tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-53915772988135887212024-03-21T11:51:43.576-07:00Southern Tier BiohistoryKevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-21237490636505288772013-04-30T18:49:00.000-07:002013-04-30T18:49:02.674-07:00"They want everything for nothing!"As I've mentioned before in this blog, I'm a fan of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_Ellison">Harlan Ellison</a>. And as it happens, one of his rants has been proving particularly salient of late.<br />
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This came to mind over the ongoing debate over the function of MOOCs as a tool of online education. <a href="http://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2013/04/20/whos-afraid-of-a-mooc-on-being-education-y-and-course-ish/">Greg Downey posts a good summary of the debates</a>, promises and misgivings of Massive Open Online Courses. Now, naturally I'm a big booster of online education in general, as it's the primary venue where I get to teach anthropology while holding a full time job. What galls me about some of the enthusiasm over MOOCs is the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/opinion/sunday/friedman-revolution-hits-the-universities.html?_r=1&">dreams of Thomas Friedman and his ilk</a> - the idea that they will effectively upend higher education with a few elite instructors teaching hundreds of thousands of students in lieu of a traditional college education. <br /><br />
Friedman seems not to be aware of (or care about) the fact that traditional academia has already been gutted, with <a href="http://adjunct.chronicle.com/">no small amount of the teaching load being upheld by adjunct instructors</a> who teach without tenure or benefits. The growth of online education has opened more opportunities for adjuncts to obtain something more like a living wage by teaching at multiple institutions. And here comes Friedman saying we can reduce education costs by replacing instructors with free courses teaching thousands. As if the situation for career academics isn't precarious enough. In a way, this situation differs from Ellisons rant about being undercut by amateurs, since this call is for the elites to squelch the rest of the academic workforce through a kind of Social Darwinism.<a href="http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/03/06/i-think-ive-just-been-persuaded-that-moocs-suck/"> PZ Myers weighs in</a> by essentially throwing down the gauntlet against MOOC proponents. <br />
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<br /> Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-3397426447448859152013-04-22T19:44:00.000-07:002013-04-22T19:45:26.011-07:00Icelandic names and consanguinityIn the "searching the news for something not utterly horrible" category, there is this recent story on the <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/04/18/new-app-helps-icelanders-avoid-accidental-incest/2093649/">Islendiga-App</a> - the App for Icelanders. Basically, this smartphone app allows any two individuals to "bump phones" and discover how closely related they are as a preventative measure against inbreeding. Apparently, the app makes use of the <a href="http://www.islendingabok.is/English.jsp">Islendingabok</a>, the online genealogical database for Icelanders which cross-references the extensive census records, church registries and personal genealogies with molecular DNA data. I should note that, in reference to a major personal research interest, Iceland is probably the only western nation where traditional isonymy research is ineffective due to the use of patronymic (and occasionally matronymic) name systems. In other words, Icelandic children derive their surname from the first name of their father (and occasionally mother). For example, my surname would be "Thomasson", whereas my son would be "Kevinsson." This pretty much invalidates the surname as a genetic proxy, although in the case of Iceland the extensive geneaological records provide an alternative for assessing consanguinity via archival methods. Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-38356777429256483602013-04-13T05:45:00.001-07:002013-04-13T05:45:14.126-07:00The 2013 AAPA MeetingsHear in Knoxville for the 2013 AAPA meetings, where I presented a poster on a micro-isonymy study of the effects of immigration on population structure. I'm always pleased when my presentations generate interest, especially since isonymy is such an arcane topic these days. Across from my poster, in the paleoanthropology session, I noticed a presentation which proposed that the so-called "<a href="http://johnhawks.net/weblog/fossils/flores">Hobbit</a>" (<i>Homo floresiensis) </i>was in fact a child with Downs Syndrome.<i> </i>This was emphasized when someone put up a hand lettered sign reading<i> "the Hobbit goes down" </i>at the top of the poster.<i> </i> I will try to find a link to this work shortly. <br />
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Also got to meet and chat with <a href="http://anthropomics.blogspot.com/">Jon Marks</a> a bit.<i> </i>We discussed race in anthropology, as well as the value of using material from somewhat dubious sources in class for students to learn about critical thinking. I'm also happy to say I exercised an admirable degree of restraint at the book tables this years, though I did get gifts for the family.<i><br /></i>Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-71215512268953595502013-04-08T19:31:00.000-07:002013-04-08T19:31:13.542-07:00The value of grad school - it's all relative.In the last few days there's been a debate over the value of graduate education, spurred in large part by a <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2013/04/there_are_no_academic_jobs_and_getting_a_ph_d_will_make_you_into_a_horrible.html">Slate article</a> warning anyone and everyone that Ph.D programs are a one way road to misery and destitution. This article was the basis of a critique by <a href="http://tressiemc.com/">tressiemic</a>, who noted that while graduate education might not be the path to fortune and glory suggested by some popular notions of tenured professorship, it can be quite valuable for minority students and job seekers for whom graduate credentials <a href="http://tressiemc.com/2013/04/05/blanket-dont-go-to-graduate-school-advice-ignores-race-and-reality/">prove quite useful in overcoming institutional racism</a>. <br />
