Gender, stereotypes and double standards revealed in cyberspace

Here are three things that crossed my path today on this common theme in the order in which I saw them:

http://www.upworthy.com/watch-a-student-totally-nail-something-about-women-that-ive-been-trying-to-articulate-for-37-years-6?c=reccon1

http://business.time.com/2013/12/10/pantene-powerfully-breaks-down-every-sexist-workplace-stereotype-in-one-ad/?xid=newsletter-weekly

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/12/05/how-far-we-havent-come-all-of-the-terrible-ways-the-media-treated-women-in-2013-in-one-video/?xid=newsletter-weekly

Food for thought.

What can the evolution of the dog tell us about the human species?

Well, the New York Times reports that scientists analyzing the evolution of the dog can agree on how it happened, but not where.  Why? because population genetics is itself an evolving science, and very often these days fossil data and genetic g=data tell different stories, as do different genetic samples.  We are still sorting the mess out, and studies on the domesticated dog are instructive for telling us how hard it can be to get conclusions for messy data sets.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/science/wolf-to-dog-scientists-agree-on-how-but-not-where.html?ref=science

So with THAT in mind, take a look at THIS article about some recent genetic studies of ancient human remains:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/science/at-400000-years-oldest-human-dna-yet-found-raises-new-mysteries.html?src=recg

Demographics: Our Aging Planet

From NPR's Planet Money:

Watch the world's population age over time.



http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/12/09/247385046/the-global-population-boom-and-bust-in-4-gifs

Consumerism in America and the Teen Budget

Interesting juxtaposition of teenage budgets vs. the rest of the ecomony on average.




http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/12/yes-millennials-are-cheap-and-this-graph-of-the-teenage-budget-explains-why/282123/

Commodity chains and globalization

NPR's Planet Money did an interesting series on T-Shirts, to highlight the interconnections of people and objects found in the global economy known as a "commodity chain."  This is one example of what anthropologists have come to call a "global assemblage"- political, economic, and social links between people across the world that make the notion of a "culture" bounded by geographic and cultural barriers problematic to say the least.

http://apps.npr.org/tshirt/#/title

Migration within the USA

Cool interactive chart showing migration trends by region and state.


http://vizynary.com/2013/11/18/restless-america-state-to-state-migration-in-2012/

The First Thanksgiving? LIES I tell you... LIES!

http://www.trinicenter.com/historicalviews/thanksgiving.htm

American Dialects

Here is an interesting set of maps showing dialect differences in the US:

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~jakatz2/project-dialect.html

And a fun little movie about American Dialects based on that same survey:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1091263959001?bckey=AQ~~%2CAAAABvb_NGE~%2CDMkZt2E6wO0aqwg3BkGVZipVhkS_MPQH&bctid=2864134119001


Can't vouch for the accuracy of this but if you are wondering about YOUR dialect, try this quiz::

http://www.gotoquiz.com/results/what_american_accent_do_you_have

Finally, a more comprehensive treatment of American dialects:

http://robertspage.com/dialects.html

A complex map of American dialects:

http://aschmann.net/AmEng/

Two studies shed light on emergence of modern Homo sapiens and its subsequent diaspora (with update)

New Genetic studies of Neandertals and Denisovans as reported in Nature reveals a "mystery species" (population?  subspecies?) they seemed to have bred with.  The problem is, we haven't found any of their remains, but their genes seem to be embedded in the first two populations.



http://www.nature.com/news/mystery-humans-spiced-up-ancients-rampant-sex-lives-1.14196

Here's another treatment of the story:
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/38361/title/Ancient-Genomes-Reveal-Secrets/

And in other Asian genomic news, another Nature paper relates Native Americans to Europeans through a 4 year old Siberian boy, but curiously not to East Asians... yet.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12736.html

Here's a BBC article summarizing the find:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25020958




  UPDATE:  Atapuerca, Spain- Genetic testing reveals atapuerca 5 (Homo heidelburgensis) was related to Denisovans, NOT, as previously thought, Neandertals.





Brief, pretty good:
http://www.ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/sections/culture/2013/12/05/Spain-Oldest-hominid-DNA-uncovered-Atapuerca_9730700.html

A bit more in-depth, gives better context:
http://www.businessinsider.com/400000-year-old-human-dna-in-pit-of-bones-2013-12

Brief, not particularly good:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/pit-bones-yields-oldest-human-dna/story?id=21093890

Haven't been able to open this on to read it, but New Scientist is usually better than most for science journalism:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029462.600-oldest-human-genome-dug-up-in-spains-pit-of-bones.html

From BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25193442

My 8 Year Old Son Discusses Human Evolution

I got some new recording equipment today and I decided to test it out by doing a quick "podcast" interviewing my son about what he knows about human evolution.  It's just under five minutes, but my boy did me proud.  Bear in mind he's only in second grade.

http://faculty.elgin.edu/mhealy/Will%20Healy-%20Human%20Evolution.mp3