Dodo redemption

dr. dolittle — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 23:17:02 +0000

Dodo redemption

Image of dodo bird skeleton and model By BazzaDaRambler - Oxford University Museum of Natural History ... dodo - dead apparently.Uploaded by FunkMonk, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20054563

Using computed tomography (CT) scans of an intact skull, researchers have discovered that extinct dodo birds (Raphus cucullatus), despite having a rather silly name, were actually pretty smart. Well, as smart as a pigeon at least, and pigeons are pretty smart. Dodos likely also had a good sense of smell based on measurements of the olfactory portion of the skull. This sense probably came in handy when hunting for food as these were flightless birds.

Researcher Eugenia Gold of Stony Brook University commented in Live Science that the brain was an appropriate size for their body, neither too large or small. In fact, the ratio of the brain to body size was similar to a modern day pigeon.

Source:

Live Science

dr. dolittle Sun, 02/28/2016 - 18:17

TEDTalks: My Quest for the Dodo Bird, and Other Obsessions

grrlscientist — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 05:59:46 +0000

TEDTalks: My Quest for the Dodo Bird, and Other Obsessions

tags: TEDTalks, ornithology, dodo bird, Adam Savage, streaming video

Adam Savage talks about his fascination with the dodo bird, and how it led him on a strange and surprising double quest. It's an entertaining adventure through the mind of a creative obsessive. [15:39]

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts.

grrlscientist Thu, 06/04/2009 - 01:59

Tags

That's freaking awesome. I frequently get obsessed by ideas and projects, and love Adam Savage's method of having a single place to dump ideas and info. Mine often are scattered through multiple notebooks, sketchbooks, bookmarks on my browser, and piles of paper on my desk. I also share his appreciation for people who take photos with a ruler or some common object for scale included!

Adam savage pisses me off. You know why? He constantly reaches out for comradery with fellow 'geeks' by invoking heterocentrism. He's misogynist and bigoted against LGBT persons.

In this video alone, he takes time out of the lecture to deride a woman for having plump hands. "Oh, at least I hope that's a woman's hand" -- simultaneously implying that if a man who painted his fingernails gave him a picture, that would be just so icky.

Mythbusters sure is full of the same kind of crap. For example in one episode, Tori is to be agitated by receiving a massage from a man. The massaage places was called the "torture tent."

Scienceblogs has recently been writing an OK series on sexual violence, rape, and general sexist bullcrap called "silence is the enemy" -- not only is silence the enemy, but so are buttheads like Adam Savage.

I don't know much about Adam Savage, but I'll agree with Aerik about the gratuitous "at least I hope that's a woman's hand" comment. I couldn't stand to watch the whole video. The idea of someone selling a dodo's skull on eBay just made me incredibly sad. And the idea of someone coming at the whole sad history of dodo bird skeletons, let alone the dodo bird itself as a species and how we beat it into extinction in no time at all, as just an interesting object to be played around with and added to his collection of objects made me want to barf. That slide of the faux-dodo skeleton was, I thought, the apotheosis of what humans have done and are doing to species all over this planet, especially birds: wipe them out and turn them into interesting art objects for our pleasurable contemplation. This is my first encounter with Adam Savage, and, I hope, my last. If this is what counts as one of the world's leading thinkers and doers, I am sad for us all.

oh yeah Zuska, that's not nearly the end of it.

Every time they do a myth on mythbusters that has to do with a historical figure from another country, Adam just must break out an incredibly cliiche'd, stereotypical, xenophobic stereotyped voice and mannerism set. French, Australian, Asian (oh yeah he can't [refuses do] discern different Asian ethnicities apart besides slant-eyes and indians), you name it -- until he hits the continent of Africa, then suddenly it stops. At least, in front of the cameras?

Everybody but Jaime jumps in on the racist crap any time there's a myth originating on the continent of Asia. I can't stand to watch one of their "ninja" episodes. Ugh.

Adam Savage made a video responding to questions from users at Reddit.com. When I tried to ask questions, they did everything to hide them. Here is my list of questions for Adam Savage that he either didn't see or refused to answer.

* Why is it every time you do a cooking myth, you put on this amazingly bigoted stereotype french accent?

* What's with all your stereotyped, bigoted fake accents anyways? Why do you have to be dripping white privilege 24/7?

* Why is it you constantly use racist imagery and audio stereotypy of asians every time you do a "ninja" or "samurai" myth?

* Do you really not see how bigoted it was against homosexuals when you called the man-massage the "torture tent?" Seriously? How would you like it if somebody thought the idea of even non-sexual contact with a nerd, or anybody with glasses, or red-haired people, was called torture for a laugh?

* In a presentation about your dodo skeleton, you show a picture of a hand with painted fingernails and said "At least I hope that's a woman's hand" -- what, do you just totally get off on these bigoted comments against non-hetero, non-cisgendered people?

* In one episode you guys did the "don't tase me bro" joke. Stun guns are torture devices. When we electrocute people like that in interrogations, we break the Geneva conventions. Do you think that torture is funny? Don't you think that you owe the poor young man who suffered from the incident that started this meme an apology? Remember how totally unfunny it was when you got shocked with the thing in that ark of the covenant myth? See why this incident makes you a total douche?

* Do you realize what an a^^h^le all these incidents make you?