Geico’s “so easy a caveman can do it” advertising campaign incorrectly minimized the intelligence of Neanderthals. (Credit: Shutterstock)
(This post originally appeared in the online anthropology magazine SAPIENS. Follow @SAPIENS_org on Twitter to discover more of their work.)
For the last dozen years or so, Geico Insurance has run commercials featuring Neanderthals in modern contexts. The story line varies, but the take-home point does not: Switching to ...read more
The TeamIndus rover. (Credit: TeamIndus)
A team of undergraduate engineers from the University of California-San Diego hopes to be the first to brew beer in space.
They are one of 25 teams competing for a spot aboard India’s TeamIndus lunar lander mission, which itself is vying for a $20 million Google Lunar XPRIZE. Inspired by home brewing projects, the young engineers want to study how yeast behaves in outer space.
Beer Blast-off
Their experiment consists of a soda-can sized ...read more
Pilots from Weather Modification, Inc., prepare the cloud seeding aircraft with seeding flares. (Credit: Derek Blestrud, Idaho Power Company)
“Make mud, not war.” That was the slogan of the American 54th Weather Reconnaissance Squad, the first military force to engage in weather warfare.
Throughout the Vietnam War, they flew 2,602 missions, releasing silver iodide, a compound that seeded clouds and exacerbated monsoons—or so the thinking went. Dubbed “Operation Popeye&r ...read more
After a late dinner, a jungle-dwelling whip spider can’t rely on an Uber driver to get her home. She has to find the way herself, in the pitch-black, picking her way over thick undergrowth to reach the tree she lives on. It’s a trick she can even manage when plucked from her home tree and tossed into the forest at random, up to 10 meters away. Now scientists think whip spiders don’t use her eyes for this homing feat—they use their feet.
Whip spiders hunt b ...read more
Author Vishay SinghPosted on Categories Discover Magazine
