Corante: technology, business, media, law, and culture news from the blogosphere
OUR PUBLICATIONS:
Corante is a trusted, unbiased source on technology, business, law, science, and culture that’s authored by leading commentators and thinkers in their respective fields. Corante also produces premium conferences and publications that help decision-makers better understand their industries and the world around them.
Corante Blogs
Corante Blogs examine, through the eyes of leading observers, analysts, thinkers, and doers, critical themes and memes in technology, business, law, science, and culture.
Vin Crosbie, on the challenges, financial and otherwise, that newspaper publishers are facing: "The real problem, Mr. Newspaperman, isn't that your content isn't online or isn't online with multimedia. It's your content. Specifically, it's what you report, which stories you publish, and how you publish them to people, who, by the way, have very different individual interests. The problem is the content you're giving them, stupid; not the platform its on."
by Vin Crosbie in Rebuilding Media
There's a problem in the drug industry that people have recognized for some years, but we're not that much closer to dealing with it than we were then. We keep coming up with these technologies and techniques which seem as if they might be able to help us with some of our nastiest problems - I'm talking about genomics in all its guises, and metabolic profiling, and naturally the various high-throughput screening platforms, and others. But whether these are helping or not (and opinions sure do vary), one thing that they all have in common is that they generate enormous heaps of data.
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Now that the Web labor market is saturated and Web design a static profession, it's not surprising that 'user experience' designers and researchers who've spent their careers online are looking for new worlds to conquer. Some are returning to the “old media” as directors and producers. More are now doing offline consulting (service experience design, social policy design, exhibition design, and so on) under the 'user experience' aegis. They argue that the lessons they've learned on the Web can be applied to phenomena in the physical and social worlds. But there are enormous differences...
by Bob Jacobson in Total Experience
Clay Shirky, in deconstructing Second Life hype: "Second Life is heading towards two million users. Except it isn’t, really... I suspect Second Life is largely a 'Try Me' virus, where reports of a strange and wonderful new thing draw the masses to log in and try it, but whose ability to retain anything but a fraction of those users is limited. The pattern of a Try Me virus is a rapid spread of first time users, most of whom drop out quickly, with most of the dropouts becoming immune to later use."
by Clay Shirky in Many-to-Many
Over the last few years we've seen old barriers to creativity coming down, one after the other. New technologies and services makes it trivial to publish text, whether by blog or by print-on-demand. Digital photography has democratised a previously expensive hobby. And we're seeing the barriers to movie-making crumble, with affordable high-quality cameras and video hosting provided by YouTube or Google Video and their ilk... Music making has long been easy for anyone to engage in, but technology has made high-quality recording possible without specialised equipment, and the internet has revolutionised distribution, drastically disintermediating the music industry... What's left? Software maybe? Or maybe not."
by Suw Charman in Strange Attractor
Derek Lowe on the news that the Nobel Prize for medicine has gone to Craig Mello and Andrew Fire for their breakthrough work: "RNA interference is probably going to have a long climb before it starts curing many diseases, because many of those problems are even tougher than usual in its case. That doesn't take away from the discovery, though, any more than the complications of off-target effects take away from it when you talk about RNAi's research uses in cell culture. The fact that RNA interference is trickier than it first looked, in vivo or in vitro, is only to be expected. What breakthrough isn't?"
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Andrew Phelps: "Recently my WoW guild has been having a bit of a debate on the merits of Player-vs.-Player (PvP) within Azeroth. My personal opinion on this is that PvP has its merits, and can be incredible fun, but the system within WoW is horridly, horribly broken. It takes into account the concept of the battle, but battle without consequence, without emotive context, and most importantly, without honor..."
From later in the piece: "When I talk about this with people (thus far anyway) I typically get one of two responses, either 'yeah, right on!' or 'hey, it’s war, and war isn’t honorable – grow the hell up'. There is a lot to be said for that argument – but the problem is that war in the real historical world has very different constraints that are utterly absent from fantasized worlds..."
by Andrew Phelps in Got Game
Derek Lowe: "So, you're developing a drug candidate. You've settled on what looks like a good compound - it has the activity you want in your mouse model of the disease, it's not too hard to make, and it's not toxic. Everything looks fine. Except. . .one slight problem. Although the compound has good blood levels in the mouse and in the dog, in rats it's terrible. For some reason, it just doesn't get up there. Probably some foul metabolic pathway peculiar to rats (whose innards are adapted, after all, for dealing with every kind of garbage that comes along). So, is this a problem?.."
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Bob Jacobson, on shopping at his local Albertsons supermarket where he had "one of the worst customer experiences" of his life: "Say what you will about the Safeway chain or the Birkenstock billionaires who charge through the roof for Whole Foods' organic fare, they know how to create shopping environments that create a more pleasurable experience, at its best (as at Whole Foods) quite enjoyable. Even the warehouses like Costco and its smaller counterpart, Smart & Final, do just fine: they have no pretentions, but neither do they dump virtual garbage on the consumer merely to create another trivial revenue stream, all for the sake of promotions in the marketing department..."
by Strange Attractor in Total Experience
Kevin Anderson: "First off, I want to say that I really admire the ambition of the Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free. It is one of the boldest statements made by any media company that participation needs to be central to a radical revamp of traditional content strategies... It is, therfore, not hugely surprising to find that Comment is Free is having a few teething troubles..."
by Kevin Anderson in strange
Corante Developments
Here you will find the latest news from Corante including updates on upcoming events, new initiatives, product and publication launches, and more.
It was with shock that I returned home from a night out last night to hear the news of Russell's passing. How terribly, terribly sad. Most of all for him, as he'd seemed buoyant, healthier, and content when I'd last seen him several months ago when he was in town - he was happy that work was busy and rewarding and was having fun with it but most of all was thrilled about how things were going with his girlfriend, Ellen.
I've known Russ for what seems like ages now (in a good way) though in fact it's only been about six or seven years since the early days of "commercial" blogging when he started working on various projects at and around Corante. He was a diligent, committed, and prolific journalist who had impressively and more ably than others been able to make the transition from the old-school way of doing things to the new. He had his quirks, as we all do, but I greatly valued that he was good-natured, collegial, reliable, quick to adopt, trustworthy, eager to learn, and earnest in his interest in helping others better understand what he wrote about.
He was also, it should be said, a kind and thoughtful soul and it was the rare conversation in which he didn't ask, with sincerity, about what he knew of my life, e.g. our new babe, and we didn't talk as seemingly old friends about our lives and respective paths. I can't say I knew him very well, of course, but in our half-dozen get-togethers over the years and dozens of conversations I got a good sense of the man: he cared about learning and sharing and his bearing was earnest and ego-less and we'll miss him for that and more.
We wanted to let you know about a discount to New Comm Forum, the annual event event put on by our friends at the Society for New Communications Research. The conference, which runs from April 22-25, will feature many of the field's leading observers and is an important event for those looking, in the words of SNCR, to "better understand new communications tools, technologies and emerging modes of communication, and their effect on traditional media, professional communications, business, culture and society."
Check out the event's website and, if you're interested in attending, be sure to use the code supplied below for a special discount.
EARLY BIRD PRICING - NOW UNTIL FEB. 15th
NewComm Forum Conference - $995.
Pre-conference or post-conference session - $195.
SNCR Jam only - $75.
REGULAR PRICING - AFTER FEB. 15th
NewComm Forum Conference - $1095.
Pre-conference or post-conference session - $249.
SNCR Jam only - $75.
CORANTE READER DISCOUNTS
NewComm Forum Conference - save an additional $100
Use discount code: NCF08100
Pre-conference or post-conference session - save an additional $45.
Use discount code: NCF0845
We've been remiss in letting you know about two new independent blogs we've helped launch in the past month or so.
The first - the ConversationHub - is a companion blog to Supernova 2007, the latest edition of Kevin Werbach's excellent conference on all things connected. As the conference site says: "Supernova examines the effects of an increasingly connected world on business, life, and public policy. As disparate physical and social networks link with one another, a new societal network is rapidly evolving... The New Network is greater than the sum of its parts. It challenges us to re-create everything from the software and hardware we use...to the business models we employ...to the information and entertainment we encounter...to the ways we work and play."
Visit the ConversationHub and you'll find several dozen leading thinkers and doers, led by a few notable ringleaders, weighing in on the themes and trends of the day in technology and business. We encourage you to tune in - feel free to comment and even suggest topics and ideas for posts.
The second blog - Mobile Messaging 2.0 - convenes about a dozen top observers of the mobile messaging space for an intense discussion of the industry and where it's headed. Among its contributors are leading commentators, journalists and players in the field - tune in and you'll find them touching on topics such as mobile device design, messaging platforms, market pressures, user-generated content, interface design, and much, much more.
Also, if you visit the site, which is sponsored by Airwide Solutions, this week, you'll find live coverage and commentary from Global Messaging 2007, to which several of our contributors have traveled to hear about the latest developments from a broad spectrum of the industry's players and providers.
Be sure to catch the Office 2.0 Conference and hear from and engage with leading thinkers and doers in this exciting new market. Find out more here and be sure to use the code "GLDRK" for a special discount for Corante readers.
In the Pipeline: Don't miss Derek Lowe's excellent commentary on drug discovery and the pharma industry in general at In the Pipeline
Get to know that little skull. Scientists are going to be talking about it for centuries.
