Effective size through genealogy
Sandwalk: "What William the Conqueror's Companions Teach Us about Effective Population Size". Let's assume that there are 20 well-documented companions. Only one of these (William Mallet) has possibly...
View ArticleBuy at home
Just a reminder -- if you haven't found everything on your shopping list, you can use my links to Amazon, which will put some money in my server account without costing you a single extra penny. Plus,...
View ArticlePutting together australopithecine diets
Synopsis: A review of microwear and stable isotope evidence of diet prompts questions about early hominin relationships.Peter Ungar and Matt Sponheimer earlier this fall [1] reviewed the evidence for...
View ArticleQuestioning phylogenetic inferences about language
Bruce Bower of Science News enters an article covering the last year of application of phylogenetic methods to questions of language evolution: "Darwin's Tongues". He gives a description of work by...
View ArticleQuote: Lord of the tweets
John Scalzi: "Lord of the Tweets". Everyone in Middle Earth writes in the same font. THAT’S JUST NOT REALISTIC. Tags: humormovies
View ArticleWhen anthropological and geological facts collide
Synopsis: Weidenreich's introduction to the Sinanthropus cranial monograph illuminates some issues I'm facing with ancient genomes. This passage is the first paragraph of the introduction to Franz...
View ArticleDigital anthropology panel
Daniel Lende reports on the AAA panel on Digital Anthropology: Projects and Platforms. Golub also advocated for anthropology to embrace a home grown approach to our online projects. Rather than...
View ArticleSequencing is outpacing computing
The New York Times notices DNA sequencing's Malthusian trap: "DNA sequencing caught in deluge of data." That is a decline [in sequencing costs] by a factor of more than 800 over four years. By...
View ArticleDusk monkeys
Donald Prothero on Skepticblog gives a history of one of the exceptional finds in the history of North American paleoanthropology: "A tooth, a myth, and creationist lies". When I visited the American...
View ArticlePhilosophy of mind, abbreviated
If there could be such a thing as a 2000-word highlights version of Philosophy of Mind, Laura Weed has written it for Philosophy Now.. I find myself teaching this material every couple of years in my...
View ArticleThanks to all you Canadians!
I have heard from a number of Canadian readers who wondered whether they could use my Amazon affiliate links. I didn't fully understand the localization -- as Amazon keeps opening new Kindle stores...
View ArticleA stretch of Bronze Age river
In the course of studying recent human evolution, I've done a lot of work on the skeletal remains of Bronze Age Europeans. This is a series of cultures we know vastly more about than Paleolithic...
View ArticleXMRV saga develops
John Timmer's reporting on the rise and fall of the hypothesis that XMRV causes chronic fatigue syndrome is the best I've seen so far on the topic: "How a Collapsing Scientific Hypothesis Ended in an...
View ArticleSpecial effects
The day has come when you can raise money for a movie by subscription, and here's an interesting article profiling a project that's trying to put old-style FX back to work: "Filmmakers Reviving Sci-fi...
View ArticlePigmentation of archaic humans: introduction
Synopsis: I describe the outline of our project on the pigmentation genetics of the Neandertal and Denisova genomesThis week I will be blogging on research that represents a collaboration between my...
View ArticleFinding where datasets line up
Adam Van Arsdale comments on a new paper [1] that tries to correlate variability in paleoclimates with human evolutionary events: "Paleoanthropology with 3D glasses". Separate from their analysis of...
View ArticleInterviewing with good humor
Michael E. Smith's post, "War stories from academic job interviews" is too good not to share. He describes several of his job interview experiences, with characteristic good humor and honesty about the...
View ArticleDead Dead Sea prehistory
Emily Sohn reports on a drilling project that is bringing to light ancient drying episodes in the Dead Sea basin: "A dry Dead Sea before biblical times". At a level corresponding with 120,000 years...
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Lion-Man to be reconstructed from new pieces
Copy of the "Lion-Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel", at the American Museum of Natural History The Lion-Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel is one of the most famous pieces of Paleolithic art ever found. Der Spiegel...
View Article"Transformative" research can't come from milquetoast
Synopsis: Grant agencies should set transformative objectives, not set aside money for transformative researchPhilip Ball writes in The Guardian about another new initiative from NSF to fund...
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