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Remember those fossils of tiny people nicknamed Hobbits, that were discovered in Indonesia? Turns out they weren’t tiny after all?the so-called dwarfs of these Micronesian islands actually were modern, normal-sized hunters and gatherers.

It’s all the fault of an archeologist who misinterpreted fragments of leg bones, teeth and brow ridges found on the site. Anthropologist Greg C. Nelson says, Oregon “Our research from whole bones and whole skeletons indicates that the earliest individuals in Palau were of normal stature but gracile. In other words, they were thin [and not Hobbit-like at all].”
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Birds react by moving north – There is a colossal ice shelf collapse going on in our close neighbor Canada. Farther away, Greenland’s glaciers are not doing well. That’s not the only thing that’s happening in the North: Bird habitats are moving that way, as the weather gets warmer.

The ice shelves in Canada have lost a huge amount of ice this year?ice which had been in place for thousands of years. Now almost one-fourth of it is gone. BBC News quotes researcher Derek Mueller as saying, “These changes are irreversible under the present climate.”
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If movie executives could figure out how to read our minds, they’d have a hit film every time. They haven’t perfected the technique yet, but they’re working on it.

The NYU film school has enlisted their psychology department to help future screenwriters and directors figure out what movie goers want to see. Since films take years to arrive on screen, they need to figure this out before the audience realizes it themselves.

Neuroscientist Uri Hasson started out by showing dramatic movies, such as Hitchcock films, to people and while watching to their brains with an fMRI machine, to see what parts of the brain “lit up” during which parts of the film. The Hitchcock film caused similar responses in the same area of all the viewers’ brains.
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First we find out that, for some mysterious reason, the Saudis (some of whom were involved in911) are immune from a lawsuit filed by families of victims of the 911attacks. Now we’ve learned that the Agriculture Dept. can STOP meatpackers from testing cattle for Mad Cow Disease. Has our government gone crazy?or is it just crazy about big money and big business, and its powerful foreignfriends?

A small Arkansas meatpacker called Creekstone Farms wanted to test every animal at its plant, to assure foreign purchasers (and Americans) that the meat was safe to eat. Sounds like a good idea, right? Lots of us would pay more for meat that we knew was guaranteed to be safe, just like we do for organic fruits and vegetables.
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