bad for the environment.
|
| Smile! March comes in like a lion and goes out with a live video stream of a zoo lion.
|
| Diorama-o-rama Natural history dioramas are compelling artifacts, if everyone could just stop stripping them of any complexity.
|
| The Bad Seed? Birdfeeder season has arrived. Ready for all that environmental, aesthetic, scientific, and financial responsibility?
|
| I'm Dreaming... Why do we make artificial snow? Uh, because we can.
|
| Bitch, Please Can't wait until Thanksgiving to know the winner of the National Dog Show? Neither could I.
|
| Sports Animal Used to be a bear or a lion made a good team mascot. Then came the Phillie Phanatic.
|
| Peepin' Ain't Easy You think fall foliage viewing is just about finding a tree and staring at it? Wrong.
|
| Getting Tanked Fishing for answers at the Annual Marine Aquarium Conference of North America.
|
| Pet Project Could there be any worse time to celebrate National Pet Health Insurance Month?
|
| Name Tags Taxonomy may be an evolved skill, but human subjectivity has no place in the lab. Or so we're told.
|
| The Art of Politics The Federal Duck Stamp turns 75 this week. But why does the Interior Department run an art contest anyway?
|
| Symbolic Gestures Ken Burns' upcoming film on the National Park Service will be full of beautiful images, but a more intriguing visual story is told through its symbols.
|
| Michael's Menagerie Everyone keeps saying Michael Jackson had a bizarre taste in pets. They were actually pretty boring choices.
|
| Animal Crossing Economic trend: African safari, out; American drive-thru safari, in?
|
| Consider the Hermit Crab In praise of the hermit crab, our favorite animal of summer. And if it dies…well, there’s always next summer.
|
| The Elephant in the Room I hear complaints over Wal-Mart and McDonald's and McMansions, but what about the sameness of the zoo landscape?
|
| Duck, Duck, Goose The Ward World Championship is a competition for the only American art form grounded in deception: bird carving.
|
| Gorilla Warfare Government support of zoos is increasingly seen as frivolous. Not so in the Great Depression.
|
| Green Economy In this economy, stop and smell the roses. No, seriously, they're on display at the world's largest flower show.
|
| Nature vs. Nature When is the natural world like The Real World? When we're choosing its seven 'official' Wonders.
|
| Fat Cats Celebrate artifice: Feed a zoo animal.
|
| Skeletal Remains Happy 140th birthday, dinosaur displays! You don't look a day over 65 million.
|
| A Giant Problem The large mammals are our closest relatives. So why is our relationship with them so tense?
|
| Ocean View At the Smithsonian's new Ocean Hall, the drama of the seas plays out alongside that of the modern natural history museum.
|
| Guiding Light The Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America celebrates its creator's centennial this month. But why do we still need field guides?
|
| Power Hungry Plants, wind, and sunlight make good energy. Oil, coal, and the atom make good exhibits.
|
| Zookeeping Small-town zoos lack the pizazz of those in New York, San Diego, and D.C. Sometimes that's a good thing.
|
| What's up, Doc? Werner Herzog's made a film about life on Antarctica. Too bad nature documentaries don't matter anymore.
|
| Creating a Truth About half of the United States does not believe in evolution. Our correspondent visits a new, $27 million creationism museum in Kentucky, built just for them.
|
| |
