This week we have world affairs, anthropology, mental health, and the brain. Thanks to Paul for some very worthy additions.

Top of the List

A Blog around the Clock, The Open Laboratory 2008 – All the Submissions Fit to Print
The list of nominees for the best science blogging of 2008. Enjoy!

Neil Scheurich, Time Out of Joint
“I’ve always been interested in the way psychology has struggled to deal with the hulking fact of human depravity.”

Open Anthropology, UAE’s The National on the Human Terrain System (2.0)
Maximilian gives us a well-written critical reflection on the Human Terrain System – as the last entry for the foreseeable future, this is a great one to read

Kylie Sturgess, Is This A Superstition I See Before Me?
The theater and superstition. Worth it for the funny Black Adder clip alone.

Norman Doidge, Re-evaluating the Basis of the Brain
Plasticity rather than localization from the author of The Brain That Changes Itself

World Affairs

IBNLive, Blogging from India
Indian bloggers address the terror in Mumbai

CNN, The World’s Most Heinous Crime
The 60th anniversary of the UN Genocide Convention, a timeline of genocides since then, and questions about how and if genocide will stop

Anthropology

Hannah Fearn, The Great Divide
Social vs. evolutionary anthropology! Biology vs. culture makes a good story, even though there is some “reaching out” moments in the second half of the piece. For some critical reaction, see Michael Stewart’s post

Steven Erlanger, Lévi-Strauss, a French Icon, Turns 100
The great French anthropologist is celebrated. Savage Minds has been covering the centenary. And Dan Sperber provides a great reflection on Levi-Strauss as a psychological anthropologist.

Paul Mason, From Coursework to Fieldwork
Our own Greg and Paul show off their capoeira moves and more!

Simon Barthelme, Culture and Perception
Richard Nisbett, Asians vs. Westerners, and visual perception considered over at Cognition and Culture

Lorenz at Antropologi, How Anthropologists Should React to the Financial Crisis
Renewing our engagement with global political economy in the midst of the financial meltdown

Mental Health

Kate Torgovnick, Why Do the Mentally Ill Die Younger?
Based on data from 16 states, “people with severe mental illness die 25 years earlier than the general population.” The connections between mental and physical health, the problems of access to care, and the inequality linked to mental illness.

Tara Parker-Pope, Lack of Exercise Explains Depression-Heart Link
Depression raises the risk of heart attacks by 50% or more – the simple explanation looks now to be less exercise

Sandra Blakeslee, In a Host of Ailments, Seeing a Brain Out of Rhythm
Profile of the neurologist Rodolfo Llinas, his theory on the brain’s abnormal rhythms (focusing on the thalamus) and neurological problems, and his pushing of deep brain stimulation as a treatment

Tina Peng, Out of the Shadows
Pro-anorexia groups come to mainstream internet sites like Facebook

Trisha Gura, Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit
Brains, reasons, and contextual demands – we can learn to work with all three to get the job done

Marnell Jameson, Stress Reduction: Why You Need to Get a Grip and How
Stress is going up, so what can you do about it? A guide from the LA Times

Kate Zernicke, Never Let Them See You Sweat
Calm, the antidote to stress. Some considerations on emotion regulation and the art of staying cool

Fred Newman and Lois Holzman, The Relevance of Marx to Therapeutics in the 21st Century
An argument for social therapy. For some critical reflection, see mutually occluded.

Carol Bradley, The Great Brain Suck: A Virtual Life or a Real Life
Eugene Halton’s new book: “Big Zombie wants to live in the big McMansion, drive a big SUV to the big mall in a big body,” he explains. “There is no one cabal directing it, but it is a system directive. The way to alienate people from their bodies is to encase them in them.”

The Brain

Amelia Tomas, Some Brains Are Wired for Change
“People who welcome new experiences have stronger connections between their memory and reward brain centers than people who tend to avoid anything new, research now shows.”

Gary Wolf, Want to Remember Everything You’ll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm
Piotr Wozniak and the technique to becoming a genius – or rather, predicting the “future state of a person’s memory and schedule[ing] information reviews at the optimal time.”

Miriam Sach, “Cerebral activation patterns induced by inflection of regular and irregular verbs with positron emission tomography: A comparison between single subject and group analysis”
Miriam dances her PhD thesis! See the video now!

Science and the City Podcasts
Recent shows to listen include Joseph LeDoux on fear and the brain and Ranulfo Romo & Kun Chang on understanding touch

Ed Yong, Pain in the Eye of the Beholder
Controlling extremity pain by making the hand seem larger or smaller