Goodall with Flint as an infant

I use the above photo in many of my classes. It paints an iconic scene of a young Jane Goodall in 1964 reaching out to the infant Flint. From there, I often elaborate on the number of years Goodall invested in her work and life into studying and advocating for chimpanzees, and for nature more generally.  

By now, most people have heard that Goodall’s new (co-authored) book “Seeds of Hope” contains not only several lifted passages, but fabricated interviews and poor research. Here is one particularly harsh but even-handed review, which notes that the criticism of Goodall has been muted because of who she is and her long track record as a gentle ambassador of primatology. 

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 48,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 11 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

Below is a quick look at the most-read posts in 2011. I’m listing some of the top ones with a brief summary, in case you’re interested. Thanks very much to everyone for visiting, and to the kind people who have shared these writings and commented on them.

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Lessons from the Christmas Truce of 1914. This is easily the most widely read thing on this site, with nothing else coming close. It looks at the truce negotiated by German, French, and Scottish officers on Christmas Eve of 1914 during WWI, and the lessons we can draw upon from this and similar events to facilitate cooperation. I’m grateful to John Rennie for linking to it on his site.

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This year was the first for this website. In looking at the blog’s statistics, it’s interesting to see which posts were the most-read. I’m listing the top ten posts with a brief summary, in case you’re interested. Thanks very much to everyone for visiting.

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1. Life is Beautiful (May 15)

This was the most-read post of the year, and it was a very personal one. I wrote about the tenth anniversary of the death of my brother Kevin, and how I’ve used anthropology and evolutionary biology to maintain perspective on the beauty of life.

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2. Making Peace with the Past (Apr 14)

If past injustices are not addressed, they can fester for decades or centuries. However, people seem to crave forgiveness, justice, and reconciliation. [Armenia, the Soviet Union and Poland, the former Yugoslavia, Tiger Woods, Joshua Blahyi (‘General Butt Naked’), and Gandhi.]

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