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Four Stone Hearth #26
2007-10-24 12:16:00
Net's best anthropology blog carnival begins its second year.Welcome to the newest installment of the four field anthropology blog carnival Four Stone Hearth . As the carnival enters into its terrible twos there were many wonderful voices clamoring for attention. I've done my best to select only the choicest beans to make this blend a sensation you won't soon forget.CulturalMango Girl at Kafr Al-Hanadwa discusses how fasting in Hinduism is perceived to have spiritual benefits, but only for women. Such is the romance of the self-denying woman.Meanwhile, anthropologists working with the military are still raising controversy. Oh No a WoC PhD has her say about Anthro and the State while The Interrogation Diaries makes a few points about the little rituals of dehumanization. Marcus, From an Anthropological Perspective, puts it all into context by exploring the way politics affects how academics make a living (in a post which I’m not sure is a justification or an excuse).Anthrop...
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Wedging Religion into Science (Again)
2007-10-23 14:15:00
Answers in Genesis promotes miseducation in AmericaImage: Tom Toles/Washington PostAs AiG is currently attacking public science education (and, surprise, not because our science standards are ill preparing our students) I thought it would be appropriate to repost this article from the last time they tried to pull this nonsense. It's organizations like this that continue to ensure that our nation's understanding of evolution reaches a whopping 33rd out of 34 countries (just ahead of Turkey).--Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis and creator of the Creation Museum, is currently promoting his new book by submitting sample chapters on his group's website. Entitled War of the Worldviews the book teaches Young-Earth biblical literalists strategies on how to argue against the evidence for evolution.At the beginning of the chapter he chastises Christians for adopting “flaky evidence” to support their views.Over the past several years, some so-called “evidence” for creation ha...
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The Biology of a Mother?s Love
2007-10-22 16:41:00
Mother-infant bonds predicted by hormone levels in humans and other mammalsImage: "Mother's Love " by Kolongi BrathwaiteA common tactic by evolution deniers is to claim that if a complex behavior can?t be measured than the scientific method must be a flawed approach towards understanding the world. Nevermind that no one challenges the science of physics just because we can?t predict the complex motions of a leaf in a windstorm. But when it comes to matters of emotion somehow natural explanations are off limits. This is readily apparent in the common argument that, ?if you think biology is such a good explanation of behavior, then prove that your mother loves you.? However, as it turns out, we can address this challenge of motherly love and demonstrate a plausible scientific explanation by measuring the levels of the important hormones involved.Writing in the current issue of Psychological Science (subscription required), Ruth Feldman and colleagues at the Gonda Brain Research Cen...
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Richard Dawkins: Tribulation Force
2007-10-21 15:26:00
Your Sunday Skepticomic from Slime Culture TV(click image to enlarge)To view last week's comic click here.
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Adoption in Non-Human Primates
2007-10-19 17:17:00
How genes for altruism can benefit strangers as well as kinThe generosity of adoption has long been considered a unique human hallmark.Image: Shadows of Forgotten AncestorsFor decades it was conventional dogma that humans were the only species that used tools. ?Man the Toolmaker? was our celebrated designation. The hominin fossil Homo habilis (or "handy" man) was even defined within our genera primarily because the skeleton was associated with stone implements. However, when Jane Goodall discovered chimpanzees using modified sticks at Gombe to ?fish? for termites, Louis Leakey famously cabled her that:?Now we must redefine man, redefine tool ? or accept chimpanzees as human.?By now people should stop insisting on singling out specific human behaviors and declaring them to be unique in the natural world. Invariably, whatever special attributes humans possess, other primates do in some form as well. For many years it?s been argued that humans are the only primates that will adopt...
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Afarensis Celebrates His Third Blogiversary
2007-10-18 16:00:00
What to get an anthropologist who has everything?Talk about offering the clothes straight from your back.Image: Joel BentleyFamed ScienceBlogger Afarensis celebrated his third anniversary on the blogosphere recently. The traditional gift for year three is leather, so here's a suit that should serve him well.Remember, as Tyler Durden says:In the world I see -- you're stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You will wear leather clothes that last you the rest of your life. You will climb the wrist-think kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. You will see tiny figures pounding corn and laying-strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of the ruins of a superhighway.Here's to another three years! According to tradition, appropriate gifts then would be iron and wood, perfect for our future hunter-gathering lifestyle.
