Blue Green and Between 5/5/25: How Nations Thrive, Dance Your PhD Winners, Observances in May, and More!

May 05, 2025

Landscape within Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. Image: National Park Service

Every week I share feature articles, news, tools, and actions to help everyone protect and enjoy our wonderful planet, from the sea to the sky and everything in between. In this week's issue:

Something Important: How Nations Thrive
Something New: Partisan Use of Science
Something to Enjoy: Winners of 2025's Dance Your PhD Contest
Something to Celebrate: Observances in May
Something Quick

#bluegreenbetween #theoceanisforeveryone #conservation #parksandrec

100% Human-Written, Always!

a 1926 map shows the countries of the world at the time in different colors — 1926 map of the world, courtesy of the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection

Something Important: How Nations Thrive

This article from The Economist (may be behind a paywall) shares the central theme of a new book called Peak Human by Johan Norberg about the commonality held by the golden ages of nations and cultures: openness. They supported their labor classes; valued new ideas and progressive thinking; engaged in free trade with neighbors; and welcomed visitors and immigrants. In short, they valued all the things that MAGA movement and other Bad Guys in this country hate and are trying to destroy. Writer and philosopher George Santayana wrote in 1905: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Anyone else think that the Bad Guys need to brush up on what really makes America great along with some basic lessons in civics and constitutionality?

a scientist stands with a special camera designed to observe the night sky atop a mountain with valleys and a river behind her — An NPS scientist installs a night sky monitoring camera in North Cascades National Park. Image: Li-Wei Hung/National Park Service

Something New: Partisan Use of Science

New research shared in Science shows a stark divide between the Democratic and Republican parties in how they use scientific literature. Congressional committees controlled by Democrats at nearly twice as likely to cite scientific papers as those by Republicans, and when Republican-overseen committees change to be controlled by Democrats, their use of citations increases by nearly 200 documents. The same trends are seen in partisan think tanks, with those that lean left five times more likely to use science than those that lean right. An important read!