Skeletal Plasticity

Come Find Me

2006-09-27T18:58:00.000-08:00

Weather Factoid:	Now on Pandora:	Mood:
Grey and crummy	Rush, "Bravado"	A bit up

Hey, for the moment, come and find me at Abnormal Dental Morphology. I'm giving Xanga a try-out. My standards are tough, so we'll see.

//PaleolithNick//

The Creeping Dread (or, It's Almost Winter)

2006-09-26T20:09:00.000-08:00

Weather Factoid:	Now watching:	Mood:
Hadda scrape the car windows yeterday, but not today; still getting up to around 60F by the end of the afternoon, but it's slow getting there	NCIS	Fighting the encroaching gloom of the long day which lasts from the first snow a few weeks after break-up

Got my tropical places screen-saver goin', but this sinus thing I'm fighting isn't letting me be fooled about the the fact that it's just about winter here.

School is going pretty well, though it's a bit of a funky semester. I had to drop Aikido for this term for health reasons, and that leaves me with A&P and stats, plus TAing for Intro to Bio Anth and thesis work. A&P is going well, though it's a pretty different kind of class for me, something that's taking a little brain re-training. I haven't studied molecular models since, like, 1997, so the pathways are a little rusty up there. Stats so far is pretty straightforward. Thus far, it's pretty straightforward. It's pretty strange not having any classes for which I'm reading 300 pages a week or any discussion groups to TA. Need something other than stress to motivate my engine.

It is, on the other hand, about time for me to start applying to the next level of grad school. Maybe I can get some stress juice from that. :)

//PaleolithNick//

Selfishness: The Soup We Swim In

2006-09-21T22:19:00.000-08:00

Weather Factoid:	Now watching:	Mood:
Another sunny day, if rather more brisk than balmy	Star Trek: TNG, "The Wounded"	Decent, though I have my first test of the year coming up on Monday, so... decent, with allowances :)

First, an amusing little incident from this Next Gen ' episode we're watching... O'Brien and Keiko are enjoying a nice meal of plankton loaf when there's a boom and the whole ship shakes around them. O'Brien says, "Something's wrong."

Several things have occured recently in a variety of different circles in which I travel and perform my amazing feats which I cannot really talk about, but which have really brought home to me the central nature of selfishness to the human condition. By this, I'm speaking not of the blantant form of self-absorption which we all recognize and stereotype as, "Me-me-me," thinking. There's a lot of that, to be sure. But there's an even more central form of selfishness which is less readily recognized and less readily escaped.

That selfishness is seen in the actions of people who do not wilfully disdain the needs and interests of others but who are quite literally blind to them, or see but do not comprehend them. Leaders who expect those whom they lead to not only keep up but to already be caught up. Folks who get so caught up in working hard, that they lose track of the work they're supposed to be doing. People who misuse intimate relationships to temporary benefit with no eye towards how it impacts their other intimate relationships, nor indeed their community at large.

It's at moments like these in which I can feel very drawn towards existentialist philosophy. "If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life." "He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hope for the human condition is a fool."

In fact, I think that Camus got very close to a deep truth with his conception (graphically illustrated in portions of The Stranger) of a wall of absurdity which separates any given individual from each other individual. This is where the selfishness thing comes in. Just by the very fact of being two separate individuals, one person can never really know another person the way a person knows himself. In the view of Camus, this is irreconcilable, and it is absurd for anyone to try and break down that wall or to fool herself into thinking she really knows or connects with someone.

Those walls, to whatever extent they really exist, are why so many people are selfish without even knowing it. Because they can't see past the wall of absurdity. It's honest ignorance, stemming from the nature of their existence as isolated individuals.

Of course, there are ways around this problem. Ultimately, it could be argued that the greatest product of the Holy Spirit within us is the ability to transcend those walls and act in patience, in kindness, in goodness, with gentleness, with mercy, and with self-control, and so on. Too, anyone can learn how to read other people through that which they present on the outside of their wall (sorry, Camus, but it's possible to varying extents) and anyone can choose to make a leap of trust if they can't figure out what to do (now I'm brushing on SK... yikes!).

But it's all dependent on first recognizing that these walls exist, and that acting in ignorant defiance of them will only hurt you and others. The futile beating of your fists against the wall will only bruise you, and blindly walking forward will only break your nose.

Perahps a cynical turn for the night, but there it is...

And, to close on a lighter note, an amusing incident from the Wodehouse book we're listening to these days in the car. Beach the butler at Blandings castle inquires of Clarence Earl of Emsworth, "My lord, I have been asked if can you see Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parlsoe?" Clarence, confused, looks around the sitting room. "No, I can't see him anywhere."

//PaleolithNick//

Rout rule?????

2006-09-19T20:31:00.000-08:00

Weather Factoid:	Now watching:	Mood:
33F this morning, up to 58F this evening	Season premire of NCIS	Pretty Good.

Good grief, this is the height of absurdity.

//PaleolithNick//

iTunes 7

2006-09-14T19:55:00.000-08:00

Weather Factoid:	Now Watching:	Mood:
Didn't reach 40 F until noon, peaked at about 70 F around 6pm	MacGyver	Fine en

Upgraded to iTunes 7, and I love a lot of its additional features, but it is really slow to launch. Additionally, the new album art download is very cool but also very buggy; it seems to be linked to the iTunes store, so if you can't buy it there, you're not likely to get the album art.

Also, the new cover browser feature is really really really a pain. Many users have already complained about this feature not working properly, and I'll joing them right now. My computer exceeds the minimum specs, is fully updated, is set to full graphics acceleration, and yet the cover browser returned nothing but iTunes cannot browse album art on this computer.

What a very helpful error message too, by the way!

As always, Apple's stuff is great when it works, but next to impossible to deal with when it's not working.

//PaleolithNick//

Two Thoughts to Guide Your Saturday

2006-09-09T10:44:00.000-08:00

Weather Factoid:	Now on iTunes:	Mood:
41F and grey	Jess Klein, "Soda Water"	As good as can be before I've had my cup of coffee :)

These keep me laughing all day, anyway...

***

Bullwinkle J Moose has just inherited a great fortune, but there's a condition which must be met before he can collect the loot. "You live for one weekend in Abominable Manor." Bullwinkle replies, "Shoot, I've been living in an abominable manner all my life!"

***

A Stephen Hawking-like character in a movie portrayed on TV's The Critic says, "And now let me tell you a joke. It has been said that Planck's constant is neither."

//PaleolithNick//

Running Commentary, Part II (Game On, the sequel)

2006-09-07T18:14:00.000-08:00

...Got back just in time to see the Dolphins score their TD of the first half. Nice play, and as long as they put Chambers in motion, line him up at tailback and actually run the ball with him, they'll be able to make use of that play throughout the season. Otherwise, it'll be like a team that does play-action every pass play and lines up in a totally different formation whenever they actually run the ball.

...Both Batch and Culpepper look like they have a good arm to start the season with. I'm a little concerned, though, that Culpepper seems to always have one go-to in each pass play and then he has to dump off or throw it away. And watching the Steelers, it's not that the defense has everyone else so locked up they're not worth even a look. It looks more like either Miami's scheme calls for that type of focus or else Culpepper's just letting himself get locked in. (Or perhaps he's taking so much time, waiting for his main guy to get open, that everyone else is in a useless position.) There's something to be said for schemes like West Coast or R&S that call for the QB to cycle through options on every play.

...Notice, by the way, that I've not been wasting any energy reflecting on the half-time show.

...The Dolphins might want to think about some man coverage on Hines Ward. He keeps ending up in the seam between two zones. Jeesh.

...Good persistence on Miami's second touchdown drive. Brown's a good chugger, and the Pittsburgh pressure seems to break down with time. Their initial push is pretty hardcore, but when Miami strings them along for a while on a counter or just a slow-developing blocking scheme, the Steeler D's seem to get pooped. They can't break free and go after the guy with the ball.

...is there anything worse than a 5 yard penalty with an automatic first down?

...yes, a 5 yard penalty with an automatic first down on the subsequent play.

...Dumb rules in football: the protection of the quarterback on the hookslide. I'm glad the refs didn't call a penalty on Thomas (MIA) for a late hit on Batch (PIT). For crying out loud, you're goin' at the guy when he's running, and he hookslides after you've already committed, what're you supposed to do? I mean, really.

...Speaking of Charlie Batch and his experiences and that fumble he just lost. In his 7 games with the Steelers, he fumbled twice, losing one of them. Yikes. That means 2 fumbles lost in 8 games with the steelers.

...Horrible throw by Culpepper after a good recovery, but an awesome grab by Chambers.

...talk of Bill Cowher retiring makes me very happy.

...seeing a commercial with a man asking his car out for dinner, on the other hand, makes me very unhappy.

...3rd & 2, you do not flip the ball back 8 yards to your running back. That turns it into 3&10, which is a passing down. I mean, think about it, y'all.

...And, by the way, remember what I said about the Pittsburgh defensive rush? Yeah, a quick option plays into their hands. Slow blocking schemes and quick options are not the same thing.

...Good grief. Absolutely no deep coverage on the Pittsburgh apparent TD pass to Miller. Ya gotta leave at least one safety back, yo. Even on a running play, yo

...Good interception by Palamalu, but the throw was behind Chambers. Either he wasn't supposed to break in, or Culpepper threw it behind him. Still a good read and a good move to snag it, but Miami's not looking very smooth right now.

...I think Saban may not have actually wanted that challenge on the Miller touchdown. If I'd been him, I wouldn't have challenged, because it would have likely only delayed the Steelers' score after using up way more clock. By doing a tenatitive, half-hearted challenge like that, he maintains face with his fans by still caring about the game, but does the smart thing by not wastign time.

...Good defense by Porter on the Int-TD and all, but, once again, Culpepper took his one look and threw. Read the field, man!

Ah well, good game, and the season is underway!

//PaleolithNick//

Game On!

2006-09-07T16:04:00.000-08:00

Weather Factoid:	Now watching:	Mood:
Sunny outside, 62F inside	The NFL Regular Season: Game One	Good, yo.

What the heck... why not offer y'all a running commentary on the first NFL game of the season?

Starting with the fact that I tuned in a little early, before pregame, and caught the end of Oprah, in which the hostess herself was stroking Tim McGraw's face and telling him he was sweet after he got done singing a love song to Faith Hill, who was standing right there with them. Crrrrreeeeeeepy.

And now: Game on!

...Bob Costas and Rich Eisen on the same sportscast. That's an awful lot of pretension for one network.

...Diddy, featuring Cassie and Special Guests. This is an NFL pre-game show? Maybe if it were Dr. Dre, featuring Luke Skywalker and Special Guests. I mean, come on. By the way. Lip-syncing in concert. The sin of Milli Vanilli lives on. "It's the new Diddy," the man on the side says. Well, that's a relief.

...Culpepper with the Dolphins. Culpepper hasn't done very well without a Randy Moss-caliber receiver. On the Dolphins he doesn't even have a pile of moss to throw to on the outside.

...Rascal Flatts is America's newest super group? Um, a super group by definition is supposed to be composed of standout members of other noted groups. It's a super group because it subsumes the talent of other groups. Hence, super. It's not just a really neat band. Sorry, but that's the jargon and I'm sticking with it. And has no one else noticed that this song is just a country / southern rock re-working of the musical scheme which rocketed J Geils Band to stardom with their hit, "Angel in the Centerfold."

...Charlie Batch. Cracks me up listening to Bill Cowher talk about Charlie Batch as someone who's been around Pittsburgh for a long time and has proven himself in big games. Yeah, he's been around, but he's been in 7 games in that time, and only started in 2 of them. In the two seasons in which he played, his completion percentages were below 65%, yards per attempt less than 9, and total touchdowns were 1. Proven.

...It is kinda cool to see the old Steelers, from before my time, celebrated. I mean, I hate the Steelers and all, but it's nice to be reminded that I'm not so old that the only surviving sports greats are people I've seen play. It's bad enough that virtually all the current sports greats are younger than me. I mean, Favre isn't, so that's something, I guess.

..."One of the most amazing and distinct voices in America, Martina McBride." Without the ride, naturally. Still, she did sing a nice national anthem, albeit with the obligatory, southern pronunciation, "per-o-lis."

...ROFL ROFL ROFL... I'm not even going to talk about journalistic integrity or professional dignity, I'll just relate this in dry language: the new announcer for NBC's studio show, former running back Jerome Bettis, just entered the stadium in a school bus with flashing lights, to a display of furiously waving yellow towels. Hopefully, he's not lousy. :) Kinda fun, I s'pose, but very odd.

...this opening theme must have been produced by the same people who brought us recent Monday Night nonsense. It's almost enough to make he turn the channel.

...did I mention that I hate the Dolphins almost as much as I hate the Steelers? I'll root for them anyway, but I'll have to think about it as a guy replacing Dan Marino's ghost versus Bill Cowher to feel really comfortable with that decision.

...good blocking by Miami's special teams on the runback. Using their shoulders and everything. That's a good start for sure.

...3rd and 13 against a dime defense, and Culpepper has one look downfield, and then looks off to the running back on the sidelines in the flat?

...nice protection for Batch on that 3rd down of the posessions, but it seemed like even so he was retreating rather than dropping back.

OK, time to go pick up meghan from work. If I make it bac for more of the game, I will resume the commentary! :)

//PaleolithNick//

But black and white ARE shades of grey

2006-09-07T13:11:00.000-08:00

Weather Factoid:	Now on iTunes:	Mood:
38F this morning, now all the way up to 52F at 1pm... at least it's still sunny!	Pink Floyd, "Waiting for the Worms" + Blue October, "Clumsy Card House" + Pink Floyd, "Goodbye Cruel World" + Tom Petty, "Change the Locks"	Good now that I have my medicines in me

I appreciate the decision of Alan Stern (of the Pluto exploratory mission) to reject the IAU re-definition of planets for a number of reasons, and agree with the reasons he elucidates in a recent editorial. Like him, I do not share others' concerns about making the list of planets too lengthy to memorize (we just need an Ent song), nor about making the Earth too unique a planet and Pluto more typical (that'd be like redefining the word cat because the present definition makes domestic house cats more typical than majestic wild lions). Also like him, I find the definition confusing and paradoxical ("these we shall call dwarf planets, for they are not to be thought of as small planets"), and very nearly inconsistent enough with the evidence to lose the predictive power which is supposed to be the hallmark of science.

However and But, that said, I was struck with frustration at one of Stern's own remarks:

What is not controversial is that the subject of planet definition remains one of debate. Textbooks and teachers are going to have to recognize that the astronomical community is still adjusting to new facts and no final consensus is yet available.

As I have said to the daughter we put in college last week many times, as you grow up, you realize more and more that life isn't all black and white, but endless shades of gray; it's complicated, and there's no getting around the fact that you just have to get over the untidiness of the real world and move on.

I believe that planetary science is just now grappling with just such a realization that our tidier youth, before the discovery of extra-solar planets and Kuiper Belt dwarfs, never belied.

My frustration centers on the oft-repeated refrain in boldface -- that life isn't black and white, that we have to learn to apprecitae shades of grey. I am not here to suggest that everything in life can be easily described in single-bit binary code (1 or 0). I am here, however, to suggest that the folks who use this phrase rarely mean what it actually says. The intention when employing this phrase is also to talk about how difficult and confusing things are, as if life is a blurry cloud of grey. The phrase itself belies this concept; it speaks of shades of grey. Allow me to lay forth a few implications of this:

In the monocrhome spectrum, the so-called greys are steps along a continuum between black on one end and white on the other. Therefore it could be argued that black and white are themselves shades of grey, and also that greys are really degrees of blackness or of whiteness. Moreover, it could be argued that this implies that every grey but that in the precise middle is either more black or more white. In other words, grey is not a value-free color.
In truth, if grey is a continuum, then any shade is an arbitrary section, just as arbitrary as the designations black and white which are being rejected. If anything, it requires more precision and more support arguments to defend the assignment of a particular shade of grey than to simply refer to something as black/ish or white/ish.
Lastly, for the time being, the apparent conclusion to be drawn from Stern's position here would be to reject the classificatory work of science. If reality is a messy smear of grey, how can science ever hope to classify its objects of study? The choice before us seems to say, "well, a planet is whatever we feel is a planet," or, "well, we really need to throw out the word planet and just refer to solar bodies," or, "well, there are are the following grades and classes of planet, which cannot necessarily be subsumed under one master definition..." These choices all defy utility. Classification is an important scientific task, because classification is what allows people to talk about what's out there. Maybe there are a lot of shades which need to be considered and weighed before a better definition is established. But, at some point, a line has to be drawn that says, "these are planets and those are not," and the black and white are then back in play.

//PaleolithNick//

The Fresh Taste of a New Semester Lingers in Your Mouth Like Spearmint

2006-09-06T14:45:00.000-08:00

Weather Factoid:	Now on iTunes:	Mood:
A chilly, brisk, but sunny 61F	Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" + Blind Boys of Alabama, "Way Down in the Hole"	Good, though tired of these fall allergies which have been plaguing me since mid-August.

After bouts with health issues and computer problems, I'm back in the swing of thins, and the fall semester is underway.

My classes for this term incude Analytical Methods (stats for anthropologists), Adanced Human Anatomy and Physiology I, and thesis credits. I'm TAing for Intro to Biological Anthropology. It should be a good, if very different semester. It's funny how many undergrads I know at this point because of TAing 100x last year and being in so many stacked classes. I thought I'd be in A&P with a bunch of strangers, but I know at least four students in there. Likewise, I know about half the Intro to Bio class already.

We bought a new futon last night, and that was an adventure. As anyone that knows me well can tetsify and will testify at the drop of a hat, I really don't do good with assembling furniture. Following directions in general is not my brain's forte, and somehow furniture seems to be even worse than most things. On top of that, the futon -- which we bought from Fred's -- was apparently in a box at the bottom of the truck, and lot of parts were sort of bent. Mainly we were able to straigthen them out just through the process of assembly. The back piece, however, had traces of rust on it and was bent in such a way as it couldn't even fit anymore. So we had to exchange that part. Fortunately, we were intercepted on our way to the customer srevice desk by the young man who had sold us the piece and that removed all hassle out of the exchange. The other huge headache with the futon was that the braces on which the seat and back rets were shipped in bent-L position (couch) rather than flat (bed). You can't really fasten the pieces in bent position, and you can't reeally straighten the braces without both pieces being attached for leverage. We managed to find a half-way position that got us through, but... ugh...

Fortunately, Meghan is able to get me through these things. Otherwise I'd be watching TV while sitting on a pillow amidst strewn broken fragments of furniture. :)

NickC---

//PaleolithNick//

The Bad Taste of Convenience Lingers Like a Chewed Aspirin

2006-07-26T14:27:00.000-08:00

Weather Factoid:	Recently on iTunes:	Mood:
63F, grey, yucky	Falling Up, "Symmetry" + Thousand Foot Krutchs, "Puppet" + Richard Cheese, "Come Out and Play," + Cracker, "Riverside"	Shaking of a Benadry stupor

Part of the point of the paperless home entertainment center, like the paperless office, is convenience and portability. You can now take your entire music collection, all your videos, and even your home library with you when you travel, all on your computer. Likewise, because of the internet, all these things are available for purchase anew and download in remote locations, provided appropriate conenctivity.

(1)

So there I am in Mascota, needing as much as enjoying my night-time reading both as a way to disengage my brain for a while (not only was I engagd in difficult research, but I was spending the rest of my off-time constantly learning the language) and to revel in the pleasantly familiar encumbrance of the English language. And, what do you know, I burn through my last Kathy Reichs novel.

Naturally, in a town the size of Mascota, there are pretty darn limited avenues for the purchase of English-language reading material, and all I could ever really find was the occasional periodical. I was about on the verge of being a copy of Time magazine (yuch). Then I had a reveelation: oh yes, there are eBooks. I can purchase one of those, download it to my iPod shuffle -- acting as a flash drive -- and then I'm set.

But, alas, it's not that simple. I make the purchase in the local internet cafe, active my copy of the book, copy it to my shuffle, and when I get home upload it to my computer. Ah-hah! You can't just activate the book and then copy it. You need to activate it on the computer you read it on. That was going to require an internet connection. There's no place in town to connect my own laptop to the internet, so I was out lof luck. I checked al lthe different reader formats, and they all had the same problem, so I was just going nowhere.

At lesat, I figured, when I got home and got an internet connection I'd still at least be able to read the book, and it cost no more than the paperback, so what the heck... it was alright.

Ah-hah! Here I am at home with my computer on the internet, and I still can't open the darn book. Because it was originally downloaded on a different computer, I have to re-activate the book on both the original computer and this computer using the same passport login. (sigh)

(2)

Then there's the frustration of protested digital audio. I have an iPod shuffle so iTunes is my audio player of choice. It's a very versatile program and I've been happy with it.

Then, the other day, I downloaded some protected audio files from a local radio station. They posted the files in protected Windows Media format.

iTunes cannot read that format.

!!!!!

***

The moral of the story is this. As a writer, song-writer, and photographer, I appreciate the value of intellectual property and the importance of safeguarding the fruits of your creative labor... but we still have a ways to go before that need is truly compatible with the promise of this new techological avenue of delivery. At a minimum, we need to move to one standard of protection. Moreover, it needs to be better keyed in to the individual user, not the user's equipment -- just as I have rights over a CD to play where I want to, the rights over a book to read it wherever I want to, and so forth.

Hopefully, one day, in a bright and shining future, I will be able to read that book and listen to those songs.

//PaleolithNick//

Mascota, Mexico: Greatest Hits

2006-07-24T16:39:00.000-08:00

Weather Factoid:	Now on iTunes:	Mood:
81 F, grey, kinda yucky	Don McClean, "Every Day" + Smashing Pumpkins, "Butterfly" + No Doubt, "Hey Mr."	Tired

Some highlights from bullet-point e-mail updates I sent out while I was in Mascota, selected from those suitable for general consumption... :)

sound of roosters nonstope during the daytime here, but especially early am
highschool marching band marches through the streets amidst delivery trucks
a truck that drives around selling bottles of drinking water and sounding like the world´s loudest ice cream truck
a similar truck selling propane
similar vehicles with loudspeakers promoting candidates in the upcoming election
A church which was never completed because they ran out of money is is now called, ¨ruins¨and used as a tourist destination
Fireworks at 4am
See a goat standing in a tree.
See a dog and a horse curled up and taking a nap together.
Stand thirty feet or so away from a major fireworks display with cinders raining on our heads and misfires flying at us.
Be watching a slolw-moving flying insect in the common living room, and hear someone say (in urban Mexican Spanish), "Oh good it´s green, not black. The black ones are fatal."
Be asked, "Do you go to school in an igloo?"
Be asked, "Is Alaska an island?"
Be asked, "Do you use dollars in Alaska?"
Be asked, "Is Alaska an American colony like Hawaii and Panama?"
See four full-size cows in the bed of an ordinary 1980´s pickup truck.

And a couple of new ones, just for the 'blog:

Learning and teaching new card games around a table with one Mexican, two Spaniards, a Frenchman, and a Hoosier-Alaskan, the latter two having only basic command of the Spanish language.
Waking up at 6:20 am and needing to catch a 6:30 am bus half a mile away so I could get to Guadalajara for my flight back.
Discovering that Taco Bell refried beans at the store are pretty authentic tasting.
Figuring out how to make Mexican hot chocolate and toastados for Meggie with ingredients I can purchase at Fred's here in Fairbanks.
Coming back to the US and easily paying $5 for things I would never have thought of paying $50 (pesos) for in Mexico.