As researchers report in tomorrow's issue of Nature, the skull--and along with other parts of a skeleton--turned up in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores. Several different dating methods gave the same result: the fossil is about 18,000 years old. (Additional bones from the same cave date back to about 38,000 years.) If all you had was the 18,000 year figure and this picture to go on, you might assume that the skull belonged to a small human child. After all, there is plenty of evidence that Homo sapiens had already been in this part of the world for 25, 000 years. But you'd be wrong.
The skull actually belongs to a previously unknown species of hominid, whose ancestors split off from our own some 2 million years ago. Homo floresiensis, as it's known, stood three feet high as an adult and had a brain less than a third the size of our own.
To understand just how mind-blowing Homo floresiensis is, you have to consider it in the context of hominid evolution. Our closest living relatives (chimpanzees and bonobos) live in Africa, and both genetic and fossil evidence indicate that the common ancestor we share with them lived in Africa as well. The oldest known hominids--those species more closely related to us than chimps or other primates--date back 6 million years. They were short, probably could walk upright, and had brains about the size of a chimpanzee--about 350 cubic centimeters. It was only about 2.6 million years ago that hominids started using stone tools, and only about 2 million years ago that species emerged that stood as tall as we do. Its brain was also bigger--850 cc. The increase in brain size may not have been all that significant, since bigger mammals tend to have bigger brains, smart or not. But shortly after this evolutionary surge, the first hominids turned up outside Africa. Homo erectus moved as far east as China and Indonesia within just a few hundred thousand years. At the very least, their migration suggests an expanding population of meat-eaters who have to seek out much bigger ranges than their ancestors.
The Asian population of Homo erectus had little, if anything, to do with our own origins. The oldest human fossils, dating back 160,000 years ago, were found in Africa, and there's a pretty good chain of evidence showing that Homo sapiens descends from hominids who stayed home on the mother continent while Homo erectus swept across Asia. For instance, African hominids underwent a massive burst of brain expansion around 500,000 years ago to close to our own capacity. Meanwhile, Homo erectus in Asia underwent a slight increase, if any. Humans only expanded successfully out of Africa about 50,000 years ago. They may have interbred with Homo erectus, but most of our genome still points back to a recent African origin.
Paleoanthropologists were first attracted to Flores when 800,000 year old tools were found on the island in 1998. Boats seem to have been essential for getting to Flores, which speaks of a pretty impressive mental capacity for Homo erectus . (On the other hand, lizards and elephants and other land animals got to the island without a boat--perhaps by swimming being swept away on logs during storms.) Researchers poked around on Flores, and last September they turned up something none of them had expected: Homo floresiensis. Homo floresiensis was not an ape--it had the signature traits of a homind, such as a bipedal anatomy and small canine teeth. But it wasn't a pygmy human, either. Pygmy brains are in the normal range of variation for our own species. What's more, the floresiensis brain wasn't just small but had a drastically different shape than ours--a shape more like the brain of Homo erectus. This and other anatomical details have led the researchers to conclude that Homo floresiensis branched off from Homo erectus and evolved into a dwarf form.
Here is case-closed proof that today's solitary existence of Homo sapiens is a fluke in the history of hominids. Even 18,000 years ago, at least one other species walked the Earth with us. Exactly how Homo floresiensis went extinct no one knows, but close to the top of the list would have to be ourselves. Neanderthals survived only a few thousand years after humans turned up in Europe, and Homo erectus seems to have disappeared from Indonesia around 40,000 years ago, just around the time humans came on the scene. Perhaps Homo floresiensis lasted longer on Flores because it was harder for humans to reach.
A dwarf hominid on an island is fascinating for another reason--islands are famous for fostering the evolution of dwarf animals, from deer to mammoths. It's possible that the small territory of islands and the lack of competition and predators favors the small. For the first time, hominids have fallen under the same rule. Islands mammals have also been shown to sometimes evolve much smaller brains, and, incredibly, the hominid brain is subject to the same rule. Homo floresiensis's brain shrank down to the smallest size ever found in a hominid. Did Homo floresiensis lose the mental capacity to use tools along the way? The researchers found stone tools in the same site where they found Homo floresiensis, but it's not clear whether Homo floresiensis made the tools, or humans used them (perhaps to kill Homo floresiensis?).
One of the most interesting questions that comes to mind with the discovery of Homo floresiensis is how far back it goes in the fossil record. Just how long did it take for a lineage of hominids to lose half their height and two-thirds of their brain? It may have taken a million years, or a few hundred thousand, or maybe less. In a commentary in Nature, Marta Lahr and Robert Foley of Cambridge point out that it only took 12-foot high elephants on Malta only 5,000 years to shrink to the size of a dog. I've always been a bit skeptical when people forecast dramatic change for our species. But if evolution can produce Homo floresiensis, who knows what a few thousand years on Mars or another solar system could take our descendants?
Update, 11/1/04: Here's a bundle of papers, interviews, and such on H. floresiensis from Nature. Much of it is free.
3. vernaculo on October 27, 2004 05:14 PM writes...
