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Anthropology, Evolution and Science
Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called Transitions:The Evolution of Life His previous blog can be found here.
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"Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul..."
Mark Twain
"Ideology is a poor substitute for rational thought..."
Afarensis
"It isn't faith that makes good science...it's curiosity"
Prof. Jacob Barnhardt, The Day the Earth Stood Still
"This man wishes to be accorded the same privilege as a sponge. He wishes to think!"
Clarence Darrow, Inherit the Wind
"...I become fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason..."
Klaatu, The Day the Earth Stood Still
"I want you to grab life by its little bunny ears and get in its face..."
The Simpsons
"This is between me and the vegetable..."
Seymour Krelborn, The Little Shop of Horrors
"There are bad laws and cruel laws and the people who enforce them are both bad and cruel..."
Thea, Isle of the Dead
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." Jean- Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation
"But the limit of tolerance for these human foibles is obtained when the proponent of a questionable scientific doctrine endeavors to maintain it against all possible odds by misrepresentation, misinformation and suppression of contradictory data, and by insinuating unfairness in opponents of his views."
Franz Weidenreich, Morphology of Solo Man
"Man stands alone in the universe, a unique product of a long, unconcious, impersonal material process with unique understanding and potentialities. These he owes to no one but himself, and it is to himself that he is responsible. He is not the creature of uncontrollable and undeterminable forces, but his own master. He can and must decide and manage his own destiny."
George Gaylord Simpson, Life of the Past
Yeah he's the Dick to the Dawk to the phd,
he's smarter than you he's got a science degree!
Yeah he's the Dick to the Dawk to the phd,
he's smarter than you he's got a science degree!
Unknown
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
Frederich Nietzsche
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
The Declaration of Independence
Category: Bacteria
The bacteria were found in the Rancho La Brea tar pits, according to Science Daily. Several things serve to make this story interesting. First:...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 8:28 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Bacteria
I don't know how I missed this, but Science Daily has an interesting story on the Out of Africa theory....
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 3:14 PM • 3 Comments •
Category: Bacteria
A lot has been written about the impact of global warming, but an article on ABC News discusses an aspect I had never thought about before. The article discusses the public health aspects of global warming. The article mentions a...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 10:32 AM • 2 Comments •
Category: Bacteria
A while back I wrote this post on efforts to sequence the DNA of sea going bacteria. Research in that area has continued and new findings have recently been reported. They are quite fascinating - so much so I am...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 9:20 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Biology
By now, most of us are familiar with MRSA or methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus. The staph bacteria is pretty common on human skin but doesn't become a problem until it finds an entry through the flesh [afarensis had an old...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 7:57 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Bacteria
John J. Dennehy (Yale University), Nicholas A. Friedenberg (Dartmouth College), Robert D. Holt (University of Florida), and Paul E. Turner (Yale University), "Viral ecology and the maintenance of novel host use" http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/499381 Infectious diseases often mysteriously appear and disappear in...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 11:59 PM • 3 Comments •
Category: Genetics
This is fascinating: It's a case of evolutionary detective work. Biology researchers at Lewis & Clark College and the University of Arizona have found evidence for an ancient transfer of a toxin between ancestors of two very dissimilar organisms--spiders and...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 3:04 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Bacteria
Those of my readers who followed me from my old blog may remember this post on magnetic bacteria. In it I discuss how a new technique called cyroelectron tomography has allowed researchers to gain new insights into how magnetosomes are...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 9:35 PM • 9 Comments •
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