//PaleolithNick//

Afternoon Thunderstorms and Other Oddities

2006-05-16T22:11:00.000-08:00

Weather Factoid:	Recently Heard on iTunes:	Mood:
Mostly cloudy, upper 50's	Trapt, "Headstrong" + Alanis Morisette, "Head Over Heals" + Marcy Playground, "Sex and Candy" + Plan White T's, "Hey There Delilah"	Good

We ate a picnic at the Kiwanis Park here in Fairbanks with Meghan's Aunt Gaye, Uncle Floyd, Joy, Melody, Pixie, and Melody's friend Sarah. It was loosely in celebration of Meghan's birthday and the Wrights' wedding anniversary. Good time, good food, and a nice walk along the Chena river.

I wanted to take the opportunity today, though, to remark upon some oddities which have stuck me about Fairbanks and life.

Only in Alaska would leaf-blowers be put to use to gust the gravel off the road which had been dumped down over winter to offer traction.
Only in Alaska would those same leaf-blowers be used to blow gravel regardless of whether it would blow that gravel into passing cars or pedestrians.
Only cats would get excited at the prospect of guitar string changing as the production of toys.
Only in Fairbanks could mosquitos get denser the higher you get and the further you get from the lakes, ponds, and streams.
Only in Alaska would the same people who love outdoor activities and wilderness leave an incredible layer of litter for the snow to uncover.
Only in Fairbanks would a family of three adults and a one kid cram themselves into a two-room plus bathroom apartment because it's all they can afford what with their large quantities of beer, two trucks, four-wheeler, snow-machine, motorcyle, hunting gear, fishing gear, and trailers...
Only in Fairbanks would, "We can always count on our afternoon thundershower," refer to a thunder-less light rain which occurs every two or three days around 6pm. :)

//PaleolithNick//

Nice to Have Fewer Pressures

2006-05-14T00:08:00.000-08:00

Weather Factoid:	Recently on iTunes:	Mood:
65F and mostly cloudy today	The Decembrists, "The Legionnaire's Lement"	It was a good day

First things first. Sometimes there is a peril when you operate in a random way. As many of you probably realize many of my blog titles are random snippets of song lyrics or brief quotes from popular media of some sort. As many of you also know, the link in the title is often some random website selected by word association or because of a topic on my mind. A couple entries ago, there was an unfortunate coincidence of the two. I had, "Mad, Mad World," running through my mind, a song whose chorus includes the phrase, "when people run in circles." I chose that lyric for my title. In a totally separate moment, I linked to David Byers' website. I did not intend to link by implication the website to the sentiment. I simply hadn't connected the two at all. So... Let me clarify here that I respct Dr. Byers' work as an archaeologist and enjoyed his recent talks at UAF, as well as my chances to speak with him one-on-one duirng his visit. He is certainly not a person running in circles. :)

OK, now that I've cleared that up!

Friday evening we went to the local glow in the dark minigolf establishment to celebrate Meggie's birthday with some friends. It was a great time, like playing putt-putt in a 1980's music video. The course is simple, fun, and the owners good-natured and friendly like the Alaskans you always hear about.

Today we did a little shopping, ate same great fish 'n' chips at the Bakery Restaurant, and went for a little hike at Ballaine lake, a natural area in the extended property of the university. It was a great walk even thought he mosquitos are already out in force here. Whatever other exciting things are going on in our lives or in my academic pursuits or whatever, the bests times we have seem to always be when we're out hiking or camping and taking pictures. It's when we both seem happiest, most content, most at peace with ourselves and each other.

So today was definitely a good day. :-D

And homework is done, grades are in... All I have left for school is my thesis for the moment. No biggie. ;-)

//PaleolithNick//

Additional Tip

2006-05-12T10:33:00.000-08:00

Weather Factoid:	Now on iTunes:	Mood:
A little sunnier already :)	Stephen Malkmus, "The Hook" + Jets to Brazil, "Orange Rhyming Dictionary"	Still good!

Another thing I meant to pass along -- if you've not used Google's book search, you owe it to yourself to check it out. What an amazing reserach tool, and what a great hook for book-sellers, too. For that matter, if you've not used Google's other research tool, Google Scholar, you're really missing out there, too.

http://books.google.com
http://scholar.google.com

I've really started to rely on these as excellent starting points, more robust in many ways than typical library databases which tend to either have a more limited scope or to have a clumsier and slower search engine.

Google will someday own the world. You know the computer system in Star Trek: TNG and the generations after that, where you can access information wherever you are in a useful way? I think Google gets closer everyday.

//PaleolithNick//

When People Run in Circles... aka When I Stop Paying Attention

2006-05-12T09:51:00.000-08:00

Weather Factoid:	Now on iTunes:	Mood:
Partly sunny, in the 50's, occasionall drizzle	Michael Andrews, "Mad World" + The Offspring, "Hit That" + The Offspring, "Gone Away" + AFI, "My Michelle"	Good!

Well, school is basically over! :) I still have finals to grade, but there are no short answer or essay questions, so that should go pretty quickly I think. I'll also still be spending time toothin' in 308 so that I keep learning how to see the teeth and don't lose what I have already learned -- but no more deadlines for the moment! Whew!!!

In fact, last night I was just having some downtime rather than grade. A few things had been really annoying me about my computer and I got those taken care of. One of which I thought I'd pass along: I've always assumed that having hard dives set to "ALWAYS ON" on a laptop's plugged-in power profile was advantageous. Turns out that so much is run straight from RAM these days, that there's no need. By changing that setting to turn hard drive off after 30 minutes of idle, I have dramatically decreased my problems with overheating, my fan's not constantly running, and hence my computer is just generally perofrming better. A tip for all the rest of you out there! :)

Alright, I think that's it for now. Now that school is out, I should be able to post pretty regularly, at least as long as I'm in town. :)

//PaleolithNick//

?Oye como va... Oye como va mi ritmo?

2006-05-10T00:33:00.000-08:00

Weather Factoid:	Recenty heard on iTunes:	Mood:
Mostly 50's in the day time, lots of clouds until late, late afternoon when it tends to clear up though we've had two actual rain storms pass through which was kinda neat.	Sons of the Pioneers, "Wendin' My Way to Wyoming" + OPM, "Potluck" + Incubus, "The Warmth" + Gogol Bordello, "Mussolini vs. Stalin"	Ready for the semester to finish out, not ready for the summer to start

Almost all my term projects are wrapped up now. I have a final in bioarch at 10:15am tomorrow which is one of those that I feel prepared for everytime I look at the study guide and talk to other students, but haven't really studied a ton for it, so feeling prepared makes me nervous. The other thing I have is to wrap up a couple things for Prehistoric Dental Morphology. Hopefully I'll having everything done by the end of the day tomorrow so that I can just grade 100x finals at that point and then be done.

Looking forward to the summer, there are a number of things on tap. It's gonna be chocked full. I'll be in Mexico for a month doing my fieldwork, of course, and I also have a possibility of working with a contract archaeology firm here in Alaska when I'm not in Mexico and hopefully that will come to fruition. A week from friday I will be assisting Dr. Irish and Dr. Greene with some forensic anthropology work. Somtime this summer I and some other students will be helping one of our fellow grad students do a lithic debitage analysis which we can as a group publish as a separate research paper (or two) and will contribute to the research required to shore up his masters thesis project.

Today was Meggie's birthday and we did lunch at Pad Thai, a fun little Thai restaurant in a log cabin building here in town. One of the few true shining spots I'd say of Fairbanks' role as both a cosmpolitan center and and hub of Alaskana. Food there is great, too. :)

This Friday we're getting together with some friends from the anthro department to do Glow in the Dark putt-putt at a minigolf place in the Sadler's Furniture Store building.

Bot for now, it's late and I'm tired. :)

'Night!

//PaleolithNick//

There's Always the Salad

2006-04-27T23:50:00.000-08:00

Weather Factoid:	Recently Heard on iTunes:	Mood:
Chilly at night, pleasantly mid-forties during the day	Stephen Malkmus, "1% of One" + Gogol Bordello, "Start Wearing Purple" + Belle and Sebastian, "Funny Little Frog"	A lot of opposite extremes at once... I have subsumed them into a new, high truth called, "I dunno."

A conservative character in The Moonstone asked what was left for the English with the loss of their tradition in the face of democracy in the 19th century. A younger, more world-wise character responded, "Life, love, and salad."

So, anyway, there's a strange mixture of news to report. Let me get the bad news out of the way first. For the few who haven't heard, there was a major tragedy resulting in the death of five Taylor University students and employees -- including my brother-in-law's girlfriend and one of my dad's students -- and the injury of four others. It's a very sad time for a lot of people close to home.

Less dismal bad news -- they're taking down significant portions of the small woods which surround our apartment building, giving us a view of a highway and less of a barrier and reducing even further the illusion that our home is somehow in the wilds. It was actually the downer with which I started my day, before heairng the news of the tragedy in Indiana which made our trees seem pretty insignificant. Sometimes it's good to get a little perspective.

Good news now. I received grant money for my summer field research from the Museum of the North's Geist Fund. In fact, they felt I had underbudgeted and gave me a little more than I had asked for. Woohoo!

And in the in the department of, it's a great opportunity but something I'm uncomfortable saying is happy news, I've been given the opportunity to work with Dr. Irish and Dr. Greene doing some forensic anthropology. I don't know details and probably couldn't share them if I had them, but apparently the thaw has revealed a dead body somewhere in the north, and the state police have asked Dr. Irish to assist, and he got Dr. Greene involved, and he was looking for others, and she kindly recommended me. Part of me wants to say it's exciting, but part of me feels awkward with that sort of sentiment given that it revolves around someone's death.

Well, now to lift your mood:

Q: What's green, has four legs, and if it falls out of a tree onto you, it will hurt?

A: A pool table.

Time for bed, so nothing left to say but, "Yo, holmes -- smell ya later!"

//PaleolithNick//

The Cold Eyes of a Sailor

2006-04-25T23:28:00.000-08:00

Weather Factoid:	Recently Heard on iTunes:	Mood:
Actually had some wind today!!! :-D	Snap!, "The Power of Bhangra" + Amar Arshi, "Gunman" + 3 Doors Down, "Down Poison"	Winding down, wearing down

Semester actually seems to be on track to wind up okay. I still have a lot of projects to complete, but I think I should be able to do so within the time alotted. I'm more concerned right now with the search for appropriate PhD programs to apply to in the fall and the search for some kind of class to take in fall. (There are presently no graduate-level archaeology or physical anthropology classes offered at UAF in the fall. I'll be taking an anthro stats class for sure, and probably some thesis credits, but I need at least one other class. I could take the undergrad zooarch class... or graduate level courses outside the department like paleopedology or paleopalynology... We'll see...)

Archaeology method and theory was prety good today. There's a lot of interesting stuff in human behavioral ecology and foraging theory. Alas, the class continues to highlight the limited preparation undergrads seem to get at UAF. The undergrads in the class try their best, I think, but just haven't been equipped by other courses in critical reading or presenting a critical response to an essay. I might have thought they'd get that in their English core curriculum classes at least, but it sure doesn't seem like it. I feel sorry both for the instructor of the class and for the students. I think it must get really frustrating for both parties, and I know it can be frustrating in the audience.

Well, there was some wind today and the sun was mostly out, so that was very nice. There were brief flurries around six o'clock, but they didn't last, which was excellent.

And I've really fallen behind on keeping up with everyone else's blogs just as I have with writing my own. This evening I finally caught up on my dad's and now I'll make the rounds over the next couple of days. I look forward to seeing how everyone is doing. :)

//PaleolithNick//

Carabelli's Trait to Go

2006-04-24T19:18:00.000-08:00

Weather Factoid:	Now on iTunes:	Mood:
Dreary and mid-40's	ApologetiX, "Devil Went Down to Jordan" + Our Lady Peace, "Happiness and the Fish" + Dirty Dozen Brass Band, "Down by the Riverside"	Literally trying to catch my breath, metaphorically speaking, if I may coin phrase, and I mean it for real.

Most of the worst homework is over now, so hopefully I can get a little more consistent again with my 'blogging.

The weather here right now is, um, ucky? It's midforties and on the days it's sunny that's nice, but on other days it's just grey out like Indiana, only chillier. Yich. Actually, I don't mind the temp, and fortuntaely the blue skies have out-numbered the grey, so that's not too bad. Unfortunately, the thing that still confounds understanding is the notion that Fairbanks is a dry place. Granted, the annual rainfall is minimal, and the snow is considerably ness than in other parts of Alaska. And, yes, when it does rain, the only way you can tell most of the time is because puddles get bigger and there are dots on your windshield. But, that said, the ground is almost always soaked. Mud, muck, and puddles went away to be replaced by snow, and now they are making a triumphant return. If only the perpetual soak meant we were getting lush vegitation and tropical wildlife or something. Alas, it mainly just means the approach of mosquitos which I am told are bigger than Indiana mosquitos in roughly the same proportion as Alaskan ravens are to Indiana crows. Fortunately, they don't come into town very much, and eventually the late summer forest fires will chase them away.

Whew!

As far as school goes, long term projects are still underway, and I had a fun little side trip making a cast of Meggie's teeth. In case I've never put it out quite this succinctly, here's an abstract of my thesis research, cut from the grant proposal I submitted to the Museum of the North's Geist Fund:

The researcher will examine bioarchaeological evidence pertaining to composition of the human population interred at El Pantano (~800 BC) in West Mexico. Non-metric dental traits of the individuals in the cemetery will be used to describe and analyze the degree of biological homogeneity within the population in order to shed light on how this particular group of agriculturists came together in Jalisco, and contribute to the anthropology of cultural change and the movement of prehistoric people.___

I will be going to Mascota, Jalisco this summer, approximately mid-June to mid-July. What makes this research particularly interesting is that very little is known about how agriculture came to West Mexico. One dominant line of theory is that farmers from other parts of Mexico were displaced by Olmec expansion, and relocated to West Mexico, bringing agriculture with them. My thesis research will be a great opportunity to look into whether these mid-agricultural people in El Pantano seem to be from diverse backgrounds and distant locations or perhaps an insular, likely local population.

And hopefully all that will be some kind of great lead-in then to my PhD work when it comes time, which will hopefully continue examining the early transition into agriculture in prehistoric society, using bioarchaeological and other lines of evidence. I'm partly intrigued by possible applications of foraging theory to the examination of this transition. It has been suggested that agriculture is the end-result of long term, controlled predator-prey relations and this suggests that the prey model of foraging theory might have applications outside of foraging, particular with horticulture and early agriculture, where fitness for survival can still be argued to rest on the fruits of human labor, as it were.

Let's see, what else... The next few Wednesdays promise to be the best prime time block ever on ABC television with Alias, Lost, and Invasion all in a row with new episodes. I'm continuing to read Richard Sharpe novels, and continuing to find them entertaining and interetsing, though I couldn't precisely explain why. They're good stories, I reckon, with enough history and strategy to appeal to a football fan's brain. Meggie and I are listening to Wilkie Collins' Moonstone (1868) which is a 19th century sort of Bertie Wooster, Sherlock Holmes, Edgar Allen Poe-ish social-commentary slash intrigue slash life drama told with tongue largely in cheek. Hard to describe. Don't try it if you need your plot coherent and punchy... In fact, I'm not sure if I were reading it that I could handle it. As an audio book, though, it's very entertaining, because its narrative (via imagined correspondence) is very informal and meandering and sounds just like someone telling a story. I'm not sure how well I would like that in print, however.

Alright, well, that's a good catch-up, and now I must really be off.

//PaleolithNick//

Neither Dead nor Dying

2006-04-06T22:42:00.000-08:00

Weather Factoid:	Recently on iTunes:	Mood:
Temps are swinging between ~10F and ~35F over the course of the day; not much precipitation, but grey skies a lot until the sun really breaks free around 4pm or so	Velvet Revolver, "Slither" + The Band, "Up on Cripple Creek" + Pink Floyd, "Hey You" + American Eyes, "Radio" + Stephen Malkmus, "The Hook"	Head spinning in eight direction (hapo undo)

So, no, I'm neither dead nor dying, just juggling a ton of projects. I don't really have time these days to reflect on what's going on around me, or even to notice it half the time, but to get you an idea of what I'm doing with my time, here are some of the projects I've been juggling the past couple of weeks:

Masters thesis proposal, "Whence these Farmers? Bioarchaeology of a Formative-era Cemetery in West Mexico." I can't really publish details on the internet, but if you'd like an abstract or a copy of my current draft, feel free to e-mail and request.
Geist Fund grant proposal for the above-noted project. That's due tomorrow, so it's basically done now, except for printing.
Research paper, "Lithic Debitage." That was for Method and Theory of Archaeology, and I handed it in a week prior to last Tuesday. You probably don't want to read the paper, but if you're curious, I'd be happy to send you either the paper or the comprehensive bibliography or power point presentation which accompanied it. Lithic debitage refers to the unretouched pieces of rock which fall off when you're doing flint or chert-knapping to create a tool (for instance).
Research paper, "GIS in Archaeology." That one's due next Tuesday (well, Monday really). Trying to find traces of theory in the way archaeologists implement GIS technology.
Research project, "Sexual Dimorphism in Dental Morphology." Presently conducting research on dental morphology traits which are commonly considered to display no difference between male and female teeth. Dental casts from thirty individuals (fifteen male and fifteen female) are being blind-examined for these characteristics twice. These casts have known age, sex, ancestry and date-of-production values to allow for tight control over any sex-based skew. Whew.
Research project, "Prehistoric Dental Morphology of Mexico." Basically an extensive lit survey for my independent study, which will feed into my thesis nicely.
Skills project, "Same-individual Teeth in the UAF Biological Anthropology Loose Teeth Bin." I'm sorting through all the loose teeth we keep around for general classroom use (about a tupperware container's worth). I'm almost done with the first step, which is classifying each tooth or tooth fragment as which particular tooth it is (e.g., upper right central incisor, lower right second premolar, upper left third molar, lower right canine, etc...). (Thanks to Meggie for finally hitting on the layout for a great tooth-sorting matt, by the way!!!) Once I've finishd that, then I get to start looking at the teeth to figure out which ones (if any) might belong to the same individual.
Plus regular homework and life chores. This weekend I guess I need to make time for doing the taxes, come to think of it.

So, anyway, that's what's been consuming my attention. :)

//PaleolithNick//

Sweeps = Bad TV

2006-03-23T20:22:00.000-09:00

This is what's on in stead of CSI????

An old man buys a John Deere tractor and drives from Iowa to Wisconsin to see his estranged, ailing brother.

What's tomorrow night? Balki loses cap?!?!?!

//PaleolithNick//

Logic, Thou Art Dead and Archaeologists Have Killed Thee

2006-03-23T19:38:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now on iTunes:	Mood:
3o's, grey, and slushing up... reminds me of Indiana :)	Torpedo Boyz, "Are You Talkin' to Me?" + Timax, "Flight Over Rio" + The Killer Groove Formula, "Peter Gunn"	Congested, worn out, but not bad actually

Most social science plays pretty poorly within the bounds of logic, but archaeologists employing blatant analogy seem to hae erected a 12' tall golden statue of a non-sequitor, and they worship nightly at its feet, probably with some sort of sacrifice of little grey cells. I recently joined the SAA for my birthday and while I haven't yet received my first official volue of Latin American Antiquity I have received my complementary, "Hey, subscribe to this one too," copy of the traditional American Antiquity from Jan 2006. The opening article is a piece on rock art in the US by Keyser and Whitley.

Now, I'm sure that Keyser and Whitley are some of the real good guys in archaeology and that they're great guys to have in the clubhouse and all that, but I hope they're only in American Antiquity for a cup of coffee, because this article in all its great intentions of attaining new heights of rationality only serves to bewilder the human intellect. The guiding question of the article is whether rock art in the US ever portrays sympathetic hunting magic. Once they get warmed up, they get to the point where they feel they can claim, "...at least some Columbia Plateau rock art probably resulted from sympathetic hunting magic" (15). Granted, this is a thoroughly qualified statement, but check out the evidence they proceed to set forth:

1) "...the clear importance of subsistence concerns in Plateau rock art..."
2) "...art was created for purposes of ... sympathetic magic in three neighboring culture areas..."
3) "...evidence for hunting magic related art also occurs in the neighboring Plans culture area..."

And then, this, their archaeological tets for their hypothesis:

4) "Unlike sorcery, which might be a rare of unusual event, hunting is obviously common." And the next sentence is where it really gets good: "It follows then that, if hunting related rock art derived from individual acts of hunting magic as opposed simply to the acquisition of hunting powers, it too should be common."

At least, it's all laid out logically...

//PaleolithNick//

Yes, I'm Still Alive

2006-03-20T22:13:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now watching:	Mood:
~ +15F and snowing pretty heavily for here	CSI: Miami	Tired

Yes, I'm still alive and things aren't going badly, just been really busy. I've spent most of the past couple of weeks pulilng together a starting bibliography for my thesis research. I should be esaing back into general circulation for a little while now as the rest of school is likely to take over again. Just to give you an idea of the scope of things I'm looking at here's my bib so far...

Alt KW, and Turp JC. 1998. Hereditary dental anomalies. In: Alt KW, Rosing FW, and Teschler-Nicola M, editors. Dental anthropology: fundamentals, limits, and prospects. New York: Springer Wien. p 95 -- 128.

Alt KW, and Vach W. 1998. Kinship studies in skeletal remains. In: Alt KW, Rosing FW, and Teschler-Nicola M, editors. Dental anthropology: fundamentals, limits, and prospects. New York: Springer Wien. p 537 -- 554.

Alvesalo L, and Tigerstedt PM. 1974. Heritabilities of human tooth dimensions. Hereditas 77: 311 -- 8.

Baume RM, and Crawford MH. 1978. Discrete dental traits in four Tlaxcaltecan Mexican populations. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 49: 351 -- 360.

Baume RM, and Crawford MH. 1980. Discrete dental trait asymmetry in Mexican and Belizean groups. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 52: 315 -- 321.

Bedrick EJ, Lapidus J, and Powell JF. 2000. Estimating the Mahalanobis distance from mixed continuous and discrete data. Biometrics 56: 394 -- 401.

Bell B. 1972. Archeological excavations in Jalisco, Mexico. Science 175: 1238 -- 1239.

Blom DE, Hallgrimsson B, Keng L, Lozada C. MC, and Buikstra JE. 1998. Tiwanaku ''colonization''. World Archaeology 30: 238 -- 261.

Brery AC, and Berry RJ. 1967. Epigenitic variation in the human cranium. Journal of Anatomy 101: 361 -- 379.

Butler PM. 1963. Tooth morphology and primate evolution. In: Brothwell DR, editors. Dental Anthropology. Oxford: Pergamon. p 1 -- 14.

Butler PM. 1972. Some functional aspects of molar evolution. Evolution 26: 474 -- 483.

Cahue L, Schurr MR, Mountjoy JB, Weaver DS, and Erb J. 2002. A stable isotopic assessment of maize consumption among the earliest settled villagers of the west Mexican state of Jalisco, Mexico. Paper presented at 67th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. March 20 -- 24th 2002. Denver, Colorado: ms.

Coe MD. 1960. Archeological linkages with North and South America and La Victoria, Guatemala. American Anthropologist 62: 363 -- 393.

Coe MD. 1962. An Olmec design on an early Peruvian vessel. American Antiquity 27: 579 -- 580.

Coe MD. 1963. Olmec and Chavin. American Antiquity 29: 101 -- 104.