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Anthropology Blog Submissions
2007-10-18 12:46:00
We're waiting . . .Image: UnattributedFour Stone Hearth will be held right here on Oct. 24th. Send in your anthropology related blog posts (cultural, linguistic, archaeological or biological) to primatediaries@gmail.com now.
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Intelligent Design's Selective Moral Outrage
2007-10-17 23:12:00
James Watson, Ann Coulter and the tolerance of bigotryImage: Voices for Change CommitteeThe nineteenth-century American author and moralist T.S. Arthur once wrote, ?We are judged by the company we keep.? While we can doubt the veracity of this statement in every particular (after all, this famous advocate against the evils of alcohol was a friend of Edgar Allen Poe who probably died from drink) it?s certainly true in the case of people who condemn in others what they tolerate amongst themselves.Denyse O?Leary, Canadian journalist and Intelligent Design creationist who writes at William Dembski?s site Uncommon Descent, has taken great umbrage with James Watson for yesterday?s racist comments, and for good reason. Just days after insulting the intelligence of Rosalind Franklin (the geneticist he refuses to credit as one of the discoverers of DNA) Watson claimed that he was ?inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa? because:"All our social policies are based on the fact that th...
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Jane Goodall - A Personal Tribute
2007-10-17 06:03:00
Primatologist and UN Peace Messenger at Duke UniversityJane Goodall bridged the divide between two species.Image: Hugo van LawickThe primatologist and neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky once wrote that, when he grew up he wanted to be a mountain gorilla. Me, I wanted to be a chimpanzee. His inspiration was Diane Fossey, but I was always most interested in the work by that other cover girl of National Geographic. As I?m sure was the experience for many of us, Jane Goodall was the only scientist I had ever heard of when I was growing up (I wouldn?t discover Carl Sagan until much later). Her friendly manner and relaxed charm was a stark contrast to the cold and cerebral stereotype of Hollywood films.So it was a great pleasure to finally hear her speak in person after a lifetime of listening to her voice from the old, tinny speakers of my family?s television. As one of the 300 speaking engagements she?ll make this year alone, Dr. Goodall addressed the Duke University campus with a mess...
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Is Religion Poison or a Cure?
2007-10-16 21:46:00
Hitchens vs. McGrath at Georgetown UniversityHitchens starts after a six minute introduction. The total video is 1:40.Linked from Google Video.
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Monkey See, Monkey Don't Remember
2007-10-16 16:49:00
Neurogenesis declines in the aging primate brainMarmoset trying to remember if this bug was tasty or not.Image: Gerald DurellWe?ve all heard that you can?t teach an old marmoset new tricks, but researchers now understand why in a study that hopes to narrow in on the cause of neurodegenerative illness. Writing in the early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Benedetta Leuner and colleagues at Princeton determined that neurogenesis, or the growth of new neurons, diminishes once these South American monkeys reach sexual maturity. This decline in neurogenesis is particularly noticeable in the hippocampus, a region of the brain central to learning and memory.This research has been demonstrated previously in rats (I participated in some of this work as an undergraduate student) but there has always been a question as to whether or not the more complex primate brains undergo the same phenomenon:As the authors reported:No previous studies have investigated whether ...
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Lord Ram and his Army of Monkeys
2007-10-16 06:50:00
Existence of God questioned before India's Supreme CourtLord Ram with his vaanar sena building a bridge to Sri LankaThe Indian government withdrew a report submitted before the Supreme Court that challenged the existence of the Hindu God Ram. The report was in connection with a proposed shipping canal between India and Sri Lanka.According to the story linked at RichardDawkins.net:Hindu hardliners say the project will destroy what they say is a bridge built by Ram and his army of monkeys.Scientists and archaeologists say the Ram Setu (Lord Ram's bridge) - or Adam's Bridge as it is sometimes called - is a natural formation of sand and stones. . . They said there was no scientific evidence to prove that the events described in Ramayana ever took place or that the characters depicted in the epic were real.As a result the Bharatiya Janata Party (conservative Hindu nationalists that led the government until 2004 - basically the equivalent of modern Republicans) condemned the report fo...
