Wednesday Round Up #104

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”

EvoS: Evolution, Addiction and the Encultured Brain


Two weeks ago I had a wonderful visit to EvoS, the Evolutionary Studies Program at Binghamton University. Leslie Heywood, a gifted writer and a true interdisciplinary scholar, invited me to Binghamton. She really enjoyed herself at our Encultured Brain conference, and wanted me to share my work with the EvoS program.

It was a very stimulating visit, and given their technology gurus there, I can share with you two key parts of it.

First there is the video of my lecture on Evolution, Behavior and the Encultured Brain. You don’t actually get to see me, however – you see my Powerpoint slides and hear my accompanying lecture. In the talk I cover a lot of my work on evolutionary theory and addiction, and then discuss how that work has lead me to neuroanthropology and how neuroanthropology works as a good complement to evolutionary biology.

I also took part in a podcast, where I got involved in a great discussion with students at Binghamton about my research on substance use and abuse in Colombia. So in the podcast I range more widely over my work, in particularly discussing some of the cultural anthropology work I have done. So you can also get the Daniel Lende podcast.

They also had a page providing a brief introduction to my talk, and there you can access the pdf of my Evolutionary Medicine and Health chapter “Evolution and Modern Behavioral Problems: The Case of Addiciton.”

Two by Four Stone Hearth


We’ve been a little lax about posting links to the great anthropology carnival Four Stone Hearth. So we’re going to take a swing at updating you about the last two editions.

A Very Remote Period Indeed hosted Four Stone Hearth #85: Cold Wind Edition. Amidst the January cold came archaeological delights like ancient pants and prehistoric footwear to keep you warm, as well as Melville Herskovits in the history of anthropology, the place of linguistic anthropology at the hearth, and much, much more.

Over at Testimony of the Spade we have Four Stone Hearth #86: Amazing Stories Edition. It’s worth a visit for the great covers from fantastical fiction. But you can also find musings on the paleolithic diet, a bronze age halberd, dance and trance, and once again, much, much more!

Link to Four Stone Hearth #85: Cold Wind Edition

Link to Four Stone Hearth #86: Amazing Stories Edition

Wednesday Round Up #103

I really like this round up – one of my better efforts of late, I think. Some great stuff up top, and then lots of good material on new media, social networking, gaming, etc. Then a neuroanth mash-up, followed by drugs, genetics, mental health, and of course chickens.

Top of the List

Emily Polis Gibson, Children’s Hospital Rotation
A powerful poem about attending to an anencephalic newborn, a baby without a brain. Written by a doctor in Washington State

Science Friday – Ira Flatow, Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall on studying chimpanzees, preserving habitats, and what lies ahead for the field of evolutionary science. I particularly liked her answers to people’s questions, including an adorable 13 year old girl, in the second half as she powerfully described how she moved from working on chimps to working for conservation and human development.

Research Digest Blog, Evidence-based Tips for Valentine’s
Miss out on Valentine’s Day? Well, better dig into the research on how to enhance your irresistibility

Desde el Manicomio, Adrian
Some beautiful and award-winning photos of an autistic child in his daily life

Reader Comments – NY Times, Comments on Bob Herbert’s Watching China Run
These reader recommended comments are some of the best critiques of US society and culture that I have read in a long time

Daniel Elkan, The Comedy Circuit: When your Brain Gets the Joke
Neuroimaging humor, with a look at why a joke is funny to some and not funny to others.

David Sloan Wilson, Economics and Evolution as Different Paradigms IV: The Limiting Factor of Cultural Evolution Is Not Origin But Spread
I had an illuminating conversation with David when I visited Binghamton University last week. He has really pushed evolutionary thinking into applied arenas, and here examines the intersection of cultural evolution and economics, with childhood education and risky adolescent behavior both discussed.

Tara Parker-Pope, As Girls Become Women, Sports Pay Dividends
Showing that sports participation has direct benefits for development with “ lifelong improvements to educational, work and health prospects”

New Media

Vaughan Bell, Don’t Touch That Dial!
I thought Facebook rotted my brain… right? Not so fast, says the master behind Mind Hacks, in this “history of media scares, from the printing press to Facebook”

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #103”

Graduate Student Pecha Kucha Session @ New Orleans


Denice Szafran, a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Buffalo, is putting together a Pecha Kucha session for the annual American Anthropological Association meeting in New Orleans. Pecha Kucha is a new visual format for giving a talk, which features 20 slides shown for 20 seconds each. Here’s her call for submissions over at the Anthropology Cooperative:

I am putting together a session proposal for the 2010 AAA meeting in New Orleans, and would like to call for submissions of abstracts.

The session will focus on graduate student works-in-progress, and will be Pecha Kucha – 20 slides, 20 seconds each. Often the only people who are aware of graduate student work are our advisors and committees, and this will be a chance to show the discipline what we are up to and where we are researching, and get feedback from the audience. This format is an exciting way to do that. With this method we will be able to accept 12 presenters for the session, and all research areas are welcome.

If you are interested, or think you might be, please submit an abstract to me at dszafran@buffalo.edu by February 24 so that I can assemble the invited session proposal by the March 1 deadline. You will be notified by February 27 whether your abstract will be included with our submission (just in case we get more than we can handle).

As Denice notes, Lorenz over at Antropologi kicked up interest in Pecha Kucha with his post in January, Pecha Kucha: The Future of Presenting? It bears some similarity to our speed presentation format that we used successfully last October at the Encultured Brain conference. Lorenz included a bunch of links to learn how and explore more. You can also go directly to PechaKucha.org.

Here’s a video about this new format:

Another example, this one from Wired and introducing Pecha Kucha and then discussing the social uses of signs: