FUnny how old memes never die, just find a new place to spread. This is a classic brazilian viral (in the "video that spreads" way, it's a true incident). So famous in fact that someone was able to track him down, along with other local viral videos and have him on a video clip (for a cell company).

So good news is: he survived..

http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=6abiH1xtaZI

It is funny, but that's precisely why I don't like this new instance of Dawkins, the crusader against all religion.

By reading his hate-mail he is effectively cherry-picking the most stupid and hatred correspondence he gets from religion-nuts and making all religion look a bit nutsy. He is reinforcing a stereotype of religion as something that dumbs people down and spreads hate.

He does the same as when a priest tell stories of how drug addicted atheists, or school shooters that loved rock music. Cherry picking the worst examples as a metaphor of the whole.

Dawkins is putting a lot of effort aiming at the wrong target. There is nothing wrong about religion per se. There is nothing stupid about following human traditions. But there is stupidity everywhere, and we should all be fighting that.

Why are people not celebrating? I mean, one of the biggest tricks in AI was solved, does it really amtter if it was by the bad guys. Now why when I buy a US$300 scanner it comes with a crappy OCR software that can't tell a vertical line from a lowercase "l" printed black in a white paper?

#9 evolution
first you start behaving like that. Then a couple of animals in the outskirts of the herd start behaving more agressively and the ones inside start doing other menial tasks. That´s specialization.

the next thing you know that amoeba is now a self replicating superorganism.

A flying-self regenerating-selfreplicating- one. Coming right to your face.

So, can I export the data from my Spore creature creator directly to DNA?

monkeys must think

"those darn humans really make us do stupid little things for our bananas"

About the controversy: there is none. The only thing it make it clear is that the boing boing editors (and most of the media for that matter) did not read at length the original news, falling for the easy trap of romanticizing the story. They were always "intentional photographs of a uncontactected tribe for the purpose of raising awareness of the danger the nature reserve", never an "accidental encounter with a undiscovered tribe".

For all other quick commenters about whether or not they are being "denied health care" you are falling on the same trap. This is not how it work, see survival international for the history of what happens when those tribes are forced into contact.

Finally for those questioning the need for a reserve: This is a natural reserve, the will to preserve it goes well beyond the fact that there are people. If the presence of the tribe can help protect the greater area then they deserve their title as protectors of the jungle.

#for all the ones calling fake: very unlikely. Those photos were published by FUNAI the official brazilian gov body for indian policies. For #74 i recommend you googling for north sentinele people, for an example of true uncontacted tribes

#for the discussion on either they should remain uncontacted, it seems you are all romanticizing the story, not thinking about the whole facts.

This is NOT a california man movie, where those people have a choice between living an idyllic prehistoric life or applying for a job in New York. During the history of civilization growing upon the wilderness, many tribes have took the choice of going to live in civilization or to seek isolation. Those are probably the ancestors of those people chose the latter, and have been able to live their lifes that way. This is NOT like being visited by aliens species that are out of our own reach. They could reach civilization if they walked the direction the plane went for a few days, and they probably did some point in their past as a tribe.

Some tribes, like the yanomami, have been able to reach a middle term compromise, where they are able to gain access to modern medicine and electronic voting machines but kept some traditions alive. Those are the famous indians wearing boxers you can see in other articles. Others, have reach a ill fate, vanishing as a group by diseases, alcohol and assimilation. Remember how hard it was growing up and seeing all the little things you valued in your childhood (your parents, your toys, your home) being slowly taken away by maturity? Imagine this happened upon everything you ever knew? So you need an analyst to talk about when mommy took your candy?

The main point is: those indians live in complete isolation because of their own (or their ancestor's) choice. While we still have great extents of protected rain forests, they will be able to thrive, therefore protecting them is also protecting the rain forests our own world needs, and that's what funai plans to do.

They have a choice of walking down to a city in acre (a state so isolated that brazilians itself joke if it even exists) and finding about great things like TV, alcohol, cigarretes, cars and maybe - if they are walk a lot - some internet bar with a pc running windows 98.

But it's not like they could simply press a button and say: "beam me up scotty, i'm tired of this stuff. Take me to the 5th avenue apple store cause I crave this new 2nd gen iPhone.

funny how things turn around right? I wouldn't be surprised that one day napster might offer theyr tunes for free and undrmed if they could find an alternative revenue stream.

And then suddenly napster took 10 years to go back to it's original form.

I have one of these in my room!
Gosh I feel stiley now!

hey it's 2063, we still got time. Don't give up on the moon colonies just yet...

wikipedia and OLPC are missing from this list :)

Interesting. There's a mytical creature in brazilian folklore that has the feet backwards that protect the forests by making hunters get lost trying to track him down.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curupira

wow. Those mickey masked mans on those weird sounding trucks mmust be the most horrifying vision I ever saw..