The burden for this impasse should be shouldered by the university. Throughout the 20th century, anthropologists from Berkeley and other UC campuses abused their scientific privilege by digging up graves without respect for the descendants of the dead; encouraging amateur archaeologists all over the state to send skeletal remains to the nearest university; failing in many cases to document the sites of excavation; indiscriminately mixing up body parts; and promoting racist ideas about native inferiority.
The Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, which serves as curator of Berkeley’s collection of human remains, is currently closed for a “profound transformation” of its galleries, educational programs and storage facilities. According to a Hearst staff member, the collection of body parts will be moved from a dank basement in the Hearst Gym to “new and improved storage” in Kroeber Hall. There will be a visitors room for native groups to hold ceremonies, and a Native American advisory committee — selected by the university — will be established.
These are small steps in the right direction. But in addition to these mostly cosmetic changes, and to complying with the bureaucratic procedures spelled out in the repatriation law, the university should take responsibility for, in Heizer’s words, “a human ethical” issue, namely, how so many well-educated, well-meaning professors and administrators eagerly violated the rights of the dead and tormented the living.
![Peter Suber’s book about open access is now available in multiple open access formats, roughly one year after the publication date. [Google+]
PDF/ HTML/ ePub/ Mobi
Summary at MIT Press website.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/b24393f9e44f557e7b0c0aae823f8757/tumblr_mol4kpStAI1qzs6yjo1_500.png)
Peter Suber’s book about open access is now available in multiple open access formats, roughly one year after the publication date. [Google+]
Sometimes we actually learn things in high school
Jessica Lee evokes the late and great Notorious B.I.G. for her parting wisdom in an interesting way, keep an eye on the chemical symbols on the left,
(F) - Flourine
(U) - Uranium
(C) - Carbon
(K) - Potassium
(Bi) - Bismuth
(Tc) - Technetium
(He) - Helium
(S) - Sulfur
(Ge) - Germanium
(Tm) - Thulium
(O) - Oxygen
(Ne) - Neon
(Y) - Yttrium.
I will never not love or appreciate the part-time nerds and the full-time G’s of this world.
![UC Berkeley professor Steven E. Brenner lets you construct a personalized annotated version of a text he wrote for the journal Nature on mitigating the potential dangers of genome leaks. [Comp Bio | Berkeley]
From the FAQ at the link above,
What is this document?
Collected jetsam. I submitted a rough piece to Nature, and the editor there helped whip it into shape and cut it down to size. Along the way, bits of text were left on the cutting room floor. I’ve collected some of those elisions that help motivate or explicate my points, as well as expanded on some queries I received. This document does not purport to be a full-fledged support of every detail in the piece. Why are you providing this annotation in such a weird form?
Natureowns the copyright on my piece, and they were firm that I could not post the text anywhere else for 6 months, even for the sole purpose of providing the annotation. This print overlay was designed as a method that could be used by anyone to make an annotated version, without any special technology beyond a PDF viewer and a printer. Let me know if you have better ideas for how to legally distribute the annotations.
Interesting method to say, I‘m not finished and it probably beats a blog post.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/9a006ad8d74bc972073ec772338a39ed/tumblr_mol10cxvmq1qzs6yjo1_1280.png)
![UC Berkeley professor Steven E. Brenner lets you construct a personalized annotated version of a text he wrote for the journal Nature on mitigating the potential dangers of genome leaks. [Comp Bio | Berkeley]
From the FAQ at the link above,
What is this document?
Collected jetsam. I submitted a rough piece to Nature, and the editor there helped whip it into shape and cut it down to size. Along the way, bits of text were left on the cutting room floor. I’ve collected some of those elisions that help motivate or explicate my points, as well as expanded on some queries I received. This document does not purport to be a full-fledged support of every detail in the piece. Why are you providing this annotation in such a weird form?