How long would it take to produce a dwarf Rotweiler that bred true? In dog years?
Is there an assumption that any fossil is representative? So that what may have been a freak driven off to the margin is assumed to be right out of the heart of the species?
5. vernaculo on October 27, 2004 06:08 PM writes...
Thanks PZ. That makes the next question for me, as curious dilettante - how many other bands, or tribes of cousins have there been? Boy howdy.
"(perhaps to kill Homo floresiensis?)" seeming a likely interpretation, if not here certainly for the Neanderthal, and how many others?
So are we different now? Or just enjoying the peaceful aftermath of our violent successes?
Do the Bushmen of the Kalahari have the right to that moral regard?
How dispassionately can science view that extermination?
Great post, Carl. Re your last paragraph, for an example a bit closer to home, I recall reading (probably in Science News) some years ago that present-day domesticated cats have brains only half the size of their wild ancestors, ca 20,000 years BP. In my more cynical moments, I wonder how much stupider people have gotten since the invention of agriculture ...
7. Jackmormon on October 27, 2004 11:36 PM writes...
Thanks for an informative post. I was directed here by a commenter at Crooked Timber, and I suspected that this was an important breakthrough but didn't know exactly why. You've done a great job of clarifying the scientific stakes in this discovery, and I look forward to reading more of your work in the future.
I'm a little confused about their brain size. If they lost half their height, and their brain shrunk proportionally, it would be an eighth of the original size. Since they were actually a third of the previous size, weren't their brains larger than expected? Or do brains not scale like this?
9. James Bass on October 28, 2004 01:48 PM writes...
This discovery is truly fascinating. Logic would lead one to believe that it shows Homo erectus survived even longer than we have thought. Which leads me to think that it might be presumptuous to name this a different species. Although I believe I read that no genetic material had been isolated yet, I assume that it eventually will be. Comparison of mitochondrial DNA with Homo erectus should provide some interesting information.
Since this homonid evolved before the end of the last ice age, would it have necessarily have been isolated by water? I am not familiar with the exact geographical changes around the island of Flores, but I thought many of the land masses of Indonesia were connected prior to the end of the ice age 15,000 years ago.
10. George McCurdy on October 28, 2004 04:34 PM writes...
Quoting talkorigins.org Douglas Theobold's 29+ evidences for macroevolution prediction 2.5 under falsification:
"...we predict that we should never find elephants on any Pacific islands, even though they would survive well there."
Apparently finding elephants on Pacific Islands would be a falsification of macroevolutionary theory.
Quoting from this blog:
"Boats seem to have been essential for getting to Flores, which speaks of a pretty impressive mental capacity for Homo erectus . (On the other hand, lizards and elephants and other land animals got to the island without a boat--perhaps by swimming being swept away on logs during storms.)"
Whoops! One can imagine how a Creationist speaker would love to add this to his arsenal. First the evolutionists say that finding elephants on a remote Pacific island would "falsify" the theory, then, when elephants are found, the explanation is that they were swimming while holding on to logs in storms. Of course! The theory of evolution has been saved again!
11. David B on October 28, 2004 05:26 PM writes...
Look at a map. Flores is not a 'remote Pacific island'; it is part of the 'Malay Archipelago'. No biogeographer would be more surprised to find elephants on Flores than rhinos on Sumatra.
12. Andrew C Ross on October 28, 2004 06:34 PM writes...
Re James Bass's post: Why would it be useful to obtain mitochondrial DNA rather than DNA from a nucleus?
Re George McCurdy's comment: What sea level changes have there been in the area over the last 1 million years? Can he suggest an alternative to swimming there for H. floresiensis? Presumably to support the theory of evolution it would be necessary to demonstate that the DNA of H floresiensis has evolved from H. erectus?
It is much easier to extract mitochondrial DNA, because the mitochondrial genome is very short and there are lots of copies of it in each cell. As a result it's easier to amplify mtDNA and to be assured that it hasn't suffered post-mortem damage leading. Also, there are already mtDNA studies on Pleistocene Homo sapiens and Homo neandertalensis, so it would be interesting to see how more different Homo floresiensis is to these two species.
Cool write-up. A few quibbles. Current best bet on the local extinction of H.floresiensis is the volcanic detonation that wiped out the other mini-mammals on the island c. 13,000 bp. If H.sapiens did in the hobbits then why did they leave the mini-stegodons and the like?
However from what the researchers who made the find have said the stone tools found with the homs are proportionately reduced from regular erectus-style tools - hence made for little hands. No evidence is yet apparent for a violent end, as much as certain paradigms are praying for such.
The intriguing aspect of the freshness of the remains are the local legends of "ebu gogo" who are described in terms very similar to H.floresiensis. Hence the current thought that the hobbits lived on until the arrival of the Dutch. Some - even Chris Stringer in "Nature" - have gone so far as to wonder if they're still lurking around the Javanese bush.
