Wednesday Round Up #43

This week, after some great favs, we have war and violence, brain development, anthropology, and the brain. And Happy Holidays to everyone!
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Top of the List

Carl Feagans, Alien Skulls? Not Even Close!
The shaping of skulls by the Maya. Wow.

Benedict Carey, Psychiatrists Revise the Book of Human Troubles
The DSM-V – politics and money infect the creation of the next psychiatric diagnostic manual. For reactions, see Mind Hacks and Furious Seasons.

Julian Baggini, A Piece of iMe: An Interview with David Chalmers
A discussion of the extended mind over at The Philosopher’s Magazine

Furious Seasons, Seattle Snowball Fight
With lots of snow, two neighborhood bars get it on in these YouTube clips. Very funny.

Archaeoastronomy, If You Put a Snail Shell to Your Ear Can You Hear the Sound of Your Thoughts?
Snail shells, human ornamentation, and the evolution of the human mind

War and Violence

Mudhafer Al-Husaini & Erica Goode, Prescription Drug Abuse Rises Among Iraqi Troops
Internationalizing both PTSD and functional drug use.

Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, Rural Afghans Resistant To Official Judicial System
NPR on tribal councils, power, state development, and the administration of justice in Afghanistan

Continue reading “Wednesday Round Up #43”

Grand Rounds Highlighted

Highlight Health is hosting Grand Rounds 5.14 Holiday Edition. So please head over and revel in the gift of medical blogging.

In the holiday spirit, there is a gift guide for those without a home this Christmas, a short Christmas list of evolution books, and other goodies.

After that comes the list of all your favorite medical topics and areas. I found this version easy to access, with a lot of great reads, so enjoy the latest Grand Rounds.

SharpBrains Top 30

SharpBrains, the weblog responsible for hosting the latest Encephalon (the 61st edition), also brings us a year’s end Top 30 Brain Health and Fitness Articles of 2008. I know that a lot of our readers are interested in brain health, including the health-related implications of some of the basic research that we discuss here at Neuroanthropology. Although I’m sometimes reluctant to wade into this sort of prescriptive discussion, SharpBrains does a very good job of exploring the effects of practices like brain ‘exercises,’ meditation, physical exercise, play, education, sleep, and a host of others.

There’s a number of the posts that are worth checking out, but I appreciated that were some here that I missed the first time around, including Why do You Turn Down the Radio When You’re Lost?, which used an example of something I do all the time (I get lost a lot in Sydney as I’m still unfamiliar with the city), and hadn’t really noticed; and the critical discussion of the concept of ‘brain age,’ Posit Science, Nintendo Brain Age, and Brain Training Topics. But there’s lots more good stuff in this list, especially if you are interested in ‘brain training’ of all sorts.

From the Annals of Anthroman

John Jackson, professor of communications and anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, writes regularly over at Brain Storms: Annals of the Mind, hosted through The Chronicle of Higher Education. He has some great posts, and as I searched for anthro blogs to hopefully include in The Best of Anthropology Blogging 2008, I found Jackson’s other blog, From the Annals of Anthroman.

Both Jackson’s blogging at Brain Storms and Annals of Anthroman represent public anthropology and communication at the highest level, so I do hope you check his writing out. Here’s the post An Election Irony, on how John McCain turned into the racial candidate. And Spike Lee on Spike Lee is also a great read about Jackson’s course on Spike Lee at UPenn, including a visit from the master filmmaker himself.

Annunciando la prima edizione di «I migliori dei blogs di antropologia»

Un numero crescente di antropologi ha cominciato a produrre e diffondere il loro lavorro su Internet, specialmente in forma di blog. Come risultato di questo vediamo che l’antropologia in tutte le sue forme diventa più rilevante e sicuramente più visibile per il resto del mondo. Per questo motivo «Neuroanthropology» proporre di creare una collezione dei migliori articoli dei blogs antropologici.

Per participare, si prega di seguire queste istruzioni:

Ci sono due categorie di articoli. La prima categoria è costituita degli articoli più popolari, in termini di numero di lettori per un articolo. La seconda è costituita degli articoli scelti da voi stessi, in altre parole, il vostro preferito articolo su vostro blog.

Si prega di inviare un esempio in ogni categoria (il più popolare e il più preferito di vostra scelta), compreso il titolo, il suo indirizzo su Internet, e una o due frasi spiegando il motivo per cui pensate che questi sono i migliori esempi da vostro blog.

Nel caso di blogs con più di un autore, è possibile inviare due esempi di articoli nella seconda categoria.

Per favore mandate questi dettagli a Dottor Daniel Lende a: dlende[@]nd[.]edu (eliminando le parentesi).

Si aspetta queste informazioni non più tardi del 29 dicembre di 2008. «I migliori dei blogs di antropologia» sarà pubblicata su Internet el 31 di dicembre.

Mille grazie ai nostri colleghi italiani.

The Sharp Encephalon

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Sharp Brains is hosting Encephalon #61, and rounds up an outstanding version of mind/brain blogging.

Mind Hacks’ Medical Jargon Alters Our Understanding of Disease is some great medical anthropology. Then we have the Jerry Springer of brain blogs, Neurocritic, on Jerry Springer himself, with some justice thrown in too.

Plus sexism and anger, the purported placebo gene, materialism and the soul, a striking visual illusion, and even more.

So check out the latest version of Encephalon.