Month: June 2007

When the going gets tough, take some hostages

Hey, it worked well enough the first time (just ask Jimmy Carter), so the Iranians have started taking Americans hostage again[*1] :

Rarely have so many journalists, politicians and commentators so totally missed a headline. There are now five American hostages in Iran. Each case has been largely treated by itself, almost as if it were an oddity, something requiring a special explanation, instead of another piece in a luminously clear pattern whose meaning should be intuitively obvious to us all.

Of course, the first time around was an act of war rather than the current petty thuggery, but unfortunately we had history’s worst American President in office at the time.

Orang-utans and walking upright

I’ve been worried, it’s been almost a week since the last simian article of note.  But never fear, ScienceDaily comes through with:
Lessons From The Orangutans: Upright Walking May Have Begun In The Trees[*1]

Because these ancestors were probably fruit-eaters, as orangutans are, they would have needed a way to navigate the thin, flexible branches at the tree’s periphery, where the fruit typically is. Moving on two legs and using their arms primarily for balance, or “hand-assisted bipedalism,” may have helped them travel on these branches.The researchers analyzed nearly 3,000 examples of observed orangutan movement, and found that the orangutans were more likely to use hand-assisted bipedalism when they were on the thinnest branches. When bipedal, the animals also tended to grip multiple branches with their long toes.