BTW the Scientific American link you gave has a link to an interview with Peter Brown. Here's his thoughts on the tools...
[Quote]B: It's strikingly different from everything ever found with H. erectus. Apart from this short, small-brained thing surviving until 14,000 or 18,000 years ago, its association with these stone tools is the other most remarkable thing about the site. It's something the critics will take a very close look at because there are three possibilities. Either Homo sapiens, of which there is no [fossil] evidence, was making these stone tools; or this small [hominid] learned to make the stone tools from H. sapiens in some way; or it was actually making the tools itself. I think it was making the stone tools. We have the same tools going from 94,000 years ago until 18,000 or 14,000 years ago--no change in technology, no change in materials, consistent from the bottom to where the skeleton was found. So on account of the evidence, the association seems fairly clear. Maybe something else will turn up at Liang Bua in the end, but at present there is nothing. The only [hominid] we're finding in association with stone tools is this small thing.[/Quote]
...so Quite convincing linkage between the tools and the hobbits. What a puzzle!
16. mark erectus on October 30, 2004 02:06 PM writes...
i was just speaking with the flouridenthies in my backyard. to quote it: WE ARE ALL HOMO-ERECTUS DONT FLATTER YOURSELVES. THE SCIENTISTS ARE ALL A BUNCH OF HACKS AFRAID TO DISSECT ANY OF US CONTEMPORANEOUSLY AND ADMIT WE'RE ALL A LITTLE DIFFERENT! I'M NO ROCK HUDSON LOOK AT ME! in which moment i cut it off telling it not to be so hard on itself, and changing its attention back to the miniature stone tools that it was showing off to me.
It's a pity they don't actually have any H.erectus DNA to compare do they? I believe they have some Neanderthal DNA (which is H. sapiens).
Wouldn't it be good if they found them living today on other islands. They'd have to keep it a big secret though & vaccinate the little guys against everything.
The name literally means 'little man' in Bahasa Indonesia (maybe the same creature as ebu gogo?)...people at my field site in Borneo claim to have seen this small man-ape in the forest from time to time, although they question themselves as to whether they have just seen a gibbon walking on the ground!
You can bet that scientists all over the Indomalayan region are going to note the locations of previously unexplored caves. Although given the condition of these bones of H. floresiensis, one needs to tread lightly (or not at all without the help of an paleontologist)! There are literally thousands of islands in the region, so there must be other bones (and possibly hominid species) awaiting discovery.
Corante: technology, business, media, law, and culture news from the blogosphere
OUR PUBLICATIONS:
Corante is a trusted, unbiased source on technology, business, law, science, and culture that’s authored by leading commentators and thinkers in their respective fields. Corante also produces premium conferences and publications that help decision-makers better understand their industries and the world around them.
Corante Blogs
Corante Blogs examine, through the eyes of leading observers, analysts, thinkers, and doers, critical themes and memes in technology, business, law, science, and culture.
Vin Crosbie, on the challenges, financial and otherwise, that newspaper publishers are facing: "The real problem, Mr. Newspaperman, isn't that your content isn't online or isn't online with multimedia. It's your content. Specifically, it's what you report, which stories you publish, and how you publish them to people, who, by the way, have very different individual interests. The problem is the content you're giving them, stupid; not the platform its on."
by Vin Crosbie in Rebuilding Media
There's a problem in the drug industry that people have recognized for some years, but we're not that much closer to dealing with it than we were then. We keep coming up with these technologies and techniques which seem as if they might be able to help us with some of our nastiest problems - I'm talking about genomics in all its guises, and metabolic profiling, and naturally the various high-throughput screening platforms, and others. But whether these are helping or not (and opinions sure do vary), one thing that they all have in common is that they generate enormous heaps of data.
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Now that the Web labor market is saturated and Web design a static profession, it's not surprising that 'user experience' designers and researchers who've spent their careers online are looking for new worlds to conquer. Some are returning to the “old media” as directors and producers. More are now doing offline consulting (service experience design, social policy design, exhibition design, and so on) under the 'user experience' aegis. They argue that the lessons they've learned on the Web can be applied to phenomena in the physical and social worlds. But there are enormous differences...
by Bob Jacobson in Total Experience
Clay Shirky, in deconstructing Second Life hype: "Second Life is heading towards two million users. Except it isn’t, really... I suspect Second Life is largely a 'Try Me' virus, where reports of a strange and wonderful new thing draw the masses to log in and try it, but whose ability to retain anything but a fraction of those users is limited. The pattern of a Try Me virus is a rapid spread of first time users, most of whom drop out quickly, with most of the dropouts becoming immune to later use."
