Thursday, September 10, 2015

Science & UW-Madison, GOP targets, shine worldwide

As the UW-Madison gets worldwide notice for its role in a just-announced and monumental discovery about the fossilized history of humankind, I wonder if anyone will ask UW budget slasher Scott Walker and his snide, science-dissing sidekick Robin Vos whether today's news gives them a better appreciation for science and the immeasurable benefits across-the-board provided by a fully-supported and respected state university system.

The unprecedented paleoanthropological discoveries heralded in media today from the The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - - and props to the paper for naming three UW-Madison members of the multi-national discovery team, including Alia Gurtov, one of the six-person, all-female 'underground astronaut' team which crawled perilously through South African caves to the eventual discovery site - - to The New York Times, which said:
At a news conference on Wednesday, John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a senior author of the paper describing the new species, said it was “unlike any other species seen before,” noting that a small skull with a brain one-third the size of modern human brain cases was perched atop a very slender body. An average H. naledi was about five feet tall and weighed almost 100 pounds, he said.
Hawks is also quoted at CNN:
"Overall, Homo naledi looks like one of the most primitive members of our genus, but it also has some surprisingly human-like features, enough to warrant placing it in the genus Homo," says John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a senior author on the papers describing the new species that were published Thursday.
On, Wisconsin.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

These people don't care about a new species of human. They believe in Adam and Eve. Anything outside of their biblical beliefs is just blasphemy.

Anonymous said...

Agreed. Voters who support Vos & Walker will see the word "homo" mentioned, and not understanding what it means, will rip UW a new one for wasting money studying homos. It violates their belief of marriage between a man and woman.

Anonymous said...

Was Prof. Hawks when saying that the brain was 1/3 the size of a modern human, describing Scott Walker or the popcorn king Robin Vos? Just asking.