Over the past several weeks I’ve accumulated links and information from several of our members. If you have information you want to share with us, just email it to Neece or leave a comment below. I’ll do a regular roundup of links and information in the future. If it’s about science, critical thinking, books or other media, or religion and atheism, share it with us whenever you come across it.
You may have noticed the tab under the banner that says Library. That lists all the books and media we each recommend. Feel free to contribute to it. In that list you’ll find that Tim recommended a book called Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett. Brent found an interview on Groks Science Radio Show with the author.
Daniel has three stories to share:
The first is from RadioLab. Here’s the description from the page:
Parasites: What’s gotten into you? In this hour we explore nature’s moochers – the good, the bad, and the hideous. We have stories of lethargic farmers, zombie cockroaches, and even mind-controlled humans (kinda, maybe). Could parasites be the shadowy hands that pull the strings of life?
Carl Zimmer plays defense lawyer, trying to exonerate parasites for their wrongs, while Jad and Robert argue in defense of the victims. Our producer Lulu Miller comes in to moderate a lightning round of: “Parasites: are they evil, or are they awesome?” The parasites in question are the zombie wasp, the nematode, and the lovey-dovey blood fluke.
From NPR he sends a story about throwing out the Primordial Soup theory:
Is the “primordial soup” theory — the idea that life emerged from a prebiotic broth — past its expiration date?
Biochemist Nick Lane thinks so. The University College London writer and his colleagues argue that the 81-year-old notion just doesn’t hold water.
Lane tells NPR’s Guy Raz there’s another possible explanation for the emergence of life. But before we get to that, why toss out the soup theory?
Lane says the idea of a primordial soup goes back to 1929, and great biologists like J.B.S. Haldane.
And he shares another story from NPR about “mystical” baboons: Read the rest of this entry »
