A great blog is born: The Panda’s Thumb is a multi-authored blog that blasts a firehose of reason at distortions of evolution.
Category: Blog
Our ancestors branched off from those of chimpanzees some six million years ago. Since then, our lineage became human–and distinctly unlike other apes. Figuring out how that difference evolved is one of the grand challenges of biology. Until now, scientists have gotten most of their clues by looking at the fossils of extinct hominids. These fragments of bones only preserve a little information, but it’s not a random smattering of data. It’s more like a scaffolding on which other clues can be fixed, so that a picture of how we became human can gradually emerge. That’s because the changes documented in the fossil record were ultimately created through the evolution of our genome.
In February I wrote an article in Popular Science about a project to implant electrodes in a monkey’s brain allowing the monkey to control a robot arm with its mind. The goal of this work is to let paralyzed people operate prosthetic limbs by thought alone. Now the research team has announcedanother big step in that direction: their first work on humans.
Attention Virginian readers of the Loom: I’ll be heading to warmer climes later this week to speak in Charlottesville at the Virginia Festival of the Book.On Thursday at 4 I’ll be speaking on a panel about science and society. On Friday at 4 I’ll be speaking again on scientific discoveries and how they change us. I’m looking forward to listening to my fellow panelists, who include Robin Marantz Henig and James Shreeve. See you there.
I’ve posted a new batch of reviews for Soul Made Flesh on my web site. The newest is from Ross King, the author of Brunelleschi’s Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling. His review in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times is a rare sort–he likes the book (which he calls “thrilling”) for what the book really is, rather than as a projection of some phantom in his own mind.