Corruccini RS, Sharma K, and Potter RHY. 1986. Comparative genetic variance of dental size and assymmetry in U.S. and Punjabi twins. In: Russel DE, and Santoro JPSD, editors. Teeth revisited: Proceedings of the VIIth International Symposium on Dental Morphology, Paris 1986. Paris: Memoris du Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle. p 47 -- 53.

Corruccini RS. 1998. On Hawikku cemetery kin groups. American Antiquity 63: 161 -- 163.

Creamer W. 1987. Mesoamerica as a concept. Latin American Research Review 22: 35 -- 62.

Dahlberg AA. 1963. Analysis of the American Indian dentition. In: Brothwell DR, editors. Dental anthropology. Oxford: Pergamon. p 149 -- 178.

Davis S, and Irish J. 2000. Ongoing investigations of early man in Jalisco, Mexico. Mammoth Trumpet 15: 17 -- 19.

Drennan RD. 1984. Long-distance movement of goods in the Mesoamerican Formative and Classic. American Antiquity 49: 27 -- 43.

Estrada E, and Meggers BJ. 1961. A complex of traits of probably transpacific origin on the coast of ecuador. American Anthropologist 63: 913 -- 939.

Frisch JE. 1963. Dental variability in a population of gibbons (hylobates lar). In: Brothwell DR, editors. Dental anthropology. Oxford: Pergamon. p 15 -- 28.

Greenberg JH, Turner II CG, and Zegura SL. 1986. The settlement of the Americas. Current Anthropology 27: 477 -- 497.

Harris EF, and Rathbun TA. 1991. Ethnic differences in the apportionment of tooth sizes. In: Kelley MA, and Larsen CS, editors. Advances in dental anthropology. New York: Wiley-Liss. p 121 -- 142.

Haydenblit R. 1996. Dental variation among four prehispanic Mexican populations. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 100: 225 -- 246.

Hillson S 1999. Dental Anthropology. Cambridge University: Cambridge.

Howell TL, and Kintigh KW. 1996. Archaeological identification of kin groups using mortuary and biological data. American Antiquity 61: 537 -- 554.

Howell TL, and Kintigh KW. 1998. Determining gender and kinship at Hawikku. American Antiquity 63: 164 -- 167.

Irish JD. 2005. Population continuity vs. discontinuity revisited. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 128: 520 -- 535.

Kohn LAP. 1991. The role of genetics in craniofacial morphology and growth. Annual Review of Anthropology 20: 261 -- 278.

Lanning EP. 1963. Olmec and Chavin. American Antiquity 29: 99 -- 101.

Le Gros Clark WE 1960. The antecedents of man. Quadrangle: Chicago.

Long SV, and Taylor RE. 1966. Suggested revision for west Mexican archaeological sequences. Science 154: 1456 -- 1459.

Lovvorn MB, Gill GW, Carlson GF, Bozell JR, and Steinacher TL. 1999. Microevolution and the skeletal traits of a middle archaic burial. American Antiquity 64: 527 -- 545.

Mizoguchi Y 1985. Shovelling. University of Tokyo:Tokyo.

Mountjoy JB. 2002. Exploraciones en El Pantano, un panteon del Formativo Medio in Jalisco. Informe sobre la temporada de 2001; iforme al Conseo de Arquelogia del INAH M, Mexico..

Powell JF, and Neves WA. 1999. Craniofacial morphology of the first Americans. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 42: 158 -- 188.

Powell JF 2005. The first Americans. Cambridge University: Cambridge.

Scott GR, Potter RHY, Noss JF, Dahlberg AA, and Dahlberg T. 1983. The dental morphology of Pima Indians. American Journal of Physical Anthropoogy 61: 13 -- 31.

Scott GR, and Turner II CG. 1988. Dental anthropology. Annual Review in Anthropology 17: 99 -- 126.

Scott GR. 1991. Dental Anthropology. In: Dulbecco R, editors. Encyclopedia of Human Biology. San Diego: Academic Press. p 789 -- 804.

Scott GR, and Turner CG 1997. The anthropology of modern human teeth. Cambridge University: Cambdridge.

Snyder RG, Dahlberg AA, Snow CC, and Dahlberg T. 1969. Trait analysis of the dentition of the Tarahumara Indians and Mestizos of the Sierra Madre Occidental, Mexico. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 31: 65 -- 76.

Spence MW. 1974. Residential practices and the distribution of skeletal traits in Teotihuacan, Mexico. Man 9: 262 -- 273.

Sutter RC. 1997. Dental variation and biocultural affinities among prehistoric populations from the coastal valleys of Moquegua, Peru and Azapa, Cile. University of Missouri -- Columbia.

Turner II CG, Nichol CR, and Scott GR. 1991. Scoring procedures for key morphological traits of the permanent dentition. In: Kelley MA, and Larson CS, editors. Advances in dental anthropology. New York: Wiley-Liss. p 13 -- 31.

Wijsman EM, and Neves WA. 1986. The use of nonmetric variation in estimating human population admixture. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 70: 395 -- 405.

Willey GR. 1962. The early great styles and the rise of the Pre-Columbian civilizations. American Anthropologist 64: 1 -- 14.

ILL Requests Still Outstanding

Standards for data collection from human skeletal remains : proceedings of a seminar at the Field Museum of Natural History, organized by Jonathan Haas

The effect of environmental change and economic power on the diet of Tarascan elites / Cahue, Laura.

Evoluci?on de una civilizaci?on prehisp?anica : arqueolog?ia de Jalisco, Nayarit y Zacatecas / Weigand, Phil C.

El Occidente de M?exico : arqueolog?ia, historia, antropolog?ia

El Occidente de M?exico en el tiempo : aproximaciones a su definici?on cultural /

Transformaciones mayores en el Occidente de M?exico

Greater Mesoamerica : the archaeology of West and Northwest Mexico /: Prehispanic cultural development along the southern coast of West Mexico Mountjoy, J B

Ancient West Mexico : art and archaeology of the unknown past

Mexicoa.: El desarrollo de cultura indigena en la costa de Jalisco, Municipio de Puerto Vallarta Mountjoy, Joseph B.

//PaleolithNick//

March Madness

2006-03-01T23:45:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Last Heard on iTunes:	Mood:
Back down below -30F this morning. Yikes!!!	Insyderz, "He has Made Me Glad" + Jabir Jassi, "Naina Lad Gaye" + White Stripes, "The Denial Twist"	Pretty decent

Wednesday afternoons are my best chance to get in the lab and get real work done on my independent study. At this point I've got an okay handle on most of the basics and just need to keep working with it all to get increasingly adept and evermore comfortable with it. I did a chart on one skull this afternoon and it took me about four hours. Now, there were occasional interruptions, but at the same time, the skull was missing several maxillary (upper jaw) teeth, and I imagine that balances out. I've just gotta get to the point where I don't need to think and consider so much, let alone consult the casts and charts quite so frequently.

For those of you who are still wondering what the heck it is I do with these teeth, here's a basic outline. For those of you for whom this sort of dental analysis is old hat, I apologize for the crudity of these descriptions.

First, if I'm looking at a loose tooth (that is, a tooth not still in a jaw) then I need to figure out what tooth it is. That begins with identifying whether it's human or non-human, deciduous or permanent. Then, there's the type of tooth: incisor, canine, pre-molar, and molar.

Next, upper (maxillar) or lower (mandibulary). In general, upper teeth have more contours and features on them and lower teeth have narrower, more compressed roots. Upper pre-molars usually have two cusps of roughly equal shape, but lowers have one large cusp on the cheek side (buccal) and a much smaller cusp on the tongue side (lingual).

Then, there's the question of side: right or left. There are certain characteristics of each type of tooth that help you figure this out by determining which side is more towards the center of the dental arch (imagine a line between your front two incisors) or more towards the back of the mouth. For instance, most teeth have a high arch at the bottom of the crown on the mesial side (more towards the center-line).

One you have the tooth type and the quadrant of the mouth to which it belongs (e.g., upper-right), then there are still some positioning things to sort out. There's only one canine per quadrant, but there are two incisors (central and lateral), two pre-molars (first and second), and up to three molars (first, second, and third). There are different characteristics common to each position -- usually differences in size, commonness of certain features, root shape, or number of cusps.

Now, if I'm looking at teeth in a skull rather than loose, then I don't really have to that, although it's always good to look over all the teeth to verify that they're correct for their position. It's not altogether uncommon for teeth to fall out and get re-inserted (at burial, at re-burial, during grave-robbery, or amidst excavation and tranport) and they're not always re-inserted correctly. That's important for making sure you examine the teeth correctly but also can provide useful cultural information if it can be determined that the tooth was reinstered at or near the time of burial.

Working with a skull, you also have to go through and note which teeth are present, which are absent, which appear to have been lost ante-mortem (before teeth... you can tell because the bone around the socket gets resorbed), and which are congenitally absent (most commonly third molars or "wisdom teeth").

The analysis that I'm doing of the teeth includes some basic record keeping. Identification and presence of teeth, for instance. There are also two measurements to take: the buccal-lingual diameter (cheek-side to tongue-side) and the mesia-distal diameter (towards the center to towards the back). I also do some general wear-scoring. There are a couple of scales you use to determine how much wear there's been on a tooth, based generally on smoothing and flatenning of cusps as well as the exposure of dentine. For molars, you divide the tooth into four quadrants and give a score for each quadrant.

But the really important stuff I'm doing is the analysis of discrete morphological traits, or characteristics of tooth shape which aren't measured. There are thirty-some characteristics, not all applicable to all teeth, that I have to look at. For some traits I just mark down something that equates to "present" or "absent." For others I grade the extent of the trait on a scale, usually set forth on a tooth cast plaque produced by Arizona State. And for others I note something else entirely like a position or a shape-form.

I won't bog you down with all the traits, but just to give you an idea of the kinds of things I'm looking at, there's something called shovelling which occurs on incisors and canines and consists of border ridges on the lingual side of the tooth giving it a roughly spade-like appearance. There's something called an interruption groove, which is a small groove that occurs in a bulge at the base of tooth like a canine. Sometimes it's as simple as noting the presence of absence of a certain cusp on a molar. (There are four basic cusps on an upper molar, for instance, but some don't develop the third cusp, and some develop a fifth and even a sixth cusp.)

The point of all that is to group the teeth by genetic similiarity. In general, teeth are more strongly controlled by genetics than just about any other developed feature of the body, and these traits I'm looking at, epecially in certain teeth, have been determined to be among the most strongly controlled by genetics. Therefore, to put it really crudely, the more of these traits that a group of teeth have in common, the more likely they are to be genetically related. Or, conversely (and even more crudely), if there's a strong division especially along certain trait lines between two segments of teeth within your group, the more likely it is that you're dealing with two groups of people who aren't very closely related.

So that's what I do with myself. :)

//PaleolithNick//

Blog Burger

2006-02-28T23:21:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Last heard on iTunes:	Mood:
-15F most of the day, and the 14" snow's not going anywhere, except where they scraped the roads into a fine polish	The Offspring, "Gone Away" + Elysian Fields, "Black Acres" + Kris Kristofferson, "Why Me, Lord"	Pretty Good

For archaeolgy methods and theory this week we were doing responses to processualism and my essay for special analysis was, "Anarchy in Archaeology," by James Bell, which pasically sugests that post-processual archaeology (see below) is a redux of Feyerabend's philosophy -- put roughly, saying boo to rigorous methods and hurray to the proliferation of theories -- which Bell equates to scientific anarchy. So, of course, in my presentation I had this great slide with a roll call of anarchists: Chumbawumba, Megadeth, the Sex Pistols, the Vandals, the AIS, Workers Common Defense, and post-processual archaeologist Ian Hodder. The page got a few respectable chuckles. My later -- and, frankly, more creative -- slide discussing Feyerabend's use of Galileo as a model scientific anarchist which I entitled, "Galileo Burger," fell flat.

Ah, well. I guess the youth passion for punk rock and anarchy isn't what it once was. Even if they're not familiar with the Vandals, I at least figured they'd know the reference to, "Anarchy Burger," from xXx.

Other than lamenting the lack of appreciation for my truly geeky humor, I'm feeling pretty decent right now. I got some practical information on the project for this sumer and now I just need to kick prep into high gear and get some of the protocols rolling for my Graduate Student Plan and all that. I'm still trying to figure out the best path from here, of course, but that's it's own long story. As I do my literature review for my thesis, work on my independent study, work on my dental pathology project for bioarch, and do contemporary topics research for archaeology methods, I'm hoping to either stumble on the perfect situation or at least a great theoretical fit.

Which brings me to something that's probably overdue. I think it's about time I explain same of these archaeology terms in simple language so heopfully you can read by 'blog and know what I'm talking about. So, with no further ado, key movements and terms in the theory of archaeology:

Classics... the period until the middle of the 19th century when people were mainly concerned with treasure collection, a little bid national pride, and mainly the past of "higher" (i.e., literate and art-producing) civilizations.
Unilineal evolution... the idea that cultures develop in set stages, moving in one direction from simplest to most complex. General there's a sense that "survival of the fittest" is key.
Speculative (descriptive).... the period that began in North American archaeology around the middle of the 19th century and involved more actual study, but a lot of filling in the gaps with speculation. This is when ideas like the race of Mound Builders came into vogue.
Culture areas... In North American archaeology, the idea that archaeological cultures were each distinct, bounded entities. As if each unearthed village (for instance) was its own social and cultural unit, unique in time and place.
Diffusion... The notion that different types of technology move as ideas are passed from person to person. It is most often tied up with thinking that humans are, as a rule, not given to creativity and innovation. It is usually paired with theme sof migration and warfare.
Historical Particularism... the movement in North Amreican anthropology and archaeology begun by Franz Boas at around the turn of the 20th century, focusing on each culture as a product of its own unique history, geography, and environment. This was in direct opposition to unilineal evolution.
Typological approach... an inductive, empirical approach to archaeology, most common in North American from around 1920 to 1950 or so, but still continuing on in places. It is characterizes by examinging artifacts for as many distinguishing traits as possible in order to define "types" or categories of artifact. This was used as a way of tracing cultural development, as in "the blackware culture" or "the red slip culture."
Early functional archaeology... In the 1940's and 1950's a group of North American archaeologists like Willie, Phillips, and others started raising questions about social meaning and cultural funciton in the archaeological record.
The New Archaeology... Founded by Lewis Binford in the early 1960's, this was a revolution in method and attitude. It saw the introduction of systems analysis as a way to study human behavior, a concerted effort to make archaeology scientific, the use of ethnographic analogies between contemporary and past civilization, and the flourishing of a Comtean form of positivism in archaeology (i.e., scientific examination of human nature can reveal universal laws).
Processualism... This is the broader term for the movement that came out of the New Archaeology. It is still common today, though with time has abandoned its interest in positivism and also lost some of Binford's early certainty that these methods could uncover a timeless snapshot of an entire culture.
Post-processualism.... This is the melieu that came in response to processual archaeology, really getting steam in the early 1980's. In include contextual archaeology, critical theory archaeology, feminisit archaeology, marxist archaeology, and so forth. In general, there is discontent with the liitations of processualism for getting to the ideas, the mental and emotion aspects, which go along with behavior in the human past.

While I'm not comfortable with post-processualism because, like so many things which might be lumped together as post-modern, it offers a critique without much of a methodological alternative -- I'm still not really comfortable with a lot of things in procesusalism. I'm not sold on systems analysis for modelling human behavior in the past, I'm really iffy these days on the viability of ethnographic analogies, and I find the overall approach to be too a-historical.

Additionally, I'm studying bioarchaeology, which the study of human remains and their archaeological contexts. There's not a very solid body of theory yet developed for that, even for mortuary analysis which is the examination of patterns in burial construction, burial orientation, grave goods, and so forth. There are theories for elements of it (e.g., for paleodemography or the study of prehistoric populations through skeletal remains), but not really much unifying theory.

And, it's also a funny field in terms of placement. It's mostly under biological anthropology rather than archaeology, and while that's sensible in a lot of ways, it's unfortunate too, because it tends to blur the focus on the archaeological context and end up being more interested just the osteology or taphonomy (studying the bones or what happens to them after death). There aren't a lot of programs which are strong in bioarchaeology in North America, largely because there are so many legal issues which make it difficult in the US and Canada.

So, as I look at PhD programs part of the challenge is just simply finding one which allows me to study the bones and graves (and teeth!) but which will also allow me to keep the archaeology part of it rather than slipping into just flat out into dental anthropology or whatever. At this point I'd rather do forensic anthropology than just biological, though I'd still be more interested in biological anthro than a lot of what consumes North American archaeology (primarily lithic analysis -- the study of things made out of rocks -- and means of production -- ceramics, metallurgy).

Food for thought. :)

//PaleolithNick//

By Popular Demand...

2006-02-26T19:59:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now watching:	Mood:
In the teens, but tons of snow out there. At least a foot over the past couple of days.	Olympics	Drained

The concluding running commentary, starting just a little late. :)

Kill me now. A clown marching band playing YMCA while the French foreign legion dances around in circles and does the motions out-of-time. It must be the closing ceremonies!

A top40 cover of "Volare" accompanies the entry of the athletes with flags. Very appropriate, given that "Volare" means... Well, I don't really have a clue, but it's appropriate nevertheless.

I'm definitely glad for Joey Cheek. Amidst the various and obvious personality flaws of Chad Hedrick and Shauni Davis, he definitely shone as a positive and level-headed presence in American speed-skating.

The atheletes get clown noses, too. Good deal.

Hey, mambo!

I think that for the transfer of the Olympic spirit or whatever they should have Yoko Ono sing the Canadian National Anthem. It's all abotu symmetry, y'know?

That's amore!

Good, another recap of the ladie's figure-skating. It's not like most people were watching the event, nor the
previous recaps.

And a recap of short track. Another low-rated Olympic event.

And Shaun White. I'm all about the flyng tomato, but I've already seen the olympics, y'all.

More figure skating recap.

Vespas and Fiats. The Italian experience is now complete.

Okay, the free-fall into the fan is amazing!!!! Honestly, one of the coolest things I've ever seen. That's just plain really, really awesome.

Wow, an intruder on the stage. Holy cow, he was right there and could have killed the speaker.

Nope, Yoko isn't doing the national anthem. It's some opera guy. That's a terrfic improvement. Why can't
opera singers sing? That's what I don't understand. "I'd say he hit them all." "Stirring, huh?" "That was something." "Some anthems are better than others." "That one's one of the best."

And goodness, now we have "Volare" again. Don't run with the flag! Someone will lose an eye!

Dude, it's not a snow mobile. It's a snow machine.

Groovy special effects on the ice fishing.

Avril Lavigne. Infinitely cooler and more talented than Yoko or Peter Gabriel, but ... Olympic?
"Well done, Canada!" the man says. Fella, she's only 21. Cool it.

Why do Italian angels wear blush on their cheeks? To continue the clown theme?

I guess this Botacelli dude is supposed to be somebody special, but he's kinda generic.

The tallest cauldron in Olympic history is now out.

Ricky Martin. What says Italy and Canda more than a Puerto Rican hasbeen rock star with a limited
songlist. And, as Meghan suggest, the dancers are there with him to remind us that this is where passion lives.

More Ricky Martin. And news that the guy that rushed the stage wasn't an attacker, just trying to promote
an on-line gambling site. I don't know that that makes him less insane, really.

Ok, it's boring now. Seeya.

//PaleolithNick//

Processual Winter

2006-02-21T22:42:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now on iTunes:	Mood:
+10F, windy, kinda snowy, and very icy	Gongcast Gamelan + David Gilmour, "On an Island"	Indeterminate, as has been pretty typical

It's definitely winter now, no question. It's still warmer than it was though today back down to the teens most day -- despite what all the on-line weather reports were saying. I think they mostly get their current temp from the airport, and the airport thermometer is kinda bogus some times. The roads are really horrible because we had freezing rain over the weekend and, of course, that ice ain't going anywhere for another month or more. Our only hope is for more snow to come and get packed down on it for "improved" traction. The drivers up here don't really get driving on icy roads, so it's not a lot of fun out there right now. Today at least there was a wind; the first real wind we've had since we've been here -- not a breeze, but actually gusting wind. Cold, but nice just the same. I don't know why, but I find I really like wind.

I'm just about over my sinus thing finally, so that's great. Homework is not letting up; in fact, it's picking up. But that's the way of it. I chose this way of life. :)

We talked about the New Archaeology (new as of ~ 1962) in method and theory this week. If you'd asked me prior to thinking about it during readings this week, I probably would have alligned myself with this "processual" school which still dominates most archaeology. After all, there's a lot to see about taking a systems-driven view of culture, stressing the importance of statistical analysis, and the application of "ethnographic analogy" (comparing present-day cultures with the prehistoric record). The New Archaeology brought functionalism to archaeology, and brought down some of the irrational barriers that had begun to be erected by North American historical particularism which treated each archaeological culture as if it were a discrete entity.

However, as I've reflected this week, I've begun to have second thoughts about some of the contributions of the New Archaeology. For one thing, by stressing systems analysis and ethnographic analogies, archaeologists end up proving the prehistoric past on paper rather than in the dirt. Present day cultures are observed, systems mechanics are derived, and then statistical analsysis is run to predict the workings of those mechanics in the past. It is essentially ahistorical. Too, while the New Archaeology is ostensibly interest in "process" (hence, "processualism") and variability (functional differences between artifacts), it is really a redressing of Radcliffe-Brown's structural functionalism -- which means that its emphasis must always be on system maintenance, which is stability not change.

Ah, the disillusionment.

//PaleolithNick//

Do You Know the One About?

2006-02-17T21:45:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now watching:	Mood:
+19F, Crisp	Jacobellis Showboating her Way to a Humiliated Silver	Sinusy and sinus-mediciny still

So there were these two deaf men on a train. When the train pulled into the station, the first man asked, "Is this Wembly?" The second man responded, "I thought it was Thursday." To which the first man said, "So am I."

ROFL ROFL ROFL

Ah, Bertie, Bertie, Bertie.

//PaleolithNick//

Melting on the Inside

2006-02-15T10:04:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now listening to:	Mood:
+10F, mostly sunny	Clicking of my keys	Stuffed up

I used to think it was molds in the mud that got my sinuses all crazy back in Indiana when it started to warm up, but the recent warm-up here has had the same impact on my sinuses, but it's not even close to mud out there. I wonder what the deal is? My current theory is that the insulation inside my head insufficient, and the sinus fluid all freezes when it's cold out. Then as it gets warm, the sinus fluids all start to melt and thta makes them flow down into my chest and nose, creating congestion.

LOL

Okay, maybe not, but it's the best idea I have right now...

//PaleolithNick//

1/5 & 6.0

2006-02-11T20:41:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now watching:	Mood:
In the mid +30's most of the day; sometimes cloudy and sometimes sunny	Winter Olympics	Inexplicably anxious about some unknown anxiety-producer; probably the result of all the sinus medicine I've been taking the past couple days.

Two critical issues require comment, one of which is about a week overdue

First up: the Super Bowl. Forgot to make known my definitive critique of the Super Bowl. No, it was not a well-played game, but I still thought it wsa suspenseful, and that's what makes for a good football game. As someone who dislikes the Steelers and Bill Cower, it pains me to say this, but... As many bad calls as there were against the Seahawks, and as as poorly as the black and gold played for most of the game, neither of those things make up for how horribly Seattle performed. There were way too many dropped passes, missed tackles, and blown free safety deep coverage for them to have won.