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Both of these articles made me reflect om my own circumstances. Although the Slate article was written from the perspective of a humanities student, I can attest that the bitterness and second guessing of ones life choices are a universal element to graduate school, be it biology, engineering or fashion design. In the case of anthropology, I've heard <i>and</i> felt the bitterness expressed in the Slate article, regardless of subfield. Speaking personally, I certainly don't lack for employment and do well enough for the area I live in, but this is because I work full time in addition to being an adjunct instructor. So on the one hand, my graduate degree has led me into a career path common across the modern workforce where middle class seekers work two or more jobs to attain the same level of comfort their parents achieved with one. On the other hand, my job is something I decided I wanted to be in the 3rd grade, I don't work in a cubicle, and I don't have to wear a suit to work (well, I could if I wanted to, but it's a bit impractical when digging 1 x 1 units). Overall, my graduate education has been a net positive. <br />
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My 2 cents for anyone thinking of pursuing graduate work? <br />
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1) Chose a topic you love, and can see yourself doing for the rest of your life.<br />
2) Go into the program with a very clear idea for a topic and how you want to pursue it. <br />
3) Don't idealize your topic - IT'S NOT YOUR LIFE! It's a means to an end. I had a conversation with <a href="http://evolution.binghamton.edu/evos/seminars/spring-2010/lende/">Daniel Lende after his talk at Binghamton</a>, and he really hit the nail on the head when he told me to think of the Ph.D as your union card.<br />
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<br />Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-77115081211573569922013-04-06T07:46:00.002-07:002013-04-06T07:46:45.466-07:00And we're back....It's been awhile since the last post (nearly 2 years in fact), but as of today Southern Tier Biohistory is back in business. There were a few issues that caused this long hiatus, not the least of which were some technical issues related e-mail provider switches. But the main issues were time constraints. In the two years this blog has been asleep, I have become an adjunct instructor at <a href="http://www.sunybroome.edu/">Broome Community College</a> (soon to be SUNY Broome). I now teach the online versions of Introduction to Archaeology and Introduction to Biological Anthropology. With online courses, the majority of the course prep occurs long before the course begins, especially when it's your first go at it. In addition, I still teach my summer courses at <a href="http://www.binghamton.edu/">Binghamton University</a>, all while working full time at <a href="http://paf.binghamton.edu/">Public Archaeology Facility</a>. So blogging took a far backseat.<br />
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Now, thanks to a lull in course development duties, as well as the encouragement from Jason Antrosio over at <a href="http://www.livinganthropologically.com/">Living Anthropologically</a>, I've gotten things off the ground again. And it's an interesting time to be an anthropology blogger, or at least it has been for the past years. In the time I've been out, I've missed the recent <a href="http://www.livinganthropologically.com/2013/02/06/yanomami-science-violence-empirical-data-facts/">Jared Diamond</a> and <a href="http://www.livinganthropologically.com/2013/03/16/brian-ferguson-napoleon-chagnon/">Napoleon Chagnon</a> controversies, not to mention <a href="http://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2011/10/11/florida-governor-anthropology-not-needed-here/">the targeting of our field</a> by Florida governor Rick Scott. But rather than beating dead horses, I'd like to move on with the focus of this blog. In the next few days I'll have information on not one but two archaeological field schools offered this summer at Binghamton University, more recent isonymy research, and the upcoming meeting of the <a href="http://physanth.org/">American Association of Physical Anthropology</a>...<br />
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Stay tuned, and welcome back.Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-17369223286264715742011-09-05T17:46:00.000-07:002011-09-05T17:46:21.845-07:00Twinning in South BrazilBrushing off the cobwebs from this blog tonight with an article on a fairly morbid topic: the potential legacy of Dr. Joesph Mengele on the populations of South America. For years there has been rampant speculation regarding the seemingly high numbers of twins within the municipality of Cândido Godói in South Brazil. Seeing as twinning was an obsession for Mengele, the question reigned as to whether or not the high instance of twins is the result of some unknown experimentation upon the population. However, as <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0020328">this article</a> by Tagliani-Ribeiro et al. demonstrates that no spike in twinning occurred in association with Mengele's presence in the area. In addition, isonymy studies demonstrate that the twining often occurred among women with a significantly higher inbreeding coefficient,pointing to a founder effect as the cause for the higher incidents of twinning in Cândido Godói. <br />
