I was thinking something like “Imma let you finish being stupid and all, but first I want to review the preponderance of evidence for evolution. But you may also like to see Genie Scott’s take on it:

The heretofore unknown events that led to an investigation of Dr. Marc Hauser of Harvard University, which led to a recently completed investigation of Hauser’s scientific conduct.

You cann read the article here. I hope you can access that document (it may be fully or partly behind a firewall). At the moment, I’m out in the middle of the forest so I can’t summarize it for you, but let me know if it is not generally viewable and I’ll rectify that later assuming I am not eaten by bears.

Don’t be a dick.
Continue reading Phil Plait’s Famous Speech →

Well, not yet, but wait for it. This story and this story describe “tracking” of the Democratic Candidate by the Teabagging Republican, which is also discussed by Jim in this story from the point of view of an insider.

Do check out this series of guest posts at Quiche Moraine, written by by Jim Emery, which detail the events associated with a recent campaign for the US Congress in a hotly contested district in Minnesota.

• Inside the Political Process: Jim Emery and the Madia Campaign
• Inside the Political Process: The Role of Communication
• Inside the Political Process: Framing the Debate

Elvis In 1977 I drove from Nashville down to Memphis with no particular plans regarding Memphis. It was just a place to stop on the way to Hot Springs, Arkansas. I had the name of a cheap motel and a vague idea of where it was. But I kept getting lost. Every time I came to about where this major street was supposed to be, there was a different street there. What the hell was going on?

About the fifth time I came to the right/wrong location, it dawned on me … “Elvis Presley Boulevard” must have just recently been named as such …

That, I realized, could also explain another strange thing I was seeing….
Continue reading The King Is Dead. Still. →

A typical adult human recognizes that the image one sees in a mirror is oneself. We do not know how much training a mirror-naive adult requires to do this, but we think very little.

When a typical adult macaque (a species of monkey) looks in the mirror, it sees another monkey. Typical adult male macaques stuck in a cage with a mirror will treat the image as a fellow adult male macaque until you take the mirror out of the cage.

(Experiments that attempt to determine if an individual can recognize themselves in the mirror ultimately derive from what is known as the Gallup Test, after Gordon Gallup, who first painted spots on the foreheads of primates to see which individuals .. of which species … figure out that you can inspect one’s own forehead by looking at one’s face in the mirror.)

A typical adult chimpanzee will be startled by the mirror on first encountering it, or show curiosity, maybe exhibit bewilderment. But within a very short period of time, the chimpanzee will realize that this is an image of self.

A chimpanzee that understands that this is an image of self will use the mirror to inspect his or her own body, to see things never seen before, will identify bits of lint or paint stuck to the face and groom them away, and so on. Placed with a group of mirror-naive chimpanzees, the chimp that understands mirrors already may try to freak out the other chimps by showing it the mirror. They seem to get a kick out of this.

Magpies do this too.

Continue reading The Magpie in the Mirror →

Stephen Jay Gould and David Pilbeam wrote a paper in 1974 that was shown ten years later to be so totally wrong in its conclusions that it has fallen into an obscurity not usually linked to either Gould or Pilbeam. However, they were actually right in ways that they could not have anticipated. And even if they were not right, this paper still has much to contribute, including the opening words of that publication in Science, which are very much worthy of consideration for many reasons:

Continue reading Size and Scaling in Hominid Evolution →

Lucy, Ardi, Frodo, and us: what old bones and new genetics are revealing today.

Who are these people and can we call them family? Listen to Greg Laden and Lynn Fellman discuss how recent fossil and tool discoveries are changing the shape of our family tree.

A report earlier this week showed evidence for stone tool use at 3.39 million years ago — much earlier than previously thought.

In addition to ancient bones and tools, genetics is filling some of the pre-historic knowledge gaps. For instance, genetic material from 40,000 year old bones show that some of us are one to four percent Neanderthal.

As a biological anthropologist, Greg Laden has insight into how the recent finds are challenging intrenched ideas. He’ll talk about what new trends are changing our understanding of human evolution. Taking us through past and recent discoveries, Greg’s engaging way of thinking critically about the mixing of bones and genes reveal a remarkable and controversial family story.

Lynn Fellman is a member of Minnesota Atheists and an independent artist inspired by evolution and genetics. You can see her work on display at UROC now through December. Commissioned by the University of Minnesota, the exhibit are DNA portraits of Native American, African American, Laos and others from the Northside community.

More details and links to Lynn’s site and other sites HERE.

A fairly accurate and well done, and more up to date, account of what has gone on with the Marc Hauser investigation is here, in a piece punished in the New York Times by Nicholas Wade: In Harvard Lab Inquiry, a Raid and a 3-Year Wait.

It is very clear that the Fourth Estate is on the verge of a detailed and clear description of events.

Continue reading The Marc Hauser Maneno. Truth Will Out. →

Wanted: A shortcut key to zip backwards to the last mispelleded word in a text document. (And, forward too would be nice, but backwards is most important.) Next time you are writing stuff, think about how cool this would be.

See the whole “WANTED” list here.

I will be interviewed on Sunday Morning by Lynn Fellman on Minnesota Atheist Radio. We’ll be covering the recent and almost recent news in several areas of human evolution, and discussing “Lucy, Ardi, Frodo, and us: what old bones and new genetics are revealing today”

… but since news from the field comes in so quickly, we may never get to our intended topic, since we can also talk about monkeys and very ancient cut marks on stone tools.

Tune in on Radio 950 KTNF Twin Cities, or catch the Podcast later. I don’t think there is a streaming thingie.

… which begs a number of different questions that I will think but not say out loud.
Continue reading Women have more sex than men, and iPhone using women have the most sex →