by Clay Shirky in Many-to-Many
Over the last few years we've seen old barriers to creativity coming down, one after the other. New technologies and services makes it trivial to publish text, whether by blog or by print-on-demand. Digital photography has democratised a previously expensive hobby. And we're seeing the barriers to movie-making crumble, with affordable high-quality cameras and video hosting provided by YouTube or Google Video and their ilk... Music making has long been easy for anyone to engage in, but technology has made high-quality recording possible without specialised equipment, and the internet has revolutionised distribution, drastically disintermediating the music industry... What's left? Software maybe? Or maybe not."
by Suw Charman in Strange Attractor
Derek Lowe on the news that the Nobel Prize for medicine has gone to Craig Mello and Andrew Fire for their breakthrough work: "RNA interference is probably going to have a long climb before it starts curing many diseases, because many of those problems are even tougher than usual in its case. That doesn't take away from the discovery, though, any more than the complications of off-target effects take away from it when you talk about RNAi's research uses in cell culture. The fact that RNA interference is trickier than it first looked, in vivo or in vitro, is only to be expected. What breakthrough isn't?"
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Andrew Phelps: "Recently my WoW guild has been having a bit of a debate on the merits of Player-vs.-Player (PvP) within Azeroth. My personal opinion on this is that PvP has its merits, and can be incredible fun, but the system within WoW is horridly, horribly broken. It takes into account the concept of the battle, but battle without consequence, without emotive context, and most importantly, without honor..."
From later in the piece: "When I talk about this with people (thus far anyway) I typically get one of two responses, either 'yeah, right on!' or 'hey, it’s war, and war isn’t honorable – grow the hell up'. There is a lot to be said for that argument – but the problem is that war in the real historical world has very different constraints that are utterly absent from fantasized worlds..."
by Andrew Phelps in Got Game
Derek Lowe: "So, you're developing a drug candidate. You've settled on what looks like a good compound - it has the activity you want in your mouse model of the disease, it's not too hard to make, and it's not toxic. Everything looks fine. Except. . .one slight problem. Although the compound has good blood levels in the mouse and in the dog, in rats it's terrible. For some reason, it just doesn't get up there. Probably some foul metabolic pathway peculiar to rats (whose innards are adapted, after all, for dealing with every kind of garbage that comes along). So, is this a problem?.."
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Bob Jacobson, on shopping at his local Albertsons supermarket where he had "one of the worst customer experiences" of his life: "Say what you will about the Safeway chain or the Birkenstock billionaires who charge through the roof for Whole Foods' organic fare, they know how to create shopping environments that create a more pleasurable experience, at its best (as at Whole Foods) quite enjoyable. Even the warehouses like Costco and its smaller counterpart, Smart & Final, do just fine: they have no pretentions, but neither do they dump virtual garbage on the consumer merely to create another trivial revenue stream, all for the sake of promotions in the marketing department..."
by Strange Attractor in Total Experience
Kevin Anderson: "First off, I want to say that I really admire the ambition of the Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free. It is one of the boldest statements made by any media company that participation needs to be central to a radical revamp of traditional content strategies... It is, therfore, not hugely surprising to find that Comment is Free is having a few teething troubles..."
by Kevin Anderson in strange
Corante Developments
Here you will find the latest news from Corante including updates on upcoming events, new initiatives, product and publication launches, and more.
It was with shock that I returned home from a night out last night to hear the news of Russell's passing. How terribly, terribly sad. Most of all for him, as he'd seemed buoyant, healthier, and content when I'd last seen him several months ago when he was in town - he was happy that work was busy and rewarding and was having fun with it but most of all was thrilled about how things were going with his girlfriend, Ellen.
I've known Russ for what seems like ages now (in a good way) though in fact it's only been about six or seven years since the early days of "commercial" blogging when he started working on various projects at and around Corante. He was a diligent, committed, and prolific journalist who had impressively and more ably than others been able to make the transition from the old-school way of doing things to the new. He had his quirks, as we all do, but I greatly valued that he was good-natured, collegial, reliable, quick to adopt, trustworthy, eager to learn, and earnest in his interest in helping others better understand what he wrote about.
He was also, it should be said, a kind and thoughtful soul and it was the rare conversation in which he didn't ask, with sincerity, about what he knew of my life, e.g. our new babe, and we didn't talk as seemingly old friends about our lives and respective paths. I can't say I knew him very well, of course, but in our half-dozen get-togethers over the years and dozens of conversations I got a good sense of the man: he cared about learning and sharing and his bearing was earnest and ego-less and we'll miss him for that and more.
We wanted to let you know about a discount to New Comm Forum, the annual event event put on by our friends at the Society for New Communications Research. The conference, which runs from April 22-25, will feature many of the field's leading observers and is an important event for those looking, in the words of SNCR, to "better understand new communications tools, technologies and emerging modes of communication, and their effect on traditional media, professional communications, business, culture and society."
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We've been remiss in letting you know about two new independent blogs we've helped launch in the past month or so.
