Blogs / The Loom

Who says there aren’t any disagreements over human origins? Not this guy.

[hat tip the Twitterati]

Take the Loom with you. Discover has now set up a mobile version of the entire site, including this blog. It looks good on my Itouch, I have to say, but judge for yourself. And let us know if you find any bugs in need of fixing.

Tomorrow the Discovery Channel will show an Ardipithecus documentary. I’ve embedded a couple preview clips they’ve been sending around. I don’t have cable myself (the same way an alcoholic doesn’t keep cases of gin). So I’ll leave it to commenters to offer reviews tomorrow.

There’s obviously a striking parallel with the TV mania that recently surrounded another primate fossil, Darwinius. Personally, I don’t see anything amiss (a priori, at least), with a documentary coming out right after a journal paper gets published. What I don’t relish is when the publicity for a show distorts the news coverage of a fossil, as happened with Darwinius. So I’d be curious what people who watch the show think.

I’ve got a short piece in tomorrow’s New York Times about the 400-million year history of insects. Some beautiful pictures of the creepers included.

Peter Brown, anthropologist on the hobbit team, jumps into the comment fray himself on the nature of the fossils he discovered.

I’ll be talking to science writers about blogging on Tuesday in New York. If you’d like to participate in the discussion, leave your comments here. Thanks.

A Bronx cheer for the four-legged hobbit from one of its discoverers. See my updated post.

The science writer/blogging panel I was on over the weekend is now available on Contentious.