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<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0020328">Tagliani-Ribeiro A, Oliveira M, Sassi AK, Rodrigues MR, Zagonel-Oliveira M, et al. (2011) Twin Town in South Brazil: A Nazi's Experiment or a Genetic Founder Effect? PLoS ONE 6(6): e20328.</a>Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-58870176326352081072011-08-07T18:30:00.000-07:002011-08-07T18:30:30.902-07:00Reminder - The Battle of NewtownJust a quick reminder - the <a href="http://chemungvalley.org/Rev%20War%20Info%202011.htm">Battle of Newtown reenactment</a> will take place August 27 and 28. My family went two years ago and had a great time. Even if the sound of cannon and musket fire is not your bag, there is Sutler Row with a wide variety of merchants and craftspeople (my then nine-month old son was fascinated with the blacksmith). Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-82274969546428939692011-07-21T18:46:00.000-07:002011-07-21T18:48:07.083-07:00Online degrees (and the perils thereof)One of the reasons I have been horribly slacking on the blog is that I'm currently constructing a number of online courses for future semesters. I've taught them for two semesters, and found them rather enjoyable for myself and my students. So when I'm confronted with stories of the how bad these courses can be, particularly as taught by for-profit colleges, I feel an instinctive need to reexamine my own course construction to make sure everything is up to the rigor of my institution. For the record, I teach out of an established, public university, and rather resent the perceived monopoly that for-profit "colleges" have on the medium. For some quick background, here is an amusing yet informative bit from <a href="http://www.cracked.com/article_18660_why-you-should-beware-schools-from-late-night-tv-ads.html">Cracked Magazine</a> (I've always thought of them as a sad MAD Magazine wannabe, but funny is funny). I came across the bit via Amy Hale, who <a href="http://www.amyhale.weatherlight.com/?m=201007">relates some of her experiences teaching for a for-profit institution</a> (hint: not pretty).<br />
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All this came back into my mind lately when I chanced across a story from the Albany Times Union, in which <a href="http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/New-cop-fired-over-diploma-questions-1472727.php">a police recruit was fired a day after he was hired due to questions about his online degree in criminal justice</a>. Apparently, the degree was from Ashwood University, a rather obvious <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diploma_mill">diploma mill</a> that awards degrees based on "life experience." I suppose I could take the easy and obvious route, wag my finger at the phony degree holder and intone <i>Caveat emptor</i>, but I have to wonder just how informed high school guidance councilors are about online colleges. Did anyone warn the student about these scams when he was a junior in high school? Or has the proliferation of for-profit institutions become so widespread that quality control only goes into effect after the checks have been cashed and a hapless graduate finds himself the subject of media ridicule due to his useless degree?<br />
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And yes, I have heard rumors of online, for-profit institutions that don't offer shoddy courses ending in useless degrees. By all means, show them to me. I'm always up for new experiences.Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-28391349063198208372011-07-01T19:20:00.000-07:002011-07-01T19:20:01.416-07:00Surnames and VikingsJust finished reading<i> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Leif-Lucky-Ingri-Daulaire/dp/0964380307/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1309571345&sr=1-1">Leif the Lucky</a></i> to my 2 year old, who sat with very un-bedtime like, rapt attention through the whole thing. This reminded me of a recent article in Molecular Biology and Evolution regarding the <a href="http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/25/2/301.full?sid=5bc8f56f-c9c8-4842-a0df-aec1c702ca47">covariance of Scandinavian-derived surnames and Y-chromosomal signatures</a> in northwestern England. Lest I begin to sound like a broken record, here we have yet another example of how classic marker studies are being validated by modern molecular methods.<br />