Natureowns the copyright on my piece, and they were firm that I could not post the text anywhere else for 6 months, even for the sole purpose of providing the annotation. This print overlay was designed as a method that could be used by anyone to make an annotated version, without any special technology beyond a PDF viewer and a printer. Let me know if you have better ideas for how to legally distribute the annotations.
Interesting method to say, I‘m not finished and it probably beats a blog post.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/bdca955499b9699777cf23fdff93d3fd/tumblr_mol10cxvmq1qzs6yjo2_1280.png)
![UC Berkeley professor Steven E. Brenner lets you construct a personalized annotated version of a text he wrote for the journal Nature on mitigating the potential dangers of genome leaks. [Comp Bio | Berkeley]
From the FAQ at the link above,
What is this document?
Collected jetsam. I submitted a rough piece to Nature, and the editor there helped whip it into shape and cut it down to size. Along the way, bits of text were left on the cutting room floor. I’ve collected some of those elisions that help motivate or explicate my points, as well as expanded on some queries I received. This document does not purport to be a full-fledged support of every detail in the piece. Why are you providing this annotation in such a weird form?
Natureowns the copyright on my piece, and they were firm that I could not post the text anywhere else for 6 months, even for the sole purpose of providing the annotation. This print overlay was designed as a method that could be used by anyone to make an annotated version, without any special technology beyond a PDF viewer and a printer. Let me know if you have better ideas for how to legally distribute the annotations.
Interesting method to say, I‘m not finished and it probably beats a blog post.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/3efca7da64babacaa12716838c08cbb7/tumblr_mol10cxvmq1qzs6yjo3_1280.png)
UC Berkeley professor Steven E. Brenner lets you construct a personalized annotated version of a text he wrote for the journal Nature on mitigating the potential dangers of genome leaks. [Comp Bio | Berkeley]
From the FAQ at the link above,
What is this document?
Collected jetsam. I submitted a rough piece to Nature, and the editor there helped whip it into shape and cut it down to size. Along the way, bits of text were left on the cutting room floor. I’ve collected some of those elisions that help motivate or explicate my points, as well as expanded on some queries I received. This document does not purport to be a full-fledged support of every detail in the piece.
Natureowns the copyright on my piece, and they were firm that I could not post the text anywhere else for 6 months, even for the sole purpose of providing the annotation. This print overlay was designed as a method that could be used by anyone to make an annotated version, without any special technology beyond a PDF viewer and a printer. Let me know if you have better ideas for how to legally distribute the annotations.
Why are you providing this annotation in such a weird form?
Interesting method to say, I‘m not finished and it probably beats a blog post.
The launch of several science mega-prizes is making some researchers millionaires but others question whether such awards are the best way to promote their field.
This seems like a fantastic and expensive way to solve zero of the problems that you aim to address.
Like any good scientist, I can’t give a firm answer to this question, and truthfully no one can. Anyone who claims to be able to foretell the apocalypse is, at best, overstepping the bounds of scientific certainty. But I love that my friends THINK I might know the answer. We scientists are supposed to know stuff—valuable stuff. Like whether or not the world’s going to end.
My personal and scientific opinion is that the answer is “No”. The world is not going to end. Yes, things are going to change, and they’re going to change fast, but the world’s not all coming to a screeching halt. The Earth will continue spinning on its axis, the planet will keep revolving around the sun, and winter is still coming (once a year, Game of Thrones fans).
Which is not to say that climate change doesn’t matter. I think it matters a lot. In fact, I think it’s arguably the most important issue facing the world today. But, let’s be honest— we scientists have to start approaching this whole “climate/apocalypse” question with a bit more nuance.
The first step should be to ask ourselves, “Why does climate matter?” Forget global warming for a second. Why does climate matter?
Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov was a gifted scientist, a dedicated conservationist, and a practical, grounded man who expanded everyone’s understanding of animal husbandry. He also, for years, tried to make human-ape hybrids.
Meanwhile, this was recently a thing that a scientist said.
