So the favs, then a bunch of book reviews, and onto anthropology and the mind. Then some health, art and philosophy, and after you spend all day reading this stuff, why not finish it off with some alcohol and sex?

Top of the List

Sharon Begley, West Brain, East Brain
“What a difference culture makes.” Newsweek has a story on cultural neuroscience!

Chris Clark, Zooming in with Prezi
Prezi, a cool new presentation tool – an online version of Powerpoint that lets you zoom in and out and also embed YouTube and Flash animations. Looks both cool and useful!

Sarah, Would You Like to Kula?
Funny anthropology pick up lines.

BigThink, Oliver Sacks on Humans and Myth-Making
“Humans naturally create stories and narratives,” says Oliver Sacks in this video lecture.

Leslie Heywood, Gender Specs
An informed feminist takes on the evolutionary psychology approach to gender. So, what do women look for in a man? And what do men look for in a woman?

Joe Brewer, Belief and Worldview in Politics
Over at Cognitive Policy Works, an argument that what someone believes to be true is more important than what is actually true. How do our minds work? How do we view reality? These are the sort of questions addressed here, using an applied approach informed by cognitive science. Another interesting piece is Story Reversal: The Power of Frame Breaking, which includes a video.

Harvey Whitehouse, Four Recipes for Religion
Our Encultured Brain keynote presenter gives a nice summary of different types of organized religion. Discussion continues over at Cognition & Culture in the post, Religion Science: If you pay the piper, do you call the tune?

Book Reviews

Emily Bazelon, The Tiny Differences in the Littlest Brains
A review of the new book by Lise Eliot, Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow Into Troublesome Gaps — and What We Can Do About It. Looks like a very good neuroanthropology read on gender and the brain.

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #104”

Top of the List

ScienceDaily, Ancient Human Teeth Show That Stress Early in Development Can Shorten Life Span
George Armelagos, a professor of mine at Emory, is featured in Science Daily with some excellent work showing how stressful events occurring early in life, as indicated by tooth enamel, can mean a shorter life span.

Susan Carey, The Origin of Concepts
The Harvard professor has a video lecture over at Cognition & Culture, where she discusses her new book The Origin of Concepts

Jane Brody, Rules Worth Following, for Everyone’s Sake
Michael Pollan’s new book, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, is reviewed very favorably over at the NY Times. I also liked his earlier interview with Tara Parker-Pope, where he presented this book as the practical version of Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food. Anthropologists could pay great heed to what he says:

I’ve spent 10 years looking at agriculture, food and health. I’ve done it mostly as a reporter with a lot of research and adventures and explorations. At the end of the day people want to know what to do with this information. What’s the practical import of what you’ve learned? It’s the question I always get when I’m speaking to readers… I kept hearing the word pamphlet, and I wanted to write a book that would reach as many people as possible. It’s a real radical distillation of everything I’ve been working on. It’s really just to help people to act. It’s about daily practice more than theory.

Frans B. M. de Waal, The Evolution of Empathy
How empathy is essential to who we are, in the context of apes and other animals also exhibiting this trait.

Vaughan Bell, Death of a Gladiator
A gladiator graveyard is discovered in Turkey. Really cool research on how scientists determine the gladiators’ cause of death, with a focus on traumatic brain injuries.

Owen Slot, A Great Sporting Achievement
“Why the key to becoming a successful athlete is using less, not more, of your brain.”

Mind

Daniel Carlat, Lilly: “Execute the *%#&*! out of them!”
How drug companies manipulate science and doctors in order to sell their drugs.

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #102”

Back to the old categories approach, with thanks to my student Casey Dolezal for help. So top of the list, then anthropology and writing for a broader public, mind, a nature/culture mix of anthropology, health, and finally some good stuff on addiction at the end.

Top of the List

Sharon Begley, The Depressing News about Anti-Depressants
Prozac Nation needs to face the data – anti-depressants don’t work as well as we thought, especially for more mild cases of depression (no better than placebos in the meta-analysis)

Michael Greenwell, Howard Zinn – 1922 to 2010
The “radical historian” Howard Zinn is remembered.

Lorenz, Pecha Kucha – The Future of Presenting Papers?
Papers presented the Pecha Kucha way – a visual speed presentation – is becoming more popular. Papers are not read but instead shown on a screen in 20 images, displayed for twenty seconds each.

Natalie Angier, Abstract Thoughts? The Body Takes Them Literally
The NY Times gets embodied!

