The Daily Procrastinator

Science is more than your seventh grade teacher droning on about nematodes.  Science can be funny, and NCBI ROFL is proof.  Rectal salami.  The correlation between ass size and penis length.  Dolphin tattoos.  The possibilities are endless.

Read and enjoy.

We choose to go to the moon

We’re back!

The Daily Procrastinator writers missed a lot while we were out for the month of July, not the least of which was the 40th anniversary of the moon landing.  Unless you were living on a deserted island, you probably already learned nearly everything you needed to know about this historical event.  But just in case you didn’t, I’d like to direct you to a favorite site of mine, Badass of the Week.  In honor of the moon landing, I present Buzz Aldrin, Badass.

Dear Procrastinators,

The big E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) is going on this week. Microsoft, Sony & Nintendo all announced their new gaming technologies:

Sony: Wii-like controller

Nintendo: A new, more accurate, Wii controller

Microsoft: NO CONTROLLER NEEDED

Look ma, no hands!

It is obvious that Microsoft is the clear winner here.  Now you won’t even need to find (much less pick up) your controller to start playing.  You will just walk in front of your TV,  be recognized by the system  and start playing, Minority Report style.  You may even get some exercise from moving around as you make the on-screen character follow your moves.

But that will require work and effort, and therefore runs counter to everything this site believes in.

Fortunately, Procrastinators, I have a solution.   And it will be a reality in just a few years.

Researchers at Emotiv have figured out how to control objects on screen using brainwaves.  Imagine just thinking what your character should do and having it respond, all from the comfort of your couch with nary a need to lift a finger.   Shoot the bad guy?  Think it.  Pass the ball to T.O. in Madden? Think it. Exercise on your wii board? Think it.

This, my friends, is the future of gaming.

A recently revealed 47-million year old fossil of the species Darwinius masillae could be the oldest known ancestor of human beings ever discovered. The specimen, a roughly two-foot long skeleton nicknamed “Ida,” appears to be an ancestor to early anthropoids, from which humans are evolved.

Ida is preserved almost completely, including the contents of her stomach.

The many similarities between Ida and modern humans begin with her fingers and toes, which feature fingernails and toenails. Her hands feature opposable thumbs. Her limbs are proportioned like ours, with her legs considerably longer than her arms. Ida’s eye sockets face forward. Her blunt teeth suggest a diet that consisted mainly of fruit. With the exception of her tail, which she probably used for balance while traveling through the trees, she looks strikingly human.

The truly remarkable thing about Ida is her age. Prior to this discovery, the oldest human ancestor ever discovered was Lucy, a 40% complete skeleton of the species Australopithecus afarensis. Discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, Lucy is estimated to be 3.2 million years old. Ida is 95% complete and lived a full 40-plus-million years before Lucy.

The nearly perfect preservation of Ida’s remains for such a tremendously long time is due to a very specific set of circumstances. The fossil was discovered in the Messel pit, near Frankfurt, Germany. This pit has been a goldmine for fossil hunters since its discovery. 47 million years ago, the pit was a crater that resulted from an underground steam blast. As this crater filled with water, it created an immensely deep lake. The bottom of the lake was so far removed from sunlight that almost no living thing could exist in the depths, not even the bacteria necessary for decomposition. Because no rivers flowed into or out of the lake, the waters lay very still, making oxygen exchange between the surface and the depths almost nonexistent. Any plant or animal which sank to the bottom of the lake would rest relatively undisturbed until sinking dead algae and sediment covered it. Thus, Ida’s remains were not decomposed before her fossilization began. The fossilization is so complete that the outline of her fur can be seen in the surrounding rock and the contents of her stomach are still visible.

The contributions this discovery could make to modern evolutionary science are staggering. As a paleoanthropology enthusiast, I rushed to the bookstore yesterday and bought The Link, the story of Ida’s discovery and scientific examination. Although I think the title is chosen poorly, since it only reinforces the misconception that there is a “missing link” between monkey and humans and therefore implies that humans evolved from monkes, what I’ve read of the book so far is immensely interesting.

The world is a beautiful and amazing place, procrastinators, and the discovery of Ida proves once again that we are only beginning to understand natural history and the role of our species within it.

Note: While I subscribe to evolutionary theory as the most likely explanation for modern life forms, my fellow Procrastinators may or may not agree. In fact, you yourself may or may not agree. I intend no offense to anyone’s sensibilities.