Daniel Rourke /stream

Ask Metafilter Monkey sexual politics documentary scene A few years ago I watched a David Attenborough nature doc in which he narrated a scene that took place in an ancient, overgrown jungle temple. An alpha male monkey was surrounded by females, and a smaller, cheeky, male monkey waited nearby. A…

June 3 2015, 1:20pm | Comments
Bookmark HIJACKING THE ANTHROPOCENE
What can lobbyists do when science contradicts their political messages? Some simply deny the science, as many conservatives do with climate change. Others pretend to embrace the science, while ignoring or…

May 26 2015, 5:08am | Comments
Bookmark Mammoth Tusk Hunters
One last chance. That’s all the Siberian hunter wants. For five months Karl Gorokhov has tracked his ancient prey across a desolate island in the East Siberian Sea, slogging 18 hours…

May 19 2015, 4:17pm | Comments
Bookmark I Just Want to Say One Word to You: Plastiglomerate - Scientific…
Humanity inscribes itself into the rock record of Earth’s history. People now move more sediment than all the world’s rivers combined. Fossil fuel burning has changed the composition of the atmosphere.

May 14 2015, 5:43pm | Comments
Bookmark We are not edging up to a mass extinction – Stewart Brand…
The way the public hears about conservation issues is nearly always in the mode of ‘[Beloved Animal] Threatened With Extinction’. That makes for electrifying headlines, but it misdirects concern. The loss…

April 23 2015, 12:26am | Comments
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February 18 2015, 1:31pm | Comments
Bookmark Wild Systems « NextNature.net
Steven Levy writes in Wired on the unexpected turn of the Artificial Intelligence revolution: rather than whole artificial minds, it consists of a rich bestiary of digital fauna, which few would…

September 8 2014, 5:11pm | Comments
Bookmark Ants Swarm Like Brains Think - Issue 12: Feedback - Nautilus
Deborah Gordon spent the morning of August 27 watching a group of harvester ants foraging for seeds outside the dusty town of Rodeo, N.M. Long before the first rays of sun…

April 28 2014, 5:28am | Comments
Bookmark Exaptation & managed serendipity: II - Cognitive Edge Network Blog
In this second of three posts on exaptation I am going to continue to build on reporting discussions and ideas that came out of the Durham conference. In the final post…

February 26 2014, 9:06am | Comments
Bookmark Exaptation & managed serendipity: I - Cognitive Edge Network Blog
The feather original evolved for regulation of temperature, but then evolved for flight. In 1942 a scientist at Raytheon was testing a magnetron, a key component of radar, and noticed that…

February 26 2014, 9:06am | Comments
Bookmark You’re Only Human. That’s the Problem - Newsweek
If you have the leisure time to read Newsweek, then you probably live with a generally manageable nexus of concerns. You know you are going to die, but are not terribly…

January 16 2014, 3:06pm | Comments
Bookmark Ruminations on worshipping the glitch | atractivoquenobello
Influential post-industrial sound alchemists Coil once implored us to Worship the Glitch, and it’s true that errors and flaws have long been perceived as having an essentially spiritual nature: they serve…

January 16 2014, 3:06pm | Comments
Bookmark Peak Nature | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters
Nature is the featureless remainder at either end of the process of production. Either it’s exploitable stuff, or value-added stuff. Whatever: it’s basically featureless, abstract, gray. It has nothing to do…

January 16 2014, 3:06pm | Comments
Bookmark Scientist wants human woman to give birth to a Neanderthal - Crave
A scientist believes he's close to perfecting the necessary technology to clone a Neanderthal - all he needs is a human woman to gestate it.

January 22 2013, 3:44pm | Comments
Portfolio Sampling, Acclimatisation, and the ‘Die Hard’ Method

October 7 2012, 3:48pm | Comments
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Synthetic Biology: Designing a “Metaphysical” Chicken

September 5 2012, 1:20am | Comments
Bookmark Synthetic Biology: Designing a “Metaphysical” Chicken
The ultimate design material is one that understands what it is to become. By way of an example, I’d like to think about how we might design a chicken. Think of…

September 5 2012, 1:20am | Comments
Bookmark Neanderthals Getting a Colourful Upgrade
A chorus of smart, modern minds is rising over the hills of anthropology that the ancient Neanderthals of Europe weren't anywhere nearly as dumb, insufferable and unrecognizable as everyone thought all…

May 23 2012, 9:44am | Comments
Bookmark We must set planetary boundaries wisely
As pressure on resources increases, pollution accumulates and humanity's impact on Earth escalates, global-scale governance of the environment is increasingly necessary. In June, the United Nations' Rio+20 Earth Summit in Rio…

May 23 2012, 9:39am | Comments
Bookmark Harvard sociobiologist E.O. Wilson on the origins of the arts
RICH AND SEEMINGLY BOUNDLESS as the creative arts seem to be, each is filtered through the narrow biological channels of human cognition. Our sensory world, what we can learn unaided about…

April 21 2012, 5:37am | Comments
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Is Chernobyl a Wild Kingdom or a Radioactive Den of Decay?

April 20 2012, 7:36am | Comments
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Bespoke pets: Just press “print” | The Economist

April 5 2012, 3:02am | Comments
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Next What?

April 4 2012, 1:42am | Comments
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Should we clone Neanderthals?

April 4 2012, 1:42am | Comments
Bookmark A universe without purpose
The illusion of purpose and design is perhaps the most pervasive illusion about nature that science has to confront on a daily basis. Everywhere we look, it appears that the world…

April 2 2012, 2:38pm | Comments
Findings Mat of microbes the size of Greece discovered on seafloor
Gargantuan whales and hefty cephalopods are typically thought of as the classic marine mammoths, but they might have to make way for the mighty microbes, which constitute 50 to 90 percent of the oceans’ total biomass, according to newly released data. These tiny creatures…

March 16 2012, 8:02am | Comments
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Any Sufficiently Advanced Civilization is Indistinguishable from Nature

March 9 2012, 4:34am | Comments
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The Virus Planet

March 9 2012, 3:36am | Comments
Bookmark Billion Dollar Brain in a box
Officially, the Swiss Academy of Sciences meeting in Bern on 20 January was an overview of large-scale computer modelling in neuroscience. Unofficially, it was neuroscientists' first real chance to get answers…

February 24 2012, 3:33pm | Comments
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At what age do babies enter the uncanny valley?

February 13 2012, 9:06am | Comments
Bookmark We live in a "more-than-human" universe
The new political ecology is thus emerging from a call for greater humility toward the world and all the life forms it may hold, both literally and figuratively. Rather than contrasting…

February 13 2012, 2:09am | Comments
Bookmark The meaning of monsters, magic and miracles
Monsters demonstrate, monsters alert us: whether or not the etymologies relating the word to both “monstro” (I show) and “moneo” (I warn), are correct, monsters act as a moral compass. The…

February 9 2012, 10:33am | Comments

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