The first - the ConversationHub - is a companion blog to Supernova 2007, the latest edition of Kevin Werbach's excellent conference on all things connected. As the conference site says: "Supernova examines the effects of an increasingly connected world on business, life, and public policy. As disparate physical and social networks link with one another, a new societal network is rapidly evolving... The New Network is greater than the sum of its parts. It challenges us to re-create everything from the software and hardware we use...to the business models we employ...to the information and entertainment we encounter...to the ways we work and play."
Visit the ConversationHub and you'll find several dozen leading thinkers and doers, led by a few notable ringleaders, weighing in on the themes and trends of the day in technology and business. We encourage you to tune in - feel free to comment and even suggest topics and ideas for posts.
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Be sure to catch the Office 2.0 Conference and hear from and engage with leading thinkers and doers in this exciting new market. Find out more here and be sure to use the code "GLDRK" for a special discount for Corante readers.
Get to know that little skull. Scientists are going to be talking about it for centuries.
1. Greg Wilson on October 27, 2004 03:31 PM writes...
How reliable is this find? Any chance it could be another Piltdown Man?
Permalink to Comment2. William Gruzenski on October 27, 2004 03:46 PM writes...
Anything--anything--is possible.
Permalink to Comment3. vernaculo on October 27, 2004 05:14 PM writes...
How long would it take to produce a dwarf Rotweiler that bred true? In dog years?
Permalink to CommentIs there an assumption that any fossil is representative? So that what may have been a freak driven off to the margin is assumed to be right out of the heart of the species?
4. PZ Myers on October 27, 2004 05:35 PM writes...
They've got EIGHT specimens. This is not a single strange skeleton.
Permalink to Comment5. vernaculo on October 27, 2004 06:08 PM writes...
Thanks PZ. That makes the next question for me, as curious dilettante - how many other bands, or tribes of cousins have there been? Boy howdy.
Permalink to Comment"(perhaps to kill Homo floresiensis?)" seeming a likely interpretation, if not here certainly for the Neanderthal, and how many others?
So are we different now? Or just enjoying the peaceful aftermath of our violent successes?
Do the Bushmen of the Kalahari have the right to that moral regard?
How dispassionately can science view that extermination?
6. Jay Manifold on October 27, 2004 06:45 PM writes...
Great post, Carl. Re your last paragraph, for an example a bit closer to home, I recall reading (probably in Science News) some years ago that present-day domesticated cats have brains only half the size of their wild ancestors, ca 20,000 years BP. In my more cynical moments, I wonder how much stupider people have gotten since the invention of agriculture ...
Permalink to Comment7. Jackmormon on October 27, 2004 11:36 PM writes...
Thanks for an informative post. I was directed here by a commenter at Crooked Timber, and I suspected that this was an important breakthrough but didn't know exactly why. You've done a great job of clarifying the scientific stakes in this discovery, and I look forward to reading more of your work in the future.
Permalink to Comment8. Mike on October 28, 2004 07:07 AM writes...
I'm a little confused about their brain size. If they lost half their height, and their brain shrunk proportionally, it would be an eighth of the original size. Since they were actually a third of the previous size, weren't their brains larger than expected? Or do brains not scale like this?
Permalink to Comment9. James Bass on October 28, 2004 01:48 PM writes...
This discovery is truly fascinating. Logic would lead one to believe that it shows Homo erectus survived even longer than we have thought. Which leads me to think that it might be presumptuous to name this a different species. Although I believe I read that no genetic material had been isolated yet, I assume that it eventually will be. Comparison of mitochondrial DNA with Homo erectus should provide some interesting information.
Since this homonid evolved before the end of the last ice age, would it have necessarily have been isolated by water? I am not familiar with the exact geographical changes around the island of Flores, but I thought many of the land masses of Indonesia were connected prior to the end of the ice age 15,000 years ago.
Permalink to Comment10. George McCurdy on October 28, 2004 04:34 PM writes...
Quoting talkorigins.org Douglas Theobold's 29+ evidences for macroevolution prediction 2.5 under falsification:
"...we predict that we should never find elephants on any Pacific islands, even though they would survive well there."
Apparently finding elephants on Pacific Islands would be a falsification of macroevolutionary theory.
Quoting from this blog:
"Boats seem to have been essential for getting to Flores, which speaks of a pretty impressive mental capacity for Homo erectus . (On the other hand, lizards and elephants and other land animals got to the island without a boat--perhaps by swimming being swept away on logs during storms.)"
Whoops! One can imagine how a Creationist speaker would love to add this to his arsenal. First the evolutionists say that finding elephants on a remote Pacific island would "falsify" the theory, then, when elephants are found, the explanation is that they were swimming while holding on to logs in storms. Of course! The theory of evolution has been saved again!
Permalink to Comment11. David B on October 28, 2004 05:26 PM writes...