Second up: this new figure skating scoring system. I understand what they're trying to accomplish in response to the the Salt Lake City debacle, but isn't this overkill? There's no real element of "artistic impression" anymore, just a couple of nods to it amongst the over all pile of points. It's far more technically driven. Too, I hate having the judges' nationalities obscured. Watching the countries' judges was honestly part of the interest of the sport. Worst of all, this new system really obscures the scoring for the fans at home, and that really takes out a large part of the suspense and interest. Now this is like the scoring in ski jumping or freestyle skiing. We just watch, enjoy the stunts, and then kinda nod and smile politely when the points come up, because... Well, who really knows? The same goes for this new system. I'm watching the skaters, and I'm watching the points roll up, and I'm like... "Hmm... Okay." The home audience is now more connected to the scoring in gymanstics and even, believe it or not, diving. The old system had room for inequities, but by removing the chance of inequities, they've also in large part removed the drama and adrenaline.

Feels less like the Olympics, more like just watching the icecapades with somebody talking about scoring in the background.

//PaleolithNick//

Sparkling, Vivacious Brand of Excellence

2006-02-10T19:13:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now watching:	Mood:
+40F at the peak this afternoon, now back down to around +25F... Mostly cloudy for the most part.	Winter Olympics Opening Ceremonies Broadcast	Getting over some nasty chest virus. Much better today than yesterday.

Today's running commentary on the Opening Ceremonies Broadcast... More or less... :)

If you don't find the reflections as amusing as I apparently do, you should at least scan down for some of the links I'll provide as they seem appropriate. ;-)

Whoever wrote the opening voiceove monologue for the Opening Ceremonies needs to be let go. Sports broadcasts are full of cliches and grammar errors, the Olympics even more so... But come on... "sparkling, vivacious brand of excellence," "capricious piazzas"... What on earth, dude?

Jim Lampley said something really assinine before I got over here to my computer, but I don't remember what it was. I'm sure it won't be the last.

Hey, it's the qualifying runs and Bode Miller looks hungover. That's weird. hehehehehe

Meghan and I disagree about these American ski team outfits. I think the Spider-man look makes them cool; she thinks it makes them sad. She's willing to grant me the point, though, as long as I'm willing to have the Japanese figure skaters dress in Sailor Moon costumes. I'm trying to find a compromise point on the fact that they look a whole lot less like Spider-man than they did last time around. Not sure how great that line of argument is going to work.

Local newscasts should not try to promote themselves with parodies of pairs' figure-skating on rolling chairs, bobsledding on office chairs, or curling with mop buckets in the news studio. Somehow that doesn't spell p-r-o-f-e-s-s-i-o-n-a-l.

Oh, wait, it wasn't something assinine Jim Lampley said; it was something assinine he related from the Olympics. This stadium was built by Mussolini??? What the heck??? Isn't that kind of creepy???

Bode Miller: "I've skied wasted." Bode Miller: "I never said I skied drunk."

Jimmy Roberts: "How do you put a finger on it?" Bode Miller: "I don't have to. That's what's nice about being me and not being you. You have to put a finger a on it." Jimy Roberts: "But you'll be upset if I do." Bode Miller: "Honestly, I'll probably be upset either way."

hehehe. That snowboarder's name is Aunty Outy. hehehe.

A technological milestone. Broadcast in HiDef. Oooooooooooo.

What is Brian Williams talking about. The entrance of North and South Korea will not, in fact, show that sports can do with diplomats and presidents cannot, unify people. This, my friend, is just the Olympics. It's cool and all, but it doesn't have much impact on nuclear arms, the DMZ, or any of those other things.

Andrea Joyce's questions are way too long. Chris Witty's eyes are glazing over waiting for the actual question.

(And

"Shaman-like figure"?!?! He looks like a frickin' power ranger reinterpretation of Wagner, but not any shaman I've ever seen. But I'm glad I get to hear techo-accordian music while he does his thing with the anvil and all these demon elves do roller derby. Actually, I must admit that that the fire effects are pretty cool, if a little creepy.

"...a beating heart, an obvious universal symbol of passion." Costas needs to take some anthropology classes. lol And why did that red storm trooper just skate right through the heart and send the pieces of the heart flying. Ah, he's a spark of passion. And, um, passion, um, splits the heart in half. Um. I think this might be the big one.

Those alpine herders are blowing on dryer hoses, dude!

Ah, the famous plastic cows of the alps.

Why are those ice skaters dressed up like Gateway boxes?

"...about a third of the nation is connected to the mountains." I'm really not sure what that means, but the alps are basically just the northern border of Italy.

Did Brian Williams just lament the actions of American soldiers in Italy during WWII? I can't think of what other "blood spilled" in "this land" he could be talking about. Nor do I understand why he invoked Italian-Americans at the outset of that. Are Italian-Americans supposed to personally upset that Mussolini's troops were killed in Italy?

Hey, this little girl can really sing! The choir ain't bad either.

Now I think they're doing the safety dance in block formation.

They're forming into a giant... what... cigar? Furnace pipe? I dunno. It's puffing smoke, whatever it is. Now it looks like a downhill skier. Maybe it's breath was freezing before, rather than it smoking. Ski jump now. That's actually pretty cool, I must confess, though I'm not sure what the Charlie's Angels music is supposed to add to the experience.

Yes!! The sparks of passion have returned!!

Shaun White appears to be dumb-founded as he looks on. You know what they say in the entertainment world. If you've lost Shaun White...

So. The famous trellises and iron works of Italy. And lycra. Lots of lycra. Nothing like lycra. Oh, those are supposed to be olympic rings, not trellises and iron works. I get it. Olympic rings. And lycra.

Finally! The parade of nations! I'm sure there will be more lycra in abundance.

More disco? What is going on!! What does the worst of the 1970's have to do with Italy or the alps or the sparks of passion or plastic cows or anything?

Andorra, eh? I'm never heard of it. Cool. I'll have to check it out.

Brian Williams assures us that the Australians can practice because they have snow in the mountains in the south. This after we've already seen athletes from Algeria and Argentina. Oh well, I suppose you've gotta say stuff.

Why did Belarus time-travel to the 1940's for their outfits?

I'm glad they give Canada credit for loving hockey, but I'll bet there are a lot of Canadians who would feel slighted that their beloved curling wasn't mentioned. Who wouldn't want the world to appreciate their passion for sweeping ice while some other guy slides a stone?

Not much to say about Chile, I guess. Brian Williams talked to Bode Milelr about his time in Chile. Don't know what either of them said, but they talked about it.

Germany's outfits are pretty cool, in a weird sort of colorful way.

"It's almost always dark in Reykjavik." No, Brian and Bob. It's not. It's about like Fairbanks in regards to sunlight. 3-4 hours of light in the darkest months, but plenty of sunlight in the summer.

"Kerjistan." It's a hard g in Kyrgyzstan, Bobbers.

Did Brian Williams just say that his hopes are with Lebanon for keeping the peace in the Middle East? What's with this guy?

I'm not sure what sport the athlete from Madagascar does. Brian Williams didn't say, and the NBC Olympics website doesn't have Madagascar as an option. They do, however, have Mexico as an option, even though Mexico's not in these Olympics. And ESPN's Olympic's secion, only forwards to NBC's. Good grief.

I'm glad Costas and Brian Williams are as confused about the disco and 80's music as I am. There's some hope for them yet.

And now Brian Williams is saying of Soviet life behind the iron curtian, "...or so we were taught." As if there have been revelations in the post-USSR era that life really wasn't so bad under the communists, and there really weren't secret police and opression? Is this how revision happens? Just by suddenly equivocating, and before long those questions take on reality? "...or so we were taught." :-p

(That's a great Nike commercial with Bode Miller, by the way. Him sipping something at the outset, and then giving us his usual double-speak. Gotta love skuzz bags who make fun of themselves for million dollar endorsements.)

On the American team, you can tell the boys and girls apart by the color of their hats. Very handy. Boys wear blue and girls wear red or white. That's planning, man.

(These commercials, on the other hand, with the Ronald McDonald statues are kinda creepy.)

Interesting that there still aren't any black South African athletes. I'm not sure what the significance is of that, but it's interesting. Meghan needs to do an AAP plan for that country.

Gotta love these Italian fans. They're excited enough to make you think they're major medal contenders in more than slalom and a couple other events. And, hey, they actually get to march into Italian disco, rather than American like everyone else.

"...a country where it's impossible to get a bad meal anywhere." Blech.

Says Mary Carillo of the flag dancing, "This could be where rhythmic gymnastics began." Well is it??? What an empty statement. And the answer, by the way, is no. The sport traces its roots to the free exercse system of Swede Peter Ling from the early 19th century.

The flag dandcing was very cool, and this Botocelli thing is kinda cool, but can you re-enact a painting with movement?

I could totally do without this naked punk techno ballet, however. OK, this finally tops the bubble women of Albertville. I mean... Holy cow, this is messed up.

An F1 pit stop? Eh? Sure, I understand that Italians love their Formula One, but... Seriously, that was one slooooooow pit stop for F1. Burning out his tires rocks, though. :-D Or, as Costas put it, "A ferrari, spinning around doughnut style."

(The Magic Fridge commercial is awesome! Anthro of Religion comes in handy!)

Why is Susan Sarandon in this group of people bearing in the Olympic flag? Whatever you think of the war in Iraq, a celebrity protesting it is hardly the same level of most of the other women honored here. At least Sophia Loren is Italian. But Susan Sarandon? Weird choice.

I can't decide if the acrobats on the ropes are cool or if they just remind me of spiders and other fence bugs in various Mario games. I suppose the two are not exclusive... Pretty amazing coordination, that's for sure, even if the "dove" is kinda cheesy and eagle-like.

Yoko bleeding Ono?????

Imagi bloody nation???? Didn't Stevie Wonder beat that horse dead in Atlanta?

"Power works in mysterious ways," she says. Good to know.

Oh good, now Peter Gabriel is being trotted out to sing the song. Even if I was crazy about this song, isn't there something cheap about using a number from the previous olympics? At least Peter Gabriel sings beter than Stevie Wonder. But, man, this song is so depressing and cynical. I'm not sure what we're supposed to be clinging to here. Get rid of absolutely everything and we'll be happy. Huh? Imagine a world where where white musicians don't try to trump the Olympic performance of blind, black musicians.

And, by the way. Yoko Ono spoke at the Olympics? So, what, when the Olympics are in Canada in a few years, Janet Jones Gretzky speaks? I mean, come on, y'all.

The Olympic Torch was blessed by the Pope? There's so much to say about that, but I'm sure you're already thinking it.

I wonder if he blessed Yoko Ono?

I'll bet you weren't thinking that.

Wow, there just aren't that many world famous Italians, huh?

That's a cauldron? Ah, no, it's a fireworks display that flickers up to the torch. Pretty cool. Nobody will ever top Barcelona and the flaming arrow, but this was still pretty nifty.

Oh good, Opera. That's the surprise I was hoping for.

Cool that Pavaroti's Just for Men Hear and Beard Formula is working.

How come he didn't do a duet with Yoko Ono?

Fireworks, now that's cool. :) And that spiral firework thing is amazingly cool.

Well, it's always an experience, no? :) See you at the Olympics!

//PaleolithNick//

Spring is in the Air

2006-02-06T22:23:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now watching:	Mood:
+25F and partly sunny most of day... Pretty much a spring-time paradise, as far as I'm concerned	CSI: Miami	Somewhere out there

Much of the day was pretty good because the weather was so nice, but I've been kinda foggy all day, just the same. Bummer. I've mostly just been doing homework, so there's not too much to tell you about right now. No major developments on the masters thesis project front or anything else like that.

Let's see... What're we talking about in my classes... In Bioarchaeology, we were talking about taphonomy (roughly, post-mortem changes in the body) last week and we're onto burial types this week (primary v/s secondary, individual v/s multiple, that sort of thing). In Archaeology Method and Theory, last week was mostly early, pre-archaeology, and this week is the culture-historical phase of archaeology which includes diffusion, culture areas, historical particularism, typology and taxonomy. No research design class this week because Dr. Murray's little girl was home sick.

In my prehistoric dental morphology independent study I'm starting to move past tooth identification, siding, and positioning onto indentifying the individual cusps of molars. That will both help with the former stuff and will be critical as I start working on charting the discrete (non-metric... "unrelated to measurements") characteristics of teeth which will be the core of my research project.

Other than that, I'm immersing myself in Spanish to prepare for my month in Mexico this summer, and generally feeling kinda out of it. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be a little more clear-headed to enjoy the nicer weather while it lasts. :)

//PaleolithNick//

"Bones" (or, Anthro-what-ogy?)

2006-02-01T22:39:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now watching:	Mood:
Clear and -16F... Cold enough to freeze the ears, but pretty nice compared to a week ago	CSI: NY	Stuffy... Like maybe I've got some bug coming on

So, for the second time ever, we watched the Fox TV show Bones, ostensibly about a forensic anthropologist, based on the novels and life experiences of a real forensic anthropologist. Alas, beyond that, there's not a whole heck of a lot in the show that has to do with forensic anthropology.

Some of the things that jumped out at me...

The FBI agent tells the forensic anthropologist, "You ID that victim..."

Technically speaking, anthropologists don't ID anyone. They may help put a face on someone, but that's not the same as ID'ing them.

One of the lab guys refers to a "bicuspid"

That's not a "wrong" word, per se, but no anthropologist would be at all likely to use it in reference to a tooth. Outside of primary school, the tooth is called a premolar. The shape is bicuspid.

The hologram for facial reconstruction is totally bogus; it doesn't exist, and even computer programs take way more time and work than they allow.
Why's she still hanging around after the reconstruction anyway?
Okay, then she tries to talk like a cultural anthropologist, which is something no respectable biological anthropologist would do professionally, and few would be interested in doing period. Not only that, but what she says is worse than hoaky; it makes no anthropological sense.

"Learning to ride a bike is a rite of passage," she says. Rites of passage are very specific things in anthropology, generally involving a three-stage process (see Turner and Van Geneb). She goes on to clarify that she's talking about, "a set of cultural proxies and morays." I have no idea what that means or what it has to do with anthropology, but somehow it was supposed to prove she wasn't talking about psychology. She went on to read body language like that was part of her job, too. I really don't know what's going on there.

I won't belabor this, but a forensic anthropologist has no business dabbling in cause of death and talking about blood clots and chemical compositions.

OK, enough for now. It's bed time. :)

//PaleolithNick//

Classes say, "Students taste good, but they leave me feeling bloated."

2006-01-31T22:12:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now listening to:	Mood:
It's gotten clearer again and up around -20F for the past few days... Much better!	The Escaflone soundtrack	Overwhelmed

Isn't it too early in the semester to feel as if you're being eaten alive? Archaeology Methods and Theory is certainly procuding that feeling. It's a very intensive course, and, to be honest, I'm not sure that the pay off is going to be all that great because the class is so large and has so many different levels of students, that I don't see a lot of high quality class time in the future... I do like the professor, and I think he has a solid plan for the class (even with a crazy workload), but I think he got sandbagged with this turnout. Something like 19 undergraduates and 6 graduates, for what's intended to be a very high level seminar in theory.

Other than that, not much to report. The warmer weather (so to speak) has been nice. I've been trying to allow myself the luxury of coming back home each day for about an hour after dropping Meghan off to eat my breakfast and drink my coffee at a more relaxed pace than the usual dash out the door. I'm not sure if I can keep that up the way this homework has been looking, but it's been nice, just the same.

Other classes are going okay. Research Design still looks helpful, though I think it would have been way more timely in the fall term so that we could have had all this prep for our theses and committees and things back then and have it underway now, but at least we're getting it, even if a little later than ideal. Bioarchaeology still looks really good, though, again, it's a much larger and more mixed class than planned for; but it's not a seminar so it's an easier adjustment to make, I think. Aikido is going well, and, of course, you can keep up with that over on the Frozen Aikidosicle.

Alright, I'm hungry. I'm gonna go have a snack. :)

//PaleolithNick//

How To Celeberate Your Wedding Anniversary, Fairbanks-style

2006-01-27T22:21:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now listening to:	Mood:
-45F, thick ice fog (second-day running); overnights down to -50F and lower	Some song stuck in my head... I think it's, "Complicated"	Bemused

Alrighty, everything else that's happend in the past couple of days no longer matters. Only what happened today from 3pm onward. :)

Today was our 5th wedding anniversary (yay!!!) and Meghan was getting off work early (yay!!!). At about 3pm we were going to run our friend Phil out to his cabin to feed his cat, since his car is in the shop. The three of us ride merrily along in the Green-route shuttle to the Nenana parking lot where our Blazer is parked. We disembark, walk over to the Blazer... and find the driver-side rear tire is utterly flat.

Hoping parking services can help us out (they do gas, battery jumps, and lock-outs, we know), I flag down the Blue bus and ask the driver to find out if they can help. (None of us has a cellphone on us and there's no phone in the Nenana bus hut.) The answer comes back -- after a few excruciating minutes -- in the negative. No air, no flat repair.

Phil and I could do the tire, of course, but it's -50F weather out there, and that sounds stupid to us.

So, we wait for the Green shuttle to return, ride back up to Eielson, and I call our emergency roadside service to get someone to come out. Things go pretty smoothly until we get the call-back from Progressive. It would require a tow to get the tire changed. "None of the mechanics," the gentelman on the phone says, "want to change a flat out in minus fifty degree temperatures."

Knowing the complications that would entail, I tell him to put the service request on hold, hang up, and look around at the others in the grad room. Once I relate the news, we all decide that we need to give it a try ourselves, and if a group of us go donw we can shift off as necessary in the frigid cold. So, Meghan, Phil, Alysa, Nicole, and I all get back on the Green bus, and head down to the parking lot to try changing the tire.

I won't belabor the details of the change, but there was much laughter, frustration at frozen parts (our hydraulic jack cannister exploded and our tailgate is frozen shut, for example), groaning over sore muscles, reluctant lying on the frozen ground, and ultimately celebration, as we got the tire off and the spare on.

As if it wasn't enough being able to now tell people we've changed a flat tire in -50 degree weather, there's a somewhat bizarre end to the story. Meghan and I figured we would go in to Wal-Mart in the morning to have the tire repaired, and just go have a nice, Fairbanks-fancy dinner at Denny's after running Phil to his cabin and dropping him back off at Eielson.

We did that, and when we came out of Denny's we got back into the Blazer, and looked into the backseat, where we had slung the flat tire.

The tire was re-inflated and firm to the touch. And still is, four hours later.

Happy Anniversary to us! :)

//PaleolithNick//

What Octane is Your Fog-ahol?

2006-01-25T15:42:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now on iTunes:	Mood:
-42F with Ice Fog	Ben Folds Five, "Army" + Blind Melon, "No Rain" + Simon & Garfunkel, "Punky's Dilemma"	Excited!

Now that I've experienced real ice fog and taken a deep breath in it, I think I know about what it must taste like to syphon gas. :-p

Anyway -- good news, everyone! No sooner do I express my confusion over my masters project dilemma, than an answer to the dilemma appears. Whew! Today, I heard back on the project which had laid still for so while, and I guess it turns out the delay was mainly in the hands of various officials having to sort things out.

At this point, I feel comfortable enough with the project to give you all a little overview. Obviously, I can't go into a lot of detail -- I'm still waiting on a lot of the details, for one thing, and I need to go through the whole proposal process, as well -- but I can at least give you a more specific idea of what's probably going on.

My project will be part of a bigger, multi-layer project at least partially affiliated with National Geographic and part of a set of three projects coordinated by Dr. Laura Cahue at the University of South Carolina. The project takes place in a burial site known as El Pantano (or, "the swamp") which is in the town of Mascota in Jalisco Province, Mexico, about 100KM from Puerto Vallarta.

The site is a middle formative period cemetery (~ 800 BC) in which there are > 160 individuals. There is archaeological evidence at the site suggesting that the population might be heterogenous (i.e., coming from different places or of different cultural backgrounds). My task will be to examine the dental characteristics of the individuals in the cemetery and do some statistical work on the genetically-controlled traits of those teeth to see if the population was composed of biologically disparate groups, as would be expected with the extent of hypothesized heterogeneity. (See Dr. Irish's work on Nubia and Egypt for examples of this type of dental anthropology.)

OK, that's plenty for now, but I wanted to let you all know the good news!

//PaleolithNick//

The Old Dilemma

2006-01-24T15:00:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now on iTunes:	Mood:
-27F and very still air	Jethro Tull, "Locomotive Breath" + The Who, "Behind Blue Eyes" + Blood Sweat & Tears, "Sometimes in Winter"	Muddled

Bioarchaeology got under way for real yesterday with an overview of the discipline. It's kind of cool, as Tammy pointed out, that the people who got this particular field of anthropological study under way are still alive and active in research. It wasn't until the 1950's and the WPA's mania for ditch-digging and rapid-fire earthworks projects that people started to realize that there is value in relating the biological and artifactual evidence in context in order to ultimately uncover truths concerning the culture of past peoples.

Research Design and Professional Development started yesterday and I wasn't sure if my back would be up to a three-hour class, so it was probably for the best that it was a shortened class. That's going to be a heck of a class: helpful and brutal at the same time, by Dr. Murray's own admission. The idea of the class is two-fold: to help us get a grounding in graduate school and professional scholarship, and to end the semester with defensible thesis proposals. I'm not too worried about the first part, and I think it will be good to be exposed to the academic world from the persepctive of a research-intensive anthropology department. The second part is daunting, merely because I've found myself suddenly back in the position (as you know) of not having a very firm project any longer, after thinking for a couple months that I did.

The question I'm facing probably boils best down to this: which is more important, the methodology and scholarship or the geography? When I asked that question of myself during the admissions process of grad school, I thought the answer was clear the methodology and scholarship. I'm not so sure about that right now. An awful lot of anthropologists have geographic blinders on. I really appreciate that neither Dr. Irish nor Tammy have that problem, though their knowledge is understandably more limited in certain geographic areas. Overall, though, the program here is very arctic. The program at Wyoming is very great plains. The program at Hawaii is very south east Asia. Cross-pollination is difficult as long as you maintain some interest in the cultural. If you go whole-hog into the science or biology of skeletal remains, you can carve out a niche as, "an aging guy," but then you spend your time in labs working on refining techniques and re-testing old standards, not out there exposing past culture and human life experience. That doesn't interest me at all.

So... If what I want to end up doing is bioarchaeology in tropical rainforest environments, be they south east Asian, Oceanic, South American, or what-have-you, there's a definite sense in pursuing that for my masters, lest I get locked in as a "circumpolar" guy. Unfortunately, the resources I have on hand at UAF for pursuing such a project are pretty limited, and while I've made some contacts out there, it's difficult when you're not in their program for them to include you in their projects (assuming they have any), and it's difficult at the masters level to (say) get access to collections housed in museums in Thailand without being part of an established research program with a director whom they recognize. So, at that point, I'm looking at working with published data, whether data on teeth or on burials, and massaging that data for new questions and answers.

And that leads to the other side of the problem. I'd like my experience to include field work if possible, and certainly generating my own data through first-hand examination of the skeletal (ideally, dental) materials. That's what I want to do, and that's I feel like I need to practice and to establish with my MA research project. And that leads back to (given my lack of success hooking up with any projects) working with existing collections outside of my ultimate geogaphic area of interest.

Hence, "dilemma."

Alright, well, I'd better go do some more research on possible projects before I leave to pick up Meghan, have supper, and go to my night class.

