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

Got Lice?

Humans and their parasites evolve together, so naturally we have a window into understanding some aspects of our own evolution by looking at the nasty little beasts that evolved to suck us dry, and by that I don't mean children:

Lice Harbor Key Insights Into Human Evolution, Scientists Say

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/12/lice-human-evolution_n_4259581.html?ref=topbar

Proto Indo European reconstruction...

How do you reconstruct a dead language that laft behind no written records?

Read on...



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/28/proto-indo-european-language-ancestors_n_4005545.html

Internal Migration In The US- What Cities and Regions are Growing, and Why

From Yahoo Finance News:

For much of the nation’s history, Americans moved around mostly to find decent work. But these days, people may be more inclined to move in search of low taxes, cheap housing and like-minded citizens they’re comfortable being around. Such shifts in internal migration patterns could transform the U.S. economy and the political establishment in sweeping and unforeseen ways.
 

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/cities-americans-moving-escaping-154840318.html?l=1

The worst ideas in recent history?

Agriculture has been called "The biggest mistake in human history."  Arguments can be made that many things from the incandescent light to capitalism, the industrial revolution, nuclear power,  and genetic engineering have been wrong turns for the human species, although once the genie gets out of the bottle we're stuck with the consequences.

With that in mind, the Washington Post had a special series trying to answer the question "What are the worst ideas of our times?"

So this is food for thought.  Bon appétit.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/opinions/outlook/worst-ideas/index.html

Fast Food Pirates

This is pretty predictable, but fascinating nevertheless.  In Iran, entrepreneurs are pirating fast food brands. Since we have no diplomatic relations with Iran, there's not a lot that we can do about it.  The interesting question is why the Iranian government puts up with it- the US is the Great Satan, but hey, everybody loves fried chicken, tacos, pizza and hamburgers, right?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/politicallyaff/the-greatest-form-of-flattery-imitation-american-ebwy

Big Mash, anyone?

Dental Analysis in Archaeology

Kelli- a local student found this and her teacher sent it to me:

Dental Analysis in Archaeology

(http://www.perioimplants.us/dental-analysis-in-archaeology.html)

Thanks Kelli!  That's an interesting site with an overview of what archaeologists and biological anthropologists can learn from dentition as well as some links to other articles and resources.

Teeth of course are the hardest bones in the body and the ones most likely to fossilize, so they are more common than other fossils.  They are also some of the most useful, because in general, you can learn a lot more from teeth than any other bone I can think of.  A single tooth can identify a species, in some cases, to say nothing of what we can learn about diet from them.

Kudos to this dental practice for spreading the word about dental archaeology!

While we are on the subject- here are two more sites to check out:

It’s the Tooth: Dental Remains & ArchaeologyASOR blog- American Schools of Oriental Research-Boston University

Teeth - An Introduction for Archaeologists

http://www.wikiarc.org/teeth

Probably the biggest news in biological anthropology for the year...

Okay, every year (or so) there is a "BIG STORY" in paleoanthropology that usually revolves around a fossil (sometimes it's a genetic study) and increasingly it's the publication of a paper (finally!) that analyzes a fossil that was actually found years ago.

This week people started talking about a skull that was found 8 years ago at the site of Dmanisi (Pronounced "Dee-man-EE-see) in the Republic of Georgia (in the Caucusus Mountains- a former member of the Soviet Union, not the state in the American South).  Really, the story is about how one skull fits in with several other skulls that had been discovered there, and the answer is "not very well."  Taken together, the five hominid skulls found at one site all look very different from each other although they are all found in the same place in pretty much the same geological instant, so the interpretation is that there was a LOT more variability in species during the paleolithic than many at first thought.

For years there has been a battle between "Lumpers" (people who emphasize similarities and therefore lump fossils together as part of the same species) and "splitters" (people who emphasize discontinuities in the fossil record and split them into many different species).  Taken together, the Dmanisi fossils give a lot of creedence to the lumpers, but to the splitters... eh- not so much.

