More news from the Shire April 29, 2008
Posted by argotnavis in Archaeology, News.Tags: blogs, conferences, Flores, John Hawks, physical anthropology
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God, I bet physical anthropologists just hate when people use titles like “More news from the Shire” for blog entries about Homo floresiensis. Anyway, I wish I'd been at the AAPAs this year (via, again). It must have been pretty intense. I imagine that this was one of those “boisterous” conferences my professors were always talking about. It'll be interesting to see how this whole thing turns out.
On a related note, John Hawks blogged last week on Peter Brown's response to claims that LB 1 has a filling. That appears to be basically resolved; as Hawks said, “That's enough to convince me.”
By the way, in addition to the two posts I just linked to, Hawks has an extensive archive of posts on H. floresiensis. You know, in case you're curious.
Saving the planet without doing any work March 29, 2008
Posted by argotnavis in Humor, News.Tags: Dan, Google, green, John Hawks, slacktivism
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I just read this story from the BBC on this year's Earth Hour. For those who are unfamiliar with the event, it basically involves turning the lights off for one hour at night. Once a year. I, personally, think it's great that they're trying to build awareness for this, although I think doing things like turning off the lights one hour a year really reinforces the idea that we can continue living exactly the way we are and still save the planet by doing virtually nothing.
What got me about the article was this quote: “In its own contribution, the Google web search engine is putting a dark background on its homepage.” This made me laugh, of course, because of Blackle, the “energy saving” search engine that achieved mild internet fame last year. Dan blogged about it last year, and pointed out, rightly, that for LCD screens, it saves roughly no power at all. I decided to actually check out Google's page on Earth Hour, and found that they have this to say about it: “As to why we don't do this permanently – it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display.” Apparently the Official Google Blog had something to say about this last year, too. Good to know.
Also amusing was the fact that the second most read story on the BBC at the time I read the Earth Day story was this two-and-a-half year old story about that python that died after eating a gator. Why yes, someone did write a blog entry about that. Two men enter. No man leaves. Rated R.
Anthropologists are basically awesome March 12, 2008
Posted by argotnavis in Archaeology, TV/Movies.Tags: archaeoblog, awesome, blogs, Flores, internet, John Hawks, physical anthropology
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I'm ashamed to admit it, but I had actually never read, or heard of, John Hawks' very entertaining (and educational!) blog before today. I discovered it this afternoon (via) and spent most of my free time at work reading through it. If you're at all interested in biological anthropology or human evolution, it's a pretty good read. His latest post on LB 1, for example, is pretty cool if you've been following the Hobbit news lately (edit: I guess I should point out that he has written, uh, a bit more about the Hobbits, too).
I, of course, was mostly drawn to his TV reviews. Here are some highlights:
The post that drew me in was his review of 10,000 BC drawn from the IMDb message board (apparently IMDb is the new YouTube). The “hey guys, the correct term is BP” comment really made this one for me.
His comparison of Apocalypto and Collapse sums up much more elegantly than I've ever been able to my basic opinion of Jared Diamond's writings on anthropology (see also).
This older entry is pretty good.
I enjoyed this even older entry simply because the discussion about “race” reminded me of something my skeletal analysis professor said: “Remember, the police generally are not interested in lectures on the socially constructed nature of race. They really just want you to help them figure out who those bones belonged to.”
This entry is easily one of my favorites.
Also, it's not in the TV reviews section, but I always think it's cool when I see reviews of papers by people I used to say hello to in the hall, such as this one. Even if that paper was over 20 years old at the time.
Anyway, the point is, he has a pretty cool blog. Someday I hope to be at least that cool. Perhaps I'll send him an e-mail and let him know . . . probably not, but hey.
