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Anthropology, Evolution and Science
Afarensis is a 3.5-2.8 million year old hominin from the Kada Hadar member of the Hadar formation in the Middle Awash, Ethiopia. He is approximately 41 inches tall, weighs approximately 60 pounds and has a cranial capacity of a whopping 410 cc (approximately). Afarensis is currently considered to be transitional between apes and humans and displays some traits of both. Since he spends a lot of time on the couch watching monster movies, some observers question whether he is an obligate biped (although no one has observed him climbing a tree). He also has a blog called Transitions:The Evolution of Life His previous blog can be found here.
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"Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain or freed a human soul..."
Mark Twain
"Ideology is a poor substitute for rational thought..."
Afarensis
"It isn't faith that makes good science...it's curiosity"
Prof. Jacob Barnhardt, The Day the Earth Stood Still
"This man wishes to be accorded the same privilege as a sponge. He wishes to think!"
Clarence Darrow, Inherit the Wind
"...I become fearful when I see people substituting fear for reason..."
Klaatu, The Day the Earth Stood Still
"I want you to grab life by its little bunny ears and get in its face..."
The Simpsons
"This is between me and the vegetable..."
Seymour Krelborn, The Little Shop of Horrors
"There are bad laws and cruel laws and the people who enforce them are both bad and cruel..."
Thea, Isle of the Dead
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." Jean- Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation
"But the limit of tolerance for these human foibles is obtained when the proponent of a questionable scientific doctrine endeavors to maintain it against all possible odds by misrepresentation, misinformation and suppression of contradictory data, and by insinuating unfairness in opponents of his views."
Franz Weidenreich, Morphology of Solo Man
"Man stands alone in the universe, a unique product of a long, unconcious, impersonal material process with unique understanding and potentialities. These he owes to no one but himself, and it is to himself that he is responsible. He is not the creature of uncontrollable and undeterminable forces, but his own master. He can and must decide and manage his own destiny."
George Gaylord Simpson, Life of the Past
Yeah he's the Dick to the Dawk to the phd,
he's smarter than you he's got a science degree!
Yeah he's the Dick to the Dawk to the phd,
he's smarter than you he's got a science degree!
Unknown
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
Frederich Nietzsche
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
The Declaration of Independence
Category: Anthropology
The BBC has an interesting, but sad, story called Botswana Bushmen refused borehole: The government of Botswana is refusing to allow Kalahari Bushmen access to a water borehole. In 2006, the Bushmen won a landmark legal victory against the government...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 10:32 PM • •
Category: Anthropology
Did anybody catch the interview of Roy Richard Grinker, author of Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism on the Diane Rehm Show? If you missed it, the show is available here. The show was a fascinating discussion of autism...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 3:14 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Cultural Anthropology
Having been a hostage to corporate America (and probably will be again), I was quite interested in a post by lexis2praxis called On Anthropology of the Office??. Those of you who work in corporate America maybe familiar with the concept...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 1:22 PM • 4 Comments •
Category: Cultural Anthropology
That is the name of an article in Inside Higher ED: Anthropologists have a long history of being uncertain about how close they should get to the U.S. government. Many anthropologists helped intelligence agencies in World War I and World...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 10:46 AM • •
Category: Cultural Anthropology
According to Science Daily recent research (to be published in Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biology) indicates that Toxoplasma gondii may have some interesting effects on human culture:...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 5:20 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Cultural Anthropology
"...tradition does not arouse, but tends to rather to preclude, thought and reflection."Emile Durkheim "Education and Sociology" Although I mostly write about physical anthropology, with brief forays into archaeology, I am just as interested in cultural or social anthropology (especially...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 9:30 PM • 2 Comments •
Category: Primatology
Culture is one of the seminal concepts in anthropology. A lot of people have tried to define it. Starting with E. B. Tyler (one of the founding fathers of anthropology) who defined culture thusly: "culture or civilization, taken in its...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 8:50 AM • 1 Comments •
Category: Cultural Anthropology
This story comes from National Geographic News. Apparently, the director of the film New World got a little carried away and decided to have large sections spoken in the original Algonquian. The problem is, this particular dialect hadn't been spoken...
Posted by afarensis, FCD at 8:51 PM • 2 Comments • 1 TrackBacks
