I could not agree more with their Editorial Statement:

Environmentalism has taken a global turn. What was once a movement that revolved around local activism and outdoor enthusiasm now tops the agendas of leading research universities, corporations, and policy makers. As the science grows more mature and the money more serious, Conservation has emerged as a new kind of environmental magazine poised to capture the transformation.

Without being heavy handed, without preaching, pleading, or bias, we take on key environmental issues, explore them from novel angles and bring cutting-edge science to the table. Our editorial mission is to raise the bar on environmental thinking and writing. Our recipe is a mix of world-class journalism and provocative ideas spiced with offbeat illustrations that add a touch of irreverence—and delight.

They publish Conservation and its constituent Journal Watch Online as two integrated WordPress sites. We are currently working on broader plans to redesign their combined online presence. I have designed, developed, and implemented dozens of features for Conservation in our half year of working together and describe here just one such project for demonstration purposes. Many of our projects have focused on improving their behind-the-scenes editing and publishing tools as well as improving their presence online but beyond their site, in social media.

In most cases, a new feature such as adding a widgetized column to Journal Watch Online served both specific and general purposes. Specifically, the new column allows them to elevate more content and more features to the top of the page. That the new column is “widgetized” means that editors are able to use WordPress to manage content such as categorized links and a display of recent comments. What could be described as one feature — a new column — is actually any number of features, including whatever WordPress has available as a widget.

Generally, the Conservation and Journal Watch Online sites had similar designs but two significantly different widths. As a result of their difference in width, visitors navigating from one to the other would see features like the site header and footer “jumping around.” It was a visually more confusing, jarring experience. Matching the widths of the two integrated sites did not resolve all design differences but was a part of a larger effort for more conscious design and improved user experience.

The original developers of the site made these types of changes, and this type of control over a defined area of the site, much more difficult and expensive for Conservation. Two of our longer term goals in working together have been to give them greater control over their site, and to reduce their cost accordingly for making changes.

Adding a new column to Journal Watch Online was a classic win-win-win type of project, and from idea to design to completion it required just two hours’ work.

REALscience is a science media company based in Seattle. We are launching the new site today, March 30th 2009 and will continue rolling out improvements in the following weeks.

There are so many new features we are calling it “REALscience 2.0.” The features include:

• * Cross-browser compatibility, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, and Flock
• * Social bookmarking features so articles can be quickly submitted to relevant sites
• * Featured articles section to keep popular articles sticky near the top of the site
• * Widgetized sidebars so that any widget in WordPress can be easily added and managed
• * Gravatar readiness
• * Designed for threaded comments
• * Custom thumbnail images and optional automatic thumbnail image scaling throughout the site
• * Valid XHTML and CSS for a design without the use of tables
• * WordPress compatibility through versions 2.8.x

Visit REALscience! This is a small image of their new site:

This is a small image of their old site:

They write: Comments from a cross-section of our signatories provide a glimpse at the the depth of concern to Defend Science, the broad support for this initiative, and the diversity of viewpoints that gives strength to this effort.

My comment was:

All people must employ critical thinking, must understand the scientific method, and discern clearly between fact and opinion, between truth and theory, and between understanding and belief. It is essential for the progress and truly for the life of humanity that we educate and inspire with science. It is our responsibility to do so, as scientific and educated and motivated people. This fire is not a mystical gift we were given, rather it is of our making and in it humanity should take its greatest pride. The fire of science as a gift will also not be given to others supernaturally, rather we must share the warmth, force, and light of it. When threatened by mass fear of the unknown, we must stand up with courage and defend the bravery of discovery, the human will to demystify, to know, and to understand.

My gainful employment is currently in software, and I was cited as “Brian Glanz, Software Developer.”

Other signatories’ comments are at times alarming, touching, and all of them challenging. I will paste another half dozen below from other signatories which I want to emphasize. If you’d prefer, read the full collection here.

Then, review and sign the Defend Science Statement.

More Comments from Signatories of the Defend Science Statement:

The defense of the scientific method should be viewed as part of a larger fight to protect basic civil liberties from the onslaught of corporate-funded, right-wing extremism.

