….and the award for the stupidest science story I’ve seen in months goes to LiveScience.com for “Cave Men Loved to Sing“, in which we’re told that our cave-dwelling ancestors used echo-location:
With only dull light available from a torch, which couldn’t be carried into very narrow passages, the ancient hunters had to use their [...]
No doubt you’ve all seen some of the hype surrounding the new book, Big Brain: The Origins and Future of Human Intelligence by Gary Lynch and Richard Granger. The book argues that a long-extinct hominin species, the “Boskops”, were much smarter then we are:
Our big brains, our language ability, and our intelligence make [...]
The reviews of Roland Emmerich’s new movie, 10,000 B.C. (“A prehistoric epic that follows a young mammoth hunter’s journey through uncharted territory to secure the future of his tribe”) are starting to come through, and it sounds like a bigger crapfest than Apocalypto:
In 10,000 BC, you’ve got Egyptian pyramids being built [...]
The NY Times meets some Young Earth/Creationist Geologists, and discusses the increasing ‘respectability’ of Flood-Geology:
On a muggy afternoon in July, a group of geologists from around the country put on some bug spray and fanned out along one of Ohio’s richest fossil beds. The rock walls were slippery and steep at points, and some [...]
In short: John Scalzi takes a day trip to the Creationism Museum, and mercilessly mocks the stupidity therein. The photos he took are amazing, and includes what may just possibly be the coolest photo ever:
This just in – feminism wiped out Neanderthals!
Among Neanderthals, hunting big beasts was women’s work as well as men’s, so it’s a safe bet that female hunters got stomped, gored, and worse with appalling frequency. And a high casualty rate among fertile women – the vital “reproductive core” of a tiny population – [...]
Here’s a new occasional segment that I’m going to run on Henry: The Stupid Science Terminology Award. This week, the award goes to the National Geographic News, for inflicting upon us the nausea-inducing term “brainbow”:
In their effort to tease out the details of connections in the nervous system, Lichtman and his colleagues [...]
James “I discovered *DNA” Watson has stuck his foot in his mouth (again) by saying that he’s “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”…“people who have to deal with [...]
Ok. Time for a catch up post. There’s just not enough hours in the day…
1: Native Language Governs The Way Toddlers Interpret Speech Sounds:
Toddlers are learning language skills earlier than expected and by the age of 18 months understand enough of the lexicon of their own language to recognize how speakers [...]
Arnold Zwicky over at LanguageLog has an interesting post on the naming of cars, and why “Evolution” may not have been a good idea for Mitsubishi’s “flagship” sports car:
The name “Evolution” was probably chosen to suggest progress, but it occurred to Swarthmore biologist Colin Purrington a little while back to wonder whether the [...]