On top of that there is the question of the "Multiregional hypothesis" that competes with the "Out of Africa hypothesis."  The Out of Africa hypothesis states that modern humans evolved in Africa and spread out subsequently, replacing populations of archaic Homo in Asia and Europe.  The multiregional hypothesis (sometimes called "regional continuity") claims that ancestral Homo species were one giant gene pool and advantageous genes in one geographic area would spread to others via gene flow, but local populations might retain regional variations.

The takeaway (from MY perspective):  Lumpers look pretty good here, although it would be a dream come true to find a similar site in Africa to show such variability.  I'm still not convinced that there was only one species in east Africa 2 million years ago.  I've (mostly) been a lumper since I started studying this stuff though.  I have to admit that the miltiregional hypothesis seems to come out on top with this find, although I think the genetic evidence has really given the edge to the African origin hypothesis over the past ten years or so.

Never a dull moment in this field!  Here are stories about the find from some of the major players in the mainstream media.

The New York Times' take:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/science/fossil-skull-may-rewrite-humans-evolutionary-story.html?_r=1&hp&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1382036967-uVGQOLIVXjaActXANk%2Fc2g

The BBC's take:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24564375

Nat Geo's Take:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131017-skull-human-origins-dmanisi-georgia-erectus/

Time and Space in perspective...

Here are interesting vantage points from which to view ourselves (as individuals, as well as a species) in time and space

Space (this is extremely cool):
http://www.htwins.net/scale2/

Here's a different take on basically the same idea:
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/

Time (This is merely very, very cool):
http://waitbutwhy.com/2013/08/putting-time-in-perspective.html

Scotland the Free? Wallonia the Brave?

The latest on what may be the next big change on the world map:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/opinion/does-scotland-want-independence.html?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fopinion%2Findex.jsonp

The article mentions "Wallons" in Belgium- here are a couple of resources on that (although not quite au current)
From TIME magazine, 2010:  http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2000517,00.html

From one of my favorite blogs- Strange Maps (2006):  http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/14-what-will-happen-after-belgium

Gender roles on their head

Here's a short film that shows women and men switching roles in the face of some typical scenes of what is conventionally understood as "sexy" from a male perspective.  Very interesting, and from one male perspective (mine), it's a bit painful to watch.

http://screen.yahoo.com/flip-side-sexy-030000502.html?utm_source=taboola

Now, it would be interesting to see the same reversal done, only with what WOMEN find sexy.

Tourism, privilege, race, development...

Just take a look at this and see what you think:

http://gurlgoestoafrica.tumblr.com/

Manufacturing in the USA making a comeback- searchable map

This from Time magazine:

http://business.time.com/made-in-the-u-s-a/?iid=sl-article-moreontime

Digestive tract and bacteria are surprisingly important

Three recent articles about the role of digestive tract bacteria and their impact on our health.  It seems that what goes on in your guts has a LOT of important ramifications.

Interesting audio series

Here's series of anthropological vignettes produced by some folks at my Alma Mater- the University of New Mexico.  Anton Daughters, Ph.D, was a student in one of the first classes I ever taught, although I can hardly claim any sort of credit for the high quality of these recordings.

Enjoy!

http://www.archaeologychannel.org/audio-guide/the-human-experience

Good advice for college grads (or young workers in general)

Folks, the biggest obstacle to class mobility is... wait for it...  CULTURE!  Poor people don't talk the talk and walk the walk of rich people.  Your education level is pretty easy to discern by the way you speak, dress, and generally act.  Youndg people stumble most often because they can't, or won't, acculturate to the subculture of people who are older than them and wield power over them.  Therefore, they get relegated to menial jobs until they start acting like adults, whereby their supervisors suddenly recognize their potential.

Take this advice to heart:

20 Things 20 Year Olds Don't Understand
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonnazar/2013/07/23/20-things-20-year-olds-dont-get/

Don't get all defensive and angry because this is yet another slam on your generation.  This is good advice. Take it.

Syria- What You Need To Know About The Latest Geographic Hotspot

A primer from the Washington Post explaining the basic information you need to know to understand what is happening is Syria. (Click on map or link below).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/08/29/9-questions-about-syria-you-were-too-embarrassed-to-ask/

Winner Declared in Chimpanzee Art Contest- New York Times

Disappointing that there are no links to their work:


http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/its-a-madhouse-winner-declared-in-chimpanzee-art-contest/?src=recg

but here is a resource for some ape artworks:

http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn16090-ape-art

Postscript:  I own an original painting by "Cheeta"  [sic], one of the chimps who played Tarzan's pet in the 30s era Tarzan movies with Johnny Weismuller.  He (Cheeta) is mentioned at the end of the article as having won second place and an honorable mention by Jane Goodall).

Jane Goodall Also owns one, so Cheeta perhaps had an unfair advantage, as he was a sentimental favorite.  Here's a picture of MY Cheeta original:

Note that it is signed at the bottom with a thumbprint.  Cheeta is the oldest living Chimp ever known, and if you want a painting you better act fast.  They are tax deductible, by the way,  and cost about a hundred bucks (maybe a bit more now- I bought mine a few years ago.  Here is the website:

http://cheetathechimp.org/donate.htm

Culture, Children and Their Toys

In my cultural anthropology class this year I wrote my own definition of culture.  I normally use the definition used in whatever textbook we happen to be using, and they are always different.  It's daunting to write a definition of culture, but I settled, for better or worse, on the following:

Culture:  The characteristic ways that people learn to think and behave, using symbols,toys and tools in the context of a social structure and a modified environment.

I've never seen a definition of culture that includes "Toys" before, but I think it fits, and I would confidently say that play is a cultural universal.  Indeed, it is found throughout the mammalian order, if not beyond, although human play, if not qualitatively different, is certainly different by degree at the very least.

I've been a fan of Peter Menzel's work, especially his "Material World" and "Hungry Planet" projects where he photographed families with, respectively, all of their material possessions and a weeks worth of their food.  The contrasts between rich and poor are striking, and the cross-cultural comparisons are often surprising and enlightening.

Here, Italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti's "Toy Story" project is described and his photographs featured.  It's much the same idea as Menzel's, but focusing on children and their toys.  Click on the picture below for the story:

Galimberti's site (his name is hotlinked above) is worth checking out in addition to the site above.

Thanks to Sarah Wiese for the reference and link.

Top 10 Mysteries of the First Humans

From Live Science.  Click on the picture to go to the link.

PRI's "The World": Family Choices: Fertility and Infertility in Africa

Public Radio International has a great series about fertility in Africa- three great radio documentaries and a wonderful interactive map-  check it out:

http://www.theworld.org/familychoices/

Incarceration Nation

Destined to be a classic- this 2012 essay by Fareed Zakaria on the USA and our insanely high incarceration rates.



http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2109777,00.html

What the Public Knows - In Pictures, Maps, Graphs and Symbols

http://www.people-press.org/2013/02/05/what-the-public-knows-in-pictures-maps-graphs-and-symbols/

Germany's Population decline

From the August 13, 2013 New York Times:

"The reality is that the German population is shrinking and towns like this one are working hard to hide the emptiness...By 2060, experts say, the country could shrink by an additional 19 percent, to about 66 million."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/world/europe/germany-fights-population-drop.html

Tourism vs. traveling?

