No brains and no anthropology this week! Categories, that is. Not even a top-of-the-list. Just a data dump on Our Digital Age, then a plethora of psychiatry. Followed by fuzzy animals and furry hobbits.

Our Digital Age

The Op-Ed Project
“an initiative to expand public debate, with an immediate emphasis on enlarging the pool of women experts who are accessing (and accessible to) our nation’s key print and online forums”

Antropologi, Dissertation: Why Kids Embrace Facebook and MySpace
New research on just why kids get so involved in social networking

Douglas Quenqua, Friends, Until I Delete You
Are you only worth a tenth of a hamburger on Facebook?

Daniel Solove, Do Social Networks Bring the End of Privacy?
Gossip and the changing shape of privacy online

Pamthropologist, Another Semester Begins and There is Work to Do
These students don’t need a virtual life – they need to get engaged with some basics

Daniel Smith, What Is Art For?
A profile of Lewis Hyde, from Thoreau to our digital “cultural commons”

Jonah Lehrer, The iPhone Mind
The extended mind meets social networking

Thinking Meat, Book Review: iBrain
“If you are looking for a good book summarizing what we know about the effect of technology on our brains, I’d suggest you keep looking.”

NPR: Talk of the Nation, Photosynth: The New Best Thing In Photography?
Creating large-scale photos from the thousands of cameras out there. An interview with Farhad Manjoo, who calls Microsoft’s Photosyth the “best thing to happen to photography since the digital camera” in his Slate article, All I Wanna Do Is Zoom Zoom Zoom Zoom. Some nice reflections on the Obama inauguration photo, where no one is actually watching the couple.

Samantha Shapiro, Revolution, Facebook Style
In Egypt, citizens foment online after the Gaza attacks

Robert Darnton, Google & the Future of Books
NY Review of Books on the Google digitization project – worries about private control of public information and what that holds for our future

J. Courtney Sullivan, See the Web Site, Buy the Book
Everyone is creating websites for their books. Does it make a difference?

Virginia Heffernan, Click and Jane
Online reading for kids – is it really like reading a book?

Duke Helfand, A Closer, Faster Walk with Thee
Serving up God via podcasts and email

Christian Lowe, Army Tries Holograms, Quantum Computing
Chasing science fiction for military benefit

History Repeats Digitally, 2009: A New Year in Digital
What’s the next bold move in digital?

David Berreby, The Hunter Gatherers of the Knowledge Economy: The Anthropology of Today’s Cyberforagers
Gen X is so paleo-retro

Bryan Nelson, The Extended Mind: Technology is Making Us Smarter
Discover the possibilities…

Sudo Futures, Google Might Be Doing More Than Making Us Stupid
Multitasking, Google and Socrates – now that’s a mix

Virginia Heffernan, The Cybercafe Lives
Places to physically hang out while online –Tokyo vs. New York

Jonah Lehrer, The Hazards of Hyperlinks
What gets lost when journals move online?

Eileen Joy, Virtual Conference in the Humanities & Social Sciences
Let’s “break down barriers”

Nicholas Claidiere, Into the Dynamics of Hot Topics
Understanding how networks can make population-level phenomena happen so fast in today’s world

Microecos, Dust. Wind. Dude. Or, the comparative social phenology of Girls Gone Wild and Socrates
Using Google Trends to search for the striking periodicity of social life

BBC News, Virtual World for Muslims Debuts
Will it be Second Life for those who adhere to a Muslim lifestyle?

CBC News: The Fifth Estate, Strangers in Paradise
In-depth report from this online news show on the strangeness of Second Life – here are people going to extremes for their virtual lives

Thomas Metzinger, Soul-Travel for Selfless Beings
An Edge answer – new technologies for “recreating ourselves” in the future, and our transformation of virtual realities into something even more perceptually real. The complement to the Second Life piece.

Vaughan Bell, ‘Internet Addiction’ Lacks Validity Finds Another Study
Mind Hacks on why research claims of internet addiction have basic measurement problems

John Hawks, Devolve Yourself
See John Hawks the ape man. And go have fun with the “devolve me” application from Open University

Digital Ethnography, World Simulation Project
The site for Michael Wesch’s way to teach students about cultural anthropology – 600 years of history recreated by them

Maximilian Forte, Avatara: Ethnographic Film in a Virtual World
Cyberspace ethnography through film – complete with popcorn

Colleen Morgan, Archaeology and Machinima
The archaeology of movies made entirely in virtual worlds

Owen Wiltshire, Ethnography, The Internet, and an Apprentice Anthropologist.
Is it possible to observe interactions online? To develop an embodied understanding? This precocious apprentice argues yes.

