Oldest “Human” Ancestor Found

Meet Grandma:

There goes the missing link theory.

The fossil puts to rest the notion, popular since Darwin’s time, that a chimpanzee-like missing link-resembling something between humans and today’s apes-would eventually be found at the root of the human family tree. Indeed, the new evidence suggests that the study of chimpanzee anatomy and behavior-long used to infer the nature of the earliest human ancestors-is largely irrelevant to understanding our beginnings.

More at Science Magazine.

And, predictably, the Dishonesty Institute didn’t wait long to start spewing squid’s ink.

Losing Afghanistan

If you really want to know what’s going on in the war you read Michael Yon. In this recent Washington Times op-ed he lays it out clearly.

Along with the more strategic questions (for example, should war be pursued?) are those closer to the shop floor: Are we gaining or losing popular support? Is the enemy gaining or losing strength? Is the coalition gaining or losing strength?

The first answer is a common denominator for the rest.

We are losing popular support. Confidence in the Afghan and coalition governments is plummeting. Loss of human terrain is evident. Conditions are building for an avalanche. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the military commander in Afghanistan, and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates are aware of the rumbling, and so today we are bound by rules of engagement that appear insensible.

We must curb civilian losses at expense to ourselves. I believe the reasoning is sound and will share those increased dangers. Erosion of popular support seems reversible. There still is considerable good will from the Afghan population, but bomb by bomb we can blow it. We have breathing room if we work with wise alacrity. I sense a favorable shift in our operations occurring under Gen. McChrystal.

Enemies are strengthening. Attacks are dramatically increasing in frequency and efficacy. We are being out-governed by tribes and historical social structures. These structures are – and will be for the foreseeable future – the most powerful influence upon and within the political terrain. “Democracy” does not grow on land where most people don’t vote. The most remarkable item I saw during the Aug. 20 elections was the machine-gun ambush we walked into.

You should read the whole thing.

It Wasn’t the Cylons

It was the shark. The one Battle Star Galactica gradually jumped when it let politics take it off the rails.

The extent of the show’s political and ideological corruption is best exemplified by the fact that one of the central pillars of the series had to be yanked: the notion that the Cylons had a grand, complex, conspiratorial plan involving their human doppelgängers that was unfolding inexorably over the course of the show’s run, one that humans needed to uncover in order to secure a victory in the war for the survival of their species. Indeed, every episode of the first three seasons began with an opening sequence in which the viewer is explicitly told that the Cylons “have a plan.” But in the third season, a Cylon leader explains that “plans change,” whereupon the Cylon quest to exterminate the human race simply evaporates so the show can riff on the evils of “occupation.” By the premiere of the fourth season, the Cylon plan was no longer mentioned during the opening credits. And every other seed of plot that had been planted over the previous years was left untended and forgotten as well.

The miniseries and first season are some of the best television ever done. The first half of the second season is pretty good. By the third season it was clear that the earlier claim, “they had a plan” was a lie.

I never watched the fourth season.

Not Yours to Give

Mark Alexander’s column today recounts my favorite Davy Crocket story. It’s one which should be required reading by every member of congress.

Once per week, minimum.

And enjoy this sidebar rant:

In one of his more legendary orations, Crockett proclaimed: “Mr. Speaker … the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Everett] talks of summing up the merits of the question, but I’ll sum up my own. In one word I’m a screamer, and have got the roughest racking horse, the prettiest sister, the surest rifle and the ugliest dog in the district. I’m a leetle the savagest crittur you ever did see. My father can whip any man in Kentucky, and I can lick my father. I can out-speak any man on this floor, and give him two hours start. I can run faster, dive deeper, stay longer under, and come out drier, than any chap this side the big Swamp. I can outlook a panther and outstare a flash of lightning, tote a steamboat on my back and play at rough and tumble with a lion, and an occasional kick from a zebra.”

Crockett continued, “I can take the rag off — frighten the old folks — astonish the natives — and beat the Dutch all to smash, make nothing of sleeping under a blanket of snow and don’t mind being frozen more than a rotten apple. I can walk like an ox, run like a fox, swim like an eel, yell like an Indian, fight like a devil, spout like an earthquake, make love like a mad bull, and swallow a Mexican whole without choking if you butter his head and pin his ears back.”