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Who Wants a Fabulous Prize?
2007-10-15 16:30:00
How reading blogs can be better than watching Oprah.Hint: the gift will not be a car (car's are everywhere, this gift is rare).ScienceWoman is going to send me a gift (and it's not even my birthday).By the end of the calendar year, I will send a tangible, physical gift to each of the first five people to comment here. The catch? Each person must make the same offer on her/his blog.So in the spirit of "paying it forward" I will mail the first five commenters who do the same a real, fully-functional, three-dimensional gift just for letting me know you're out there. I already know what I'm going to get you too (I think you'll really appreciate it).Thanks for reading!

The Genetics of Politics
2007-10-15 07:32:00
New study breaks the silence and suggests voter apathy could be explained by the genes.Front page from the 1914 American textbook Eugenics by Professor T.W. ShannonGenetics and political science have had an ugly association in the past. Arguments that certain people were biologically ?unfit? for the political process led to an official eugenics policy in the United States that continued up until the Second World War. This was based largely in prevailing views about racial inferiority.For example, writing in 1907 Davis Rich Dewey notes (p. 163):The white population of the South honestly believed that political activity and privilege was bad for the colored race. . . The inferiority of the negro was still held to be a demonstrated fact.This ?demonstrated fact? motivated the Jim Crow voting exclusion laws and anti-miscegenation legislation such as the Racial Integrity Act of 1924.Given this history you?d suspect few political scientists would be willing to link the fields of genetics...
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The Pro-Life Party
2007-10-14 16:19:00
Your Sunday Skepticomic from Jim MorinTo view last Sunday's comic click here.
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The Pharyngula Mutating Genre Meme
2007-10-14 14:47:00
This blog meme was created by Pharyngula as a means of demonstrating evolution in cyberspace: There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...". Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations: * You can leave them exactly as is. * You can delete any one question. * You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change "The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is..." to "The best time travel novel in Westerns is...", or "The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is...", or "The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is...". * You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...". * You must have at least one question in your set, or you've gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it y...
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May I Have the Envelope Please . . .
2007-10-13 16:24:00
Intellectual Blogger Award recipients dazzle and informThinking long and hard about the final decisions was not easy.Image: Michael Nichols/National GeographicAfter much anticipation the recipients of the Intellectual Blogger Award have now been released. As everyone is by now aware, the votes for this prestigious award are done in secret and escorted under armed guard until they?re finally released to the public. Only the executives of PriceWaterhouseCoopers and myself (and probably the NSA) know the results of this award in advance.And so, without further ado, the recipients of the Intellectual Blogger Award are:LaelapsBrian is a paleontologist-to-be at Rutgers University. Founder of the paleo-carnival The Boneyard (which has been kind enough to include several of my own posts) Brian constantly inspires me with the passion he has for his subject. He can also be downright intimidating when he excels so well in combining disciplines to investigate the intersectionality of knowle...
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Mountain Gorillas Left Unprotected
2007-10-13 01:03:00
Park guards flee Virunga National Park amidst hostilityCongelese government troops captured by rebel soldiersImage: Riccardo Gangale/APEarlier I linked to the news that rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo had taken over the gorilla's protected zone in the east of the country. Today it?s being reported that park guards were forced to leave the area as the result of heavy fighting between the factions.As National Geographic reported:Today the fighting between rebels and the Congolese army heated up near Bukima, the park's main gorilla monitoring station.Rangers could also hear the exchange of heavy gunfire near park headquarters at Rumangabo, according to Norbert Mushenzi, director of Virunga's gorilla sector for the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN)."Rangers and local inhabitants are fleeing from all around the park, and the mountain gorillas are totally unprotected," Mushenzi said.With less than 700 mountain gorillas alive in the wild (half of whic...