– Matthew LaHaye, Caltech, Department of Physics

Six years ago I took the ‘defence of science’ seriously and formed a nonprofit California Corporation with the mission to promote science education be encouraging existing institutions to sponsor and produce EVENTS to celebrate Darwin, Science and Humanity. The events are held each year on, or near Feb.12, Darwin’s Birthday and are open to the public. In addition, are promoting a GLOBAL celebration in 2009 for Darwins bicentennial birthday. I invite all scientists who support the ‘Defence of Science’ to visit our website and participate in by developing their own EVENT each year. We must cooperate in this important effort to Defend Science!

– Robert Stephens, President, Darwin Day Celebration

It is a sad commentary on the current political and social climate, that, despite recent and breathtaking advancements in science and medical technology, we find ourselves having to defend science, the only mechanism we have for gaining new information about the natural world. In the face of increasingly complex social, environmental, and medical problems, seeking solutions while ignoring the insights that science can provide is pure folly.

– Ola Fincke, Professor, Dept. of Zoology, U. of Oklahoma

The effect of years of non-scientific government policies on HIV and AIDS are plain to see in South Africa. Medical Scientists should not hesitate to speak out at every opportunity against this type of influence on their work.

– Antoine Van Gelder, Internal Medicine, University of Pretoria, South Africa

The definition of science is not open to debate. Science is not “a marketplace of ideas” in which consumer behavior dictates truth. Scientific findings may, at times, challenge the status quo, be unpopular, or even counter-intuitive. But, scientific findings are ALWAYS demonstrable, testable, and measurable.

– Brian Bolea, Grand Valley State University, Michigan

As a professor of psychiatry and psychoanalysis I confront daily the damage to hope that lack of understanding causes. There are all too many medical and environmental agonies the cause and cure of which we don’t yet know, and we must bear the often overwheming emotional burden such ignorance imposes. Such are cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, global warming.

But there are many other medical and environmental agonies whose cause and cure — or at least prevention — we now DO know. To be deprived by anti-science zealots of this understanding — and the possibiity of averting these blights by appropriate action — is the grimmest tragedy. Such are AIDS, tuberculosis, rickets, unplanned pregnancies.

We must not succumb to efforts by ignorant zealots to return us to the pre-scientific dark ages, in which much human hopelessness was perpetuated for centuries longer than necessary, by the arrogant imposition of faith-based doctrines of anti-science.

Aside from the injury and death that they guarantee, they produce another and equally unnecessary blight: prolongation into our adult life of the sense of helplessness with which we are all born. Every baby is a scientist desperately struggling to become a strong and safe grownup by figuring out the truth. Whether he or she becomes a professional scientist or remains an amateur, we must preserve the freedom of everyone to observe, think, discuss, apply, and celebrate that scientific quest. For, next to love, the scientific quest is the most powerful protector of hope.

– Roderic Gorney, Professor of Psychiatry, UCLA

My comments on defending science were recently included in a collection of comments by signatories of the Defend Science Statement. Today, I thought right away to invite Vice President Gore to broaden his defense of climate related science to a full-throated endorsement of the scientific method. My emailed reply to Vice President Gore included the following.

Open Congratulations to Al Gore:

Congratulations, Mr. Vice President!

I would like to take this opportunity to encourage you and everyone to broadly embrace and defend science, in this and in every endeavor.

See comments from me and others on defending science at:

http://www.defendscience.org/fund_signatory_comments.pdf

Please sign and share the Defend Science Statement at:

http://defendscience.org/

Your compatriot,

Brian Glanz

Al Gore’s announcement email, Subject: I am deeply honored, in full text:

Dear Brian,

I am deeply honored to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. This award is even more meaningful because I have the honor of sharing it with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change–the world’s pre-eminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis–a group whose members have worked tirelessly and selflessly for many years. We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level.

My wife, Tipper, and I will donate 100 percent of the proceeds of the award to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan non-profit organization that is devoted to changing public opinion in the U.S. and around the world about the urgency of solving the climate crisis.

Thank you,

Al Gore

In 1990, Carl Sagan presented to the world the most distant image yet taken of ourselves, from 4 billion miles. The image was of a pale blue dot, suspended in a sun beam.

The book Pale Blue Dot was published by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan in 1994. That was also when I first met Sagan, while I was a student in the College of Engineering at Cornell University.

This film was a finalist at the Portobello Film Festival in London 2007, and at the Concorto Film Festival in Italy 2007. Compare it to the original, the classic, Sagan himself reading from Pale Blue Dot: