VIDEO: SIR ARTHUR KEITH'S THEORY OF EVOLUTION

A video reading by Colin Liddell of the introductory chapter of Sir Arthur Keith's 1948 book A New Theory of Human Evolution.

THE PEAT PARTY

A (re)peat offender?

by Brett Stevens

Back in the day, people were more alert and attentive to what was going on around them. They were not obsessed by detail, but trusted themselves because of their intuitive connection to their world, and so when they noticed a general change in the “shape” of events, they knew it was time to act.

The boys would break into the mead early one afternoon and talk it over. There would be some low, quiet voices from the elders, and louder voices from the young. Eventually, they would identify nodal points where things were going wrong. These points were people.

YOU LOOKING AT ME?

by Robert Henderson

The perception of facial expressions

A team at Glasgow University in Scotland published research in 2009 in the journal Current Biology on differences in the interpretation of facial expressions by different racial groups [1]. The research suggests that Whites [2] and East Asians differ significantly in their mode of scrutiny of faces and their success in identifying emotions from facial expressions.

Whites concentrate their attention on the eyes and the mouth equally, while East Asians concentrate largely on the eyes. The consequence is that the latter have difficulty in distinguishing expressions which have a similarity around the eyes. Whites, who use two reference areas, are significantly more adept at correctly identifying such expressions. The difference in the mode of scanning faces used by the two groups translates into a difference in the emoticons used by Whites and East Asians. Whites use representations of the mouth for happy and for sad; East Asians use representations of the eyes for happy (^.^) and for sad (;_;).

VERMINOCRACY

by Colin Liddell

Nature abhors a vacuum, and will often work overtime and at the weekends to fill one. In political and civilizational terms several vacuums seem to have opened up recently. We can only imagine what new-fangled entities will be called forth to occupy them.

For example, what will replace the vast, perennially gaping hole that seems to exist in Continental Europe? The tottering Eurozone is just the latest in a succession of weird and outlandish political entities, ideologies, and 'solutions' that have tried and failed to fill that particular void over the last 2000 years. On past records, the restoration of the Holy Roman Empire looks like the best bet for stability, so Franz Joseph the XXVIIth, or whatever his name will be, has got my vote.