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<a href="http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/25/2/301.full?sid=5bc8f56f-c9c8-4842-a0df-aec1c702ca47">Bowden, G et al., 2010, Excavating Past Population Structures by Surname-Based Sampling: The Genetic Legacy of the Vikings in Northwest England. <i>Molecular Biology and Evolution </i>25 (2): pp. 301-309.</a>Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-51156051253310467302011-06-23T17:36:00.000-07:002011-06-23T17:36:39.078-07:00New blog bundle on Google ReaderI was recently made aware via <a href="http://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/">Neuroanthropology </a>of a great new blog bundle on Google Reader. The <a href="http://www.google.com/reader/bundle/user/08893251130916568592/bundle/Bioanthropology">Bioanthropology</a> bundle brings together posts from a number of prominent bioblogs for your easy perusal. The result is impressive, although it did have the effect of depressing me by pointing out <a href="http://www.poweredbyosteons.org/2011/06/miss-usa-contestants-are-idiots.html">this </a>story about the Miss America pageant.Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-15782455721696809552011-06-15T19:53:00.000-07:002011-06-15T19:53:36.123-07:00Gould, Morton and AnthropologyThis story has already been around the blogosphere (particularly the bioanthropology blogs) but it does bear some further comment. In a nutshell, the late Stephen Jay Gould had frequently commented on the work of 19th century researcher Samuel Morton as an example of how personal bias can skew scientific data. Morton was famous for measuring the skulls of individuals from various world populations ("races"), which Gould claimed was intended to justify a racial hierarchy based on skull size. Gould claimed, via re-examination of Morton's data, that Morton had fudged the numbers in order to justify Caucasian superiority. Gould made this claim both in a 1978 article in <i>Science</i> and in his famous 1981 work <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man"><i>The Mismeasure of Man</i></a>. What is often lost in Gould's narrative is that his conclusions are based on Morton data tables, NOT any reexamination of the original skulls. Now, <a href="http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001071">a team of anthropologists led by Jason Lewis</a> has reexamined the skulls using Samuel Morton's methods, and the results don't bode well for Gould's legacy on this point. It appears that Morton accurately measured the skulls in his collection, while it was Gould who fudged the numbers in order to paint Morton as a biased researcher.<br />
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The importance of these results cannot be overemphasized, since Gould's conception of Morton's work as an example of racial bias have become part of the popular narrative of the impossibility of "value-free science," especially when it comes to anthropometric and craniometric analysis. I remember, as a newly minted graduate student, being essentially handed <i>The Mismeasure of Man</i> as required reading when the topic of race came up. Of course, there are some very legitimate criticisms to be made of Mortons work from the standpoint of population biology and life history. For example, many of the African skulls apparently came from slave populations, which would have been subject to greater disease load and nutritional insults. But this only underlines the fact that Gould's fudging of data was both unnecessary and damaging to the overall cause of combating academic and pseudo-scientific racism. I still remember a talk by intelligence researcher <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Flynn">James Flynn</a> at Binghamton University, where he referred to Gould's "awful" book. Flynn, of course, is the discoverer of the "Flynn Effect" (the overall continuous rise in IQ scores worldwide), and is one of the most trenchant critics of the idea of race-based heirarchies. Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-26578011840029954212011-06-07T19:01:00.000-07:002011-06-07T19:01:57.274-07:00CyarkI was just made aware of this program through the <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Community-Archaeology-Program-Binghamton-University/253236822416">Facebook page</a> for the <a href="http://cap.binghamton.edu/">Community Archaeology Program</a>. <a href="http://archive.cyark.org/">CyArk</a> is a program dedicated to digitally preserving cultural heritage sites using a battery of state of the art mapping and scanning techniques. The methods described herein are becoming more and more essential to archaeology AND biological anthropology, and should likely be required training in many four-field programs. Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-63775479804729460192011-06-06T18:16:00.000-07:002011-06-06T18:17:08.073-07:00The Battle of Newtown - This SummerA combination of bad internet connections, overwork, and old-fashioned hot weather laziness has stifled the blog a bit, but not for long. One item that I'd been waiting for confirmation of was the reopening of the <a href="http://chemungvalley.org/">Newtown Battlefield </a>this summer. Unfortunately, the Memorial Day Civil War event did not take place this year, but the annual re-enactment of the Revolutionary War event will happen in August. Although I have always been a bit ambivalent about "living history" events, they are one of the primary venues for the general public to engage with history and the social sciences. The Battle of Newtown is of particular interest to me, as it was a seminal event in the population history of the Euroamerican settlement of Chemung County, NY. Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-45018787971111691142011-05-31T19:12:00.000-07:002011-05-31T19:14:34.445-07:00Records don't tell the whole storyOne topic that pulled me into archaeology was my fascination with the Norse exploration of North America. Early on as an undergrad I had grand designs centered on working in this field, only to have numerous professors and teaching assistants assure me that there was zero interest and no future in this area. Granted, Norse sites in North America are anything but plentiful, and it would have been quite a niche field to get into. But I do wonder sometimes...<br />
