Cool Archaeological Stories!

I stumbled across a couple of cool archaeological stories today.

Interesting Science News

A number of items, ranging from paleontology and developmental genetics to osteology and primatology caught my attention this week.

Einsteinian Relativity At A Personal Scale

This is really cool!: Scientists have known for decades that time passes faster at higher elevations — a curious aspect of Einstein’s theories of relativity that previously has been measured by comparing clocks on the earth’s surface and a high-flying rocket. Now, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have measured this [...]

Censoring Science and Nobody Cares

I don’t know why a bigger fuss isn’t being made over this.

ScienceBlogs Jumps The Shark

Pepsi has a blog. What’s next? HuffPo Woo meistering? Update 1: Okay, I have to admit that Badger3k makes a good point: If SciBlogs can host Nesbitt without losing credibility, what is a corporate “blog” going to do to it?

Interesting Science News From Around The Web

Ruminant diets and the Miocene extinction of European great apes in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. From the abstract: The successful evolutionary radiations of European hominoids and pliopithecoids came to an end during the Late Miocene. Using ruminant diets as environmental proxies, it becomes possible to detect variations in vegetation over time with the [...]

An Open Letter To The New York Times

Dear Publishers of the New York Times, This is why newspapers are going the way of the dodo bird. Sincerely, Afarensis (Hat Tip to John Hawks)

Australopithecus sediba: Was the Embargo Broken

I will have more to say about the find itself this evening (hopefully), in the meantime time there have been more than a few accusations of someone breaking the embargo on the story. Ivan Oransky at Embargo Watch looks at the issue. Turns out it was a case of a reporter doing some interesting detective [...]

NPR Science Friday: Update

As I have previously mentioned NPR’s Science Friday is coming to St. Louis on March 12th. Last I heard tickets were all spoken for but earlier this week a pair of tickets arrived in the mail. So, Mrs. afarensis and I will be attending.

NPR’s Science Friday Is Coming To St. Louis

NPR’s Science Friday is coming to the St. Louis Science Center according to a “new” story in the St. Louis Post Dispatch. Unfortunately, tickets to the event are already sold out. Sigh.

Damn! Fox News Is Stupid!

Via Highly Allochthonous comes this horrible story from Fox News. The story is supposed to be about lung cancer in China caused by people burning coal that formed 250 million years ago. The story veers strait into stupidity in the first paragraph:

Interesting Evolution and Anthropology News

There is a bunch of interesting news relating to evolution and anthropology. Ed Yong discusses and interesting new study, published in PNAS, on coloration in lizards at White Sands, New Mexico. I have touched on the subject in a previous post. The paper can be found here for those who have access.

Dangerous Ltd and the Discovery Channel Quote-mine a Paleontologist

Normally quote-mining is a behavior one associates with the creationist movement. So it is shocking when the Discovery channel and Dangerous Ltd (makers of Clash of Dinosaurs) engages in the same behavior. The main culprit here is Dangerous Ltd which made the show…

I’m Home Now, Thank You For All Your Kind Wishes

They let go a little bit a go. I’d like to thank all the people who responded so kindly to my daughter’s post. First thing I did when I got home was take a loooong hot shower. So here is the story. Along about Wednesday of last week I started coming down with what I [...]

Gaah! This is Horrible Reporting

ABC News is pandering to creationists in this really bad article on Ardipithecus ramidus. Basically it boils down to, and I kid you not this is a direct quote: