So favs, anthro and mind this week. Thanks to my new assistant Casey with help putting together the list!

Top of the List

John Sutton, Batting, Habit and Memory: The Embodied Mind and the Nature of Skill
Pdf of this 2007 paper: “This essay focuses on the distinction between explicit autobiographical remembering and the kind of habitual or ‘procedural’ memory involved in complex embodied skills like batting.”

Stanley J. Ulijaszek et al., Multidisciplinary Obesity Research: A Local Strategy for Breaking New Ground
The authors of this article talk about the different causes of obesity and how new research on this topic must be produced to get to the root of this problem and help fight it.

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, How Humans Became Such Other-Regarding Apes
Humans feel, question, critique, problem-solve, and form communities. Apes ape. The evolution of our humanity.

The Neuroskeptic, fMRI Gets Slap in the Face with a Dead Fish
Do a lot of statistical tests, get some remarkable results! Like fish brains lighting up when the results smell as bad as dead fish! For more, see Mind Hacks’ Scientists Find Area Responsible for Emotion in Dead Fish

William Lu, Observation of Tool Use Activates Specific Brain Area Only in Humans
Explores the tool-use of species other than humans.

Dr. X, Last Words
Last words from prisoners executed in Texas since 1982. Haunting.

The Neurocritic, Tortured Brains Tell Tall Tales
“Neuroscience shows why torture doesn’t work”

Anthropology

Lara Deeb, An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi’i Lebanon
The first chapter to Lara’s book, “AL-DAHIYYA: SIGHT, SOUND, SEASON,” which brings to life this suburb of Beirut

Marcel Cornelissen, Neanderthal Tunes
A musical piece about the evolution of language and music with four singers and their primitive instruments.

The Macquarie Globe, Defence for an Anthropology Thesis
Paul Mason travels to Indonesia to study music and martial arts with the group Pencak Silat Panglipur. For more, see Paul’s post Darman’s Eyes.

Keith Hart, Development
The development of capitalism – take it to your Memory Bank

Eric Brunner, Biology and Health Inequality
Why, despite growth in the economy, is good health elusive for a large majority of our population? Rich and poor countries and their health are compared and contrasted.

Dr. Shock, Charles Darwin And The Tree of Life
A video that elucidates the evolutionary ties among living things.

Patricia Lee Brown, A Doctor for Disease, A Shaman for the Soul
The Hmong from northern Laos rely on spiritual beliefs to get them through illnesses. A shaman works with these patients. “The soul is the shaman’s responsibility,” says the article. Considering introducing shamans to the Western medical world, years after the ground-breaking book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

Miss Eleanora Anthrophasia Smith-Jones, Anthropomor!fic
Slash in all sorts of combinations – sex and desire make the world come alive. Opens with, “My coffeemaker moans. Like, moans. Like, the first few times I heard it, I thought the neighbors were having a nooner. That sort of moaning.”

Ryan Anderson, 9/11 and Collective Memory
Another from the new blog Prism, which covers how people remember 9/11.

Doctor Lisa Rende Taylor and Dianne Penn, Financial Crisis Forces Cambodian Women Into Sex Work
Why women are selling their bodies for money and how they feel about this. Written in question and answer form.

David Dobbs, Has the Blogosphere Gone All MSM on Us? Well Yea Duh
Blogs all grown up. And surprise, they look like traditional media. Or Wal-mart crossed with Fox News – anything for traffic, anything for attention.

Mind

Ben Tanzer, Investing in Healthy Child Development
Preventing child abuse makes more healthier, happier children, and is less costly than trying to fix things later.

Yahoo! News, Bad Habits Take a Decade Off Life: Study
Bad habits like smoking and doing drugs, overeating, and not exercising can take years off your life.

Nicolas Claidiere, The Chameleon Effect in Capuchin Monkeys
Matching other people’s (or monkey’s) behavior in the same social environment without you both realizing it. This phenomenon was also observed in non-humans such as monkeys.

The Situationist, Placebo and the Situation of Healing
The power of belief in alleviating pain, injury, or sickness.

Brenda Patoine, Will ‘Rubi the Robot’ be the Ultimate Teacher’s Aide?: Machine Learning and the Transformation of Education
Could a child learn something from a robot? Learning processes examined.

Eric Thomson, The Meta-Hard Problem
The “hard” and “easy” problems of consciousness and how experiences influence your conscience awareness.

Barbara Rosenwein, A History of Emotions
The history of emotions across time and place.

Mark Rowlands, The Meaning of Life: Part 1
Teaching about the meaning of life means you’ve got to make some decisions about it.

Greg Laden, The Touch of Phantom: When Left is Right and Right is Left
Now if I could just get that rubber hand to rub my back in the mirror…

Dudley Lynch, With So Many Unhappy People Around, It’s A Very Apt Time To Think About What Happiness Is And How To Make It Happen
Happiness needs a long title, and other considerations over at Brain Me Up.