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What brought about this bit of reminiscence was a recent piece in Science Daily regarding the <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110530152331.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29">climate history of Greenland</a> and the effect it had on the various cultures settled there. Recent ice core samplings appear to give credence to the "Little Ice Age" theory regarding the demise of the Norse Greenland settlements, although the proximal factors likely included conflict with the Inuit populations (as well as an unwillingness to adopt "Skraeling" survival strategies), raids from European pirates, and the erosion of the soil from over-farming. What is interesting is that the Norse Greenland settlements represented a literate society which provided some record (albeit sporadic) of social and environmental factors relevant to its eventual demise. For example, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landn%C3%A1mab%C3%B3k"><i>Landnamabok</i></a> (Book of Settlements) describes famine winters in which "the old and the helpless were thrown over cliffs."Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-29263885134165156102011-05-27T20:48:00.000-07:002011-05-27T20:48:15.392-07:00Wealth and poverty in historical samplesSince the lightning outside seems loath to end (great for atmosphere, lousy for electronics), I will be brief and to the point with this post. Simple premise; how do we measure relative wealth and poverty in historical populations? Two applications that I have used both at work and in my own research come to mind. The first is <a href="http://futureboy.us/fsp/dollar.fsp?quantity=20&currency=dollars&fromYear=1700">this engine for converting historical currencies</a> into present-day value (apparently, the $20 on my desk was worth $414.63 in 1700). Second, the University of Virginia Library has an online <a href="http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/">Historical Census Browser</a> that includes census data down to the county level since 1790 (although it does not enable finer, census tract analysis). I have used this particular application for assessing the relative wealth of farmsteads at the county level using the agricultural schedule function. It is also quite useful for assessing the ethnic composition of historical populations.Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-9903001639348534932011-05-22T21:15:00.000-07:002011-05-22T21:18:47.622-07:00Peer-review in the blogosphereA few years ago I caught one of my favorite authors, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_Ellison">Harlan Ellison</a>, expounding on the virtues (or lack thereof) of the world wide web as it related to the quality of information and opinion. This was prior to the release of the new Star Trek movie, which someone initially claimed on-line contained elements from Ellisons script of<i> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_on_the_Edge_of_Forever">City on the Edge of Forever</a></i>. Of course, this wasn't true, and when interviewed on the picket line of the writers strike, Harlans first remark was that this is one of the reasons the Internet deserves to be bombed out of existence immediately; the fact the the Internet now gives an easy worldwide forum to any ill-informed voice where years ago they would have been limited to mimeographed handbills.<br />
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I was thinking about all of this during the latest firestorm over something ejected from the keyboard of Satoshi Kanazawa. For those of you not in the know, Kanazawa is an evolutionary psychologist with the London School of Economics who has a blog at Psychology Today called the Scientific Fundamentalist. Recently he published a post of his alleged research titled "Why Are Black Women Rated Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women? In a nutshell, Kanazawa uses data from the <a href="http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth">National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health</a> (which included subjective measures on the part of interviewers on the physical attractiveness of the interviewees) in order to claim that African-American women are objectively less attractive than other women (based on the subjective responses of the interviewers) due to the fact that African-American women have higher testosterone levels than other women. Don't bother looking for the original post, since apparently Psychology Today scrubbed it right quick (although you can probably find an archived copy somewhere online).<br />
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What drew me to this subject was the fact that I <i>do</i> have an interest is at least the idea of evolutionary psychology (lower case), in the sense that it is important to acknowledge that our behaviors are the product of an evolutionary process and should be understood and studies as such. This view can still make large segments of the anthropological community very uncomfortable to the point of hostility. Thus, it pains me when something like the above "research" comes out under the banner of evolutionary psychology, since it has the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oroborus">oroboros</a>-like effect of engendering the kind of justifiable anti-EP backlash and then feeding on that backlash in the pose of the heroic researcher standing up to the forces of political correctness (whatever that means these days). Fortunately, much of the initial criticism of Kanazawa appears to be coming from evolutionary biologists and psychologists, particularly bloggers such as PZ Myers over at <a href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/05/i_guess_even_psychology_today.php">Pharyngula</a>. Daniel Hawes, who also blogs at Psychology Today, published a <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolved-primate/201105/what-is-wrong-asking-why-black-women-are-less-attractive">decent criticism</a> of the Kanazawa piece. And Scott Barry Kaufman <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/201105/black-women-are-not-rated-less-attractive-our-independent-analysis-the-a">conducted an independent analysis of the original data</a>, and found no statistically significant relationship between ethnicity and attractiveness. <br />