Oh, I'm not a tourist.  Because I'm WAAAAYY cooler than all the other people who are on the plane.  I'm a TRAVELER.  And I write about travelling.  It's part travelogue, part blog.  I call it a "Traveblogue."  Get it?  And MY pictures are better than YOUR pictures, because I have special insight into what is meaningful and important, unlike you.  No, I'm not a tourist.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Why I travel, rather than tour

http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/The-Home-Forum/2013/0516/Why-I-travel-rather-than-tour

10 Best Countries for Moms- Guess what? USA Doesn't make the list

From Time magazine:

10 Best Countries for Moms

http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/10/10-best-countries-for-moms/?xid=newsletter-weekly

 

America's level of development is hampered by several issues, many of which stem from an imballance in the distribution of wealth.  Put succinctly,  we have thousands of incredibly wealthy people, and  millions of pretty poor people.  This fact contributes to lowered life expectency and overall health for many Americaans:

What’s Ailing America? New Report Finds U.S. Falls Behind International Peers in Health and Life Expectancy

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/01/11/whats-ailing-america-new-report-finds-u-s-falls-behind-international-peers-in-health-and-life-expectancy/#ixzz2TH2l8aSe

On the bright side, as annoying as traffic is, The US does pretty well in terms of automobile traffic, but if you can believe that Chicago doesbn't make the list of top ten worst traffic cities, that tells you how bad it can actually get out there:

Top 10 U.S Cities with the Worst Traffic

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/07/top-10-u-s-cities-with-the-worst-traffic/#ixzz2TH3H4yf6

Tropes! Tropes I tells ya! They're EVERYWHERE!

Tropes are those key symbols and key scenarios that have become the currency of popular culture astorytelling and media.  The ugly duckling who grows into a swan, the underdog who wins the big game, the hooker with the heart of gold, the crabby old man who learns to be happy, the "very special" episode of whatever show where they talk about something heavy and serious- these recurring themes are called TROPES. 

Here's an interesting wiki about them that gives examples and background in exhaustive detail.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage

DNA, Populating the Americas, and self-correcting science

Three points of interest here:

1)  the biggest question in American Archaeology is how and wehn the continent was settled by its inhabitants.

2) More than material culture and the fossil record, genetic data provide us with a huge data set that continuously reveals more as our ability to decode it expands,

and

3) Science presents us with a body of knowledge that is only true as far as we are able to discern at the present moment, and that facts change as our ability to understand them change.  Thus, while at one point genetic evidence pointed to a single wave, we now have the ability to refine that and overturn it.  It seems like there were three waves of migration that populated the Americas.  And if the evidence changes, so will our conclusions.

Americas 'settled in three waves'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18770963

Time lapse photos- urbanization, deforestation-global warming from Time magazine

Yahoo news article about the site:
http://news.yahoo.com/stunning-30-year-timelapse-shows-earth-s-changing-surface-161911528.html


Original Time Magazine site:
http://world.time.com/timelapse/

Fair Trade, Clothing, and Market Externalites

Market externalities, or hidden costs that get passed on to the producers (farm and factory workers) so that business owners can enjoy high profits and consumers can have cheap products, are becoming more and more important to consumers.  The Fai Trade movement addresses some of these concerns in terms of food, and now, clothing is becoming scrutinized after the tragic Bangladesh factory collapse that kills 800 workers.

 

 

From the New York Times, 5/8/13:

 

 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/business/global/fair-trade-movement-extends-to-clothing.html?emc=eta1&_r=1&

Some Retailers Say More About Their Clothing’s Origins

Mosquito Coast Lobster fishermen- My own area of interest.

From National Geographic, May 2, 2013:

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/02/my-village-my-lobster-film-exposes-extreme-danger-behind-a-favorite-seafood/

My fieldwork was on the Mosquito Coast and I "discovered" the plight of the lobster fishermen there.  Now through the Smithsonian, the world can understand better how local backwater regions get sucked into the global capitalist economic system.

Uncontacted Tribes- Who, Where, and How Many?

From National Geographic- April, 2011:

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2011/04/01/uncontacted-tribes-the-last-free-people-on-earth/

Uncontacted peoples?  Hard to say how many there are.  The first picture shown in the article above shows peole with a machete and an enamelled metal pot- obviously they've been in SOME kind of contact with SOMEONE.  But folks like this cretainly live outside of the global capitalist system to an astonishing degree, and the question then is what are we to do about it?
 

Ethnicity and Afghanistan

More from NPR today- Afghan ethnicity.  Now THAT is a thorny rose.


http://www.npr.org/2013/05/08/179079930/afghans-confront-senstive-issue-of-ethnicity

By the way- the Dow hit 1500. DO you care? Should you?

"However high you rise is how far you can fall"  - Marc Healy, feeling all "motivational" and stuff.

The Dow Jones Industrial average is a stock market index of 30 stocks that are meant to be representative of the market as a whole.  When people refer to "blue chip" stocks, they are referring to those that are included in the Dow.

These milestones are statistically meaningless, but they have a lot to do with consumer (investor) confidence, just as people are more likely to buy something that is priced at 2.99 than if it is listed at 3.00.  When the Dow hits an increment of thousands, people get exuberant, and it's big news.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/05/07/181997704/dow-jones-closes-above-15-000-for-first-time?sc=nl&cc=brk-20130507-1620

What is prejudice?

Why are we sexIST and racIST but homoPHOBIC?  What exactly IS chauvanism?  Well, if you ask me, ethnocentrism is the one concept that seems to disentangle these terms most effectively.  Not the ethnocentrism isn't itself a problematic word- it is, for several reasons, but it gets right down to the heart of what most prejudice is about.  That discussion is for another time though.

Here, NPR reports on "The New Face of Prejudice":

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/04/22/177455764/What-Does-Modern-Prejudice-Look-Like?ft=3&f=111787346&sc=nl&cc=es-20130428


Here's a humorous, but insightful take on early 21st cetury bigotry in the USA:

http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/01/the-7-types-of-modern-american-bigots.html

Video: Polygamy in the US

From Time Magazine:

http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,1754465091001_2120441,00.html

It's one thing when polygamous families live in guarded compounds and separate themelves off from the rest of society, keeping themselves sequestered and practicing institutional statutory rape.  But what about if they are otherwise law-abiding citizens?  Why are the laws against gay marriage being re-written but the the ones about multiple spouses are not, despite the fact that around the world, polygamy is far more accepted than homosexual marriage?  This segment doesn't asnswer these questions- but it does challenge one to think from an anthropological perspective.


 

Externalizing costs of consumerism- who pays the price for hidden costs? Workers in poor countries, with their health, safety, and lives.

Fast, Cheap, Dead: Shopping and the Bangladesh Factory Collapse

Read more: http://science.time.com/2013/04/29/fast-cheap-dead-shopping-and-the-bangladesh-factory-collapse/#ixzz2RxKNULAQ

Austerity, the sequester, and why we can't seem to get out of this economic funk.

Here are a few articles from time magazine that call "austerity" into question.

Why the Argument for Austerity Took a Big Hit Yesterday

Read more: http://business.time.com/2013/04/17/why-the-argument-for-austerity-took-a-big-hit-yesterday/#ixzz2RrV4gFC8

Stop Bemoaning the New GDP Numbers: It’s Good News

Read more: http://business.time.com/2013/04/29/stop-bemoaning-the-new-gdp-numbers-its-good-news/#ixzz2RrUqDuAl

Why Can’t This Economy Really Get Going?

Read more: http://business.time.com/2013/02/12/why-cant-this-economy-get-going/

Genes, fossils, tetrapods, coelacanths, lungfish.... just read it.

Neil Shubin of the university of Chicago is mentioned in this article, and he is the discoverer of the "tiktaalik,"  a late devonian fossil some 400 million years old that represents the link between fish and land-dweiiling, four -footed creatures.  Fossils are exciting, but hard to come by, and they don't give us nearly as much information as genes.  Still, genes and fossils both re[present fertile ground to raise, explore and answer questions about evolutionary relationships.

From the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/science/coelacanth-dna-may-tell-how-fish-learned-to-walk.html

Deregulation, anyone?

No zoning laws = schools right next to giant fertilizer plants full of dangerous chemicals.