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Al Gore Wins Nobel Peace Prize
2007-10-12 16:54:00
Climate crisis advocacy earns world's highest humanitarian honorAn Inconvenient Truth crowned a career raising issues about global climate changeThe Norwegian Nobel Committee decided today that the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize would be shared between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former Vice-President (and future Presidential candidate?) Al Gore .As the Nobel Committee announced today:Indications of changes in the earth's future climate must be treated with the utmost seriousness, and with the precautionary principle uppermost in our minds. Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth's resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world's most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.While Al Gore hasn?t faced the trials in his work that pre...
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Evolutionary Lap Dance
2007-10-12 04:47:00
Study suggests women display sexual cues during reproductive peakLap dancers earn larger tips when men sense fertilityIn my earlier post, Eye of the Beholder, I pointed to new research showing that women are most attracted to individuals other than their partners while in estrus, the most fertile period of a woman?s menstrual cycle. Their eyes betrayed their attraction to others even under controlled settings. Now it seems that estrus causes men?s eyes to widen as well.Publishing in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior (pdf), evolutionary psychologists Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tybur and Brent Jordan collected data on the tips received by lap dancers who were currently taking birth control and those who were naturally cycling. Those dancers who were at their most fertile period received significantly more tips than both dancers on birth control and those at other points in their cycle.As the authors wrote in their study:When women and men interact intimately over the course of ...
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Happy Birthday Four Stone Hearth!
2007-10-10 15:07:00
The best of net anthropology turns one year old.The twenty-fifth installment of Four Stone Hearth is enormous with too many terrific articles for me to recommend. Go check them out at Remote Central, and while you're at it wish the organizers a happy birthday and a job well done.The next edition will appear right here on October 24th so get those posts turned in to host@fourstonehearth.net or primatediaries@gmail.com as soon as you can!
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Anthropology Goes to War, Part 3
2007-10-10 12:19:00
Anthropology and counterinsurgency in ThailandWater torture (or water boarding) as directed by US military personnel in Vietnam, Laos and ThailandThis is the third part in a three part series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 Petition for anthropologist's non-participation in counterinsurgencyThe secondary thrust of the United States? containment policy in South East Asia (the primary being direct invasion) was to undermine communist influence through ?development.? Walt Whitman Rostow, esteemed Kennedy/Johnson liberal and influential policy advisor, wrote in his Stages of Economic Growth, ?We must demonstrate that the underdeveloped nations---now the main focus of Communist hopes---can move successfully through the preconditions into a well established take-off within the orbit of the democratic world, resisting the blandishments and temptations of Communism. This is, I believe, the most important single item on the Western agenda.? 29The importance of anthropology?s role in this regard w...
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Anthropology Goes to War, Part 2
2007-10-08 12:14:00
Anthropology, colonialism and covert operationsRecent march to remember the "disappeared," tortured and murdered after theUS-supported coup in Guatemala in 1954This is the second part in a three part series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3If Thomas Jefferson was indeed "a friend to the Indian" then the indigenous peoples certainly didn't need any more enemies.However, later liberals were somewhat more conciliatory. According to Francis Edgar Williams, Oxford-trained Rhodes scholar and 17-year government anthropologist for Papua New Guinea, the role of applied anthropology in 1933 was one of ?tidying-up, purging, reconciling, blending, and developing? those primitive cultures that were ?more backward [and] more restricted than others.? 11 While, he says, anthropologists might be tempted to allow indigenous societies the freedom to manage their own affairs, this was simply not possible.?His [the indigenous person?s] way of life must somehow enter into relation with the affairs of the world. ...
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Religion of Peace Death Match
2007-10-07 14:45:00
Your Sunday Skepticomic from Joe Heller.To view last week's comic click here.
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Anthropology Goes to War, Part 1
2007-10-06 16:45:00
Anthropologists in the war effort from "savages" to "terrorists"The New York Times reported yesterday on the military's use of cultural anthropologists in the war effort in Afghanistan and Iraq in what they refer to as a "crucial new weapon in counterinsurgency operations."As the Times reports:In September, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates authorized a $40 million expansion of the program, which will assign teams of anthropologists and social scientists to each of the 26 American combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since early September, five new teams have been deployed in the Baghdad area, bringing the total to six.Before turning to evolutionary research I was a burgeoning cultural anthropologist myself (and even did preliminary work with the Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico) so I'm familiar with both the history of anthropology and the ethical problems involved when anthropologists use their training to aid military maneuvers. It's a complex issue that, on one hand, helps ...