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Beyond anything, the fairly minor controversy (in the grand scheme of academic pseudo-science) did have at least one positive effect; it demonstrated that there is a viable peer-review process operating on the science bloggosphere.Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-30134514901884983122011-05-17T18:57:00.000-07:002011-05-17T18:57:10.350-07:00Everyone loves mapsApparently my last posting was a bit depressing for certain demographics (of which I suppose I can claim membership). As such, I've decided on something a bit more calming and fun for this round, namely maps. Graphic presentation of demographic and biological data, particularly derived from GIS systems, is quickly becoming required practice in biological anthropology. In later posts I hope to share some exciting research in this area that was presented at the last AAPA meeting. Until then, here are a few quickly acessable maps for you perusal available via the internets:<br />
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<a href="http://aschmann.net/AmEng/">American English Dialects</a> - Here you'll find a wealth of linguistic and demographic information regarding the various permutations of the English language within the United States and Canada. You can even contribute to the project by providing a recording of your own voice to the database of dialect samples. <br />
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<a href="http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://southernnationalist.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg&imgrefurl=http://ethnicity-define.celebrityimagytx.co.cc/&usg=__NqqsXxH6I4tcex8ysKVMb4vkWjQ=&h=2820&w=3766&sz=1312&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=a2hE6afteOLxjM:&tbnh=139&tbnw=186&ei=oyLTTc2BBcXn0QG237DhCw&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dmap%2Bof%2Bamerican%2Bethnic%2Bgroups%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG%26biw%3D994%26bih%3D601%26tbm%3Disch&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=136&vpy=239&dur=1631&hovh=194&hovw=260&tx=147&ty=214&sqi=2&page=1&ndsp=13&ved=1t:429,r:4,s:0">Ancestry Distribution in the US - 2000 Census</a> - To date, I have not found any comparable maps for historical census data, either at the national level or more local levels. Local maps in particular would be quite valuable in representing the historic depth of various population histories in the United States.<br />
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<a href="http://www.popvssoda.com/">Pop vs. Soda</a> - This one has been of interest ever since my undergraduate days at <a href="http://www.oswego.edu/">SUNY Oswego </a>back in PI (pre-internet) 1991-1995. Apparently, Oswego sits at the pop-soda frontier, which rings true with my own memory of the frequency of usage for either (and "coke" was never used as a generic term for soft drinks). I'm not sure if there is a map of the "pizza" vs. "pie" distribution, but my prediction is that it would follow a similar distribution.Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-65463899826885179412011-05-13T19:08:00.000-07:002011-05-13T19:08:24.513-07:00"Going to grad school's a suicide mission."I am a fairly long standing fan of the NPR show <a href="http://cartalk.com/">Car Talk</a>, and make every effort to catch it on the weekends. However, there are times when the jokes Tom and Ray constantly sling about PhD hotdog venders in Harvard Square ring a bit too true for anyone whose gone through the long, slow process of obtaining an advanced degree. Since this blog came about in no small part as an attempt to link my graduate education with my career choice, a post on graduate education is certainly not too far afield. Via <a href="http://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/">Neuroanthropology</a>, I came across <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/160410/faulty-towers-crisis-higher-education?page=full">this article</a> on the problems of academia by literary critic and former Yale professor of English <a href="http://www.billderesiewicz.com/">William Deresiewicz</a>. Although I cannot complain overmuch on my own current situation (after all, I have a fairly substantial position within my chosen field, even if it is not exactly what I had in mind on beginning grad school), I have seen plenty of burnout and stress among a substantial body of young scholars with no clear path to their original career goals. <br />
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In any case, the take away message, both from the article and my own experience, is this; DON'T enter any graduate program without a clear idea of what you want to study, how you intend to complete your thesis and/or dissertation topic, an a brutally honest assessment of what your post-grad school living situation will be like. Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-78810309128176666182011-05-05T19:56:00.000-07:002011-05-05T19:56:22.226-07:00Race and health in historical perspectiveThe article I am profiling today by Carlina de la Cova is of a study of 19th century health disparities between Euro-Americans and African Americans. I chose this article since it is an excellent example of how historical data can act to compliment other methodologies in biological anthropology (in this case, skeletal biology and paleopathology). In fact, the entire study should fall within the purview of archival research, since the skeletal data were derived from three archived anatomical collections; the Hamann-Todd, the Robert J. Terry, and the William Montague Cobb.<br />
