Link: Robots in retail
MIT Technology Review has an interview with an exec from a company making robots for Walmart: “Walmart’s new robots are loved by staff—and ignored by custome...
All posts tagged with society
Combating ‘ivory tower’ syndrome
There is much in this editorial by Andrew Hoffman that merits broadcasting more widely: “Why academics are losing relevance in society – and how to stop it”....
Young adults in the U.S. increasingly accept evolution by natural processes
After many years of stasis, the acceptance of evolution has taken a noticeable uptick for American adults. Most of this increase comes from the change in you...
Link: Pääbo wins award
Some nice coverage of Svante Pääbo in the Washington Post on the occasion of him winning one of the 3-million dollar “Breakthrough Awards” last week: “3 scie...
Paleo and "physical culture" movements
NPR has a short piece with an interesting historical story about old-time back-to-nature fitness fanatics: “Paleo Diet Echoes Physical Culture Movement Of Ye...
Real cave people
The LA Times has an interesting article about modern cave life in Shaanxi: “In China, millions make themselves at home in caves”.
Eating their young
Ally Fogg: “Why the young get a bad press” reports on research into age and media bias:
The dictators will be televised
French TV makes a game-show version of the famous Milgram experiment, all for a documentary about how easily people follow authority figures.
Alpha and omega
Slate is running an article by Jessica Grose, titled “Omega males and the women who hate them.” The “Omega male” is basically a loser nebbish type who shows ...
Bad genes
Well, if your genes don’t make you a bad driver, maybe they’ll make you a murderer: “Lighter sentence for murderer with ‘bad genes’”
Mailbag: Easier to receive than to give
With reference to “We have ways of changing behavior”, a reader writes:
Tom Wolfe on the moon landing
Worth reading from last week if you haven’t seen it: The Right Stuff author Tom Wolfe’s lament on NASA’s unfulfilled promise, “One Giant Leap to Nowhere”. Mo...
Science and public Pew/AAAS survey
A Pew Institute-AAAS survey is in the news; Pew’s summary of the survey conclusions is online, very readable, and doesn’t seem to make the obvious misreprese...
Sci-fi box office
I liked the short article by sci-fi author John Scalzi, “Scifi movies made money before Star Wars, too”:
"That kind of stuff goes over well in sociology"
The Chronicle of Higher Education has a long article about the tentative pairing of genetics and sociology. The occasion for the article is a recent issue of...
No baseball exemption for BCS
Go Mark Shurtleff!
Dawkins: Wizard books promote anti-rationalism?
Richard Dawkins plans to spend his retirement writing a children’s book comparing fairy tale explanations with scientific ones, according to an interview. Th...
An infatuation with names that rhyme with 'maiden'
An excerpt from a Social Security Agency press release about popular baby names of 2007:
Haunted words from the void
This story about a pre-Edison sound recording is really interesting:
Aboriginal digital rights management
The BBC is carrying an interesting article that shows cultural anthropologists and software developers working together to document and preserve the history...
Anthropologists have "fastest-growing salaries?"
Umm...what can I say to this? I'm speechless.
The real Friday Night Lights
I have to direct you to this article on the front page of today's NY Times about Smith Center, Kansas, and their football team:
Change the world, practically
A lot of blogs have been pointing to this Washington Post article, where young idealistic DC postgrads bemoan how difficult it is to find long-term paying w...
After 10,000 years, farming bypassed as leading industry
Peter Magnusson has been reading reports from the International Labor Organization, and finds this to be the most significant part:
"Without science we would still be living in caves"
What a great concept for a column by Virginia Postrel: the way that TV is changing the image of the scientist. Her opening: a 1957 survey of images about sc...
"If you just cut this off, I'll be able to wear whatever shoes I want."
It sounds like the evil stepsisters, but it's a line from the Times of London, describing "the wilder shores of La-La Land", cosmetic foot surgery:
The economics of gold farming
Cottage industries have a way of becoming real industries, and one of the more surprising instances of such a transformation is the phenomenon of the "gold ...
"Your neck bone's connected to your cellphone"
That was just too precious, in this New Scientist story about research into making your skeleton a sound-transmitting data bus:
Another use for ancient DNA
Ummm...
Skittering not included
Who knew?
See "Pearls before breakfast"
Please let me take a moment away from my usual anthropology content to direct your attention to this Washington Post story, "Pearls before breakfast," in wh...
Cavemen, clubs, and squash racquets
This is that Superbowl time of year when everybody's thinking about advertising, so I thought it appropriate to point to this post (Ron Rosenbaum) about tho...
Dawkins advocates experiments on deposed dictators
It makes me sad that I now feel complete revulsion for Richard Dawkins. I don't often comment on world affairs, but his op-ed in the LA Times is, at least i...
Better living through osteoblasts
Well, now you can have bone rings grown from your own bone tissue:
About your space colony, Dr. Hawking…
Is it time to abandon Earth?
The helicopolar express
Outside my usual topics, but this is too weird:
We're gonna get Tesla power!
This article was so cool I had to point it out:
"It cost too much, staying human."
Wired is running a feature with short stories in 6 words, by famous authors -- mainly sci-fi but with a mix of some others.
The animation glut
Can I just say, "Yes, yes, YES!"?
From each ape according to his ability
I was discussing animal (and plant) rights in class yesterday, and now I see that the Spanish Socialist Party wants to make apes legal persons (via Althouse...
Social networks and Alzheimer's disease
This seems interesting (press release via Science Blog):
Social vs. nonsocial information and Lower/Middle Paleolithic
On the basis of a couple of student questions, I think it's worthwhile to reflect a bit on where I am going with this (also possibly made more clear in this...
Superbowl ads light up the MRI
I have to point to this entry on the SciAm blog:
"Africa": the game
MTV News has an article describing a new massively multiplayer online game, called "Africa". The game will be set in "a land of 13th century African civiliz...
A whale of a story
Sometimes studying the past gives me a unique perspective on current events. Consider the Thames whale story. The latest update is that the whale, sadly, di...
Reviving atlatl hunting
This AP article has the story:
Biology in design
I just saw the Bionic Concept Vehicle from Mercedes-Benz. It's design in based on a boxfish, which turns out to be highly aerodynamic although it looks unga...
Social hierarchies and health in primates
Wow, it's almost like Science is reading my mind! Just after this post on social status and this post on allostasis, the April 29, 2005 Science has printed ...