Recommended Reading: John Hawks On 3D Fossil Printing

From his "weblog" anthropologist John Hawks reproduces an interview he gave on the subject of the Homo Naledi discovery team's publishing of 3D printing specifications for the public use.

How 3D printing fossils will change the way we look at human evolution

The Vice Chancellor of Wits University, Adam Habib, spoke at the announcement of Homo naledi last month, and he really said something that I think resonates widely:

We often talk about science as having no boundaries, but in our world scientific knowledge has become commodified, and too often, what should be the bequest of the world, the bequest of a common humanity, is locked up under paywalls that postgraduate students and researchers cannot get access to. So what we did when we made this discovery, was we put cameras in the cave, and we streamed it live from day one.

"We partnered with eLIFE, an open access journal, to make sure that the discovery was available to all of humanity. And what we did in that practice, is create the first elements of a common global academy….We are not simply going to be beneficiaries of open access, but we are going to be contributors to open access, to the knowledge of a common humanity."

I’ve been sharing that quote a lot, because it expresses something really central. South Africa is stepping forward to lead in the area of open access, and this is not just one team of scientists, we have tremendous support from every level of the scientific enterprise and government. Our team has gotten a lot of attention for this because people aren’t used to seeing significant new discoveries published in such an open access way. But this is the future.
Paleoanthropology is about uncovering the history that all humans share. People are curious about it, they want to encounter that history, they want to explore their origins. As scientists we have the tremendous privilege of discovery, and it gives us a responsibility to enable people to understand our common past.

 

Inappropriate Satire Of Whatever This Event Is Deemed To Be

A Shooting In Colorado Springs.

I first heard of this happening from Fox News, others are also guilty of providing content which may offend some and thus should be banned.

At this moment it is not clear who did the thing we should not mention, but reports say the shooter is now inside a Planned Parenthood Clinic. Unclear too is whether the killing of any babies has been delayed or if the the dissection and harvesting of baby parts has been interrupted by the individual who has migrated to the PPC seeking sanctuary.

It is on record that the Black Lives Matter crowd has reason to hope though, at this writing it is only said that police officers have been wounded, if they pull through the demonstrations begin asap.

The White House has not yet decided if this is only a set back, or if black people were shot or looked at funny thus elevating this to a national crisis.

It is understood that whatever the facts on the ground and whoever has been or will be harmed the real culprit is of course global climate change.

Be aware too that even though the Governor of Colorado has opened the State to the Syrians any connection to that collection of peoples and the events currently transpiring is both mere coincidence and the fault of the Republicans for shutting down the government.

If more details become available we may decide to tell you what you should think and will of course remind you that we care and it is someone elses blame.

And, lastly, remember this is Colorado, so, smoke 'em if you got 'em.

Related, Kate explains it all with just a few lines...

Syed Farook is one two killers from an attack in San Bernardino, California yesterday. He, along with his "wife" is dead now. Before the authorities would release the Muslim sounding names of the killers they went to extreme measures to be certain they had correctly identified the pair. Why? In one respect it is a normal matter; but in these times it is done to assure that Muslims are not falsely accussed, because, after all, President Obama is dong every thing he can to establish Islam in the USA, (and everywhere), so naturally the Feds would pressure the locals to hold the names secret until it was impossible to keep them secret. The US government put out a release, before the names were public, stating that the shooter was an American citizen. Why would that be important, so that once the names were released people would not make the natural assumption that a killer with a Muslim sounding name was killing in the name of Allah. The killers were GoPro cameras during their day kil.., er,  at the beach, which the White House will surely remind us could have nothing to do with the propaganda videos ISIS has been issuing. It will be interesting to know if the couple began their rampag, er, wading into the deep end, by yelling allahu akbar. Expect this to be hushed up by use of the label, "workplace violence".

Btw, the details from the Colorado Springs shooting, still out there in the ether; they must not fit the narrative either. Though all on the left are eager to associate that shooting with an attack against Planned Parenthood, even to the point of accepting as fact a rumor that the killer said something about no more baby parts. Somehow they jump to their conclusion forgetting the example set by John Kerry recently when he talked about the Charlie Hebdo murders, he said they were rational, basically saying those folk had it coming. If the shooter in this place went after the baby killers, while John Kerry's logic would mean it was a rational, excusable, reaction I would disagree. Killing all these babies, nation wide, is a sad testament to who Americans are, but nothing is to be solved by killing a few when 40% of the population believe in killing babies. That 40% is sick because an even smaller minority of our population has successfully convinced the weakest among us that killing the truly weak before they are born is okey dokey. Having convinced the weakest living among us that those killing are okay, it is now easy for them to push the envelope and to kill after birthing the child, and then too to cut up the victim for profit. But, we are talking about all of this when we have not been told that any of the shooting victims were inside the clinic, some reports have that all of the shots were fired to the outside of the building. The Press lets us down day after day.