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From the abstract: <i>This study analyzed skeletal health disparities among African American and Euro-American males of low socioeconomic status born between 1825 and 1877. A total of 651 skeletons from the Cobb, Hamann-Todd, and Terry anatomical collections were macroscopically examined for skeletal pathologies related to dietary deficiencies and disease. Individuals were separated into age, ancestry, birth (Antebellum, Civil War, Pre-Reconstruction, and Reconstruction), combined ancestry/birth, enslaved versus liberated, and collection cohorts. </i><br />
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_2121540560">de la Cova, Carlina (2010),</a><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.proxy.binghamton.edu/doi/10.1002/ajpa.21434/full"> Race, health, and disease in 19th-century-born males. <i>American Journal of Physical Anthropology</i>, 144(4):526-537.</a></span><br />
Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-36176213916849771822011-05-01T12:48:00.000-07:002011-05-01T12:48:55.196-07:00The Demography of the Aleutian IslandsThe Oct-Dec 2010 issue of Human Biology is dedicated to various biological, archaeological and biohistorical studies of the indigenous populations of the Aleutian Islands. Of particular interest to this blog is the article by Katherine Reedy-Maschner regarding the demographic shifts that impacted the male Aleut population throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Using both historical data and ethnographic fieldwork, Reedy-Maschner recounts how various political and economic forces acted to effectively replace the male population via cultural assimilation and displacement. Today, many Aleuts bear Russian, Scandinavian and other European ancestry within their lineages. This article also contains a cautionary tale for demographers using surnames as genetic analogs. Aleut men baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church often took the names of their Russian sponsors, which obviously complicates the direct analogy between surnames and Y-chromosome pattern. <br />
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<a href="http://find.galegroup.com.proxy.binghamton.edu/gtx/retrieve.do?contentSet=IAC-Documents&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2CUS%2C%29%3AFQE%3D%28JN%2CNone%2C15%29%22Human+Biology%22%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28DA%2CNone%2C8%2920101001%24&sgHitCountType=None&inPS=true&sort=DateDescend&searchType=PublicationSearchForm&tabID=T002&prodId=AONE&searchId=R2&currentPosition=6&userGroupName=bingul&docId=A245116212&docType=IAC">Reedy-Maschner, Katherine, 2010. Where did all the Aleut men go? Aleut male attrition and related patterns in Aleutian historical demography and social organization. Human Biology, 82(5-6): 583.</a>Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-37978605477587133132011-04-27T18:00:00.000-07:002011-04-27T18:00:56.170-07:00Flooding, now and thenAfter several days of significant rain, it now appears that conditions are right for a repeat of the<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_United_States_flood_of_2006"> flood of 2006.</a> There is a large storm cell bearing down on us, tracking to the northeast and stretching all the way to Alabama. It will be interesting (in the sense of the Chinese curse) whether we will see history repeat itself, and whether the local municipalities will be better prepared. <br />
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Naturally, this gave me the idea of looking into the history of natural disasters and the applicability of demographic and vital records to understanding the effects. One genealogical site with a specific focus on disasters is on Cyndi's List under <a href="http://www.cyndislist.com/disasters.htm#Floods">Disasters: Natural and Man Made</a>. In some cases the information for historical disasters includes specific information regarding disaster-related deaths, such as with the failure of the <a href="http://austindam.net/">Austin Dam</a>. In situations where definitive mortality lists are not available, methods such as those described by <a href="http://southerntierbiohistory.blogspot.com/2011/02/cemeteries-in-historical-demography.html#comments">Sattenspiel and Stoops</a> combined with sites such as <a href="http://findagrave.com/">findagrave.com</a> (thanks, <a href="http://quarrystonefarm.blogspot.com/">Erin</a>) can be employed to establish what demographic impact occurs from historical natural disasters. Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-30323924227925387572011-04-22T20:33:00.000-07:002011-04-27T18:02:50.530-07:00Selection in surnames - Italy, 1926-1943I have been searching the literature for information on potential selection in surname dynamics. To date I have not found specific research integrating selection into isonymy research. However, there is plenty on cultural selection for surnames in various contexts. As an example I've chosen this article from the Journal of Modern Italian Studies regarding the attempts of the Italian Fascist government to forcibly acculturate the populace to a nationalistic ideal. In such a case of forcible surname change, what we should see in a study of random isonymy from 1926-1942 is a surname "bottleneck" comparable to a genetic one.<br />