Psychiatry

Channel N, Memories in Psychiatry
The author of Try to Remember debates leading figures about recovered memory in this video

John Seabrook, Suffering Souls
“The search for the roots of psychopathy” – prison inmates and MRIs try to light the way over at the New Yorker

Ars Psychiatrica, Concentrate…. Think!
A review of the new book Obsession by Lennard Davis on OCD

Writhe Safely, Psychiatric Survivors, Labels and Me and The Giving, Offering and Forcing of Selves
Two interesting posts about labels, drugs, authority, and identity

Jessica Marshall, Is It Really Bad to be Sad?
Being miserable – is it such a good idea to banish mood with anti-depressants?

Niall Crumlish & Brendan Kelly, How Psychiatrists Think
Scribd version of the recent essay on psychiatrists and skewed decision making

Tara Parker-Pope, School Recess Improves Behavior
Damn, I thought we could do it all with Ritalin

Dirk @ Intellectual Vanities, Why Social Rejection Causes Aggression
Tracing the paths from social exclusion to violence

Carla Johnson, Mental Illness Alone Is No Trigger For Violence
Forget the knee-jerk, media-promoted explanation. Mental illness is not about being violent.

Science Faction, If You’re Considering Going on Anti-Depressants
Consider how hard it is to get off them…

Will Dunham, Group Therapy May Extend Lives of Cancer Patients
Looks like social support matters – not just chemo

Nancy Schulte, Why Loneliness Is Bad for Your Health
A conversation with John Caccioppo, a leader in social neuroscience

CAMHS, Evidence Based Treatments for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Disorders #1 – Early Intervention In Autism
Putting together what’s known

Chase Hanson Bourke and Charles B. Nemeroff, Brain Rules
A review of John Medina’s book Brain Rules over at Psychiatric Times – 12 practical ideas according to this molecular biologist

Shrink Rap, How to Drive ME Crazy
One psychiatrist’s reflections in a handy 12 point list – an interesting mix of being human and negotiating a professional role

Vaughan Bell, Literature and Psychiatry
In 100 words, no less. Of course they are well chosen!

Furious Seasons, Doctors Not Monitoring Vast Majority Of Patients They Are Slamming With Dangerous Atypical Antipsychotics
Physical monitoring matters – “brain” drugs affect more than just the brain

Animals

National Geographic Video, Chimps Hunting in Trees
Close-up video of chimps hunting colobus monkeys – good footage, horrible voice over (so bad it’s funny).

Dwight Garner, The Joys and Pains of Being an Animal
The new book by autistic author Temple Grandin explores the emotional life of animals

Nicolas Baumard, Are Dogs (and Chimps) Really Inequity-Averse?
Debates about fairness among animals

CBC Radion One, Ocean Life
Exploring the minds of the sea

NPR, Killer Whales: The Allure of the Search
Why these scientists study the greatest hunter on earth

Ed Yong, Capuchin Monkeys Are Choosy about the Best Nutcrackers
Capuchins pick out their hammer stones for cracking nuts

Nature’s Best Photography 2008 Award Winners Photos
Fabulous photos from the past year

Rob Taylor, Dolphins Are Capable Sea Chefs, Scientists Say
Cuttlefish sushi, anyone?

Mutually Occluded, Anthropocentric Bias in the Study of Animal Vision
You can’t study animal vision by human criteria

Robert M. Seyfarth and Dorothy L. Cheney, Seeing Who We Hear and Hearing Who We See
The esteemed primatologists discuss how brain mechanisms are “essentially multisensory” across many species

Natalie Angier, Tracking Forest Creatures on the Move
Capuchins in the rain forest and automated radio telemetry – GPS to track 3-D climbers!

Jonah Lehrer, Metacognition in the Rat
Oh, how these rats can answer

Hobbits and More

Dan Vergano, Hobbit Feud: Scientists Argue Over Mysterious Bones
The USA on hobbits! Now that’s news in itself. Also a good overview of the new articles out on this most unique hominid, including that they likely ate pygmy elephants! Discover also rounds up the news.

ScienceDaily, ‘Hobbit’ Skull Study Finds Hobbit Is Not Human
Details on one specific paper, examining the 3D shape of the skull. Not human in this case means not microencephalic, and thus its own species.

Brian Handwerk, New “Hobbit” Human Bones Add to Evidence, Oddity
National Geographic reports on Homo floresiensis – they were definitely small and definitely recent

The Hobbit: Official Movie Blog
Oh come on, I had to thrown some fantasy in too! Looks like filming will start in 2010.

Live Science, Early Humans Had Nutcracker Jaws
Lucy could crack diamonds with her teeth! Well, Diamond brand nuts… Plus a really cool image recreating the jaw stresses in early hominids through the link

Marcel Williams, Our Earliest Human Ancestor
Toumai – or Sahelanthropus tchadensis – going back to about 7.0 million years ago. Likely bipedal, likely a hominid.