//PaleolithNick//

The Downside to Falling on Hard, Frozen Ground

2006-01-22T19:46:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now listening to:	Mood:
-24F, after being up to -7F; got quite a few inches of snow this weekend, as well	The sound of dishes being done	Rather Sore

I guess the past few months of slipping and falling and all the contortions and bruises that go with such activity finally caught up to me. Yesterday, early afternoon, we were out at the church, cleaning, and as I picked up a small box of lost and found pencils, crayons, and what-not, I threw out my back.

Most of yesterday I couldn't sit at all; standing was a little better; but lying flat as possible was the only really tolerable action. Today I'm a bit better, and can actually do some sitting and have needed less help from Meghan getting around. Hopefully tomorrow will be markedly better yet because I have a 10:30 meeting, an 11:45 class, and a 13:00 three-hour class. That's gonna add up to a whole lot of sitting. But it's also two more doses of Alleve from now, and hopefully that makes a difference.

Haven't done a lot else this weekend, as you might imagine... Though, you know you've reached new heights of nerdiness when you get your Christmas present from your brother and sister-in-law in the mail and are very excited and can't put it down, and it's a book about teeth. :-D

I've done a little follow-up on the Tglingit idea, and I'm not sure yet whether that will work or not. While that part of Alaska is certainly a temperate rain forest, the subsistance seems to have been mainly maritime (seafood), so it might not have the sort of applicability I'd hope to later tropical studies. All that means is that I would still be getting a good work out on the dietary studies and that's still applicable, but at that point, geography is wide-open if the rain forest applications are less critical. I plan on continuing my background research, though. Assuming all is well with my back, Tuesday afternoon will be basically spent in the library looking through journals and overview texts.

//PaleolithNick//

Don't be Fooled

2006-01-20T22:16:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now watching:	Mood:
-30F, supposedly getting ready to snow	Magic Knight Rayearth (puu!)	Good!

No matter how comfy -34F sounds, it's actually not warm enough to walk from the UAF Museum of the North to the Eielson with just jeans to warm your legs!

//PaleolithNick//

At Least We All Call the Wind Mariah

2006-01-20T16:47:00.000-09:00

Strangley, an awful lot of documentation about the south east refers to it as the north west coast. :)

Figure that one out!

//PaleolithNick//

Possible Project Direction?

2006-01-20T14:45:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now on iTunes:	Mood:
-34F, up from -39F; very cloudy, misty and abysmal	Tribe Called Quest, "Can I Kick It?" + Poco, "Pickin Up the Pieces"	Hey, it's Friday. :)

Bioarch was today, and I met with Tammy afterward to talk about my independent study on prehistoric dental morphology and also to try help me find a good sense of direction for my masters project. We talked about my various interests, and sort of homed in one I had phrased to her like this:

...the development of human culture in tropical rain forest environments and the potential for the dental record to provide clues to diet, behavior, and pathology which are commonly denied us in the broader skeletal record because of the rapid decay of bone in rain forests.

And I got more specfic and narrowed it down to the development of subsistance habits and organization, or the question, "Are early inhabitants of tropical rain forests primarily displaced agriculturalists, honest-to-goodness foragers proper, hunters first, or followers of some other mode of living?" And then added to that the notion of, "Using the evidence of the dental record to look and diet and behaviour through wear and pathology in lieu of much bone evidencesurviving from prehistoric times in the moist environment."

With that established as at least one guiding question-of-interest, we talked about how to apply that at the masters level here at UAF, and I acknowledged that apart from a couple of long-shot contacts I've made, I will probably be more likely to spend my MA time building the skill set before applying it at the PhD to the tropical environment.

So, then, Tammy suggested looking into possibilities in the temperate rainforest of south east Alaska, for which there are ample collections, and which would provide me with ample opportunities to test dental morphology and even in a rain forest environment with many of the same environmental considerations.

What I'm doing now is background reading on the possibility of looking at the dental record to track patterns of change in Tlingit populations (prehistoric, Russian colony, post-withdrawal).

I'm still holding out hope for some of the other projects which have crossed my way, but that at least gives me a really solid place to start laying the froundwork for an alternative, existing-collections project.

//PaleolithNick//

What & What Now?

2006-01-19T22:53:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now watching:	Mood:
-24F and chilly	Martin swiping pain killers from a victim's bathroom	Sleepy on Benadryl

So Meghan and I have been hearing commercials for Alaska's only park and sell auto lot, so I finally broke down and did some investigating. After all, WHAT THE HECK IS A PARK AND SELL AUTO LOT?

Apparently, based on on what I can find on websites for dealers like this, the gimick is that you don't trade your old car in to the dealer, you supposedly work with the dealer to sell your car and get yourself a cut of the profit. My thought? Most likely, they sell your car for around $6 -- $11 K and you get, let's say generously, 20% of that, or up to $2200 or so. If you had traded in, you would have only gotten, say $800 -- $3K. But, with the park and sell you don't have to worry about getting the money until after your car has sold on the lot. With a dealer, you'd get your trade-in discount right away, and that would stink.

Oh wait.

Hmmm.

//PaleolithNick//

First Day of Classes

2006-01-19T16:10:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now on iTunes:	Mood:
~ -18F; there was a light snow over night, finally covering my punch-bowl spill in the parkinglot from Christmas	The sound of silence. Not the song, just the sound.	Sore :)

School is now officially under way! My first class of the new semester was beginning Aikido, and I've created a second 'blog to detail my learning experience there: Aikidosicle. I'll still do my reflections on the experience over here, but that seemed like the sort of experience that might be handy to have just a web journal on, for those interested in what it's like to learn a martial art from scratch.

The class was great, and I think it will be a lot of fun throughout the semester, even though my legs are pretty sore. The instructor is good, and really loved what he's doing. He says the beginning class (which he's taught for 26 years now) is his favorite, and I think he means it. It's also fun because two students from my discussion group groups last term are in the class. Now they can get their revenge on me by throwing me to the mat. ;-)

I also had my first discussion group of the new term today, and I think it's gonna be a really good group. They're a little rowdy, but they're talkative and I think they'll be a lot of fun, even if they get out of hand from time to time. I think they will also do a fair amount of self-policing, too.

Well, that's about it for today really. I need to go home and soak my legs in a hot bath, I think. :)

By the way, if you're not watching Invasion, you need to. It's right up there with Lost in terms of sheer suspense and "what the heck is going on?" factor. Lots of fun. Plus, it too takes place in a really warm place. Probably helps its charm for me right about now!

//PaleolithNick//

New Look Plasticity

2006-01-18T20:25:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now watching:	Mood:
There's frost inside the house... I'm sure that says something about the weather	Lost	A bit anxious, but not unsettled

Check out the new look of the 'blog; your comments should now appear on the main page, which I think makes a 'blog a lot more interactive and, ultimately, fun. :)

Getting a little anxious about school starting up again. This week is light, since it starts on a Thursday. Aikido and one session of bioarchaeology. But, as always, a new semester always presents both the excitement of new materials and the uncertainty of, well, new material. :)

I'll certainly let y'all know how it goes!

//PaleolithNick//

Taung: Not Just for Astronauts Anymore

2006-01-17T20:51:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now watching:	Mood:
-36F this morning, -26F now	Many and various wonders	A little foggy

So there's this new paper coming out about the so-called, "Taung child," a famous australopithecene skull found amidst a great deal of monkey debris. The head-line for this news reports on this research are quite eye-catching and usually run something like, Human Ancestors Hunted by Giant Birds. Sounds like an old Leonard Nemoy Republic-pictures serial, no? Allow me to present a lengthy abstract from the Associated Press article, the key parts especially highlighted for your attention:

A South African anthropologist said Thursday his research into the death nearly 2 million years ago of an ape-man shows human ancestors were hunted by birds. "These types of discoveries give us real insight into the past lives of these human ancestors, the world they lived in and the things they feared," Lee Berger, a paleo-anthropologist at Johannesburg's University of Witwatersrand, said as he presented his conclusions about a mystery that has been debated since the remains of the possible human ancestor known as the Taung child were discovered in 1924 . . .

Researchers had speculated the Taung child was killed by a leopard or saber-toothed feline. But 10 years ago, Berger and fellow researcher Ron Clarke submitted the theory the hunter was a large predatory bird, based on the fact most of the other fossils found at the same site were small monkeys that showed signs of having been killed by a predatory bird . . .

Five months ago, Berger read an Ohio State University study of the hunting abilities of modern eagles in West Africa believed similar to predatory birds of the Taung child's era. The Ohio State study determined that eagles would swoop down, pierce monkey skulls with their thumb-like back talons, then hover while their prey died before returning to tear at the skull. Examination of thousands of monkey remains produced a pattern of damage done by birds, including holes and ragged cuts in the shallow bones behind the eye sockets.

Berger went back to the Taung skull, and found traces of the ragged cuts behind the eye sockets. He said none of the researchers who had for decades been debating how the child died had noticed the eye socket damage before.

Berger concluded man's ancestors had to survive not just being hunted from the ground, but from the air. Such discoveries are "key to understanding why we humans today view the world they way we do," he said.

Ok, so I'd love to see his research -- and maybe if I make it to the AAPA meetings in Anchorage I will; I'll have to check the schedule -- but there's a lot about this, at lesat the way I've seen in written up in the press, that leave big, anthropological question-marks for me.

First, if this were a forensic cause (it's not because there's no legal interest), we would be bound by the following rule: you can talk about perimortem conditions, things which happened around the time of death, but you can never stipulate the cause of death based on skeletal remains. (Nor, for that matter, is an anthropologist permitted to ever under any circumstances make a legal statement about cause of death.) It's nifty to speculate about cause of death in prehistoric remains, but that's because it's juicy not because it's academicaly all that helpful. Our understanding academically is just as served by talking about the trauma to the skeleton which occured concurrent with or shortly prior to death, given that the actually story of the skeleton's demise will not be able to be told anyway.

Secondly, I really wonder how nobody else ever noticed perimortem damage behind the eye scockets. I'm sure it's more difficlult to distinguish some types of damage when you're talking about this scale of time (post-morten damage done a million years ago is going to have an awful lot of time to even out its wear and weathering ["taphonomy"]) -- but, still, if everyone has been so concerned about this "child" and its death, it seems like damage would be noticed and noted, even if not understood.

But mainly, I object very strongly to the language (not just of the AP writer) which creates this portrait of hominids living in terror of the skies. We know no such thing! I'm willing to stipulate that this "child" may have been killed by an eagle, may even have been swooped down upon and eaten like a monkey. Any ape-like youngster crawling around without parental supervision in an area where eagles hunt monkeys might be vulnerable to the same thing. But that hardly means it was common-place or otherwise weighing on the minds of australopithecenes as they went about their business. This notion that an a/pith' out on a stroll would be looking at the sky nervously, waiting for the first tell-tale sign of an eagle coming after it, is pure conjecture. Moreover, the use of the word hunt suggests that the a/pith' were deliberately sought out and stalked by the eagles. We don't know that; we just know that one a/pith' youngster may have gotten mixed up in the eagle's talons. For all we know, the eagle might have tasted it, found it foul, and just discarded the rest.

Moreover, hominid or not, the a/pith' is still an ape and the confusion of an ape kid with a monkey is not especially striking.

Aaaaaaannnndddd, it's just over-blowing the matter even evolutionarily to talk about how this helps us understand human nature. On that scale, one could make the same claim for any other hunted animal prior t the a/pith' in the presumed evolutionary chain. I'm not familiar with too many people who still make these sort of evolutionary psychology claims.

Alrighty, that's plenty on this topic for now. :)

//PaleolithNick//

To Sleep, Per Chance to Not Slip on the Ice

2006-01-15T21:19:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now watching:	Mood:
-31F	Law & Order: Criminal Intent	Upbeat

Not a whole lot going on this weekend, other than relaxing and getting some chores done. Both are good. Meghan has tomorrow off for MLK, JR day, which is nice. (Amusingly, there are MLK activities held by the university, but moth are before or after the holiday itself, so as to interfere with people's day off...)

On the way to church today, I did take yet another major slip on the ice. I dunno what's going on. I normally have very good balance, but somehow this ice just has me baffled!

Last week we bought some houseplants to try and cheer up the apartment. They're not doing very well right now, most of them, depsite the special soil, special lights, and the fact that I only went with acclimatized plants which are supposed to be designed for Alaskan indoor use. I tried re-potting them last night incase I packed them in too tight. We'll see how that works out.

Oh, and I've started opening up channels of investigation once more into possible masters projects. I'm staying with the dental anthro thing because that's what my next semester is built around, but I still haven't heard back anything in over a month now on the one I thought seemed like a strong possibility, so -- given the time-frame -- I'm checking into some other options.

If nothing else, a lot of people will have received e-mails from me by the time this is done. :)

//PaleolithNick//

True Stories of Arctic Survival

2006-01-13T22:39:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now watching:	Mood:
-20F	Meghan's turn on Super Mario Sunshine	Good enough

So while I was out at the church cleaning up for Sunday, I stepped outside to empty the mop bucket. I took the bold step of overcoming my paranoia about locking myself out of places and forced myself to go out without grabbing my keys. I just propped the door open with it's "no-shut" bolt and walked across the drive to splash the water down the little hill.

Um.

Got back to the door and the "no-shut" bolt had somehow not kept the door open. It had shut behind me. Locking my keys and my coat inside the church. It was -15F at that point, which is warm enough to do some quick chores outside, not not warm enough to just hang around. No cellphone, and no one really knew I was at the church, though Meghan might have figured it out if I was an hour late for picking her up at work.

Still, I went around the church, and, of course, since I fixed the doors last week they were all shut properly and couldn't be opened from the outside. And the windows are a secure type that can't be pushed in either.

Luckily, I hadn't locked the Blazer, so I went and sat in there for a few minutes of relief from the worst of the cold. After a couple of minutes I remembered that our recent van driver had said somethign about leaving a can key in the van, so I went, and after too much searchin in the cold, found the key, and fortunately got the van to start. It, of course, was not plugged in so had no pre-heaters runing (we don't plug it in untill Saturday since it's only used on Sundays). I had to let it run for a while before I could drive it, which meant more waiting in the Blazer, which was no longer seeming like quite such a warm spot after a couple times' opening and closing the door.

Eventually, I decided it was time to force the van into action. Unfortunately, it's an old Ford van without much of a heater anyway, so it was pretty frigid in there in my shirt-sleeves. I cleaned off the windows, and started to go. And then realized that I had parked the blazer basically right in front of the van. There was maybe a van width to either side of the Blazer, the slope into the woods on the left and the church porch on the right. I decided I'd rather wreck the van than the church, so I aimed for the slot on the left and gunned it, praying it would be wide enough.

It was!

I made my way for the house of Tim, a friend and the church youth pastor. He works construction so is in season lay-off right now, so I hoped he would be at home. I didn't feel particularly safe driving the large sixteen passenger van with my hands tucked inside my sleeves and my shoulders hunched up around my stinging ears, but I didn't have much choice. -15F was beginning to feel like -15F ought to feel. Dang cold!

Naturally, I got stuck behind a school bus, so the drive to Tim's house -- he lives just about half a mile from the church -- took forever longer than it needed to.

I made it there in one piece, and saw his white Blazer in the drive. Glad he seemed to be home, I hopped out of the van and... naturally... slipped on the ice, going down hard on my right side and getting my left arm tangled in and yanked by the seat belt. Perfect ending to the adventurous trip.

Tim was, thnakfully there, and eagerly let me borrow his keys, so I drove back, and was able to let myself back in the church and get warm before finishing mopping. Needless to see, I will no longer fight but will instead nurture my paranoia about locking myself out of places. :)

//PaleolithNick//

Here Comes the Judge!

2006-01-12T21:29:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now watching:	Mood:
-10F to +5F most of the day, but felt colder for some reason	The 2nd most disturbing CSI episode ever	Pretty decent

Spent most of the afternoon at school today, working with our tooth collection. Today was the day for learning how to side and position the teeth, and I think I did pretty well for my first try at it. For some reason our colleciton turns out to consist largely of Lower Left 3rd Pre-molars. I was sure I must be doing something wrong to get those kind of numbers, but Tammy checked my work and confirmed that I was right with most of them, so .

Getting ready for the semester and what-not. That old fashioned mixture of excitement over new classes, reluctance to get back into the work habits, and trepidation over what fees and book costs are gonna turn out to be, and the satisfaction of taking another step towards the ultimate goal. The AAPA meetings are in Anchorage this year, so I pretty much have to try to find a way to get down there for at least one day. Maybe Meghan and I can go down for Friday and Saturday or something. I need to look at the meeting schedule to get an idea of any particular sessions I would want to hit, of course, but I think the main thing right now is just to "mingle" with the pros and start to introduce myself around to some of the folks I might be interested in doing a PhD with.

Plus I hear it's pretty amusing just to watch the fights break out in the human evolution sessions. :)

//PaleolithNick//

Yes, I am crazy

2006-01-11T16:46:00.000-09:00

Yeah, I know this is my 3rd post of the day, but, really, who thought this was a good idea?

http://wiki.ehow.com/Make-a-Favor-Cake

Can you think of anything crueler to the guests at your festivity than a fake cake?

"Here, have a piece of this cake."
"Thanks!" crunch "Hey, wait, this is cardboard." crunch "And the decoration is plastic!"
"I knew you'd like it!"

//PaleolithNick//

The Final Reflection

2006-01-11T16:21:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now on iTunes:	Mood:
Same as a few minutes ago. :)	Eminem, "Ballad" + Hawk Nelson, "Letters to the President" + Jars of Clay, "Flood" + anonymous Indonesian gamelan music	Still mixed?

Two mondo posts in the same day??? Yeah, well, I want to get my New Year's duties out of the way. :)

Therefore, I now present the overall highlights and thoughts on 2005...

Meghan graduated!! She worked incredibly hard for her degree, far harder than I did, much to my shame. I often envy her the depth of learning she got out of her classes through her attentive labors, compared to my reliance on a quick memory.
I ended my time working in the IT department at TUFW, where I'd been working since the end of December 1999. I left with a lot of mixed feelings -- very glad to be moving on since IT was never a great passion of mine, but just the same sad to be leaving relationships, projects, and a school in which I'd ended up investing a lot of time, energy, and care.
I entered graduate school, pursuing an MA in Anthropology as the first step towards an eventual PhD. Though there were some unexpected twists in the program into which I entered, it has all been for th best as it has helped guide me into the realms of bioarchaeology and dental anthropology which will really allow me to get to the nexus of scientific data and cultural information that I'm really interested in -- but neither of which would I have really explored had I entered a program more consistent with my original expectations.
Meghan started working as the cooridnator for the office of equal opportunity at UAF. The many facets of her job, from the organizational aspects to the interpersonal aspects, are well-suited to her gifts and personality. She has a great relationship with her boss, and continues to learn new things and take on new tasks and move into new aspects of her tasks.
We moved to Alaska. See several of my previous 'blog entries. :)
Meghan has basically assumed her first responsibility as the sole teacher of a Sunday School class at our church, and is already having a temendous impact as encourager and inspirer of the youngsters whom she shepherds for half of every Sunday service.
I preached my first sermon to a congregation, and have preached two or three more times. This past Sunday I also had my first go at leading the worship music for a church service, including the singing. It was kinda crazy, but it went okay.
We moved really, really far away from most of our family. That's been hard, especially given the health problems (new and continuing) of so many of our close relatives. It wasn't until now that I began to understand that impulse of, "I know I can't really do anything, but I just wish I could be there."
Sunbeam got spayed. Very good thing for all of us. :)

And I think I can probably wrap up there. 2005 was a good year, full of a whole lot of change on all fronts, and all things considered, I'd say we've done a good job keeping all our marbles together. :)

//PaleolithNick//

I Thought You Were Doing a Funny Run

2006-01-11T15:29:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now on iTunes:	Mood:
It's about -20F, which is 5 degrees warmer than yesterday; it's sort of snowing outside, if you can call it that	ApoliogetiX, "Corinthians" + Aroah, "Flavour of the Month" + Barenaked Ladies, "Another Postcard" + Citizensmith UK, "Captain Kirk" + lots more :)	Mixed?

So, school starts up again late next week. I've been continuing to read and researcch PhD programs, read articles about teeth, etc... I'm still trying to catch up on e-mail, too, since I've been pretty lax about staying on top of it over the past few weeks. Most of my injuries from falling on Christmas day are better at this point, though my knee is still a little clicky and doesn't have a lot of stamina. That's okay; it's been worse.

Well, there are two more sets of reflections I want to put out before school. I think today I'll do my reflections to this point on Alaska and then my reflections on 2005 in another post.

The balance sheet is still out on Alaska; we've been here since only 2 August. A few others I know who are similar to me in various ways are still working on their feelings about it after being here for 2 to 10 years, so I guess I still have tons of time. :) I do want to stress that no matter what I end up thinking about the long term prospects of living in Alaska, I do not at all regret coming here. It's a great experience, a tremendous adventure, and an opportunity that I am very glad we seized, whether it's a two-year stint or a new home for the rest of our lives.

Disclaimer out of the way, here are some of the positive and negative things about my Alaskan experience so far, presented appropriately in dialectically opposed dyads. hehehehehe Well, most of them aren't really dialectics, but it's a goal to aim for any way...

I love the way that the deep cold and lack of wind keep the bare branches of deciduous trees covered in a thick sort of fuzzy frost, somewhere beetween ice and snow. It keeps them white and pretty all winter -- almost artificially clean and perfect. On the other hand, I'm not so hot on the corresponding whiteness which covers the evergreen trees. I had assumed that one nice thing about all the pine trees would be that green would persist through winter. I does, but it's obscured by the white frostiness that I like on the leafless trees.
I love the fact that driving around town I can always see the foothills, and on clear days when you're up high on the university campus you can see the mountains down south and sometimes even Denali itself. At the same time, it's frustrating that the clear days are far more rare than they'd like you to believe and the sunlight short enough that the viewing period during these more depressing months (when sight of the mountains could be most uplifting) is limited.
I hate the way that all the building in town is 20th century blah, most of it slaped together in an ugly sort of utilitarian hurry. Just the same I do love the occasional building, generally a home or a restaurant, whose construction was approached with care and a desire to incorporate the beauty of the Alaskan log asthetic. The church we go to is one such building, and a few of the restaurants near the university are built similarly, as well as some of the homes up in the hills.
I really despise the way that the persistent snow cover and prohibitive cold seem to take away most folks' inclinations toward the aesthetic on their property. Yards tend to be left messy, houses' exteriors worn and weathered, holiday decorations kept inside, and so forth. Nevertheless, I do appreciate the fact that the snow cover, whether on roads or in people's yards, is mostly kept crisp and clean from the cold and doesn't have much of a chance to turn brown, grey, and mucky like it would after a few days back in Indiana most of the time.
I love the fact that we're surrounded by wilderness within an hour's drive in an direciton, even if I'm frustrated by the obstacles to experiencing that wilderness presented by weather, infrastructure, and expense.
I enjoy the diversity of people in Fairbanks, which is far greater than most people would probably expect of a middle-sized city in Alaska, though I struggle with their general disinterest in one another.

