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Grover Krantz at the museum
Here's another scene from the Smithsonian this weekend, this one of the mounted skeletons of the famous anthropologist Grover Krantz and his canine companion, forever now helping to educate: Tags:...
View ArticleSpace news
From Alexis Madrigal: "Hey, brother, can you spare a Hubble?" Now, we get word from the Washington Post that the Department of Defense has gifted two better-than-Hubble telescopes to NASA. That's...
View ArticleQuote: Geertz on the variable
From Clifford Geertz' 1965 essay, "The impact of the concept of culture on the concept of man" [1]: The notion that unless a cultural phenomenon is empirically universal it cannot reflect anything...
View ArticleThe Stalin Age diet
Synopsis: I find totalitarian diet control to be unpalatable.Dan Lieberman, writing in the New York Times, supports the Bloomburg soda ban with a call for additional regulations banning: "Evolution's...
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The anthropologist and the kurgans
Synopsis: I recount some of my summer 2011 trip to the Altai, focusing on Afanasievo and Pazyryk archaeologyThere are many stories from my travels last summer that I haven't yet told here. I've been...
View ArticleFly larva growing in 3-D
I don't have any comments on this, it's just cool: "Fruitfly development, cell by cell" The groups behind the two articles both chose D.melanogaster embryos to image. “We understand how the fly embryo...
View ArticlePaleoanthropologist Phillip V. Tobias dies
I want to pass along the news that Phillip Tobias, one of the world's leading paleoanthropologists and anatomists, died earlier this week. The Gauteng Tourism Authority has run a very nice short...
View ArticleThanks for donations!
I just want to take a moment to thank all of you who have made donations to the site through the PayPal link. I don't get notified about all of these when they happen, so I don't have a chance to send...
View ArticleAlzheimer's long read
The New York Times has a powerful story about the genetics of early onset Alzheimer's disease, by Gina Kolata: "An Alzheimer's gene: one family's saga". Gary was pretty sure it was his family whose...
View ArticleCalculus microbially
Molecular archaeologist Christina Warinner gave a TED talk and the main ideas are now in a CNN article: "Why your dental plaque is valuable". By applying advanced DNA sequencing and protein mass...
View ArticleAfrasia djijidae: coolest monkey name ever
Ann Gibbons explains the importance of the new possible stem anthropoid fossil teeth from Myanmar: "Out of Asia? New Primate Fossils Pose Origin Riddle". The four molars were enough to show...
View ArticlePhylo, the genomics game
NOVA describes how some genomics problems are being solved using computer gaming: "Gaming and genomics". "When a computer tries to solve the problem, it will always try to solve it the same way – the...
View ArticleOnline education and Silicon Valley
The Wall Street Journal profiles computer scientist and AI researcher Sebastian Thrun. The interview discusses his online education startup, Udacity: In the midst of this, there was a slight hitch, Mr....
View ArticleHuman tetras
Ah, I was just writing about the evolution of color vision and this interesting article came across my Twitter (via Ed Yong): "The humans with super human vision". What would it be like to see through...
View ArticlePeerJ set to launch
PeerJ founder Peter Binfield answers questions for Publishers' Weekly: "Scholarly Publishing 2012: Meet PeerJ ". First of all, we have no intention of becoming a social network, or any kind of...
View ArticleDorothy Garrod remembrance
Cambridge has produced an article about the accomplishments of archaeologist Dorothy Garrod, the first female professor in the institution: "The groundbreaking female archaeologist". Fingers drummed,...
View ArticleThrowback to earlier dopes
In its continuing series of Olympics lead-ups, the Guardian enters this one: "Sports doping, Victorian style". The story covers the great scandal of coca leaf chewing and its effects on the study of...
View ArticleIs "science literacy" a red herring?
In Slate, Daniel Sarewitz commits science communication heresy: "The Gambler and the Scientist". I raise these points to challenge the idea of "science literacy." We have this belief that unless a...
View ArticleGuinea pigs in experiment and history
Daniel Engber in Slate: "Test-Tube Piggies: How did the guinea pig become a symbol of science?" The guinea pig's celebrity (and infamy) dates to the late 1800s and the sundry reputations of the early...
View Article"Rewriting history in a way that flatters our volition"
Alex Stone, author of Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind, gives a short account of the psychological insights from magic tricks in the NY Times: "Your...
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