Greg Laden's Blog

I am astonished at how many "about" pages fail to mention the name of the blogger! So I'll start by mentioning that my name is Greg Laden (Greg is short for Gregory. And that's Greg with only two "G's", one at each end).

I am part time independent scholar and part time associate adviser with the Program for Individualized Learning at the the University of Minnesota. I'm also on one or more graduate faculties at The U, depending on demand for my services. I have a very fancy PhD from Harvard (written in Latin and everything) in Archeology and Biological Anthropology, as well as a Masters Degree in the same subjects (also from Harvard). I was awarded a Medical Doctorate from Harvard as well, but that was a clerical error and it was quickly revoked, much to the annoyance of my patients ...

For some reason the previous paragraph has enraged a number of readers. Harvard this, Harvard that. Why is the guy telling us he went to Harvard. If you are such a reader, let me speak to you for a moment. Well, the reason I'm telling you this and other things is because YOU clicked on "About" on MY blog. So you get a wordy version of my c.v., and I'm not going to lie on my c.v. just to make you feel better. I assure you that had I known you would be so offended I would have gone to what you might consider to be a lesser school, such as the one you went to. There, do you feel better now? Good. On with the c.v.

I am a biological anthropologist, but for many years before going to graduate school (did I mention that was at Harvard) to study human evolution, I did archaeology in North America (some of that was done at Harvard). I think of myself as a biologist who focuses on humans (past and present) and who uses archaeology as one of the tools of the trade.

I had the good fortune of starting my thesis work with Glynn Isaac, and working with the Efe Pygmies in the Ituri Forest, of Zaire. Glynn tragically died while I was in the field, but fortune smiled on me again and Irv DeVore kept me up and running long enough that I gained the distinction of being his last PhD student.

I live in the northern reaches of the greater Twin Cities with my wife, Amanda. Amanda is a high school biology teacher. My daughter, Julia lives with us half-time.

My most recent fieldwork has been in South Africa, and I have many interests there including field survey and the development of what we might call "ecotourism" (but that is too simplistic of a term). With my colleague Lynn Simpson, we run an entity called "bushrock" which provides customized tours for individuals or small groups. If you are going to South Africa drop me a line, I'll fix you up.

I have been involved in the evolution-creationism debate since God was a child (had he actually existed). Being married to a real-life biology teacher has given me a deeper appreciation of this end of the culture wars, where simply trying to do a good job teaching science is seen by many as a barrier to their salvation. More like a holy war than a culture war, isn't it?

Before joining scienceblogs.com, I blogged here.

I've had other web sites before as well, including one at Harvard. Where I went to school (had I mentioned that already? Oh, sorry).

Carnivals

I find myself leaning towards developing a blog policy on carnivals.

Typically, I store up and sometimes seek out information about current web carnivals, then I post that information all at once as needed, sometimes a few times a week, almost always once a week or more. This is because I am a good citizen of the net and want to promote these efforts. But two things are beginning to annoy me more and more.

One is that many carnivals are just not managed in a way that makes it easy to find them, which is a shame considering the work involved in making them. Many carnival cover pages, typically a blog on blogger or some such place, do not have the current location of the current carnival. Many carnivals that seem to be using the blog carnival submission site that we have all come to know and love don't really use those sites in an up to date manner. Increasingly, I find that looking for the actual carnival takes up valuable time that I could be spending writing senseless drivel on my blog.

The other thing that annoys me is when certain carnivals do not include my submissions for obvious and inappropriate political reasons. Occasionally there is not a match between something I've submitted and what a blog carnival producer wants to include, for some reason or another, and that's fine. On occasion, I'm contacted by such a blogger and a discussion ensues, other times not. Whatever. I do not have a need to be included in every carnival to which I submit (although, truth be known, for many carnivals, you are lucky to have enough submissions to put together a descent showing, so you need to take what you can get!) But there are clearly times when my contributions do not "fit" because a particular issue of the carnival is being put together by a creationist, a fundamentalist, or some other sort of yahoo. Right wing censoring of the left is so common (the reverse not nearly as common) that his should not be a surprise. And I'm not surprised.

But both of these factors make me wonder, each time I bother to put together a "carnivalia" post pointing to carnivals, if what I am doing is worth it. Frankly, I don't think there is enough reciprocation on the internet, and as long as chumps like me constantly link out to certain 'elements' of the internet with little or no reciprocal support, that will continue to be the case. My preference is thus moving towards linking only to carnivals in which I've got a post. Or at least, carnivals where I don't need to do any real work to find the proper link, perhaps because the carnival manager has emailed it to me!

So you may expect to see a slowly changing policy on this web site. Email me comments if you like!

The Congo Memoirs

"Congo Memoirs" is a writing project in which I memoire stuff that happened while working and living in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, then known as Zaire. The first entry is The Zodiac.

I made several different trips to Zaire, mostly to work in the Ituri Forest with the Efe and other folks. However, I did spend one extended field season in the Western Rift valley working on an expedition that involved investigation of several (close to a dozen) different paleontological or archaeological sites. (Most of the work focused on four sites, two at Ishango, one at Senga and one at Kenyatsi.) The Congo Memoirs are about this trip, to the Semliki Valley in the Western Rift.

There are people who, if they knew I was doing this, would say "OMG, I can't believe he's doing this!!!! Call a lawyer!!!" (and I'm not exaggerating even a little). However, those people should be assured that my intention is not to expose infidelities (if any), describe horrid personality traits, or reveal ethical breaches. Not like any of those things happened, of course. Rather, I'm just telling the interesting bits that will not cause anyone any harm. For the most part.

Of course, one never knows.

So far, the Congo Memoirs consist of the following entries:

The Zodiac

The Big Park

Pirate Island

The Crater and the Crocodile

The Story of Wally the Waterbuck

Zorba and The Crew

How to make an elephant turn invisible

It Had to Be Snakes

The Lion That Ate The Earthwatcher

Peter and Greg Piss Everybody Off

Biker and Greg get Eaten by Lions

Fire On the Mountain

The Greg Layer

Kenyatsi. Place of evil.

A Hippo Runs Over Rudy

A Day In the Life (Bathing with the Hippos)

Out of the Flying Plain and Into the Fire (Congo Memoir)

The Mountain Giveth, The Mountain Taketh Away

If You Build It, They Will Fly Away

On Edge

Gunfire at Night

The Lion, The Tent, and the Anthropologist

Return Of The Green Pickup

Ready ... Aim ... Fire

The Crossing

The Empty Truck

Gunfire In The Streets

The Storm