Lack of regulatory oversight = no safety inspections

From the New York Times:

Texas Fertilizer Plant Fell Through Regulatory Cracks

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/us/texas-fertilizer-plant-fell-through-cracks-of-regulatory-oversight.html?_r=0

Shedding Light On Early Australians

Yo Yo- we got early Australians in the House tonight y'all!

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2013/04/who-were-the-first-australians-a.html

Know what I'm sayin'?

Respect.

Healy out.

Japanese Body Pillows

Here's an article from 2009.  This is NOT common or popular in Japan it seems, but it's an interesting artifact of Japanese culture.



http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/magazine/26FOB-2DLove-t.html?pagewanted=all#

The Face of "Austerity"

What is austerity?  What does it mean?  In Greece, it means children go without food.

From teh New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/world/europe/more-children-in-greece-start-to-go-hungry.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

Top 100 companies and countries

 
Compare the lists:

Top 100 global companies from CNN Money:

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2012/full_list/index.html

Top 100 countries in terms of GNI (from World Bank)

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.ATLS.CD

What do you think?

Mapping regions of social interraction

Using different data sets (phone call logs and traching dollar bills) to plot how people interract with each other spatially:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/04/16/177512687/a-whom-do-you-hang-with-map-of-america?utm_source=NPR&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20130417

       

    

 

 

 

 

 

Goodbye Maggie T...

As one blogger (BC Bass) put it, Thatcher was "a tough leader who sought to restore the grandeur of England's Victorian period. She succeeded in bringing the nostalgic charm and quaint class values of the Dickensian era back to modern day Britain. She will best be remembered for the decisive actions she took during her 11-year term, which continue to affect the United Kingdom today: deregulating banks to cause the still problematic credit crunch, doubling inflation, destroying trade unions, eliminating free milk in schools for underprivileged children, creating a gaping disparity between the country's rich and poor, driving unemployment to historically high levels, destroying the coal industry, and implementing the egalitarian poll tax, which ensured that those living near poverty in Middle England would pay the same taxes as millionaires nearby."
Here's one view of Thathcher's economic legacy from Time Magazine:

Was Thatcherism Good (or Bad) for the Economy?

http://business.time.com/2013/04/09/was-thatcherism-good-or-bad-for-the-economy/#ixzz2PyVfWdCi

Remember what George Satayana said about those who didn't learn from the past?

One thing is certain is that while we are not reliving the 80s 30 years later, we are debating the same questions about what to do with domestic and global economic policies.

On other issues, BC Bass continues:  "Thatcher will also be celebrated for her uncanny prowess in foreign policy, particularly with her brave decision to use the superior might of the British military to wage war against Argentina over an island full of sheep.

She further led the charge for Great Britain by labelling Nelson Mandela a "terrorist," supporting underdog government factions such as the Khmer Rouge and embattled Chilean dictator Pinochet, and for tirelessly fighting to keep the ignorant rabble of Northern Ireland under the yoke of England to protect them from themselves."

But she did some good stuff too.

 

Population: Birth Control in the news

Do you know the difference between the "Morning After" pill and the "Abortion Pill"?  No?  Neither did most of the legislators who passed laws on the first thinking it was the second.

With a new Pope coming from a region that needs (and quietly uses) birth control, you would think his stance on it is fairly moderate.  But it isn't.  The real news on the BC has nothing to do with priggish medieval social instititions and their quaint insistence that they are the last word on sexual morality.  Rather, it is the revolution in birth control that we are on the brink of experiencing.  The male version of "The Pill" is right around the corner, seemingly, and there are other safe, cheap and effective achoices for birth control on the horizon. 

Time Magazine section on Birth Control (includes resources from around the web, including the New York Times).

http://topics.time.com/birth-control/

RELIGION: Shia and Sunni Explained (But not by me.)

