Monthly Archives: May 2012

Speaking about race and whiteness…

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

…There are a couple of pieces I have been meaning to link to for awhile. As someone who spent way too much of my childhood playing video games, I am predisposed to like John Scalzi’s post at Kotaku using the … Continue reading →

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Race, race and race

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

My weekend was spent immersed in the world of U10 soccer, as my daughter was taking part in a tournament hosted by our town club. Between six games, field prep and volunteer concession stand duty, there was little time for … Continue reading →

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Teaching in new ways

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Holly Dunsworth goes through an assessment of her curricular changes in an Introduction to Biological Anthropology course and her students’ learning experience: Based on only two semesters of data, it’s hard to link my curricular changes to the improvement between … Continue reading →

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Still more on data access

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

John Markoff has a piece in yesterday’s NY Times about the limited availability of huge troves of digital and internet data produced by companies like Google and Facebook. The issue came to a boil last month at a scientific conference … Continue reading →

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More Neandertal anti-defamation files

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Randomly found in the grocery store check-out aisle in a cancer research fundraiser used-book pile: Maybe not your mother exactly, but somebody’s mother at some point in time…

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Seasonal signs

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

One issue that constantly intrigues me is the importance of seasonality in the evolution and early dispersal of Homo from Africa ~2 million years ago. Africa does not lack complex seasonality, particularly with respect to humidity and ecological resource availability, … Continue reading →

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Neandertal anti-defamation files

Posted on May 22, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Kyle Jarrard has a piece at The Huffington Post on changing attitudes about Neandertal competence: No more can we say that old Neanderthal — prototype of shaggy man with absolutely zero smarts — didn’t know what he was doing. And … Continue reading →

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The special joys of academia

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Tara Smith, newly-minted Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Iowa, celebrates her tenure promotion: Received the official letter from the Provost–the Board of Regents approved my application for tenure and promotion to Associate Professor. … To celebrate, I’ve … Continue reading →

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Non-white births in the U.S. and historical U.S. census data

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

The N.Y. Times has a front-page article on a long-expected announcement from the U.S. Census Bureau that non-Hispanic white births are no longer a majority in the United States. This is the kind of threshold data point that will certainly … Continue reading →

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Quote of the Day: Hypothesis testing and science

Posted on May 15, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Hypothesis-driven science is a mechanism for constructing compelling, publishable narratives, most of which are wrong. – Daniel MacArthur, Mass General geneticist, writer and blogger, via Twitter …And as it should be when done correctly. Paleoanthropology, perhaps owing to the special … Continue reading →

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