Yeah, no anarchy this week, just the top, anthro, brain and some other interesting stuff.

Top of the List

Emily Singer, Brain Cells’ Long Migration
Complete with video! Neurons follow blood vessels. Very cool.

Deric Bownds, Language Shapes Fundamental Unconscious Visual Perception
New PNAS paper – Sapir-Whorf in action!

Bill Moyers Journal, Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman
Alternative news through Slate and Democracy Now covered on the popular PBS program

Joao Biehl, Social Innovation in Global Health: When People Come First
The Princeton anthropologist and rising star gives a lecture that summarizes a lot of his ideas

Life of Wiley, Hilarious
The ninja cat stalks!

Anthropology

immanence, Cultural Studies’ Biosemiotic Turn?
Coverage of some recent books within a broad bio-cultural framework. See a follow-up post on other types of biocultural studies.

Keith Hart, An Engaged Anthropology for the 21st Century
A series of lectures with a focus on “an anthropology whose object is defined as ‘the making of world society’.”

Carl Feagans, Online Comic about Archaeology
Bones in the cellar and colonial America in a clever online comic

Melena Ryzik, Mapping the Cultural Buzz: How Cool Is That?
Geography meets cultural events – a new way to see the avant garde

Benedict Carey, When All You Have Left Is Your Pride
Pride as a social emotion – wow, the psychologists finally got it.

Magnus Reuterdahl, Thessaloniki Scenic Spots Part 1Some beautiful places and things in Macedonia

Brain

Benedict Carey, Brain Researchers Open Door to Editing Memory
Popular NY Times article this week, summarizing recent research

The New Scientist, The Five Ages of the Brain
A guide from gestation through old age

Ned Block, Comparing Theories of Consciousness
This forthcoming paper comes down on the side of a neurological rather than global workspace view

Tali Sharot et al., How Choice Reveals and Shapes Expected Hedonic Outcome
Abstract for article using fMRI that explores how choosing itself changes the physiological signatures of hedonic values

All the Rest

Erica Werner, Fact Check: Do Smokers Cost Society More?
“Vanderbilt University economist Kip Viscusi studied the net costs of smoking-related spending and savings and found that for every pack of cigarettes smoked, the country reaps a net cost savings of 32 cents.”

John Tierney, Public Policy That Makes Test Subjects of Us All
Lowering salt by decree, but is the science there?

Novice Counselor, Existential Therapy
Three varieties – person-centered, existentialist, and gestalt

Edge, A Talk with Yochai Benkler: The End of Universal Rationality
Well, if it was never there in the first place… Then how about thinking about human sharing

CA Bowers, Why the George Lakoff and Mark Johnson Theory of Metaphor Is Inadequate for Addressing Cultural Issues Related to the Ecological Crisis
Obviously metaphor is avoided in the title too. Basically a critique of the individualist orientation inherent in the Lakoff embodied approach.

Here and Now with Robin Young, Online Gambling Addiction
The piece on gambling, with the journalist and poker player Martha Frankel, was a revelatory treat