Some things which aren't really dyads, but just reflections or points of interest or confusion:

I don't wanna get too Dale Gribble on everyone, but I'm beginning to think a lot of my problems here have to do with electromagnetic forces. I've long known that I'm especially sensitive to electricity and magenetism, and suspected that such might play into my struggles with large groups of people or clusters of electronic equipment. There's a tension, though, against the opposite. While I can be easily overwhelmed, I think my body, mind, and spirit (?) aren't sure what do do with the absence or confusion of those foces. For instance, a couple other people with whom I've spoken who typically have good senses of direction like I do are just as tossed around here as I am in terms in terms of the compass and sense of the geography. There's some thought amongst long-timers that that has to do with proximity to the magnetic north pole compared to previous residence in the lower forty-eight. Likewise, if the extreme reduction in small animal life makes the outside seem so empty to me because my nervous system is so used to (dependent on?) sensing the electromagnetic impulses (small though they may be) of fellow life forms. Speculation, but, speculation is mainly what I have to go on right now. :)
I still don't really understand the isolation of this place in all its various forms. For instance, I realize that we're very distant from other cities or towns of comprable size and that access to most bush villages is by plane, but really even our geographic isolation seems to be exacerbated by the simple disinterest of folks to go anywhere else other than where they are. You don't hear very often of people driving to Nenana, Fox, or even North Pole, let alone Circle or other places which are forty-five minutes or an hour away. Isolation in places like northern Michigan create an atmosphere in which people are just accustomed to driving longer distances. Here, half an hour is a long way away. I think our friend Larissa hinted at another part of when explaining the lack of corner drug stores: nobody walks around because so much of the year it's below-zero freezing cold out. Those habits stay through most of the year, and I think help to create the isolation because even neighbors don't see each other very often without effort. But, even so, there's an attitude that I really can't relate to which says something like, "Yep, we're isolated from eachother and wish we weren't but what are you gonna do," just the sam as they say, "Yep, it's gonna be -30F for the next few week and that's miserably cold, but what are you gonna do."
I think I'm starting to get a sense of the Alaskan identity, but I'm not quite sure. It came to me this morning as I was listening to one of the guys on ESPN Radio talking about differences between fans in Texas and fans in the Northeast. (Long story, don't worry about why they were talking about that.) The two basic mindsets he described were, "We're bigger and better," and "We're tougher and better." I think the Alaskan identity is somewhere in there, wrapped up in this idea that Alaskan life is unlike life anywhere else. It doesn't necessarily seem to lead to pride, though, just consensus that no one outside can really undertsand it. But what are you gonna do.

More than enough for now, I know. :)

//PaleolithNick//

Turn On, Tune In, Turn Your Eyes Around

2006-01-04T12:37:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now on iTunes:	Mood:
-14F; I hope the ducks are okay!	Strawberry Alarm Clock, "Incense and Peppermints" + Deep Purple, "Hush" + The Offspring, "Never Gonna Find Me" + Our Lady Peace, "Whatever" + Eric B and Rakim, "Paid In Full (Seven Minutes of Music Coldcut Remix)"	Sleepy; coffee isn't doign the trick yet.

As one part of New Years' reflection, I thought I would offer my thoughts on relocating to Alaska, both to help any one else who happens on this 'blog contemplating their own move, and also to give friends and family some additional (hopefully new or newly highlighted) insight on our experience.

So ten rules for relocating to Alaska:

You're not relocating to Alaska -- you're relocating to Fairbanks (or whatever). I'll elaborate that in a moment, but take that as a warning that most of the following rules must be understood as pertaining to moves to Fairbanks, since that's where we moved. Some will have broader applicability; some won't.
Listen mainly to advice pertaining to the specific siutation into which you're relocating. You can acknowledge it rationally, but it's hard to appreciate until you get here just how isolated one part of Alaska is from another. Anchorage, for instance, is eight hours away from us here in Fairbanks. If you live in Indianapolis, you're closer to Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Nashville, and more than we are to the biggest city in our own state. Other parts of Alaska (like Sitka, Homer, Barrows) are really only accessible by plane. So, when people find out you're moving to Alaska they will doubtless tell you stories of their time in Homer or their time in Juneau, or the cruise they took through the inside passage. Those stories are great, but don't mean a whole lot if that's not where you're moving, untill you yourself as a resident take vacations there. Each area also has its own very unique weather, daylight, natural setting, animal life, etc... Thinking, "Oh, they have seals in Alaska" and then moving to Fairbanks is about like saying, "Oh, they have seals in California" then moving to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Listen mainly to very contemporary advice. I'm not sure about the rest of Alaska, but the interior has changed a lot, pretty quickly, and commentary and advice from people who lived here ten or fifteen years ago has proven to be of pretty limited value. Changes in industrty and economy, as well as military re-allocating programs have had and will continue to have great impact, as they do Down South. Information from people who lived here twenty or thirty years ago has been almost meaniningless. Think about where you grew up and what it was like thirty years ago, and then amplify that greatly, because in the 1970's Alaska was still being "settled" and "civilized" by white people, so to speak. The changelessness of Alaska's rugged mountain ranges can create an illusion that the state itself is changless; this is highly deceptive.
Listeing to all the relevant advice you get, even if it seem contradictory or based on an individual experience. Life here in Alaska is complicated, despite its surface simplicity. You will hear commentary that seems particular to certain situations (e.g., "People in Fairbanks are really unwelcoming") and easy to write off. Don't. You may find that, based on your situation, such commentary is not applicable to you, but you won't really know untill you get here. I've found the people here to ber very slow in warming up; Meghan has not had that experience. But when I was told that by someone who has now left the state, I thought they were just bitter and maybe even unbalanced. Likewise, you'll hear how horrible the darkness is, yet how much better the cold is than midwestern winters, and then again that the darkness is manageable with exercise and artificial sunlight and the cold is just plain brutal. Again, untill you taste the pudding, you cannot put the meal to its proof. I've found both the darkness and the cold harsh; Meghan has found both eminently manageable.
Don't forget about heritage when you get information or advice. Not only are you going to get different persepctives from a Native Alaskan who has relocated from the Village to the City than you will from a white guy who lives on the military base, but you will also get different sorts of information told in a different way. Don't respond to advice emotionally untill you've taken the time to examine it and undertsand where it comes from.
Don't lock yourself into housing until you get here and see it for yourself. It will be hard to appreciate what housing (especially in the interior) is like until you get here. Just looking at square footage and feature lists doesn't tell the whole story. It's difficult to describe in words; you really do need to see it for yourself.
Be prepared for a lot of creativity to accomodate cost of living. You'll need to do a lot of comparison shopping when you get here. Virtually all grocrey items are more expensive, but certain stores have locked in deals with suppliers that allow them to undercut the market on certain types of item. For instance, in Fairbanks, Fred Meyer is the only place in town to go for dairy products (Wal-Mart is, like, $2.00 more per gallon of milk), but Wal-Mart is the place for paper goods (half as much as Fred's) and Safeway is the place for vegetables (once you have a Safeway card).
Bring as much with you as possible when you move. Because it can be more difficult or more expensive than you think to replace items you took for granted in the lower 48. Even thrift stores here are considerably pricier. But, at the same time, be prepared to have limited storage when you get here. Regardless of the type of housing, there seems to be a scarcity of adequate storage.
Think hard about why you're coming here, and make that happen -- don't settle for less and don't try to squeeze out more. If your work is relocating you here, then go with that and leave it at that until you've leaved here long enough to have another reason. If you're coming because you want to experience wild Alaska, then move to the bush or get yourself a floatplane; don't move to the city and expect to just absorb wilderness. If you want scenery, make sure you have that where you're moving; if you want a particular kind of weather, make sure they have that where you're moving. If you are coming for school, be prepapred to be confused and unsettled a lot, because, frankly, you probably won't have a lot of time to get out and make the place yours. Students, come because you like the program you're entering and employees because you like the job you have or will be getting, not because either are in Alaska. You won't know how you feel about the latter untill you get here; at least be happy and pleased with the former. Come for why you're coming, and don't try to milk it for more, because this state does not easily surrender itself; but make sure you at least get what you came for. After that... Well, ya never know what's going to happen.
Most importantly, have as few expectations as possible, of what your Alaskan experience will be like. It's hard not to expect something when you come to this legendary place. But it's even harder to have your expectations met. With few exceptions in the United States, wherever you have lived, Alaska is different. Period. You may like it, love it, hate it, or still not know how you feel about it after five months, but it will definitely not be what you expected.

//PaleolithNick//

Guess Who's Back?

2006-01-02T20:11:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now watching:	Mood:
Still nearish 0F, but there's some water on the river and ducks have found it! :-D	Spider-Man (2002)	Sore, but good

Well, after taking Christmas break off the 'blog, I have way too much to catch you up on, so here are some quick highlights. Mostly, Meghan and I have just spent the past week or so having fun and relaxing, so it's been really good.

Christmas Eve was very good. We had a quick service at church and then Meghan and I came back and had an evening together and exchanged our presents and stuff like that.
Christmas was also very good. We had Christmas with Aunt Gaye and Uncle Floyd and their family, at Aunts Bev and Marlene's house. Lots of eskimo dogs and huskimo dogs and game playing and what-not, so it was a good time.
Fell twice on the ice on Christmas day, the first time spilling puch all over the parking lot, so it looks rather like a crime scene -- and the second time twisting myself up and falling on the trash I was carrying out to the dumpster. That one reaggravated my right knee and bruised up some ribs on my side, but I've been getting around okay.
We've played lots on the Gamecube which Meghan got me for Christmas. Mario Party 7 -- very fun, like a video board game. Fantastic Four -- simply amazing graphics and game play, good story along the lines of the movie. Lord of the Rings: The Third Age -- very linear RPG, but still a ton of fun and overall an A- or so gaming system underlying it.
We've also caught some matinees and DVD's. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire -- really good. Possibly my favorite so far. The movie-making seems to be maturing along with the story content. Perhaps the plot complexity takes away from the chances of some of the first two movies to explore the depth of the setting, but it's all for the good. Chronicles of Narnia -- amazing! Not only a good and exciting take on the novel, but beautifully filmed and thoughtfully produced. Time was taken at every step of the production, from setting up the shots, to the score, even to the computer generatd and animatronic creatures, where short-cuts are often taken. Daredevil (2003) -- again, quite good, at least in the director's cut. It's very faithful to the spirit of the comic books, and captured the range of the books' many flavors. Perhaps bit off more than it could chew in so doing, but still well-managed.
Been reading quarter comic books and Star Trek novels, so that's been a nice change of pace.
This week I'll start picking up again with the teeth, and also start perusing PhD programs (including the one here at UAF, of course) since I have to be actually applying to those next Fall at the latest.

OK, them's the highlights. I should be back in regular publication again now. :)

//PaleolithNick//

Wiping Toilets is its Own Reward

2005-12-22T23:10:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now Listening to:	Mood:
Above zero, but brisk	Thunderstorm CD	Irritable from having dry eyes all day

Spent a couple hours this morning out at the church doing the weekly clean and taking care of a few of the long-term projects that have been on my list. Our log building is two stories, and the space beneath the stair case is open. We store tables under there and the hatch to the crawlspace is there, as well. It also (naturally) becomes a dumping point and had accumulated lots of stuff that didn't sell at the "yard sale" the church had a month or so ago. I cleared all that out and put most things "away" somewhere and starting sweeping. I got myself a really nasty, couple-inch thick pile of dirt and dust and thought, "No one would ever believe there's been that much dirt here.

You know, housekeeping and maintenance are jobs that pretty much require a lot of self-satisfaction. No one's gona come in on Sunday morning and tell me, "Gee, thanks, Nick, for getting rid of those two inches of detritous from under the stairs." And it would really be pretty silly of them to, since it would be as much as admitting that they'd seen the mess and not taken the time to clean it themselves. And it's not like I'm gonna go up to the assistant pastor at the Christmas Eve service and say, "Hey, Pat, you should have seen the amount of dirt I cleaned up under there! In fact -- you can, because I took digital pictures!"

It just doesn't work that way.

Let's face it, you can get into some pretty interesting messes cleaning a building and maintaining sinks and toilets and what not, but you better find your satisfaction in the act and in the results, because you're not going to get a lot of pats on the back. No one at the next camp fire is going to say, "Hey, Nick, can you tell us that one again about how you a three-foot puddle of dried-up Kool-Aid goop under the pulpit?"

//PaleolithNick//

Next? The Couch in the Staircase

2005-12-20T23:50:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now listening to...	Mood:
Hovering around zero degrees farenheit, plus or minus a couple	Um. Actually. Nothing.	Tired. Vacation wears a guy out.

Lots of stuff done today, but most of them in the spirit of fun, so that's good. Started back into redaing The Lives of Dax, took a little nap, tried to play the first Tomb Raider game, but our playstation hookup desparately needs revamping. Went looking for used exercise bikes (no luck) and a 5-6 input A/V switcher (no luck). But I did find the comic book equivalent to ye ole commons bins like you have in card shops. The Comic Store here in Fairbanks has boxes upon boxes of 25 cent comics. Not much for collecting, but good for reading, so I picked up a handful of cheapies just for nostalgia and kicks. We watched Sean Bean (aka "Boromir") in Sharpe's Rifles this evening. Really fun Napoleonic Wars british piece. Time to check out the others in the series and also audio books, if they're available.

Also caught a 4th season rerun King of the Hill, one of the all time greats: "Beer Can of Desire." In addition to the great "A" plot about Hank's winning a contest that gives him a shot at passing a football through a hole in an overzie beercan, and all the great material that results from that (Bill Dautrieve: "Thank God for Don Meredith" Dale Gribble: "Thank you, God." / Don Meredith: "If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, then we'd all have a merry Christmas), it's got a great "B" plot.

I dunno if anyone out there is a Tennessee Williams expert and can pick up on specifics for me apart from the name "Rose" which I know is a frequent image and name in his plays, after his sister, but maybe it's just a general parody. The "B" plot consists of Bill Dautrieve returning to his ancestral mansion in New Orleans, where his staid aunt Esme, his gay cousin Giaubert, and three younger women, all widows (Lilly, Rose, Violetta) live. The latter three all want to seduce Bill so they can carry on the Dautrieve name as they are childless, he is childless, and Giaubeter will remain childless. The trick is that two only married into the family and one is a cousin of his by blood. As Peggy puts it, "The first two are in play, the third is not. Since you don't know which it is, stay away from all three of them."

It's very funny. Just wish I knew how much was general parody of Tennesee Williams and how much of that plot was lifted strait from something he wrote.

Well, the only other news of the day is that right now we're trying to go with the futon as our bed. We've been sleeping on an air matress in the bedroom, and that's just not working very well for Meghan's back, and they keep leaking or losing air or whatever. We started sleeping on the futon in the living room as a temporary measure and now we're wondering if we want to keep it that way and turn the bedroom into an office/craft/workout room. With the kitchen being realy a full-sized kitchenette, the apartment feels a lot like a studio apt anyway, so it would really be like have a studio apartment with another room.

Regardless, we're sleeping out here until we get a real mattress for the bedroom, and we'll see in that time how we like it.

After all, even if I stay here at UAF for the PhD, we're not going to stay here in this apartment that whole time. This is a duration-of-the-masters-at-the-longest kind of place. :)

//PaleolithNick//

007 v/s Papa Gede

2005-12-19T23:06:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid:	Now Watching:	Mood:
Cold, clear, and a little bit of a turqoise aurora	King of the Hill	Amused, trying make myself feel tired instead, so I'm ready for bed. We'll seee how that goes.

As you can tell, I'm playing around with some new formatting. I'm not sure if I like it yet or not. I wanted to add the mood bit and I also wanted to spiff things up a little. But it might be a little too big and clunky looking. I'll decide once this is actually posted.

We watched Live and Let Die tonight -- the James Bond movie, not the music video for the G 'n' R cover of the theme song. Meghan asked if we hadn't already seen that one, and I admitted we had but that I wanted to see it again since I had just done all that reading on Vodou (aka "voodoo," "vodun") for Anth Rel. She said, "Ah, so this isn't you want to watch it again because it's cool, but you want to watch it again because you want to compare it with what you just read.'"

I tried to deny that, but I don't think it worked.

Besides, as I watched it I was rather comparing it. LOL

Not as if I expeted a lot out of accuracy from a James Bond movie. But, just the same, as I was struck by the the irony I had already suspected. As much as anthropologists like to decry, "the Hollywood version of Vodou," there's really not a lot of Hollywood in the otuward portrayal. The difference really lies in the ascribed intentions and motivations of what's going on. As the anthropologists argue, there's not a lot in actual Vodou that has to do with causing harm to others; the emphasis is on protection and healing. Good point. Nevertheless, the rituals are still pretty much as shown ('cept no killing of humans): snakes, possession, maybe some killing of animals, lots more possession. And the imagery is pretty much as shown, too, though not quite so exlusively focused on the skeletons and snakes. There are also drunk peasants, soldiers, and various other garbs / guises which symbolize the multiple spirits which might possess even a single priest or priestess during the course of any given ceremony.

So, all in all, I'd have to say the Hollywood version of Vodou doesn't look much worse than the Hollywood version of any other religion.

//PaleolithNick//

Flash Cards... F-L-A-S-H C-A-R-D-S

2005-12-19T17:32:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: Crystal clear skies and +9F... moderate auroras are predicted. We'll have to give it a go!
Now watching: MNF... The Packers and the Ravens? Say what? Come on, guys.

First off. As things stand, it looks like two upsets in our fantasy football league in the semifinal play-off games this week. Jason and I are both looking about to get tossed on our heads. Holy cow!!! The finals next week will probably be Meghan and Sunbeam. Who would have predicted??????

Anyway, I got my exams turned in today, and without any particular comment, I must say that I continue to be confused by students' aversion to flash cards. An awful lot of attention goes into test-taking. All these tips like, "if you don't know the answer, mark it and come back at the end if you have time," and "immediately mark off the answers you know for sure are incorrect..." I've graded my share of exams and quizes over the past five yeras or so, and while I don't have stats to back myself up, I am quite comfortably saying that at lesat 75% of the questions I see marked for students to come back to end up with the wrong answer. And while it's not a majority of the time, there are also a preplexing number of times when I see the correct answer as one of those initially marked off as dead wrong. Yet these recommendations are held fast, and my calls to use flash cards, be they general or in specific response to a students request for advice, go un-headed.

I just don't get it.

Well, with the exams turned in it's now officially break. Woo-hoo! I have untill the 17th of January until TA duties start up again (assuming I'm retained for this particular class) and until the 19th before classes start. That's a month off! Crazy, man!!

And that first day back is a Thursday, so the first day of classes all I have is Aikido. LOL

By the way, it's 28 degrees in Baltimore right now. Why are people bundled up?

//PaleolithNick//

Northernmost = No Big Surprise

2005-12-18T00:59:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: Back down to +9F by 22:00 today, so you Indiana folks can relax. Normality has been restored. :)
Now listening to: Thunderstorm CD

So we treated outselves to Denny's tonight, one of two non-fast-food major chain restaurants in town now that Chili's is open, but you can imagine how packed they are on a regular basis. The food at this Denny's ("The Northern-most Denny's in the World") is decent except for deserts and only about 20% more than it would be in the lower 48 -- par for the course. The service is amazingly slow, but I suppose that's pretty much par for the course, too. This brought to mind an interesting list of national or quasi-national brands who have no presence here in Fairbanks, even though you'd think they would since this is the second largest city in the state and the gateway to the arctice in the heart of the golden valley, and all that. Also a small list of chains just now arriving.

For context, here's the established major brands in town:

McDonald's (several)
Taco Bell (several)
Pizza Hut (several)
Napa (several)
Burger King (one)
Domino's (one)
Wal-Mart
Sam's Club
Walden Books (one, and it's super crummy)
Sears (really small)
Safeway
Blockbuster Video
Key Bank
Wells Fargo
Home Depot
Lowe's
Sam Goody (one)
Game Stop (one, and it's pretty small)
Claire's (one, and it's a mess)

Now, bear in mind that this is a college town with two major military installations, and that the population in the immediate area is over 100K not counting the university students or the soldiers who live on base, and that this is the only major city within ~600 miles.

First, the late-comers:

Chili's
Barnes and Noble
Pet Co
Old Navy
Famous Footwear

Now some notable absentees:

K-mart (closed.. last year I think)
Wendy's (both stores closed just a couple months ag0)
Arby's
Best Buy
Staples
Bath and Bodyworks
Bed, Bath, and Beyond
Kohl's
Target
Border's
Auto Zone
TGI Friday's
Outback (or Texas Roadhouse or Ponderosa or any steak place)
Red Lobster (or Long John Silver's or any national seafood chain)
Olive Garden (or Fazoli's or any national Italian food chain)

With Wal-Mart and the forthcoming Barnes & Noble we're pretty well covered personally, but that should help you color in the picture of our town some. As always, its an interesting place that's tough to figure out.

//PaleolithNick//

No, Wait -- This is the Joyest

2005-12-17T00:39:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: +46F (say what????)
Now Listening to: Meghan's light snores. I should be snoring too, but I'm not there quite yet...

Breaking news -- the semester is over!

Woohoo! So here are some brief summaries of how this finals week went:

Report on mock forensics case on Monday went alright. My conclusions were a little weak, but it was kind of a funny case and I had a lot of other things on my mind. As with anything, the report form is great for geting all the detail in for a nice, clean case, but when you try to apply it to something a little less neat (like a colleciton of human bones from an indeterminable number of individuals), it's not quite so clean. It's also aggravating to realize that you can't always figure out even the big topics like just how many individuals there are. I need a DNA lab. :)
Paper for structures on the culture concept in archaeology also went fine. As usual, I thin I probably over-researched it. I think I had a three-page bibliography which is not totally ridiculous, but was probably unnecessary for the type of 10 -- 15 page paper it was. I just can't stop looking up information when I get started. It's like an addiction!
The trip out to Lathrop on Wednesday was a lot of fun. The kids were pretty danged attentive for high school kids with a guest speaker for their last period of the day. I was impressed, and it was a good chance to re-inforce my knowledge. Mrs. Ott, the teacher, put me on the spot with a couple of questions about skeletons she had in the room, and that was pretty cool. It was like a preview of my masters defense or something. ;-) There was one interesting lumbar vert I'd like to get another look at, because there was some some interesting ossification of soft muscle touch on the spinous process as well as what some kind of deformation on the centrum itself. Some of the articulating verts showed signs of posterior compression. It's possible the gent who supplied us with that particular spine had slipped a disc or something, but it may have all just been degenerative joint disease (activity-related). It's hard to tell for sure when the spine you're looking at has all the verts glued together a steel rod running through the middle of it all.
Thursday was mainly consumed with studying because there was a ton of detailed information in this second half of the semester for osteology -- lots of very specific things about joints and pathologies.
This morning, the osteology final was easer than I'd feared it would be. Turns out I over-studied on Thursday, because the level of detail required for the test was nowhere near what I'd been afraid of. (Like, it didn't matter what populations are most impacted by either Marie-Strumpel's disease or Paget's disease, nor were we required to recall that myositis ossificans progressiva is eoncompanied by the shortening of MC1 and MT1 [thumb and big toe bones] and the loss of the intermediate palange on MC5 and MT5 [middle knuckle bone of pinky and pinky toe]. ) Still, probably good for someone getting a masters in bioarchaeology to learn that stuff anyway! :)
Lastly, my take-home exam for religion went fine, though I spent more time on it than I had expected to. The level of work required this term, especially for structures, has really raised my expectations for myself and writing 2--3 page essay answers was tough to feel right about.

OK, well, It's 1am and I should get to bed. We've gotta get up early tomorrow to finish up a few things and start sending out X-Mas packages. Hopefully it will still be in the mid forties tomorrow and windy. I love having a wind again. That may be the weather/nature thing I miss most for some reason, though I haven't the slightest notion why.

I sent out my power point of the facial reconstruction to those who had asked for picutres. I'd be happy to send it to anyone else interested in seeing the process unfold. I can also send you any of my papers to read, if you get really bored or really interested in anthropology over the so-called "Holidays" of Christmas and Christmas Eve we have coming up.

