First full analysis of Ardi, a hominid skeleton pre-dating Lucy by 1.2 million years, has been released!

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All I have to say about this is that it is AWESOME:

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As a follow up to my post yesterday, here’s an article on the Cosmos site that details various efforts to preserve global crop diversity.  With more and more people relying on foods made from fewer and fewer plants (corn being the most common), we are increasingly vulnerable to widespread crop failure.  If that doomsday scenario fails to entice you, read it anyway:  it’s got a cool seed vault hidden 130 m down inside an ARCTIC MOUNTAIN.

With the recent popularity of books like Fast Food Nation (Schlosser) and Michael Pollan’s output, people are thinking about their diets in new and important ways.  Our diets affect nearly every aspect of our lives and, increasingly, the fate of our planet.  The western diet is changing rapidly while the diets of traditional and indigenous cultures that are intimately tied to their environment, health, culture, art, and industry are disappearing.

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While it seems to come  somewhat naturally for humans to anthropomorphise our animal friends (and enemies), and is most definitely a useful tool for humorists (people clothes on a monkey = always funny, ALWAYS), the truth of the matter is that we can never truly know what another species consciousness is like.  Many neuroscientists and philosophers working in Consciousness Studies would tell you that we can never truly know what other humans’ consciousness is like either.  But we do know now that animals probably do posess some kind of consciousness.  What sets us apart is our ability to be conscious of that consciousness and it’s processes and content.  We not only experience and think, we can think about thinking and experiencing.

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Science Life NY pal and renegade bee keeper Meg is featured in this video about amateur bee keeping in NYC from National Geographic.

Thanks to reader CN for sending along this short article- a small introduction to the study of brain chemistry, religious and mystical experience, and psychedelics:

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Recent research by keynote speaker Dr. James Hansen, Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, suggests the need to reduce atmospheric levels of CO2 concentrations from the current 385 parts per million (ppm) to 350 ppm or lower in order to avoid climate change. The question of “the safe upper limit” is perhaps the most important research question of the century.

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