Infinite Stupidity Now, it sounds incredible. It sounds insane. It sounds mad. Because we think of ourselves as so intelligent. But when we really ask ourselves about the nature of any evolutionary process, we have to ask ourselves whether [our mechanism for generating ideas] could be any better than random, because in fact, random might be the best strategy. Mark Pagel previously,
edge.org previously
posted by victors
on Jan 8, 2012 -
33 comments
SEED. "An egg and an apple build competing broadcast towers that vie for the attention of a transistor radio."
[Via]
posted by homunculus
on Dec 25, 2011 -
7 comments
Did the disappearance of the elephant caused the rise of modern man? Humans are not good at extracting energy from plants or converting protein to energy. Without fire to allow for better conversion, fat was a vital part of early man's diet. Elephants being slower and larger than many other prey was a prime hunting target. When the number of elephants declined, man had to find other sources. Hunting smaller, faster prey resulted in a change in human evolution. Man became lighter and their brain size increased to handle the requirements for hunting enough animals to provide the necessary fat.
posted by 2manyusernames
on Dec 14, 2011 -
17 comments
You have certainly seen a
Tree of Life at some point
(not the movie; the diagram of the evolution of species). Originally conceived of
by Lamarck (though there is
some interesting debate on this), it was Darwin himself who popularized the concept,
first in his notebook, and next as the
only image in
The Origin of the Species. Though they have inspired
beautiful illustrations, and a
large and fascinating web project to map the tree, trees of life remain problematic since
taxonomy can be complicated. One truly stunning way of redrawing the tree is the
Hillis Plot, which maps 3,000 species by genetic similarity.
You can print out the amazing illustration here, but, even though the Plot only contains 0.18% of named species, it needs to be 1.5 meters square to be legible. The Hillis Plot has been appearing in art, notably (and meta-rifficly)
this one carved into an English oak, and, of course,
tattoos.
posted by blahblahblah
on Nov 10, 2011 -
19 comments
How to hatch a dinosaur: 'So making a chicken egg hatch a baby dinosaur should really just be an issue of erasing what evolution has done to make a chicken. Every cell of a turkey carries the blueprints for making a tyrannosaurus, but the way the plans get read changes over time as the species evolves.' [
via]
posted by dhruva
on Oct 7, 2011 -
54 comments
Collective violence, extending from riots to warfare, presents a challenge to our ordinary understanding of free will. Actions that would rarely be taken by an individual on their own seem to be embraced when supported by a larger group. This can occur in societies ranging from the communist regime of Soviet Russia to the capitalist free market of modern day England. Given this commonality, perhaps the collective violence of a riot can be best understood as a biological event in which evolved cognitive responses encounter a unique environmental threat. And if that is the case, do individuals caught up in such incidents have any choice in the matter?
Freedom to Riot: an evolutionary perspective on collective violence.
posted by Rumple
on Sep 6, 2011 -
49 comments
"The web today is a growing universe of interlinked web pages and web apps, teeming with videos, photos, and interactive content. What the average user doesn't see is the interplay of web technologies and browsers that makes all this possible.
The color bands in this visualization represent the interaction between web technologies and browsers, which brings to life the many powerful web apps that we use daily." By
Hyperakt for
Chrome's 3rd birthday.
posted by chavenet
on Sep 4, 2011 -
29 comments
Evolution 2011, the largest fighting game tournament in the world, starts tomorrow. On its eve, a documentary chronicling one player's run last year,
FOCUS, was released.
[more inside]
posted by apathy0o0
on Jul 28, 2011 -
33 comments
Larry Gonick is a veteran American cartoonist best known for his delightful comic-book guides to science and history, many of which have previews online. Chief among them is his long-running
Cartoon History of the Universe (later
The Cartoon History of the Modern World), a sprawling multi-volume opus documenting everything from the Big Bang to the Bush administration. Published over the course of three decades, it takes a truly global view -- its time-traveling Professor thoroughly explores not only familiar topics like Rome and World War II but the oft-neglected stories of Asia and Africa, blending caricature and myth with careful scholarship (cited by
fun illustrated bibliographies) and tackling even the most obscure events
with intelligence and wit. This savvy satire carried over to Gonick's
Zinn-by-way-of-
Pogo chronicle
The Cartoon History of the United States, along with a bevy of
Cartoon Guides to other topics, including
Genetics, Computer Science, Chemistry, Physics, Statistics, The Environment, and (yes!)
Sex. Gonick has also maintained a few sideprojects, such as
a webcomic look at Chinese invention,
assorted math comics (
previously), the
Muse magazine mainstay
Kokopelli & Co. (featuring the shenanigans of his
"New Muses"), and
more. See also
these lengthy interview snippets, linked
previously. Want more? Amazon links to the complete oeuvre inside!
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Jun 6, 2011 -
29 comments
Ants are one of the most abundant groups on earth, but, curiously, not a lot of things eat them. Yes, there are anteaters (who also eat a lot of termites), and some lizards specialize on ants, but the little critters are full of noxious chemicals and pheromones that put them way down on the list of predators’ preferred foodstuffs.
Because of this, many other insects and arthropods have evolved to mimic ants, taking advantage of the aversion of predators to anything antlike.
These mimics are called myrmecomorphs, and they’re the subject of a really nice eponymous feature in this week’s Current Biology.
[via]
posted by AceRock
on May 12, 2011 -
22 comments
Big
dust up about kin selection. Biologists E.O. Wilson, Martin Nowak, and Corina Tarnita publish a paper attacking kin selection, the idea that the reproductive success of a gene is influenced not only by its effects on its carrier, but also by its effects on related individuals (kin) carrying the same gene. 130 some odd other
biologists respond.
Richard Dawkins
weighs in. Some talking bears offer a
summary.
[via]
posted by AceRock
on Apr 17, 2011 -
46 comments
Dare 2 Share Ministries offers
profiles and tips on how to "share your faith" with fourteen different types of friends a teen Christian might have, such as
Andy the Atheist,
Marty the Mormon,
Jenna the Jew,
Sid the Satanist,
Mo the Muslim and
Willow the Wiccan. If none of those strategies work, they also offer
articles on how to "use the buzz in current teen culture to initiate God-talk with your friends" by "sharing your faith" through
Indiana Jones,
Halo 3,
Brokeback Mountain,
Kung Fu Panda and
The X Files.
posted by jardinier
on Apr 8, 2011 -
299 comments
Swimming around in a mixture of language and matter, humans occupy a particular evolutionary niche mediated by something we call 'consciousness'. To Professor Nicholas Humphrey we're made up of "
soul dust": "a kind of theatre... an entertainment which we put on for ourselves inside our own heads." But just as that theatre is directed by the relationship between language and matter,
it is also undermined by it. It all depends how you think it.
posted by 0bvious
on Feb 4, 2011 -
17 comments
Watch your computer design a 2 dimensional car. What happens when you give a computer, instead of a predefined function to run, a set of parameters, a goal, and the ability to
mutate those parameters? You get a
genetic algorithm. At its core, genetic algorithms can best be described as Darwinian evolution of computer functions. Is it better to use a streamlined, wide-wheel-base motorcycle to cross terrain, or something that looks like a cross between a fish and a tank? This simplistic simulation shows just what's going to cause the rise of Skynet.
posted by mark242
on Jan 28, 2011 -
90 comments
“NASA will hold a
news conference at 2 p.m. EST (11am PST) on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.” Watch it
HERE live.
[more inside]
posted by Sprocket
on Dec 1, 2010 -
102 comments
