The Sequence of Human Evolution: From 500 million years ago to present. [via Limbic Nutrition]
Did Neandertals Lack Smarts to Survive?
"Until we stop thinking of Neandertals as a bush-league version of ourselves, thinking of them as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, we'll never dignify them in an appropriate way as an evolutionary entity in their own right, with their own evolutionary history," [Ian Tattersal] said. "Neandertals did very well for hundreds of thousands of years, and were very adaptable. They probably did the maximum that could be done with intuitive thinking. I just don't think they had the ability to think symbolically."
The question of nature: Ian Simmons interviews Jaron Lanier who, among quite a number of other things, consulted for Steven Spielberg on Minority Report. That movie slipped past me, but now that I see it was based on a PKD story, I'll have to go catch it on cable. Jared is currently working on protocol-less computing (or "Phenotropics") at the National Tele-Immersion Initiative
See also: A Minority within the Minority: Jared's thoughts on Minority Report.
All Consuming: The most recently and frequently mentioned books on blogs. [via Bookslut]
Excerpts from Iraqi Poetry Today.
We have tales full of tragic knights,
who descend upon burning horses
from distant skies
like meteors at night.
We have many sleeping dinosaurs, which we have tied to rocks
in green meadows full of singing birds.
-- from In a magic land by Fadhil al-Azzawi
[via Bookslut]
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