Look at a map. Flores is not a 'remote Pacific island'; it is part of the 'Malay Archipelago'. No biogeographer would be more surprised to find elephants on Flores than rhinos on Sumatra.
Permalink to Comment12. Andrew C Ross on October 28, 2004 06:34 PM writes...
Re James Bass's post: Why would it be useful to obtain mitochondrial DNA rather than DNA from a nucleus?
Permalink to CommentRe George McCurdy's comment: What sea level changes have there been in the area over the last 1 million years? Can he suggest an alternative to swimming there for H. floresiensis? Presumably to support the theory of evolution it would be necessary to demonstate that the DNA of H floresiensis has evolved from H. erectus?
13. Dienekes Pontikos on October 28, 2004 08:49 PM writes...
It is much easier to extract mitochondrial DNA, because the mitochondrial genome is very short and there are lots of copies of it in each cell. As a result it's easier to amplify mtDNA and to be assured that it hasn't suffered post-mortem damage leading. Also, there are already mtDNA studies on Pleistocene Homo sapiens and Homo neandertalensis, so it would be interesting to see how more different Homo floresiensis is to these two species.
Permalink to Comment14. Adam on October 29, 2004 08:38 AM writes...
Hi Carl
Cool write-up. A few quibbles. Current best bet on the local extinction of H.floresiensis is the volcanic detonation that wiped out the other mini-mammals on the island c. 13,000 bp. If H.sapiens did in the hobbits then why did they leave the mini-stegodons and the like?
However from what the researchers who made the find have said the stone tools found with the homs are proportionately reduced from regular erectus-style tools - hence made for little hands. No evidence is yet apparent for a violent end, as much as certain paradigms are praying for such.
The intriguing aspect of the freshness of the remains are the local legends of "ebu gogo" who are described in terms very similar to H.floresiensis. Hence the current thought that the hobbits lived on until the arrival of the Dutch. Some - even Chris Stringer in "Nature" - have gone so far as to wonder if they're still lurking around the Javanese bush.
Permalink to Comment15. Adam on October 29, 2004 09:20 AM writes...
BTW the Scientific American link you gave has a link to an interview with Peter Brown. Here's his thoughts on the tools...
[Quote]B: It's strikingly different from everything ever found with H. erectus. Apart from this short, small-brained thing surviving until 14,000 or 18,000 years ago, its association with these stone tools is the other most remarkable thing about the site. It's something the critics will take a very close look at because there are three possibilities. Either Homo sapiens, of which there is no [fossil] evidence, was making these stone tools; or this small [hominid] learned to make the stone tools from H. sapiens in some way; or it was actually making the tools itself. I think it was making the stone tools. We have the same tools going from 94,000 years ago until 18,000 or 14,000 years ago--no change in technology, no change in materials, consistent from the bottom to where the skeleton was found. So on account of the evidence, the association seems fairly clear. Maybe something else will turn up at Liang Bua in the end, but at present there is nothing. The only [hominid] we're finding in association with stone tools is this small thing.[/Quote]
...so Quite convincing linkage between the tools and the hobbits. What a puzzle!
Permalink to Comment16. mark erectus on October 30, 2004 02:06 PM writes...
i was just speaking with the flouridenthies in my backyard. to quote it: WE ARE ALL HOMO-ERECTUS DONT FLATTER YOURSELVES. THE SCIENTISTS ARE ALL A BUNCH OF HACKS AFRAID TO DISSECT ANY OF US CONTEMPORANEOUSLY AND ADMIT WE'RE ALL A LITTLE DIFFERENT! I'M NO ROCK HUDSON LOOK AT ME! in which moment i cut it off telling it not to be so hard on itself, and changing its attention back to the miniature stone tools that it was showing off to me.
Permalink to Comment17. joe doe on October 31, 2004 11:40 PM writes...
deep fried jungle monkeys.
Permalink to Commentmmmm
sounds delicious.
18. wazza on November 1, 2004 08:11 AM writes...
It's a pity they don't actually have any H.erectus DNA to compare do they? I believe they have some Neanderthal DNA (which is H. sapiens).
Permalink to CommentWouldn't it be good if they found them living today on other islands. They'd have to keep it a big secret though & vaccinate the little guys against everything.
19. Jason Munshi-South on November 2, 2004 02:55 AM writes...
Viva Orang Pendek!
The name literally means 'little man' in Bahasa Indonesia (maybe the same creature as ebu gogo?)...people at my field site in Borneo claim to have seen this small man-ape in the forest from time to time, although they question themselves as to whether they have just seen a gibbon walking on the ground!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/3734946.stm
You can bet that scientists all over the Indomalayan region are going to note the locations of previously unexplored caves. Although given the condition of these bones of H. floresiensis, one needs to tread lightly (or not at all without the help of an paleontologist)! There are literally thousands of islands in the region, so there must be other bones (and possibly hominid species) awaiting discovery.
Permalink to Comment