//PaleolithNick//

It's the Joyest!

2005-12-13T16:36:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: Back down to -15F, but it's good the ice sculptures :)
Now on iTunes: Marcy Playground, "Sex and Candy" + Marcy Playground, "Sherry Fraser" + Marcy Playground, "A Cloak of Elvenkind"

Falling a little behind here, but it's only because of finals, I assure you. I got my facial reconstruction done, and I'm actually happy with it. It was a great experience, learning about the forensics side of it as well as the details about the human skull and face, but it was also alot more fun doing the actual sculpture part of it than I thought it would be. It's no Great Reubini or anything like that, but for my first human facial reconstruction I'd say it's pretty decent. If you want to make sure you get a copy of the power point when I finish that later today or tomorrow, just send me an e-mail.

I also got the last paper done for structures, looking at the history and theory of the culture concept in archaeology. Not as itneresting to the lay person proably as some of my other topics (like that funcionalism paper which was a crowd pleaser, no doubt), but still kinda interetsing.

So that brings me up to this point: tomorrow I have the discovery day at Lathrop, and Friday my take-home exam for AnthRel is due, as well as my in-class final for Osteology. Oh -- and I didn't do quite as bad on the lab final as I'd thought. I was prepared to be surprised if I got more than half correct, but I got a 51/60, so I'll take it, even though I should have done better. There were at least four points that were just silly mistakes.

Bah!

OK, tme to go pick Meggie up from work!

"Wishing you," as the man on the radio says, "the joyest of holiday seasons."

//PaleolithNick//

I Felt I Owed it to You

2005-12-09T21:59:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: Clear skies
Now watching: Numbers (ep., "Bones of Contention")

I decided I should do a running commentary on this episode of Numb3rs, given its subject matter. :)

That way you can get a stream of cosciousness rendering of the sort of critique my mind is always offering when anthropology is being portrayed. Not too different I'm sure than when the Maytag man watches a TV show built around some intricacy of appliance repair...

Museum? With those kind of reserach facilities? Hello!
Those equations are from, "quantitative archaeology"?!?! Dude, that's what we use computers for.
Formulas for carbon dating? No one needs to re-research or refine or anything C-14. We've moved on from there. And if she's just trying to date something, she doesn't need to do any paper work. That work has been done. You just plug in your data, folks.
What museum owns their own carbon dating lab? Send it out and send yourself the millions.
Notification of an item's needing carbon dating? Like it's something special that requires extra resources and so must be approved? The only thing it expends is a portion of the sample, and that's really the province of the person doing the study.
The math used by archaeologists? Archaeologists, as a rule, don't use math that much beyond basic stats, algebra, and calculus. Unless you're a systems archaeologist, and Charlie's dad doesn't have any books on systems archaeology, I guarantee it.
Testing something no one knows about? It's pretty dang tough to keep a specimen quiet amog the people you work with. Seems fishy. Maybe someone brought her something on the sly and asked her to test it? Ah, yes, a private find.
OK, they're re-treading Kennwick Man here.
"Any artifacts need to be returned to the Indian tribe they come from." An inaccurate and incorrect summarization of NAGPRA. Among other problems, that act (the 1990 law referred to) only pertains to finds which are on federal or Indian land, or else held by a federally-funded museum. Any so-called "private finds" are outside the domain of NAGRPA.
FORDISC is used to determine race, not age. I'm not aware of any application of it that would reveal a skull as of a particular vintage -- especially since we have absolutely no other samples to work from and any identification program is based off comparisons with known data.
10 thousand year old skull? That's definitely old... See my earlier discussions of Clovis. :)
I want to look at that skull again, but I'm not sure it looked like a Native American skull.
Great grandmother? 10K year-old gramma?
"With these dimensions?" We don't really talk about dimensions of a skull, because that really implies things about its overal size, whereas in reality there are dozens and dozens of individual osteometric measurements which may be taken. Could be called dimensions, but just measurements would be better. And some of the things she's talking about, e.g. "high cheekbones," aren't measurements anyway, but morphological impresisons.
Ancestry is not a scientfic term. Ancestry is one of many terms employed by biological anthropologists in an awkward dance to avoid the word, "race," because of all of its conotations and extra meanings.
That's not how facial reconstruction software works, though it would be nice that way.
Virtually all skulls have characteristics across the board. It would be wholly unremarkable for a Native American skull to show some European characteristics, or vice versa. Nasal sills, inter-orbital breadth, nasal bones, orbital structures, zygomatic sharp, etc... There's variation.
And, yes, a European skull is a white guy. That's not what they mean about race being a purely social construct. What that means is that all the behavioural and cultural stuff is a social construct.
I'm still not sure how this violates NAGPRA.
Why didn't FORDISC pick up that the skull is possible European? The results it returns are in terms of probabilities and discriminant analysis.
What might be violated here is ARPA, depending on if the construction guys pulled it up or the archaeologist. Archaeology without a permit is definitely a federal no-no.
The age of this skull doesn't really pertain to land rights. Not sure why that's even coming up.
There you go, Murray. It's about challenges to the Native American origin myth.
As I think about it, I'm also not sure why one particular tribe is already involved. It's way more complicated than that under NAGPRA. First it's the land, then it's direct descendants, then it's cultural ties by petition... With Kennwick man they only pulled it off at all because there was an alliance of tribes petitioning together.
You're not going to carbon-date that skull because you're not going to destroy a portion of it.
The relevance of an artifact's age for NAGRPA is heavily debated and not a case-cinching thing like they're seeming to treat it. The bigger thing would be if the skull reflected a different ancestry, something other than Bering Strait Asian.
Settlement pattern analysis in California? Wow, no one's ever done that before.
If this is a 10 year-old skull, what population information do they have before?
Unearth your burial grounds? There aren't many times when the Native Americans know about burial grounds and the white folks don't, for better or worse. Pretty commonly, it goes the other way -- again, for better or worse.
Of course, he went bac to the original site. They knew where that was? And didn't assume it? You don't have to be an archaeologist to think of that one.
He's gridding this sucker out? He's putting an awful lot of time into this under-the-radar grave-robbing stuff. You also don't really do that until you know where you're digging. In this case, I'm not sure what he was doing. His grid size was kinda overblown for just surrounding a spot where other bones had been found, but way too small for a whole-site approach. He should have been dropping test units or, heaven forbid, using a soil probe. It also doesn't do any good to be digging for bones where the construction guys already dug, which it at least sorta looked like.
The chief is actually on just as shaky grounds as the archaeologists. If there is a NAGPRA issue, the tribe gets control of the remains collectively. You don't get a blank check for being Native American.
That's an awfuly complete-loking cranium for 10KYA.
What happened to the whole, "It might be European," topic?
How did he die? Start looking at the bones. ;-)
Phooey, we're leaving the good stuff unanswered. LOL
"Bones... They don't make the man." "And they sure don't make the soul." Amen, boys. Amen.

//PaleolithNick//

Awfully Blond

2005-12-09T20:59:00.000-09:00

Just a quick additional note -- I completely forgot to mention on my schedule for the next week or so that on Wednesday, I'll be heading out for an hour and a half to Lathrop to lead a "discovery day" in forensic anthropology for a high school forensics class.

Wish me luck!

//PaleolithNick//

How Many Somethings can Something on the Head of a Something?

2005-12-09T16:31:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: Continues to be unseasonably warm, though not quite so much as the past couple of days
Now on iTunes: Jane's Addiction, "Jane Says" + Thousand Foot Krutch, "Unbelievable"

I'm almost there, I'm almost there, I keep telling myself...

OK, so let's see where we stand. The religion paper is done. Meghan is printing it for me at school and handing it in, after reading through it to make sure it makes sense. The facial reconstruction is coming along. The new clay is doing the trick and I now have what is pretty much a face. It's due on Monday, and I don't think that will be a problem. I will make available upon request at that point a Power Point presentation with pictures of the process, step by step.

I have yet to start the paper for structures, which is due on Tuesday. Hopefuly I can work on that and maybe even finish it this weekend.

The lab final in osteology went really badly today. Some things I drew blanks on and other things I just didn't know. While it didn't help that I had forgotten my BP meds in the morning so was kinda jittery and out of it, the truth is, I really never mastered how to study bone landmarks. I'll be surprised if I got more than half the points, unfortunately. I need to make sure I do well enouugh on the regular final to keep this from totally pulling my grade down...

Oh, yeah, and sometime in there I need to do a take-home final for Religion, too. LOL

I'm almost there, I'm almost there...

//PaleolithNick//

Soapy Lingle

2005-12-07T21:48:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: +41F, yes, +41F -- that's 41 degrees above 0, Farenheit
Now watching: The return of Julian Sark

Just taking a quick five minute break from writing my religion paper, and wanted mainly to call attention to how warm it is here today. Far warmer than in Alexandria, as my dad pointed out to me in an e-mail earlier. That's probably not going to happen very often. :)

I wonder if this means the caribou will come back early.

Not that I saw caribou around here anyway, but, hey.

OK, I should get back to the paper. I wrote myself a slap-bang 8-page conclusion and a not-too-bad intro, so now I just need to fill in about 11 pages of middle part.

Just a teaser, here's what I have at this very rough stage for my final concluding remarks:

Ironically, this moves a ritual intended largely to heal social fractures from its position of re-integrating the wayward individual into society-at-large to a new position of re-uniting individuals with a society and a past which is escaping them in the face of a society which is not welcoming them. The spiritual aspects of the ritual take on almost secondary importance in light of the more practical need for relief for a growing cultural minority seeking to assert their identity by using the mesa as a tableau for their social anxiety. Overcome by an imbalance of the curandero side, they must take up a position with the healer in the central zone, lifting up the ganadero side as if to say, “See, here, this too is our life.” By initiating conflict between the two, they can use the left to push back the right and restore health by restoring the balance of opposites.

Now to lay the groundwork that will make that paragraph make sense...

//PaleolithNick//

In theViolent Course of Silence

2005-12-07T08:49:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: +15F at drive-in, dark except for some X-mas light snowflakes across the way
Now on iTunes: Cranberries, "Zombie" + Crosy Stills & Nash, "Southern Cross"

Sometimes don't we all wish we could re-write Cranberries' lyrics?

I need to head down to the osteology lab here in a minute to put some features on my skull... well, not my skull... Eddy's skull... which is to say Tammy's skull... OK, this is getting confusing...

At any rate, I thought I should post a quick update to let you know that we're more or less over the virus now. Meghan was considerably better yesterday, and I was lagging behind, but today we're both pretty much there. Still a little drained, a bit of a lingering cough (for me) or throat thing (for her), but more your run-of-the-mill, "cold" kind of thing rather than, "wow am I sick."

I'll start looking at the car today. There are no symptoms at all other than the check engine light, so I'm hoping it's just one of those electrical glitches that is easy to reset. Now that I'm not so sick and it's considerably warmer out, I can mess around with that a little later on.

Alright, there's much more to talk about probably, but I really do need to go work on my face. Well, not my face...

//PaleolithNick//

Man, but it Pours

2005-12-05T20:03:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: -6F, which still feels cold since we're sick
Now Listening to: Sunbeam pouncing on a back-scratcher

Just a quick update. The temporary fix on Meghan's glasses was more temporary than we thought. Didn't last through more than an hour of the work morning. Fell apart right there on her face. Since we were sick and she was basically sightless we took the afternoon off and went hunting for eye exams, found them incredibly expensive, so went to this little eye care place that Meghan had read on-line did repairs. They did in fact do repairs, and were able to solder her glasses for only $25. Whew!

At the end of the day, returning from more errands, we were almost home when the Serve Engine Soon light came on in the Blazer.

Here we go again...

//PaleolithNick//

It Never Rains in Southern California

2005-12-04T22:31:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: -30F (up from -36F)
Now Watching: Woody Hoyt be a dumb butt

But, girl, don't they warn ya
It pours... Man, it pours

We're starting to feel better at this point, more functional at least, but this morning we were sick enough we didn't go into church. Partially because of how we felt and paritally because we don't want to spread this thing. Things seem to be subsiding finally, but most of the day we were struggling through chest congestion and throbbing heads.

As if that wasn't enough, Meggie's glasses broke today. The bridge simply came off one side of the rims. We tried a metal-bonding epoxy, but that didn't seem to hold very well even after the two hours' curing time. Left a lot of bending and so seemed likely to break off afte a couple hours. Plus, they were flexing all out of position -- a major headache (literally) with astigmatic lenses. So we did a little research -- too little, I suppose -- and decided that we should be able to solder the piece. Went out to Wal-Mart, got a soldering kit, came home, and... Well, I'm still not sure what I was doing wrong, but mainly I succeeded in evaporating the solder wire and by the time a few drops of liquid metal actually dropped down onto the break, I saw that I was melting the actual glasses frame and greating heat bubbles in the corner of the lens.

On the up side, the solder dirppings seemed to leave larger facets. So I gave another shot to the metal bonding epoxy. I painted it on pretty carefully, let it sit for about half an hour, and the applied a second coat. After a couple of hours, it seemed to have bonded much better this time. It's a temporary fix, obviously, but at least it will give her a little while's use of her eyes. Time to try the Wal-Mart Vision Center, I guess.

So that's how we spent our day. :)

//PaleolithNick//

p.s., The Debate is Over

2005-12-04T01:50:00.000-09:00

I almost forgot: it's settled:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1201_051201_archaeopteryx.html

//PaleolithNick//

I'm not Here to Feathers Ruffle

2005-12-04T01:30:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: -31F (for you celcius people, that equals danged cold)
Now on iTunes: Tom Petty, "Born in Chicago (Live from the Soundstage)" + Enimem, "When I'm Gone" + Syd Barrett, "Effervescing Elephant"

Whatever we do end up thinking about life in Alaska, and I suspect there will be a lot on the positive side of the balance sheet, it's certainly not been the health miracle for us that getting out of Indiana usually leads to. We're not necessraily worse off, but we're not necessraily better off either. Right now we've got something viral, but hopefully minor and not the strep throat that our church was graced with last week.

So project updates... I'm getting there, but had some major set backs on the facial reconstruction. Turns out the clay I got was air dry, so it's shrivelling up on me and cracking. Alysa, fellow anthro masters student and 100x TA, recommended spraying the clay down with water and keeping it covered when I have to leave it over night, and Meghan's mom echoed that recommendation. Probaby a great idea, but I'm nervous about the possibility of dislodging the tissue depth markers glued to the skull during the process of spraying or, more likely, covering and un-covering. So we went to Jo-Ann's and shelled out the cash for some more clay. (Amazing how expensive that stuff is when you actually need it in quantity.)

Here's the schedule I'm looking at...

Monday, 5 December -- Presentation on facial reconstruction
Thursday, 8 December -- Research paper for AnthRel due
Thursday, 8 December -- Last discussion group of the semester, evaluations given out
Friday, 9 December -- Lab final (bones and bone landmarks) for Osteology
Monday, 12 December -- Facial reconstruction project due for Osteology
Tuesday, 13 December -- Individual review session for 100x
Wednesday, 14 December -- Osteology final
Wednesday, 14 December -- Help administer 100x final
Thursday, 15 December -- Final paper due for Structures
Friday, 16 December -- Take-home final due for Religion
Monday, 19 December -- Final grades due for 100x

And I still need to keep working on dental stuff on the side as much as I can during all that. (LOL)

By the way -- for those who have asked or wondered quietly to themselves, I still don't know for sure what's going on with my potential masters project. I know some details but don't really want to talk about it too much publically until I know whether or not I'm definitely involved and know the outlines of the project. The professor whose overall project this would be a part of is waiting on getting some more information from the international side of things before she gives me the big run down. It sounds pretty positive, but that's about as much as I can say about that.

In general, it would be in the arena -- and maybe I already said this; I don't remember for sure -- of using dental morphology (shape and formation characteristics of teeth) to examine population heterogeneity in a prehistoric site.

The ironic thing is, even though I only happened into this dental arena because it was available and among the skills I'm being trained in and things in which I'm interested, I already have a possible PhD scope project running through my mind now making use of similar techniques on another scale and in another area. (LOL) We'll have to see how that goes.

And, oh yes, kudos to anyone who can tell me what I am here to do if I'm not here to feathers ruffle. :)

G'night, all.

//PaleolithNick//

The Proof is in the Footing

2005-12-01T10:12:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: Hovering around zero, and then sun isn't even up yet (~10:15am)
Now on iTunes: Ben Folds Five, "Your Redneck Past" + Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, "Minnie the Moocher" + Blind Melon, "No Rain"

This morning a release from Berkley came across my desk (sounds more important than, "got forwarded to me in e-mail) which elaborates some science behind discrediting the foot print referenced yesterday in this very same blog.

Among highlights from the release is a granular examination of magnetic orientation in the ostensible print. Here's that choice section: ...Feinberg found that each individual grain in the rock is magnetized in the same direction, meaning that the rock has not been broken up and reformed since it was deposited. This makes extremely unlikely the possibility that the original ash had been weathered into sand that early humans walked through before the sand was welded into rock again.
Even so, there's still a bit of chicken and egg debate, as there always is in these dating matters. Regarding the prints, the release goes on: "They're scattered all over, with no more than two or three in a straight line," which would be expected if someone had walked through the ash, Renne said. If the depressions were footprints, they could not have been made by modern humans, he noted, since even in Africa, Homosapiens did not appear until about 160,000 years ago. Given the age of the volcanic rock and lacking other evidence of early human ancestors in the Americas 1.3 million years ago, the researchers wrote in their
paper, "we consider such a possibility to be extremely remote."

There's nothing really wrong with that paragraph, providing it's not taken or meant in a propositional way. Morphology really does get the short shrift these days, as anthropologists struggle (motivated largely by low self esteem after being beat up in the press by the DNA guys) to prove how scientific they are. (Of course, also harkening back to the New Archaeology, but we'll leave that alone for right now.) There seems to be a hierarchy developing along these lines: (1) existing knowledge / theory, (2) the results of the chosen scientific tool, (3) the morphology or formal characteristics.

As an anthropologist from this university said just the other day about some hominin crania, "OK, spend your time measuring angles of foreheads and agruing over what angle is 0 and what angle is 180, or just put those skulls on the table and look at them and realize that they all look the same."

I would certainly be inclined to reject claims made purely on morphological grounds, but, at the same time, I am uncomfortable with this attitude that puts forth what amounts to these propositions:

1. It's not a footprint, because humans weren't in Mexico that early.
2. It's not a human footprint, because even in Africa there weren't modern humans that early.

Other propositions would seem equally valid on that basis:

1. The dating system is suffering from interference, because it's reporting too early a date for a human footprint.
2. Humans were in Mexico earlier than previously thought.
3. Modern humans evolved elsewhere than Africa.
4. Modern humans evolved earlier than thought in Africa.

Et cetera.

Sometimes I think there's a basic misapprehension of the scientific method's requirement for hypothesis formation. A hypothesis is still stupposed to be based on observations, so some good ol' inductive work is perfectly fine; all tests don't have to start as deductions from previously established theory or law. Moreover, the purpose of further investigation or experimentation is then to test the hypothesis. So it should always be open to being wrong...

As Willey and Phillips said of their own extensive theoretical framework for archaeology -- a theory should never be taken as the final word. Further testing and experimentation should always be done, and will inevitably produce new and different reuslts with new and different data. Therefore, the theory is just the operational structure to advance knowledge from the present condition to its next step.

All that said, the magnetic data seems compelling, though I'm not personally very familiar with the method.

//PaleolithNick//

Clovis be Cherished Forever

2005-11-30T15:10:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: Above zero, even though it's evening already (~ 3pm)
Now on iTunes: Nothing. What? Yes, I'm serious.

I don't have time really right about it, and there's obviously a lot involved, but... please... tell me why on earth we're so stubbornly attached to this whole Bering Strait --> Clovis scenario that the burden of proof is always demanded from whatever possible threatens it???

Click on the picture below to read the story, but basically the projected age of this print (which has toes, if you'll notice) has called into question whether it's actually a footprint or something created by the rumbling of machines. Since when is that a question that paleoanthropologists even entertain?

//PaleolithNick//

Can't wait for IE 7

2005-11-29T20:40:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: +3F and Light Snow
Now watching: NCIS

Firefox is really starting to get on my nerves lately. I've previously complained about the problem working with forms, which has seemed to get worse lately, but other problems have started cropping up, most notably with the integrated search box. Today when I launched Firefox, I noticed that the search box no longer contaned any search engines. It was just a looking glass. When I click on it, the only item in the drop down is Add More Engines... It's pretty annoying to have to suddenly rebuild my browser. I've not updated or uninstalled anything recently which should impact that.

Now, it's still better than current versions of IE -- and still more broadly functional than Opera since Opera doesn't chaw non-standard code very well, but I'm looking forward to that next launch of IE which will certainly feature tabbed browsing and hopefuly some ideas ripped off of great extensions available for firefox...

//PaleolithNick//

The Bendy-ness of Extension Cords

2005-11-29T15:14:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: Drive-in temp, -4F; lunch-time temp, +1F -- Heat wave conditions!
Now on iTunes: ApologetiX, "Look Yourself" + ApologetiX, "Real Sin Savior"

Today was a big relief because the temperature came up to a point where the extension cord for our engine pre-heaters were flexible again and no longer frozen into all the bends and twists and turns previously assumed. Sounds like a funny thing to be concerned about, but it was getting the point where it felt like the cord was going to snap if I wasn't careful when I dettached it. And now the plug's prings don't even start to get frozen to the metal in the outlets.

Whew! That's a load off!

//PaleolithNick//

Fortune Telling... because really, that's our only option

2005-11-28T20:23:00.001-09:00

Weather Factoid: Up to 66F in the apartment since I jacked the thermostat up to 75 for a few minutes to force the baseboard oil heat to crank
Now watching: Some twisted commercial for fruit snacks featuring demented, red-neck claymation fuits

Got one of those stereotypical archaeoogy stories in my e-mail which always raises justifiable eyebrows. I'm sure it makes more sense in its full academic glory (right? right?), and I wish I could find a picture of this particular piece, but here are some exerpts to give you an idea...

A Chinese archaeologist said Wednesday that a 4,500-year-old jade tortoise and an oblong jade article discovered in east China's Anhui Province were China's earliest fortune-telling instruments found so far . . . "They were obviously not objects used in daily life, nor adornment, but instruments used in religious activities," said Gu. He said the holes between the back and belly shells of the jade tortoise show that something might be put inside. And there should have been strings threading through the holes . . . Archaeologists inferred that the jade tortoise is an ancient instrument used to practise divination ahead of important activities.

Clear here for the actual story.

A lot of good things happened to archaeology outside of western Europe in the late 1950's and 1960's with development of the New Archaeology. The admittance and adaptation of functionalist theory allowed archaeologists to start moving past simple descriptions of artistic or technological traditions and the compilation of typological charts into explorations of the actual function of artifacts. In other words, to the traditional quesitons of, "What does it look like?" and "How was it made?" was added the revolutionary question, "How was it used?"

Unfortunately, there's a downside to that, too. For one thing, it quickly be unaccpetable to not propose a theory about an object's use. This lead right into the old joke (distressingly not always a joke), "When we don't know what something is, we say it was a ritual object."

