The new Four Stone Hearth carnival is up, covering some of the best in the four fields of anthropology, over at Hominin Dental Anthropology (say that five times fast, and you’re a real anthropologist). It has a nice chronological theme, starting with a discussion of meat eating among Neanderthals, some pseudo-science on our cousins the Hobbits, ritual and habitation in a Neolithic archaeology site, and other archaeological themes. Then some disease in the Renaissance, the general intelligence vs. social intelligence debate, and finally us.

All worth a look, but given the theme of this blog, the stand-out would be the general vs. social intelligence debate over what accounts for the evolutionary increase in human brain size. So check that out over at Professor Olsen’s.

Like Encephalon, Four Stone Hearth is a collection of the best and brightest of the recent blogosphere, but in this case anthropology. Anthropology is generally defined by four sub-fields: archaeology, biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, and linguistic anthropology, united by a holistic approach. Hence the FOUR stones joined in a HEARTH…

We have a couple posts represented there this time around, and I definitely encourage people to check out everything else there. A collected cornucopia of creativity.

Long live the carnival!

I’ve been enjoying the Discovery Channel’s series, The Human Body: Pushing The Limits, in dribs and drabs, watching the bits that are posted on You Tube. (Here’s the first part of the episode on Sensation, which is pretty good.) When I first read the description of the four-part series, I worried someone had already done a video version of the book I’m working on:

Human Body: Pushing the Limits takes you across continents and introduces you to people who have pushed their bodies to the max. Using CGI technology and hi-tech camera work, see their physical ordeals in vivid detail both externally and internally.

In fact, the series is not very deep, but the CGI graphics of throbbing nerves, eyes swiveling, sweat glands, and other anatomical marvels are pretty groovy. It’s well worth checking it out — there’s a whole lot of segments on You Tube. The four episodes were on Sight, Strength, Sensation, and Brain Power. I’ll probably try to get my hands on a DVD copy when it comes out and use it in my teaching.

Two very different takes on cognitive dissonance today in the New York Times, one about rationalizing decisions, the other counter-factual and emotional.

John Tierney writes, And Behind Door No. 1, A Fatal Flaw. It covers the Monty Hall problem, and the statistical and methodological problems of cognitive dissonance experiments dating back to the 1950s. Basically the experiments have discounted the fact that one’s initial choice changes the odds. You shouldn’t stick with Door #1 if Door #3 gets opened. A 1/3 chance (the original choice) gets changed to a 2/3 chance of winning if you switch to Door #2. As always, Tierney provides an entertaining piece, and has some good links to online experiments.

Harriet Brown writes, My Daughters Are Fine, But I’ll Never Be The Same, covering her emotional and internal reactions to life-threatening illnesses in her children. Why fall apart when things are finally going well? She tells us of speaking with a friend who had gone through something similar:

“Other parents worry about the worst,” she told me, “but they don’t really believe it could happen. We know better.” We know better. That was it, exactly. We parents throw everything between our kids and danger: bike helmets, seat belts, vaccinations, tooth sealants, self-defense classes. We are creating the illusion of safety as much as anything else, weaving a kind of magic circle of protection. Like all illusions, once broken it can never be made whole again.

One headline this week: “Neglect, Abuse Seen in 90,000 Infants” which starts: “About 1 in 50 infants in the U.S. have been neglected or abused, according to the first national study of the problem in that age group.”

Another headline this week: “Childhood Mental Health Problems Blight Adult Working Life” whose first line repeats the mantra: “Mental health problems in childhood blight adult working life, suggests research published ahead of print in Occupational and Environmental Medicine.”

Putting them together? We can look to the Adverse Childhood Experiences study, based on information from more than 17,000 members of the Kaiser Permanente HMO in California. Here’s part from the CDC summary:

“As the number of Adverse Childhood Experiences increase, the risk for the following health problems increases in a strong and graded fashion:

-alcoholism and alcohol abuse
-chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
-depression
-fetal death
-health-related quality of life
-illicit drug use
-ischemic heart disease (IHD)
-liver disease
-risk for intimate partner violence
-multiple sexual partners
-sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)
-smoking
-suicide attempts
-unintended pregnancies

Sometimes it’s about the medium, not just the neuroanth message.  Damian Kulash has an editorial today, Beware the New New Thing, on net neutrality and how companies are trying to sell us something “good” (for those who can afford it) that replaces something better that we already have, an open Internet.  There’s just one problem, we might have that–but not legally.

Here’s one good excerpt: “For some parallel examples: there are only two guitar companies who make most of the guitars sold in America, but they don’t control what we play on those guitars. Whether we use a Mac or a PC doesn’t govern what we can make with our computers. The telephone company doesn’t get to decide what we discuss over our phone lines. It would be absurd to let the handful of companies who connect us to the Internet determine what we can do online. Congress needs to establish basic ground rules for an open Internet, just as common carriage laws did for the phone system.”

To support net neutrality, you can go to the website Save the Internet.