Rosa Golijan, A Virtual Jam Session
Very cool music video – a rap/jazz fusion – put together by people playing virtually together

Kirstin Butler, Reading the Red Book
Carl Jung’s lifework now published and reviewed

Eric Taub, The Web Way to Learn a Language
A useful overview of how to learn a language online

Writing and Anthropology’s Public Presence

Chris Kelty, Why Is There No Anthropology Journalism?
A call to report more queries, debates, and findings from anthropology

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #101”

Made it to 100! Still the mash-up form, but I stuck a bunch on video games at the game over…

Carolyn Sargent, Who Are We in the Public Imagination?
The Society for Medical Anthropology has a new blog Voices from Medical Anthropology. Here the current SMA president asks how we present ourselves as medical anthropologists. Comments encouraged!

Chris Kelty et al., Outlaw Biology? Public Participation in the Age of Big Bio
Looks like a fascinating symposium this coming Friday and Saturday (Jan 20th & 30th) at UCLA. Plus just a fun site to explore.

Dr. Shock, The Neuroscience of Jazz
Tom Beek playing, plus fMRI studies of jazz improvisation

Mary Hrovat, Civilization Founded on Beer?
“Patrick McGovern, an archaeologist who studies human exploration of fermented beverages, believes that it might have been the desire for reliable access to alcohol, not food, that spurred the farming revolution that swept Neolithic culture…”

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #100”

Dirk Hanson, The Addiction Inbox Top Ten
The most popular posts over at very well done The Addiction Inbox: The Science of Substance Abuse

Ethan Watters, How the US Exports Its Mental Illnesses
Another great piece by Watters over at New Scientist of the globalization of US mental health concepts (or ethnopsychologies). For more, see some good commentary over at Mind Hacks

Michiko Kakutani, A Rebel in Cyberspace, Fighting Collectivism
The artist and computer scientist Jaron Lanier fights against the hive mind and digital Maoism (i.e., the wisdom of the crowd) and the importance of developing a unique voice in his new book You Are Not A Gadget

Vaughan Bell, The Ominous Power of Confession
125 proven cases of wrongful conviction based on false confessions – Mind Hacks covers an excellent yet disturbing paper

Stephen Casper, Book Review: Warwick Anderson, The Collectors of Lost Souls: Turning Kuru Scientists into Whitemen
“This marvelous book deliberately forces us to re-imagine the meaning of sojourn, scientific discovery, colonialism, and sorcery, while at the same time providing us with an account of the discovery of Kuru, a lethal neurological disease, and the science that ultimately determined its etiology. In a narrative grounded in sources found in archives in Papua New Guinea, Australia, and the United States, and further developed through oral histories with scientists, anthropologists, and the Fore people, Anderson shows us that the prion – an infectious protein supposedly discovered in the laboratories of Britain and the United States – was a thing constructed first through colonial aspirations and global imaginations.”

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #99”

Enjoy another week, all mashed together once again.

3 Quarks Daily, Michael Moshen Performs the Triangle
An amazing display of skilled performance, integrating timing, music and throwing – definitely one I threw in here for Greg!

Robin Young, Rehab for Terrorists
NPR’s Here and Now speaks with the British journalist Owen Bennett-Jones, who has investigated the Saudi’s rehab program for terrorists. Striking to me both because of the dilemmas of this approach (or any like it) in a probabilistic age that still wants ideal absolutes, and also because of the striking difference in the portrayals of “terrorists” (see the NY Times’ recent piece, The Terrorist Mind) and how young men and women become involved and hence why rehab can work.

Institute of Psychiatry – King’s College, Post Doctoral Research Worker
Looking for a post-doc in neuroanthropology? King’s College in London’s Institute of Psychiatry wants you! The research is on cognitive models of dissociation and the subjective and neural correlates of automatic speech and writing.

Ray Tallis, You Won’t Find Consciousness in the Brain
“My argument is not about technical, probably temporary, limitations. It is about the deep philosophical confusion embedded in the assumption that if you can correlate neural activity with consciousness, then you have demonstrated they are one and the same thing, and that a physical science such as neurophysiology is able to show what consciousness truly is.”

John Cloud, Why Your DNA Isn’t Your Destiny
Epigenetics makes Time magazine! Hunger, abundance, and multi-generational effects in Sweden is the lead case study.

David Dobbs, Neuron Culture’s Top Five from December
Get the links to the posts on David’s Orchid and Dandelion series, which talks about genetic sensitivity and the environment – really looking forward to his book on the subject

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #98”