From p. 1 of Risk, by John Adams:
The apprehension, determination and intense concentration that can be observed in the face of a toddler learning to toddle, the wails of frustration or pain if it goes wrong, and the beaming delight when it succeeds -- are all evidence that one is in the presence of a serious risk-management exercise.
Regular Althouse commenter Madison Man, on the story about Neandertal women deerstalkers:
I'm guessing that cognitively less advanced is anthrospeak for dumber. It must be too judgemental to call Neanderthals stupid -- even though that's what the adjective means!
From the Fortune sources:
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
Rachael Ray, in Entertainment Weekly:
EW: Do you ever worry that there can be only so much happiness in the universe, and that every time you smile, a unicorn gets punched in the face?
RR: I would smile all day long, if it guaranteed a unicorn getting punched in the face. I find them really annoying.
Strike "unicorn," insert "panda."
Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), according to Yahoo:
A mad Darwinist has his ape fetch young women for experiments in 19th-century Paris. Based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe.
(It stars Bela Lugosi, and it's on tonight at 8:30 on TCM, in case you wondered).
Milford Wolpoff, in "Neandertals in our family tree":
Is it intellectually dead ideas about Neandertals or ideas about intellectually dead Neandertals?
Ann Althouse, on the death of an albino squirrel:
Sometimes Mother Nature does the hawks a favor and serves up an easy lunch.
Franz Weidenreich, in The Scientific Monthly 67, p. 106:
In the face of all these facts it is hard to understand why people cannot get rid of the idea that mere size or configuration of a special convolution or fissure must give a clue to the mental qualities in general and to those of certain individuals in particular. The desire to gaze into the crystal ball seems to exist not only among the clients of fortunetellers but also among scientists.
Dirk Hooijer, writing in Scientific Monthly (72:3-8, 1951):
In Java it was a tribute to the experience of von Koenigswald that one out of every ten thousand specimens of vertebrate fossils found by his collectors belonged to a hominid.
John Gibson, on Pluto's demotion:
Long ago I learned it was a planet and I see no reason to unlearn it. Why should I?
