Greg Laden is a biological anthropologist and science communicator. His research has covered North American prehistoric and historic archaeology and African archaeology and human ecology. He is an OpenSource and OpenAccess advocate. Greg's wife, Amanda, is a High School biology teacher, his daughter Julia is a world traveler and his son Huxley is 2.
Or not.
A repost
Much is made of the early use of stone tools by human ancestors. Darwin saw the freeing of the hands ad co-evolving with the use of the hands to make and use tools which co-evolved with the big brain. And that would make the initial appearance of stone tools in the archaeological…
Is chimpanzee food sharing an example of food for sex?
One of the most important transitions in human evolution may have been the incorporation of regular food sharing into the day to day ecology of our species or our ancestors. Although this has been recognized as potentially significant for…
... and made a real mess of the place when one of them spotted the jar of pickles on the counter. They fought over it until one of them had almost all the pickles and the other one had a number of bruises and a tiny fragment of one pickle that the other chimp dropped by accident.
A repost
That…
I had one of the most interesting dinners anyone has ever had.
I spent the evening at a specially prepared dinner, cooked by chef Chris Olson, and served in the diorama exhibit in the Bell Museum of Natural History. (There are no bells in the Bell Museum.) My job was to interrupt the happy…
Perhaps not what you'd think.
This is not about appeasement. It is about not being a racist slob.
Imagine a firing squad run by a relatively benevolent government (that happens to have not yet gotten rid of the death penalty). The squad consist of a dozen soldiers assigned to the duty. While…
The question is: how does a bird "know" when to stop laying? When is enough enough? When is the clutch (all of the eggs laid in one breeding attempt) complete? Most of ecological literature is focused on energetics: are birds getting hungry, have they depleted some important source of energy, etc.…
A federal appellate court has ruled against a Christian school in Murrieta which had sued the University of California over its refusal to accept high school courses that rely on the Bible as the unerring source of truth.
Details here.
Next step: Homeschoolers!
(Hat tip: August Berkshire)
The number of anti-Semitic incidents in the UK set a new high in 2009, the most since records began, according a report released on Friday.
This is from the Jerusalem Post.
The increase in antisemetic acts has been attributed at least in part to the aftermath of the December 27, 2008 Israeli…
Officials say no one was inside the Joshua Temple Firstborn Church on Sheriff Road this afternoon when a tree fell onto the roof of the church and the weight of the tree and snow made the roof collapse.
source
God is punishing these people for a reason. We just need to figure out why by reference…
Michel Bachmann has organized a teabagging protest in Washington to bring right wing voters from across the nation directly into armed and ready, whites of the eye contact with members of Congress to demand that they pass legislation to end the current Snobama that is paralyzing politics and…
The baby's sleeping right next to me right now, so I can't watch this, but I'm looking forward to it:
Recreational genetics and self-identity (09:11)
Do racial categories have a biological basis? (09:52)
Will gene sequencing undermine racism? (05:37)
Ways to make awesome babies (12:39)
Are most of…
.... because they always shoot first! And it turns out that reaction is faster than action, so the Marshall can shoot the Varmint Bad Guy, and the Sar Wars Storm Troopers didn't have a chance.
[Niels] Bohr was seemingly unhappy with the Tinseltown explanation that the good guy, who never shoots…
There is a certain religion in which a man utters the same prayer every morning on waking. He says "Thank you god, that I was not born a woman."
That sounds really bad. But then you read this and it all makes sense: What pregnant women won't tell you. Ever.
The world's highest energy atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), will run at half its maximum energy through 2011 and likely not at all in 2012. Officials at the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, had previously planned to run the gargantuan accelerator at 70% of maximum energy…
Stellarium is a realistic looking, feature rich OpenSource planetarium. The default catalog has over one half million stars, but you can get an extended catalog with over 200 million stars. All the usual information you expect in a planetarium is available. For the most part, navigation of the…
In a recent post, I earned the ire of many poorly informed denialist football fans when I noted an obvious fact: The strategy used by the New Orleans Saints to win the playoff game with the much more deserving Minnesota Vikings, which involved trying as hard as possible to knock the Quarterback…
Somebody is making fun of everybody: Things I Have Learned From Blogging at Science Blogs, Part I
Bad news: Why the denial camp is winning (and we're all losing) the climate wars
But then again: Rush Limbaugh: How the existence of god disproves climate change