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Intellectual Blogger Award
2007-10-06 15:09:00
Like, uh, cogito ergo sum?Many thanks to Cafe Philos for his wonderful blog and for awarding The Primate Diaries with the Intellectual Blogger Award . In the coming days I will be "paying it forward" to five other blogs that are in line with Mahendra's criteria of "An intellectual [blogger] is one who tries to use his or her intellect to work, study, reflect, speculate on, or ask and answer questions with regard to a variety of different ideas."

Intelligent Design and Pseudoscience
2007-10-04 19:00:00
Michael Behe joins the ranks of UFO conspiracy theoristsThe Panda?s Thumb has linked to an excellent analysis by Duquesne University biologist David Lampe on the productive scientific work of Intelligent Design proponent Michael Behe. While ID has long been criticized for not generating testable hypotheses (and therefore not involving the scientific method) Dr. Lampe has now shown that Behe has done almost no science at all since his first book Darwin?s Black Box was published in 1996.Behe has been described as ?a scientist of the first rank,? however a scientist is judged by how often he or she publishes in peer-reviewed journals and how often other researchers cite those publications. In a simple test Lampe compares Behe?s work with that of the widely acknowledged ?scientist of the first rank? Sean Carroll.Since 1996 Behe has published only a single peer-reviewed scientific article, and that article didn?t even mention ?intelligent design.? Furthermore, Behe?s work since 1996 h...
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Incan Path from Religious Beliefs to Evil Deeds
2007-10-02 18:45:00
Child sacrifice emphasizes Dawkins' point about religionIn today?s Washington Post, Richard Dawkins has an op-ed entitled ?Logical Path from Religious Beliefs to Evil Deeds ? in which he lays bold Stephen Wienberg?s well-known quote that ?With or without [religion] you?d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.?Dawkins states that:Nobody is suggesting that all religious people are violent, intolerant, racist, bigoted, contemptuous of women and so on. It would be absurd to suggest such a thing: just as absurd as to generalize about all atheists. I am not even concerned with statistical generalizations about the majority of religious people (or atheists). My concern here is over whether there is any general reason why religion might be more or less likely to bias individuals towards all those unpleasant things in Christopher Hitchens?s list: to make them more likely to exhibit them than they would h...
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They've Got a Bone to Pick
2007-10-02 02:20:00
Boneyard #6 is up at Fish FeetEn garde, skin jobs!Had a hankerin' to read up on the mysterious world of fossils? Well here is your chance.GrrlScientist at Living the Scientific Life reviews the recent discovery that velociraptors had feathers. Steven Spielberg may need to add some CG effects to the 15th anniversary edition of his film.Brian at Laelaps has a wonderful post entitled Of Feathers, Nests and Dinosaurs. Pour a tall cold one, sit back and prepare to be blown away.Any fans of They Might Be Giants? Kevin and Christopher at The Other 95% have an amusing ditty called Receptaculites sung to the tune of "Particle Man".
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The Theology of American Empire
2007-10-01 15:53:00
Foreign policy and the globalization of original sinIra Chemus, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado (Boulder) has a fascinating essay entitled "The Theo logy of American Empire " posted at Foreign Policy in Focus. He argues that our current administration's foreign policy blunders stem from a deeply flawed sense of moral righteousness based on the views of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr:American foreign policy is built on a deep foundation of Christian theology. Drawing from the teachings of Reinhold Niebuhr, which applied the notion of original sin to the conduct of foreign relations, neoconservative thinkers believe that organized religion is the most effective institution in promoting moral absolutes and self-control and staving off a rising tide of moral relativism that is breaking down the bulwarks of social order.Inspired by this neoconservative philosophy, the Bush administration ranks the world's nations according to a moral hierarchy with irrational, ...
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