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From the abstract - <i>This article places the surname Italianization campaign in Italy's Adriatic borderlands from 1927 to 1943 in the broader context of fascist schemes to promote Italian nationalism and construct the Italian national community. A facet of legislative ethnic engineering, surname alteration policy was common to most successor states in the interwar period. In eastern Italy, while ethnic Slovenes and Croats bore the brunt of forcible acculturation, the measures intended to support nationalist, irredentist and imperial aspirations not to persecute Slavs. The fascist authorities' approach to minorities was more nuanced than scholars have recognized in their attentions to competition between west and east, 'European' and 'Balkan', Italian and Slav.</i><br />
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Hametz, Maura, 2010, Naming Italians in the borderland, 1926-1943. <i> The Journal of Modern Italian Studies, </i>Vol. 3 (15), pp. 410-430.Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-14954158608580336492011-04-19T18:34:00.000-07:002011-04-19T18:34:07.149-07:00Poster on Kin-Structured Migration<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Here is my poster presentation from the annual meeting of the AAPA last week in Minneapolis. I am still working on attaching PDF files to the blog, but since I have had several requests for it I've done the poster as a jpeg. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqLzCxlgX9Hi2dWtRYq-I8Hg88U3_6SpAeLtnr-jYxzeZTpChFW9Fk6jDHf30EHf98Tb0-Cp9hcjz2vlVE3K3ppSyM_ba6VlVuDKz4tGL86XsqCzL9lIp0AUthkqzy9u-sjlrYUbWNJmeL/s1600/2011poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="290" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqLzCxlgX9Hi2dWtRYq-I8Hg88U3_6SpAeLtnr-jYxzeZTpChFW9Fk6jDHf30EHf98Tb0-Cp9hcjz2vlVE3K3ppSyM_ba6VlVuDKz4tGL86XsqCzL9lIp0AUthkqzy9u-sjlrYUbWNJmeL/s320/2011poster.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Special thanks goes out to Edgar at the FedEx store in downtown Minneapolis, possibly one of THE most helpful and knowledgeable clerks from a print store I have ever met. Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-68240402836807031562011-04-18T19:01:00.000-07:002011-04-18T19:01:30.652-07:00Isonymy in small populationsJust another follow up on the responses to my isonymy poster presentation: one comment that came up a few times was from both students and professors was that they would love to use isonymy in their own work, but since they were working with a single population it was impractical. In those cases, I recommend two articles by Lasker and Mascie-Taylor dealing that use isonymy at very small scales, including between and within households. <br />
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<a href="http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03014460110044246">Lasker, GW and Mascie-Taylor CGN, 2001, The genetic structure of English villages: surname diversity changes between 1976 and 1997. Annals of Human Biology, 28 (5): 546-553.</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9299891">Lasker, GW, 1997, Census versus sample data in isonymy studies: relationship at short distances. Human Biology, 69 (5): 733-738.</a>Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5391577298813588721.post-25729569391499263072011-04-15T20:24:00.000-07:002011-04-15T20:24:35.146-07:00The need for a new journal?While it is sometimes difficult to gauge the impact of a poster presentation, I was very pleased with the responses to my presentation on kin-structured migration in 19th century Chemung County, NY (soon to be posted here) at the annual meetings for the AAPA. What struck me, though, was how novel the idea of isonymy studies seemed to many of the members I spoke to, and not just younger graduate students. Surname studies have been a part of biological anthropology for at least four decades, and yet one of the most frequent responses I got was something akin to "wow, I didn't know you could do that." <br />
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This got me thinking of the need for more exposure and impact for biohistorical research programs. One fairly obvious way to do this would be with a new journal dedicated to the topic. Although biohistory more or less represents a methodological approach, there is no shortage of methodological and area-based journals within anthropology alone. The growth of genealogical and historical population data online should presage an comparative growth for anthropological studies requiring such data. Not just isonymy, but historical demographics, epidemiology and hybrid studies combining historical data with modern molecular methods. Such studies do get occasionally appear in journals such as AJPA and Human Biology, but they are no doubt competing with the numerous other papers from areas some consider more "current." A "Journal of Biohistorical Research" would provide an outlet for any number of viable articles that would otherwise go unpublished. I do know there is no shortage of experienced practitioners of biohistorical research spread throughout academia, so finding a base of knowledge for peer-review would not be a problem. <br />
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More on this in the posts to come. At the moment I need to help my 2 year old get to sleep with some stories...Kevin E Sheridanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04908900117865250608noreply@blogger.com0