Greg Laden's Blog

Louise Leakey: Digging for humanity's origins

Category: Human Evolution

Posted by Greg Laden at 8:00 PM • 0 Comments

If the Civil War was not fought over slavery, then why did this happen?

Category: Civil War

On August 21, 1863 William C. Quantrill and a band of 450 proslavery yahoos raided Lawrence, Kansas and butchered 182 individuals, including children.

Quantrill and his men staged numerous raids into Kansas during the early part of the Civil War. He was quickly labeled an outlaw by the Union for his attacks on pro Union forces. He was involved in several skirmishes with Jayhawkers (pro Union guerilla bands) and eventually was made a Captain in the Confederate Army. His attitude towards his role in the Civil War drastically changed in 1862 when the Commander of the Department of Missouri, Major General Henry W. Halleck ordered that guerrillas such as Quantrill and his men would be treated as robbers and murderers, not normal prisoners of war. Before this proclamation, Quantrill acted as if he were a normal soldier adhering to principals of accepting enemy surrender. After this, he gave an order to give 'no quarter'.

Well, of course, he was a criminal and this 'excuse' is pitiful.

Read on »

Posted by Greg Laden at 4:52 PM • 9 Comments

When the big cat eats the black man

Category: Race and Racism

It was important that this man was thrown in jail. It is very bad that he is not spending more time there. Let me tell you why.

The South African man convicted of feeding one of his ex-workers to the lions is due to be freed on parole shortly, after three years in jail.

Mark Scott-Crossley was originally given a life sentence for murder but this was reduced after a judge said there was no proof the man was alive. [at the time the victim was thrown into the lion cage]

The remains of Nelson Chisale's body were found in the lion enclosure, causing a national outcry.

The case highlighted the racial tensions in rural South Africa.

BBC

I'm been chastised (by white South Africans) for what I'm about to say, but I'm sticking to my guns. (Metaphorical guns, that is.) I have a story you need to hear, though there is a bit of an introduction:

Read on »

Posted by Greg Laden at 9:53 AM • 9 Comments

Examining Expelled

Category: Expelled!

How many things are wrong with this?

Posted by Greg Laden at 9:09 PM • 14 Comments

This image does NOT need a caption

Category: Politics

An Ossetian protester holds a poster parodying US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at a rally outside Nato headquarters in Brussels.

Posted by Greg Laden at 8:20 PM • 2 Comments

The future of desktop computing

Category: Linux

The Linutop is a tiny Linux computer that you stick onto the back of your flat screen monitor (and hook it to the monitor, obviously), plug in, and go. It makes no noise, produces very little heat, uses hardly any electricity (eight watts) and seems to be reasonably powered. It cost about 300 bucks.

There are things it won't do. The system is solid state, which means it is totally secure but upgrading would not be done in the usual way. I believe this computer is what you want to use if you are not storing data or if all your data is stored on line.

But for public computers in internet cafes or hotels, as your second computer in your home network, etc. this may be just the thing.

Check it out.

Posted by Greg Laden at 6:01 PM • 8 Comments

Cosmos is on iTunes

Category: Cosmos

Cosmos, the TV show by Carl Sagen, as in:

Anyway, Cosmos is now available on iTunes.

If you click this, it will open your iTunes store. So you may not want to click it. Up to you.

Posted by Greg Laden at 2:23 PM • 3 Comments

Blogospherics

Category: Blogospherics

A Field Guide to Surreal Botany

The world of surreal botany has long remained hidden - since the 18th Century, this field of study was often derided even by trailblazing naturalists such as Carolus Linnaeus and Joseph Banks.

What are they doing in the Olympics with Honey? (Not eating it, or this would not be interesting.) Here.

I live in a working class trailer-trashy neighborhood with a fair amount of crime (for the US). Most of the criminals are Mexican or White, because most of the people are Mexican or White. The last time somebody killed someone else outright anywhere near here it was an old white guy ... a gun nut .... blowing a young teenager in half with a gun he kept by his bed. The kid had entered what he thought was an abandoned house on a dare. There was no communication .... the old man sat quietly waiting for the figure he saw moving in the dark to come close enough, then he pulled the trigger. His neighbors, all white, lauded his bravery.

So this made me laugh. (but not funny ha ha):

Read on »

Posted by Greg Laden at 1:41 PM • 10 Comments

The Magpie in the Mirror

Category: Behavioral Biology • Birds • Evolutionary Biology • Language • primates

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.

Read on »

Posted by Greg Laden at 1:00 PM • 21 Comments