Archaeology Magazine Asks, "Should We Clone Neanderthals?"

Five years ago 454 Life Sciences in Branford, Connecticut partnered with the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany to sequence the full genetic code of a Neanderthal woman who died 30,000 years ago.

 Zach Zorich writes:

[John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin], believes the barriers to Neanderthal cloning will come down. "We are going to bring back the mammoth...the impetus against doing Neanderthal because it is too weird is going to go away." He doesn't think creating a Neanderthal clone is ethical science, but points out that there are always people who are willing to overlook the ethics. "In the end," Hawks says, "we are going to have a cloned Neanderthal, I'm just sure of it."

Read the complete article here.

Photo by:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mharrsch/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Living with Robots

One of the highlights of An's Sundance trip was being introduced to Asimo, Honda's "humanoid robot." Since Honda is one of the festival's sponsors, the child-sized droid made an appearance during the festival. Asimo was able to shake An's hand, wave back when she waved, and walk in the direction she pointed to. The company also premiered the documentary short "Living with Robots" at the festival, directed by Joe Berlinger of Radical Media. The film talks about the history of Asimo's development, how robots have been viewed by society and what the future holds with new technology. This is the sixth short as part of the Dream The Impossible series commissioned by Honda.

View it here:

EARTHLING

In the thick of the Directors Lab so I apologize for the posts being few and far between. Just wanted to clue people in to a trailer for what could be an interesting project...


EARTHLING, written and directed by Clay Liford, tells the story of a handful of individuals trapped on a space station who come to realize they may (or may not) be aliens.

It looks to be ambitious, thoughtful and (our fave 3 words) low budget sci-fi. It premieres at SXSW in March so if you're in Austin, check it out and let me know.