perceptual thresholds in culture

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Today at Culture Club [1] we discussed a recent paper by Eerkens & Lipo [link], where they present a null model of copying errors in cultural transmission. One of the notions they discuss is something I learnt a million years ago in Stage 1 Experimental Psychology: Weber's Fraction, or the Just Noticeable Difference. Interestingly, they … Read more

paper: unexpected NRY chromosome variation in Melanesia

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Unexpected NRY chromosome variation in Northern Island Melanesia Scheinfeldt et al Molecular Biology and Evolution, Advance Access doi:10.1093/molbev/msl028 To investigate the paternal population history of populations in Northern Island Melanesia, 685 paternally unrelated males from 36 populations in this region and New Guinea were analyzed at 14 regionally informative binary markers and seven short-tandem-repeat loci … Read more

early observations on historical linguistics

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Aha! Not Sir William Jones after all, but rather Lord Monboddo, his correspondent, who suggested the following in a letter of 1789. [I]f you can discover that central country from which all those nations, which you have named, have derived their affinity in language, manners and arts, which you observe, it will be a most … Read more

book rec

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I absolutely reccommend This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson to anyone looking for a juicy and riveting read this summer. It tells the story of Robert Fitzroy's two journeys captaining the Beagle to South America and beyond, the second with Darwin on board. The friendship between the two men, and the testing of that … Read more

return of the linkspam

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My lame attempt to add content to today's post is to report that I went to a workshop on dealing with the media. We didn't actually get to the most useful part of it (mock interviews), but there was some interesting advice from our Media Relations centre here and from the presenters. Myself and the … Read more

linkspam

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Via John Hawks: big words make readers think you're not clever At Edge.org: Jaron Lanier on the aggregating-phenomena of the the web, where he views Wikipedia (for example) as one of many "online fetish site(s) for foolish collectivism". Yeah, exactly. The Jolie-Pitt enterprise and celebrity colonialism. Remind me again what Geri Halliwell does for the … Read more

fishing, voyaging, and personality

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Putting together cross-cultural information on the sorts of fishing that men and women did is interesting. Oceanic women were much more involved in fishing than I had realised. The typical pattern is for women to fish along the reef or by line/net in the lagoon. Spear-fishing, deep-sea diving, offshore fishing and other beyond-the-reef activities seem … Read more

bugs!

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I used to be one of those annoying girly types who hated bugs. I still am phobic about ants en masse, but this can be tied to my dreadful teenage habit of leaving glasses of sweet drinks by the bed, and one day waking up to nearly swallow a mouthful of ant picnic. I also … Read more

an inconvenient truth

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Presentation Zen, my favourite blog on the art of presentation, links to the site for Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", the film derived from Gore's "travelling slideshow" on climate change and global warming. The trailer itself is (as with all cinema trailers) isn't sparing with the drama, but the presentations and visuals linked therein are … Read more