A couple of resources on Sunni vs. Shia Islam (cuz it's been on my mind lately):

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7332087

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/subdivisions/sunnishia_1.shtml

Hoping to get a grant to travel to Turkey this summer- a destination people have been recommending to me for years.  It will be my first experience in a Muslim country.

Cultural Anthro: Wealth and Inequality

The New York Times has a new online series about inequality.  The first article talks about fairness, progressive vs. regressive tax strategies and how the poor are being increasingly targeted by tax hikes in the South and Westerns US.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/the-great-divide/

Also, this viral Youtube video generated discussion in class today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

Wealth Inequality in America

by politizane•3 months ago•4,491,829 views

Wealth Inequality in America ... Infographics on the distribution of wealth in

Globalization: Will "cyberwarfare" usher is a new cold war?

Or should we come up with a new term to describe it, say, a "cool war."  If that sounds too rad, how about "Warm War."  Cyber warfare isn't comprised of shooting bullets and lobbing missiles, but it is more destructive than the Orwellian propaganda pandering, back-room diplomacy, espionage and military mobilization and sabre-rattling that we came to understand as daily life during the Cold War.

Worse yet, since it is much more an act of conventional hostility, could it heat up to an actual shooting war?  Remember, China is a very important trade partner, as well as money lender.  How could we possibly afford hostilities with the Chinese?

From the New York Times:

In Cyberspace, New Cold War
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/world/asia/us-confronts-cyber-cold-war-with-china.html?src=recg

ANTHRO: Culture Wars in anthropology

Marshall Sahlins

Napoleon Chagnon

Marshall Sahlins, one of the most eminent cultural anthropologists alive, through down the gauntlet when Napoleon Chagnon, one of the most notorious cultural anthropologists alive, was admitted to the National Academy of Sciences.


Naploeon Chagnon in the mid 1960s

The war within anthropology between nature and nurture has been recast as a debate about the respective importance of genes and environment.  At a more philosophical level, the discipline has been split for decades between the positivist, empiricist scientific tribe, and the literary, interpretive humanistic tribe.

From time to time there is detante, but when memoirs get published or there are elections in the American Anthropological Association, the barbs get sharpened, the drums start beating and the natives get restless.

The endless cycle of warfare returns to the valley.

Here's a New York Times article about how Chagnon became the center of a controversy that spans all of anthropology:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/magazine/napoleon-chagnon-americas-most-controversial-anthropologist.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Here's another article about the controversy:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/25/prominent-anthropologist-resigns-protest-national-academy-sciences

If that's not enough, try these from Nicholas Wade:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/science/national-academy-of-sciences-scholar-resigns-over-napoleon-chagnons-admission.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/science/napoleon-chagnons-war-stories-in-the-amazon-and-at-home.html

NPR chimes in:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/02/26/172951757/the-napoleon-chagnon-wars-flare-up-again-in-anthropology

GEO: The most friendless people in the world

A few years ago though I read an associated press news item about a gropup in Burma known as the "Rohingya."  They were described as "The most friendless people in the world."  U had never heard of them before, and Until recently I never heard of them again.  Now they are back in the news.

The Rohingya are a persecuted minority living under a brutal regime that is unfriendly even to its citizens, and these were people who, while they had been living in the country for centuries, were not considered citizens and had no rights under the law.  Furthermore, there is no place for them to go, because they have no other home country and no country seems all that thrilled about taking them in.

Even undocumented immigrants in the United States, the Palestinians and other stateless ethnic minorities have advocacy groups and friends in governments around the world.  The Rohingya have virtually nobody troubling themselves on their behalf.

This article in Time Magazine rbought them back to my attention:

Horror at Sea: Adrift for Months, Starving Asylum Seekers Threw 98 Bodies Overboard

Upon further searching it seems the Rohingya have quietly crept back into the news cycle, although they are hardly front page, above the fold.  The term "genocide" is being used now, and like Rwanda, like Sudan, the major media outlets have been largely silent.  That will probably change when the calamity escalates.  I shudder to think of how bad ethnic violence has to get before it gets noticed.