March 2008

Spring Cleaning: More Wonderful Stuff for March
March 31, 2008

The whole idea of facTotem was to share with you some of the juiciest background links I found for further reading related to the articles in the current issue of the magazine. But the current issue can get pushed into the back of my brain while I'm busy fact checking two months ahead.

I just looked back through my link stash and found some March gems you shouldn't miss just because I haven't quite got the knack of this yet.

Here they are! From now on, we'll be really current.  more

London, Burning Bright [Updated]
March 26, 2008

Fact checking Richard Conniff’s March story on the natural history craze in 1770s London, “That Great Beast of a Town,” did something that nothing in my prior education was able to do: it made me fall in love with the 18th century.  more

Draftsman of Dreams
March 21, 2008

When Arthur C. Clarke died this week, many people must have thought of the strange, transformative monolith in 2001, or of the Lot-like look back at imperfect humanity as it is cast off like an old cocoon in Childhood's End. How many people thought of communications satellites?  more

Big Cat Fight
March 15, 2008

The number of tigers in captivity is growing as wild tiger populations decline. Can private owners help save a species? Two eminent conservation scientists take time out from the embattled front lines in China and Sumatra to say no. A tiger owner, rescuer, advocate, and entrepreneur in Texas says yes. The debate begins.  more

“Endangered animals are the new blood diamonds . . . .”

If your image of the immediate threat to wildlife was an unprincipled but impoverished poacher feeding his family as best he could, it's time for a frightening revision.  more

A Glimmer of Hope for Malaysian Tigers
March 1, 2008

There are only an estimated 500 left in peninsular Malaysia, "facing serious threats from poaching and wildlife trade, habitat loss, and depletion of prey and human-tiger conflict," Dr. Dionysius S.K. Sharma, Executive Director and CEO of the World Wildlife Fund Malaysia, wrote recently to the Star Online. Six of those may recently have met a terrible but typical fate . . .  more