EPIC

Epic is a 'future documentary' done in flash about the changing state of media..

http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/

...goes for about 8mins. Watch it, it's quite thought provoking.

...some mirrors:

http://www.broom.org/epic/

http://www.lightover.com/epic/

All I have to say is...




..and...

Scientists in Florida believe they know why complex language evolved. Blame it on baby talk. At least 1.6 million years ago some human ancestor mother started saying "goo-goo" and "ba-ba" to her baby as a way of keeping in touch.

And it all began because humans became bipedal. Modern ape babies cling to the maternal fur. Chimpanzee mothers are silent. There could be a link, says Dean Falk, an anthropologist at Florida State University.

She reports in the journal Behavioural and Brain Sciences that "motherese", the universal language of motherhood, is characterised by a high-pitched voice, long drawn-out vowels, repetitive phrases and a singsong cadence. These may hold the key to the emergence of language.

"I knew chimp mommies don't make these noises, so I knew something happened during evolution," she said. "The missing puzzle piece was bipedalism. We stood up; we lost hair. It was then that babies could no longer hang on to their mothers. Mothers had to hang on to their babies. That was a eureka moment."

For 200 years researchers have tried to understand how one mammal evolved from grunting and hunting to growing bonsai trees and reading Homer.

Professor Falk believes it all began 1.6 million years ago, when our upright human ancestors were roaming the savanna. The evolutionary development of bigger brains meant that early humans began giving birth before their babies' heads became too big to pass through the birth canal.

This shorter gestational period meant humans gave birth to babies that were undeveloped physically. Foraging mothers would have had to put their babies down to search for food. They may have made noises to reassure them. These noises would have served as codes, and eventually evolved into words.

"The behaviour of chimp mommies and babies and human mothers and infants are delightfully identical in many ways but we are dramatically different in other ways," Professor Falk said.

"We vocalise continually in a way that helps babies begin to learn language. I wanted to find out why we are the only animals that talk, and this need to pacify our babies as humans evolved may be the reason."

...from the Guardian

The littlest humans

The archaeologists who found the remains of Homo floresiensis on the Indonesian island of Flores predict there are other species to be found on a nearby island. The team, led by Professor Mike Morwood of the University of New England, will begin a search in Sulawesi early next year.

In a review of the find in yesterday's Science, Professor Jared Diamond, of the University of California, says it is unlikely our species mated with the "micropygmies" on Flores for the same reasons we don't have sex with chimpanzees. They would have been "too unlike humans to appeal sexually", and too unpredictable and dangerous to make the liaison a safe proposition.

from smh...

Seaside nest eggs go off the boil

Photo: Dean Sewell

Beachside property owners may have to settle for much lower returns over the next 10 years as the decade-long property boom that tripled house prices in many suburbs runs out of puff.

Figures prepared for the Herald by Australian Property Monitors show massive increases along the metropolitan coast over the past 10 years: from 345 per cent at Whale Beach in the north to 230 per cent at Bundeena in the south.

Of 36 beachside suburbs studied, 20 had a median house price of more than $1 million. Ten years earlier, only eight of those suburbs had a median higher than $400,000.

The soaring prices could have an unwelcome social impact, said Geoff Withycombe, executive officer of Sydney Coastal Councils. The State Government must improve access to affordable housing by increasing the statutory allocation of such housing, he said.

The property boom also caused social dislocation, he said. There was demand in coastal suburbs for lower-income workers but they had little chance of living nearby, while "the kids who live in these areas can't afford to buy a house in their own suburbs. It's a major social issue for Sydney."

Phil Raskall, an urban economist, said many grandparents and their baby-boomer children were likely to have enjoyed big property-driven increases in wealth, while the next generation was shut out of the market. As the eldest generation died off, "it's possible there might be arrangements made to skip a generation, with the grandparents saying it would be better to pass it on to the [grandchild] instead of the already well-off baby boomers".