I hope all of you are having a great New Year! Here’s the mash-up.

Jay Sosa, Savage Minds Rewind: The Best of 2009
A whole slew of great posts from last year from Savage Minds, the leading cultural anthropology site

Ed Yong, Not Exactly Rocket Science Review of 2009
One of my favorite science journalists online covers the best stories of his Not Exactly Rocket Science site

Dave Munger, TV’s Unintended Consequences
It makes us fat, but can benefit women’s equality – are societal benefits at individual costs the new trend?

Scott Christian, The Journalist of the Future
Is Interactive! Web 2.0, building from the ground up (okay, okay, branding), and including the reader (informant?) as the source of stories

Greg Laden, Your Future in Cyberspace: Artificially Intelligent Journalism
The journalist and the consumer still matter – the media are changing…

Gretchen Reynolds, Phys Ed: Can You Be Overweight and Still Be Healthy?
Not really, says the latest research. Fat doesn’t appear to be so good (damn), and metabolic syndrome (high blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.) is even worse. Still, “the fit or fat issue has unbelievable levels of complexity.”

Shannon Chapla, Notre Dame Anthropologist Uses New Genetics Lab to Research Women’s Health Disparities
Jada Benn Torres, my colleague here, gets some good press about her work using molecular anthropology to ask why African-American women are at a higher risk of developing uterine fibroids

Vaughan Bell, World-Wide Cocaine Cut Mystery
Two-thirds of cocaine now has small amounts of levamisole, a drug used in deworming animals and acetylcholine agonist, cut into the overall product. Are traffickers aiming for greater effect?

Alvaro Fernandez, Michael Merzenich on Brain Training, Assessments, and Personal Brain Trainers
A great Sharp Brains interview with one of the pioneers of research into neuroplasticity

Christie Lynn, Carnival of Evolution #19
Observations of a Nerd is hosting the latest edition of the evolution-themed carnival, with everything from Living the scientific life to 365 days of Darwin

Mireya Navarro, Sustainable Cultures: A Step Beyond Anthropology
Goucher College in Baltimore now offers a Master of Arts in cultural sustainability, reports the NY Times

Alison Gopnik, Mind Reading
Book review of Stanislas Dehaene’s new book, Reading in the Brain, which covers both the neurology and history of our pre-eminent civilized skill

Amy Barth, Child Abuse Leaves Its Mark on Victim’s DNA
Discover the worst – Discover magazine calls this discovery #61 of 2009, that abuse can lead to genetic modifications that leave certain people particularly vulnerable to stress and then suicide. There’s lots more, from the oldest musical instrument found to robot learning, over at Discover Top 100

Jonah Lehrer, Blame It on the Brain
Willpower as a limited resource – use it wisely! Especially in the new year.

Barbara Strauch, Adult Learning: How to Train the Aging Brain
The brain in middle age – is it all down hill, or is there still some cognitive training hope? Positive news on plasticity

Mark Hill/Todd Myers, Singer and Baer’s Killer Commodities
Consumer goods – so productive for capitalists that they kill us as we consume them.

Mo Costandi, Glimpsing Memory Traces in Real Time
Neurophilosophy on fascinating research that takes us a step closer to understanding the mechanisms of memory

Eric Michael Johnson, Deconstructing Social Darwinism – Part 1
Let’s begin by understanding exactly what social Darwinism is…

Anas Aremeyaw Anas, Exposed: Inside Ghana’s “Mad House”
JoyOnline delivers its antithesis – the Accra Psychiatric Hospital is a Foucaultian nightmare. For more, see Mind Hacks.

John Hawks, Genetics of Brain Surface Area and Cortical Thickness
Twin designs meet brain scans, with thickness and surface relatively independent of each other

Middle Savagery – lite
Get the minimized but still excellent posts from Colleen Morgan – Portrait of the Archaeologist as a Young Woman

Oxford Centre for Neuroethics, Links to Neuroethics Related Sites
A very useful collection of links on the ever growing field of neurethics

Alan Davidson, Liberty by Design
The internet saves us, with a video lecture of course given at MIT (and by a Google guru….). Or, how engineering for the internet works…

Sandra Lane, Viewing Poverty through Different Lenses: The Impact on Poverty on Women’s Health
A podcast lecture from this medical anthropologist and epidemiologist that I had the pleasure to meet with back in September