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This creative video from Do the Green Thing maps the way we walk through our lives. The point is to walk more and drive less for the good of the environment, but the video is entertaining even without an environmental message. Link -via the Presurfer
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If we don’t have visual cues to guide us, people tend to walk in circles. Many theories have been put forth for why this is so, but experiments that control for variables such as right-handedness, brain-side dominance, and more strength on one side come up with the same results: we tend to go in circles. Read more about it at NPR. Link -via Metafilter
You walk, I walk, but the Japanese? Now they precision walk. That’s what you’re about to see: a precision walking competition. Kind of like marching band, but without the tubas.
Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via metafilter
Matt Green is a 30-year old man who decided to walk across the United States. He’s not doing this to raise funds for a charity or to call attention to a cause; it’s a “for the heck of it” adventure. He intends to walk 3,000 miles, from Rockaway Beach, New York to Rockaway Beach, Oregon, pushing a cart which carries (among other items) his food, clothing, basic camping equipment, two books, pepper spray, and duct tape.
When I’m driving, I find myself saying “Oh, I should have stopped there” as I go flying by something that looks interesting. The idea of having to impede your progress, turn the car around, and find a place to park is such a mental barrier to exploring when you’re driving. Even on a bike there’s a hesitancy to stop and climb off the saddle to go check something out. But it’s easy when you’re walking. You don’t have to stop what you’re doing; you just walk in a different direction for a little and have a look around.
I’m very drawn to the simplicity of this whole pursuit. Each day I’ll wake up, pack all my possessions back in my cart, and walk a little farther. That’s it. That’s the extent of my world. I’m just walkin’. I think everyone dreams about such a simple existence from time to time, when the worries and pressures of modern life start to accumulate. This is my chance to live that dream for a while, and see how the reality compares to the fantasy.
He is travelling without a support team, so to a certain extent he relies on the kindness of strangers, and he documents those encounters and his other experiences with photos at his very interesting website (including, to date, 24 “awesome mailboxes.”)
Previously on Neatorama: Walking Across America (with a Mule!)
Matt Green’s I’m Just Walking website. Via the StarTribune.
Why did early humans walk upright? Owen Lovejoy of Kent State University has an intriguing hypothesis after studying the oldest human skeleton, of the species Ardipithecus ramidus or "Ardi" for short: it’s all about food and sex!
In apes—both modern apes and, presumably, the ancient ancestors of Ardipithecus—males find mates the good old-fashioned apish way: by fighting with other males for access to fertile females. Success, measured in number of offspring, goes to macho males with big sharp canine teeth who try to mate with as many ovulating females as possible. Sex is best done quickly—hence those penis bristles, which accelerate ejaculation—with the advantage to the male with big testicles carrying a heavy load of sperm. Among females, the winners are those who flaunt their fertility with swollen genitals or some other prominent display of ovulation, so those big alpha dudes will take notice and give them a tumble, providing a baby with his big alpha genes.
Let’s suppose that some lesser male, with poor little stubby canines, figures out that he can entice a fertile female into mating by bringing her some food. That sometimes happens among living chimpanzees, for instance when a female rewards a male for presenting her with a tasty gift of colobus monkey.
Among Ardipithecus’s ancestors, such a strategy could catch on if searching for food required a lot of time and exposure to predators. Males would be far more successful food-providers if they had their hands free to carry home loads of fruits and tubers—which would favor walking on two legs. Females would come to prefer good, steady providers with smaller canines over the big fierce-toothed ones who left as soon as they spot another fertile female. The results, says Lovejoy, are visible in Ardipithecus, which had small canines even in males and walked upright.
Jamie Shreeve of NGM Blog Central has the story: Link
When Sophie McInnes was born on September 16, 2006, doctors said that she’d be unable to walk for at least a year. Her father, Gavin McInnes, simply wouldn’t accept it as medical fact. Here’s the documentary Sophie Can Walk: Link [Funny or Die]
As suggested by VICE in a comment in John’s post Why Can’t Human Babies Walk?
Takin’ a break from weighty science research like finding a cure for cancer and whatnot, scientists have now solved the riddle of why we swing our arms when walking:
Swinging one’s arms comes at a cost. We need muscles to do it, and we need to provide energy in the form of food for those muscles. So what’s the advantage?
Little or none, some experts have said, contending that arm-swinging, like our appendix, is an evolutionary relic from when we used to go about on all fours.
But a trio of specialists from the United States and the Netherlands have put the question to rigorous tests.
They built a mechanical model to get an idea of the dynamics of arm-swinging and then recruited 10 volunteers, who were asked to walk with a normal swing, an opposite-to-normal swing, with their arms folded or held by their sides. [...]
Arm-swinging turned out to be a plus, rather than a negative, the investigators found.
For one thing, it is surprisingly, er, "’armless" in energy costs, requiring little torque, or rotational twist, from the shoulder muscles. Holding one’s arms as one walks requires 12 percent more metabolic energy, compared with swinging them.
Christoph Rehage had a plan: to walk from Beijing, China to his home country Germany. In November, 2007, he started walking. A year later, he walked 4,646 km (2,887 mi) to Ürümqi – and though he didn’t complete his original route, the amazing journey had transformed him.
This is a time lapse of pictures taken through his trip. You can read more about Christoph’s journey at his website, The Longest Way.
From the Upcoming 
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