Every once in a while at a Town Hall reading, we have to pinch ourselves to make sure we're awake. Is this really true? Did over 150 people just pay $5 to hear a lecture on behavioral economics? Obviously it helps to be interviewed on NPR. Or maybe it was the New Yorker story by Elizabeth Kolbert. Whatever the reason, there are 117 holds (and climbing) on Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational at the Seattle......

They can handle uncertainty--it is a professional requirement, in fact--but they tend to avoid speaking about their research unless they are very certain about something. (At least the good ones do.) Increasingly so, the precision and certainty of science are being put on trial on a public scale never before experienced. And to a degree, the admirable tendency of scientists to demand certainty is in conflict with our need as the public to potentially act......

God dammit! We're in no way convinced carbon offsets are any kind of a solution to global warming, but the news that a King County court has decided that Seattle City Light can't use ratepayer's money to buy them pisses us off nonetheless. Their argument is that it should be general taxpayer money that saves the Earth, and that ratepayer money is for the operation of the utility. From the Seattle Times: The decision followed......

At the Elizabeth Kolbert talk last December, UW professor Stephen Gardiner echoed Al Gore and Jimmy Carter's sentiment that the looming crisis posed by global warming is a moral predicament more than a political, religious, or scientific one (albeit, it is all of those other things as well, just not as urgently so). Today we read about a joint coalition formed by both evangelical and scientific types aimed at convincing the current administration and congress......

We saw Maria Coryell-Martin's haunting, ghostly paintings in the lobby at Benyaroya Hall after Elizabeth Kolbert's talk this week, and were instantly drawn to a collection of small watercolor landscapes entitled "Greenland Suite." We were struck by how reminiscent her work was of abstract desert landscapes, despite all the ice and snow, and as we were scribbling down the artist's name and scheming to get a few prints for Xmas presents, she popped up......

That was the clear message at Benaroya Hall last night, where New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert presented a sampling of the climate change research she covers in her much-lauded book (Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change), and then joined a few colleagues on-stage for a panel discussion. Touching on a few of the main locations and research findings from her book, the punchline is a real punch in the gut, or......

There's no such thing as a free ride. This week in speaking happenings is bursting with free-for-alls, but beware the "hidden costs" lurking beneath. Wednesday, December 6 >>>DORKBOT, 7:30pm. We love the name, but saying that they plan to "discuss their innovative approach to immersive, participatory entertainment" doesn't hide the fact that this will be geeks talking about videogames. Free, but only if you know the secret code: 'Knock knock, who's there?' 'Um, dorks?' 'Come......

SPORTS: Garfield vs. Franklin basketball is the best sports rivalry in the city. Only happens twice a year. There's bands, guys trying desperately to impress their friends in the stands, and usually a cheerleader battle or two. This is as close to Duke-UNC as we have in this state. NOTE: Bring a sweater, the gym will be COLD. 7pm // Old Lincoln High School (Garfield's being renovated), 4400 Interlake Ave N, Wallingford // Tickets are......

Wednesday, November 29 >>>Third Place Books, 7:00pm. Another weighty tome, Unreleased Beatles by Richie Unterberger, to add to your Beatles-only reference section. It details the shitload of stuff that was recorded but, you know, forgotten about what with being so high at the time, plus the whole headtrip with Yoko. Free with OCD collecting disorder. >>>University Bookstore, 7:00pm. Elizabeth George backtracks: in her last Inspector Lynley mystery, the Inspector's wife was killed. In What......

The Seattle Town Hall is officially On Notice, for having the Elizabeth Kolbert Science Series lecture in the basement. Far too many people were interested in her lecture based on her climate change writing--we were third in line when they locked the doors and turned us away, and the line was still snaking around the corner. They're not quite Dead to Me, because Seattle Channel is filming Kolbert's talk, and will broadcast it online sometime......

If, like Seattlest, you're a dead-tree-media reading tool of a dying paradigm, you might have read Elizabeth Kolbert's three-part series "The Climate of Man" last spring when it was published in The New Yorker. If you prefer your dead-tree media in hardcover, however, you're in luck -- Kolbert's new book Field Notes from a Catastrophe collects all three parts in handy pulped-plant form. Seattlest read the series last spring, and it's a lucid, compelling, and......

You've long suspected that another universe is floating nearby in hyperspace, just a millimeter away. What else would explain why your cat acts so odd when it thinks you're not looking? Fortunately for you, physicist Michio Kaku (not pictured at right) co-exists on the same plane as you. In this universe, that is. Kaku and others offer up a spate of science-themed talks in the coming weeks, including Elizabeth Kolbert, whose 3-part series on climate......