Greg Laden is hosting the current edition of the anthropology carnival Four Stone Hearth. From human sacrifice to car talk linguistics, acquatic apes, and ghost stories, it certainly gets the anthro fires going.
Enjoy Four Stone Hearth #73.
Wednesday Round Up #76
This week it’s the good stuff, then mind and anthro, and finally gaming.
Top of the List
Fresh Air, Journalist Reports On ‘Life, Death And The Taliban’
Really impressive interview with Charles Sennott, the executive editor of GlobalPost, which is running a series on the complex history and present role of the Taliban in Afghanistan. A lot of things he says sound grounded in anthropology. Here’s the link to GlobalPost’s Taliban series, which includes video and reporting.
Lorenz Khazaleh, Five Years Antropologi.Info
A great summary of what five years have meant for that blog, as well as how anthropology blogging has grown over that time.
Charukesi, Who Is a Foodie? Not Me…
No indeed. But a food voyeur. Most certainly. Some scrumptious photographs!
Michael Dove, Dreams from His Mother
The Yale anthropologist reflects on the work done by Obama’s mother, the anthropologist Ann Dunham Soetoro. For more on Ann Dunham and how Obama is actually a neuroanthropologist in disguise, see our long round up just after Obama’s inauguration.
The Economist, Amartya Sen on Justice: How to Do It Better
A review of Sen’s important new book The Idea of Justice. “In his study on how to create justice in a globalised world, Amartya Sen expounds on human aspiration and deprivation—and takes a swipe at John Rawls”
The Neurocritic
Just a lot of great material recently – from the clitoral homunculus to psychoanalytic explorations, serial killer movies, and zombie cupcakes
Mind & Brain
Kraeplin’s Grandchild, The Biopsychosocial Model Is Dead! Long Live to… to What?
Un analisis muy interesante, y si, en español
Top Ten Travel Tips for Anthropologists
Besides the obvious, here are some generic travel tips of a fieldworker. In no particular order:
1. Always Carry a Pen that can write on skin without smudging
The Birthday Hearth
While I was on vacation, Carl Feagans at A Hot Cup of Joe hosted the anthropology carnival Four Stone Hearth #72. It fell on his birthday – and what better way to celebrate than with all four fields of anthropology!
From the axes of Neolithic gods to moving beyond war, cranial plasticity to Shoshone language, it lights candles across the breadth of the field. Enjoy.
Link to Four Stone Hearth #72
Wednesday Round Up #75
Back from vacation – so better late than never. Had a great time camping, by the way.
Top of the List
Vaughan Bell, How Long Is a Severed Head Conscious For?
One of those morbid questions we often ask – well, here’s the answer.
Jerry Coyne, Creationism for Liberals
The dismantling of Robert Wright’s new book The Evolution of God over at The New Republic. Wright responds to Coyne here.
Clarence Gravlee, New TAPS Paper in Current Anthropology
Godoy et al. paper on changes in well-being over time in the Bolivian Amazon. Data come from the Tsimane’ Amazonian Panel Study (TAPS), which uses a longitudinal approach not often seen in anthropology. Plus get Lance’s forthcoming paper, Methods for collecting panel data.
Christopher Kuzawa & Elizabeth Sweet, Epigenetics and the Embodiment of Race: Developmental Origins of US Racial Disparities in Cardiovascular Health
Pdf of a 2009 article – “The model outlined here builds upon social constructivist perspectives to highlight an important set of mechanisms by which social influences can become embodied, having durable and even transgenerational influences.”
Ed Yong, Confirming Aesop – Rooks Use Stones to Raise the Level of Water in a Pitcher
And see the video too!
Anthropology
Mark Flinn, Why Words Can Hurt Us: Social Relationships, Stress and Health
Pdf of the very accessible chapter on stress in the recent volume Evolutionary Medicine and Health
Uncyclopedia on anthropology
Wizened anthropologists will notice all sorts of crucial elements that are still missing from the entry; our friends on the Australian Anthropological Society mailing list have pointed out that perhaps the most famous recently-deceased anthropologist, Michel Foucault, is missing from the un-entry. I also noted the absence of any discussion of the role of hallucinogens in the production of anthropological theory, from the early crucial inspiration of absinthe to the later influence of Amazonian pharmacology and performance-enhancing peyote, to more recent experimentation with endo-generated narcotics such as extreme reflexivity and disciplinary megalomania/self-castigation bipolarism.
Also mysteriously missing is any mention of thesis-related slavery in the teaching of anthropology, chunky ethnic jewelry or hemp clothing, or any word with the prefix ‘post-‘. In other words, the uncyclopedia entry on anthropology is a work in progress, but definitely not likely to become the least bit more accurate or reflect the field in a favourable light. I’d heartily recommend that you click on the link to visit the site so that someone might fall under the illusion from the page traffic that anthropology has a larger audience than it actually has, or you could maliciously hack the page and suggest that the field is closely related to sociology.
Photo archived at: http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/File:Harryhausen_skeletons_2.jpg
Neuroanthropology 