For another, the ascription of function to artifacts can be a very time consuming and arduous process. This means that fiarly frequently the process has been short-cut in practice to a simple matter of labeling based on the type of overly simplistic formal analysis from which the New (processual) Archaeology was ostensibly fleeing. Hence, the profusion of "corn poppers" and "water dippers" in Latin American assemblages. Both terms are used for the same object, sometimes by the same scholars, and rarely with a reason other than a need to apply a functional label to the artifact paired with a general physical appearance compatible with things that might pop corn or dip for water.

And, for a third, as shown in the sort work of which the article that started all this appears to be a part, virtually all functional analysis must be, in the end, at least partly by analogy or the introduction of the scholar's imagination. The probem is this opens up the analysis of archaeological material to speculation and uncorroborated, even corrorobortable, propositions. The material remains of a culture are left open to interpretation not on the basis of rigorous middle range analysis but on the basis of perceived context -- what fits with the scheme and isn't disproven by the evidence.

And that's just crummy.

//PaleolithNick//

Down the Stretch

2005-11-28T13:09:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: -33F and Clear
Now on iTunes: Pulp, "Common People" + Dead or Alive, "You Spin Me 'Round"

It's amazing how less slippery ice is around that -30F mark. It's tough to even get it slippery with a lot of friction and under-body heat from cars on roads. An interesting side benefit, I suppose.

We've had temps down in that neighborhood for a couple of days now, and the apartment's not keeping up fantastically, but 62 -- 65F is still considerably warmer than the temperature outside, so I won't complain! Sunbeam's taken to trying to get as high in the apartment as she possibly can to find warmth gathered just beneath the ceiling if possible.

Well, I can't take much more time to write now, since I'm looking in the teeth of term projects, and while I think their central incisors exhibit some intersting shoveling morphology, I still don't think I want to spend too much time just examining them. Just to remind everyone where I'm at, I have my facial construction to start preparing now that I've researched the basic techniques, and I'll need to present on that next Monday. I have a term paper for Structures, which hopefully I'll get nailed down in our class today. For religion I have a term paper and a take-home final. I have a good start on the research for that paper, and hpoe to make use of my time this week to finish that and maybe get the bibliography typed up and basic document format established (the long part). That's about it at this point, aside from continued work on the side honing my skills and background with teeth.

On that account, there's still no confirmation on the possible project preiously alluded to. I hope my BA outside the field doesn't count against my consideration. I know the project supervisor is pretty excited to get this work done because she lost a previous student on it to a nervous breakdown, so perhaps she's being super-cautious in her selection of that student's replacement.

OK, I'd better get to it now... ...and stop hanging my heads over the Sluggin' Spider Monkey's shameful performance this weekend in our Fantasy Football league. Tom Brady got negative points for crying out loud????? Maybe the Edge will pull off a 35 -- 45 point performance in tonight's MNF game. LOL

//PaleolithNick//

Awash in Natural Daylight

2005-11-25T22:21:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: The snow hats on our mailboxes are 7 -- 9 inches tall now.
Now listening to: Meghan in the kitchenette making pizza cups for a late supper.

You ever had one of those days when your femoral pelvic joint (i.e. hip) is killing you?

Well, that's not my femur, so don't worry, but it is hurting. Today we went over to Ant Gaye and Uncle Floyd's property to go on a hike through the snow. It was really beautiful out and Reuben took us down a great trail to the paintball field he and his friends have been setting up in their wooded acreage. -4F isn't too terribly cold once you're acclimated, but it's still too cold to be tromping through the deep stuff in just jeans. By the time we were heading back, my thighs were basically numb and my quads were so tight from the cold that I was walking pretty stiff-legged on an uneven and at-times slippery trail. Jammed up my right knee a little (where the meniscus was worn out a year and a half or so ago) but mainly mesed up my hip a little. I thought it was doing fine at this point but we ran out to Fred's for a few things and I realized it was still aching pretty badly. I'll have to take it easy for a couple days.

Time to break down and buy long johns and snow pants, I guess. :)

So I'm getting ahead of myself aren't I? That's today, and I never told the story of yesterday...

We got out to Aunt Gaye and Uncle Floyd's house without any problem, and hung around with them for a little while before heading down the street a little ways to the church basement in which we were going to hold Thanksgiving since too many people were going to show up for the Wright Homestead to be comfortable.

And that's when my gas tank went from a little over 1/4 to the E. Which, despite Kermit's hopefulness in that biplane many years ago, does not stand for, "Enough."

For those of you who are familiar with the Fairbanks area, I was at the Two Rivers Nazarene church at 14.8 mile on Chena Hot Springs Road and the Ten Mile Mercantile was out of gas.

For those who are not familiar with the area, that means we were probably ~20 miles from the nearest gasoline in a V-6 4WD Blazer with its meter reading Empty. And it was -24F out and snowing.

Trusting to the Alaskan way, I asked Uncle Floyd if he by any chance had a can of gas. But unfortunately the only thing he had was a can of chainsaw gas -- which, if you're not aware, is gasoline mixed with oil. Not very good for a car's engine, and it was stink like heck while it was being burned, but, just the same, it would be worth taking in the Blazer (aka, "Mr. Greentruck") in case we ran out.

Not very comforting to a worry wart like me, especially since the can might not itself be enough to get us back to town. I was fretting for quite a while until I finally remembered our Progressive Auto roadside assistance plan includes gas! Whew!

It was a couple hours, but we hadn't even gotten to the Thanksgiving dinner part yet, so that was fine...

Anyway, it's 11pm now and time to eat supper. I'll let Meggie fill you all in on the rest of the dinner and stuff in her 'blog.

//PaleolithNick//

Thanksgiving

2005-11-24T10:38:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: Looking out at snow, mist, falling snow, and dim grey skies. It was ~ -20F overnight and it's not much warmer right now.
Now watchng: The Falcons embarass the Lions, who don't seem to realize that they should feel great shame at this point

I almost made it through without hearing the infamous, "Turkey Day" appelation, but at 5pm yesterday when I was picking Meghan up from her office someone wished us a happy turkey day, and then the cashier at Wal-Mart at 11:45pm last night was confused why we were buying cereal when, "Tomorrow's Turkey day!" Oh well, nearly made it through . . .

So, things I'm thankful for...

Meghan both loves and excels in her job. I love seeing her self-confidence sky-rocket and seeing her feeling useful and helpful all the time!
All of my classes have been very interesting and helpful in my academic progress, be it by showing me a way I would love to pursue anthropology (osteology) or confirming for me a way I don't want to pursue anthropology (cultural)!
A few weeks ago we saw a fox running around the road coming back from church in the evening or late afternoon. It wasn't too terribly scared, so we got to watch it for a while. Very cool!
Last weekend when we were cleaning the church we heard a couple of moose calling back and forth to each other. Also very cool!
Somewhere in there Tina, the music leader / intern at church for this semster, saw a fox doing battle with a raven who was making an aerial attack on it. We didn't see it, but it's still cool!
The snow is certainly very pretty, especially when it's totally dark out and the moon or stars are shining.
Our apartment keeps up very well with the negative temperatures, especially after Meghan figured out that one of the bedroom windows wasn't as shut as we thought it was.

I'll try to post some more things later, but I thought this would be a great opportunity to try and focus myself on the positive parts of our experience so far. Now I need to go get ready to leave for Aunt Gaye's house for Thanksgiving!

//PaleolithNick//

Kerman's Dwarf: A 1K Year-old Cabbage Patch

2005-11-23T10:54:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: Flurries and cold, with a cottony grey sky
Now on iTunes: Trapt, "Headstrong" + Living Colour, "Should I Stay or Should I Go"

A couple months back there was a discovery of what was thought to be a thousand-year-old, mummified dwarf in Iran. Medical forensics and archaeologists set the age of the dwarf at 12 -- 18, leading to some really crazy speculation about about an ancient city of dwraves. This has now all been recinded, because new anthroplogists have determined that the deceased was a premie , mummified but probably under natural conditions.

I wish I'd seen the story before the correction, because when I look at the pictures now I sure can't understand why you would find a 25cm mummy that looked like the below and age it as a teenaged dwarf before thinking it might be an infant!

Oh well...

//PaleolithNick//

This blog is literally on fire!

2005-11-23T08:22:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: We're finally up to several inches of snow; it's starting to look like Alaska. :)
Now on iTunes: Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Simple Man (Original)" + Everlast, "Blinded by the Sun"

So last night we were innocently watching the Lightning v/s the Flyers on OLN when Brian Engblom (normally a pretty decent announcer, though I miss Gary Thorne and Bill Clement [in the booth, since OLN does have him still in the studio]) said, "In today's NHL it's difficult for defenders to literally tie a man up."

I mean, I know OLN shows a lot of rodeo-type stuff, but I can't imagine a time when it would have been easy for NHL defenders to literally a tie a man up on the ice.

That would definitely be letting the players decide the game!

Did you ever notice that Ronnie VanZant's vocals on some songs have a quality to them very similar to Steve Miller's?

Got my paper for funcitonalism and my presentation on Willey & Phillips done yesterday, so that's a big relief. The paper was tough since I'm struggling so much to get my brain in gear, but it was also interesting to look deeply enough into it to see a lot more of the commonality between figures who are so often portrayed polarized (Durkheim, Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown) and also to see that way that some lesser-known names did some amazing things with the theory, beyond what the major public faces accomplished (Firth, Fortes), and to see the way that functionalism revolutionized archaeology by allowing the meaning of archaeological evidence to be explored and laying the foundations for comparative work like ethnoarchaeology.

Do you know how distrubing it would be to discover that Eminem, not Martika, was the real break-out star from Kids, Inc.? I mean, not that I have or he is, but it's something to think about it, when you're bored...

//PaleolithNick//

Tyrrany of the Indistinct

2005-11-20T21:16:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: -14F with a good amount of snow on the ground
Now watching: Spiderman cartoon re-runs on Jetix (pronounce, "Jet-ex")

Been working hard on the paper for structures, and my brain is fogging up on me. 'Course, it never totally got clicking today. I don't necesarily mind the actual darkness, but the sun is so low and the clouds so thick right now that we've had a week of basically dim grey skies, even when the sun *is* up. That, I'm having a hard time with. My body's dragging along, feeling like it's the end of the day all day and my brain never quite clicks on, like it's still in a waking-up-slowly stupor.

I'm sure most of it is physically, from the lack of sun rays and outside time. We're hoping that maybe getting some plants and full=spectru lighting soon will help with that. I hear there are a couple of nutritional supplements, too, but I'd want to know a lot more about them before I hopped on their bandwagon.

Part of it also I think is this drive to classify that I've already talked about in regards to myself. Grey skies are just too indistinct. All the detail is blurred within them, and they sort of soften all the detail around, turning everything into this cheese-cloth smear of reality.

Hopefully I can figure out how to get my mind around that, too...

By the way, in case you haven't figured it out yet, most of these 'blog titles are links to various places. Usually it's some random link associated with the topic. Sometimes, like today, it's just plain random.

See what you miss when you don't wiggle your mouse all over the place. :)

//PaleolithNick//

Step into the Teeth

2005-11-19T10:11:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: They say the sun has risen, but it looks like a dark grey twilight still.
Now Listening to: The sounds of Meghan on the phone and bacon in the microwave.

Not a lot new to say since I'm mostly working right now on a paper for Structures, a presentation on Gordon Willey for Structures, a major research paper for Religion, and the background for my facial reconstruction in osteology. Sort of a grad school holding pattern. :)

But, I have taken some baby steps forward on the afore-mentioned possible research project. Still need to work things out with the supervising researcher from another institution, but I met with Dr. Irish yesterday and he gave me some more background details and we talked about setting up an independent study in dental morphology for the spring term. We're still working on the details of that. But I'm going to be spending the rest of this term doing some extra-curricular time with buckets o' teeth in the osteo lab refining my skills and techniques.

OK, the bacon got burnt, so I'd better go eat it to get rid of the burny smell in the apartment. :)

//PaleolithNick//

Word to the Wise

2005-11-16T21:13:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: +9F and Snowing since ~15:30.

By the way, in case you want your butt royally kicked each week by TV that's better than anything in the movies, make sure you're catching Lost and Invasion on ABC Wednesdays. Most gripping, suspenseful, and interesting two hours of television in a long time.

Only thing that would make it better was if they brought back John Doe for the lead-in hour. ;-)

/submitted by e-mail/

"...but I'm not going to do dental."

2005-11-16T14:42:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: When it's grey out, there's really no such thing as sunrise.
Now on iTunes: Marcy Playground, "Sherry Frasier" + Marcy Playground, "Gone Crazy"

So my program advisor is Dr. Joel Irish, a dental anthropologist (among other things). When I first approached him about moving in the direciton of bioarchaeology, he welcomed me to the first step, and said all that was left was to become a physical anthropologist and after that a dental anthropologist, and then I would be at the pinacle. (There's somethign tongue-in-cheek about that, but also something very serious and even sorta legit, as I'll explain in a bit.) I scoffed internally and thought to myself, "Ou me! May it never be!" After all, I have such a strong gag reflex that even thinking about my own hands in the skeletal remains of someone else's mouth makes me almost choke.

But naturally, the story wasn't over...

I don't want to burn the soup before it's even in the pot, but I got a pretty strong lead on a possible masters research project today.

Guess what?

It would be studying dental morphology at a site in middle formative Mexico.

So in that spirit, I thought I should let you all know that there really is a lot of interesting and cool stuff you can do with prehistoric teeth. Teeth are harder than bone, so they survive longer in the archaeologica record. Teeth also don't undergo the same remodelling process as the rest of bone, which sacrifices a few types of information, but reveals just as much or more because it means that wear, trauma, and pathology remain almost entirely unrepaired by natural means -- and so are detectable even more than they are in bone, which has the ability to heal, resorb, or desposit, masking over all sorts of potentially useful markers.

As illustrations, I thought I would point you to some articles written by Dr. Irish to give you a taste of some of the kind of work I might get into if I were, in fact, to go in that direction for my upcoing research. Here's an article by Dr. Irish about possible tooth replacement in Egypt ~5.5KYA in the terminal neolithic period. There's only an abstract available on-line for pieces in the AJPA, but here's a piece he did on affinity and human colonization and another about prehistoric diet. If you have access to JSTOR or similar electronic databases / repositities, you might also look at these, though even the titles help you get an idea of what's being studied:

Neolithic Tooth Replacement in Two Disturbed Burials from Southern Egypt
JD Irish, M Kobusiewicz, R Schild, F Wendorf
(also, with a follow up.)

[CITATION] A synthesis of dental evolution in the higher primates: the origins of extant hominid dentition
JD Irish - 1984 - Mankato State University

And so forth; there's obviously a lot more that he's done and is being done in the field. For instance, my instructor for Osteology and Bioarchaeology, Tammy Greene, PhD candidate, did her thesis research on dental anthropology as an indicator of diet change and by way of that class interaction and social change in pre-dynastic Egypt.

So, I don't think I want to get myself locked into only looking at teeth, but Dr. Irish himself does other work; it's just that teeth are his specialty. And it could be interesting, should this research opportunity pan out.

//PaleolithNick//

Ethnography of a Bus Hut (3)

2005-11-16T08:31:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: Even people from here can't tell the difference between an aurora and the lighter sky peaking through thick clouds before dawn
Now on iTunes: Ben Folds Five, "Army" + Our Lady Peace, "Superman's Dead"

I guess a lot of folks at UAF have never ridden a school bus or rout bus, because the whole process of getting on and off the bus seems to have them stymied. For instance, the basic principles of boarding a bus with a lot of people as a group is that you fill the bus from the back. But the folks on the campus shuttle always start in the front. And not only that but when there's only one person in a row of seats, they sit on the aisle with their bags and other junk out in that same aisle. In other words, the more people are getting on the bus, the longer the gauntlet the people at the end of the line have to pass through schlepping their own baggage.

Moreover, despite the already documented tendency they have toward isolating themselves, when I get on the bus early in line and choose to sit towrads the back myself so others don't need to trip over me, I get the strangets looks like, "What are you -- antisocial?"

//PaleolithNick//

Arguing from Possibility

2005-11-15T10:27:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: Thermometer said it was -4F this morning, but it felt like -18F for some reason
Now on iTunes: Wynton Marsalsis, "Blue Interlude" + Mudvayne, "Not Falling"

The van Schaik book is pretty disappointingly poor. I won't bore you with my whole presentation outline, but here's the juicy part:

Critique…

Uses possibilities as points of evidence ("what if we just haven't yet detected...?" or "what if when the orangutans mean... when they...?")
Posses questions which canot be answered, only elaborated on by further questions, and then uses the inability to answer as if proof of behavioural complexity (why build nests?)
Only lip service given to other animals' shared characteristics with great apes
Language determines outcome sof observations ("commuters," for instance)
Assumes that culture exists, that culture is some sort of entity, and that culture itself has value
Argues from its conclusion, hoping to show the nobility of the great apes
Mis-use of evolutionary scheme (assumption that all behaviours are advantageous, thinks of evolution as progress rather than survival, does not consider human behaviour as "in the wild")
Uses reductive and minimalist definitions (whatever is simple enough to meet the needs)\
Weak-form argumentation ("cannot demonstrate... but is consistent...", "arbitrary sounds")
Agency and decision-making power are granted to individual animals, to Evolution, and to Mother Nature
The book has too many goals: resolving "the Orangutan paradox," promoting conservation aims, and tacking on a little bit about human evolution.

On a totally different topic, my class load for the spring will probably be Research Design and Development, Bioarchaeology, Archaeology Theory and Method, and auditing Beginning Aikido to structure some physical activity in my day to help combat the winter gloom. :)

//PaleolithNick//

Only on the Inside

2005-11-13T19:36:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: Clear, bright blue skies for most of the day. While the sun was up for about 5 hours, anyway.
Now... watching: The end of Sunday Night Football (boo-hiss Steelers, boo-hiss Browns)

Only in Alaska would we have a huge mess in our apartment complex because ravens with four-foot wingspans were literally lifting trashbags out of the dumptster and dropping them to the ground so they could rip them open and pick through for the juicy stuff.

//PaleolithNick//

Pursuit of Knowledge (aka, "Three buses and some peanuts")

2005-11-12T11:59:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: So -10F is now jacket weather. I'm a mutant.
Now on iTunes (burned CD): Apologetix, "All the Stalls Stink" + Beck, "Where It's At"

So yesterday afternoon I needed to stop by the library really quick before heading home to do some cleaning. I needed to pick up Carol van Schaik's Among Orangutans to read and present on for Structures on Tuesday. Should've started earlier, but that assignment kinda got lost amidst others in my planning.

At any rate, Dr. Gray had printed out the library catalog pages for us on the books we need to do, I grabbed mine and headed over to Rasmusson. As I got on the elevator for the 6th floor, I looked down at realized that the catalog page said the book was in UAFBIOSCI, not RASMUSSON. I had a little bit of a sinking feeling, but so far every book I'd run into which was in the Bio Sciences library was also in the main collection, so I had some hope.

Got out on the 6th floor and realized that, the QL section was on the 5th floor not the 6th like all the other books I ever look at. So I went down and looked, and, sure enough, they didn't have the book.

So it was off to the Natural Sciences building. I caught a Blue bus in front of Eielson only to find out from the driver that I should have been on Gold, but I toughed it out and rode the longer route to Nat' Sci'. Combed the building. No library.

I finally went to talk to the secretary of the biochemistery department and found out that the Bio Sci library is in the Arctic Health building. So, I caught a Gold bus over to Irving, walked to Arctic Health, and foudn the library. Finally! I walked past the new books and periodicals to where the Q section of books were. It ended at QH. So I went up the ladder. Of course, the books resumed on the other end of the catwalk, not above where they stopped. So I went around, foudn the section.

No Among Orangutans. I thought maybe it had been checked out, so I looked again in the catalog. Nope, it was still in. So I thought maybe someone in the library was browsing through it. Of course not. No one had *any* books out.

So I went back to the section and shelf-read throughout all the Q's. Still no book. Maybe it was being rebound or repaired? Read by a librarian? I went to ask.

"Excuse, this book shows as in but I can't find it anywhere in its section, is there somewhere else it might be?"

"What year is it?"

"2004." I assumed she meant the book, not the date.

She did. "Oh, that's in new books then."

Of course it was! And sure enough, it was there.

All that was left was to wait fifteen minutes for another Gold bus to take me to the car, but at least that gave me a chance to to eat my honey roasted peanutes. All in all, it was 1.5 hours to track down that book.

I hope it's good. :)

//PaleolithNick//

Informed Consent

2005-11-10T21:35:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: 15F isn't as warm when you're running around Signer's Hall looking for a way in!
Now Watching: CSI TOS ;-)

One of the interesting ethical issues that plagues ethnographic anthropology is the issue of informed consent . We highlighted this today in 100x while talking about ethnography techniques and ethics. We highlighted the topic by discussing Napolena Chagnon and Darkness in El Dorado controversy. (Click here to see the book which started it all. Click here and here to read about the AAA's response.)

The basic issue is this: the AAA has adopted a strong stance on informed consent. Anthropologists are required by the adopted code of ethics to enter into a study openly and honestly, making sure the people whom they study are aware properly aware of what is going on. Sounds good.

But then we looked a little bit at Jean Briggs' work (see here). She did not practice informed consent in her first trip to the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic. Much to her own shame, she lied to the folks she was going to live with and study. She was there intending to study shamanism, but knew it was a difficult topic for them and so gave them another reason for her presence. Sounds bad.

What makes the issue difficult is that, as students in each of my three discussion sections pointed out today, there's a reason ethnographers might be tempted to conceal the reason for the study: because revealing it might change what is being invetsigated. Ever had a video camrea turned on you? Or had someone come by to observe and perhaps evaluate your work? It certainly has an impact doesn't it?

Imagine an anthropologist coming up to you and saying, "Can I come live with your family for three to six months? I'm here to study abuse." Or telling a Christian family, "May I stay with your family? I'm here to study witchcraft and superstition among converts to Christianity who are on the margin of mainstream Christian society."

That's the sort of foggy territory between ethics and investigation which make bioarchaeology ever more appealing. :)

//PaleolithNick//

Ethnography of a Bus Hut (2)

2005-11-10T08:29:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: 15F feels danged toasty!
Now on iTunes: Chumbawumba, "Bad Squire" + Chumbawuma, "Song on the Times"

Now, back in Indiana I was pretty antisocial, but here I'm like some glib, glad-handed room-worker. For instance, one of the few things that's more interesting than the behavior of the people in the Nenana bus hut is the fact that so many people don't even wait for the bus in the hut. And, no, they're not just tough Alaskans hanging out in the cold. They're sitting in their cars by themselves.

And more than that, they're sitting in their cars with their cars running. (Thank you, by the way, for contributing to the inversion factor. Do you guys realizes that a major component of ice fog isn't frozen water, but is frozen car exhaust? And the part of the ice fog that's nto frozen is pollution from exhaust which is trapped by the water? Turn your cars off! They're already warm!)

So whenever the bus gets to the stop, those of us in the hut line up nicely and board the bus. At the same time, there's this crazy blitz of koopa troopas running from their four-wheeled turtle-shells, pushing and shoving their way to get on the bus as quickly as possible. And, of course, some of these folks are parked on the far side of the parking lot, and don't make it to the bus until we're ready to be on our way.

I believe Charlie Brown summarized it pretty well: "Good grief."

//PaleolithNick//

Firefox, Bloody Firefox

2005-11-09T20:50:00.000-09:00

Weather: +14F give or take
Now... ...watching Lost while searching for articles for my religion paper

OK, I love Firefox because IE is just lousy these days, but I'm about sick of the way it can get confused by paged with forms. It's especially common with search forms, like at library catalogs or article databases, etc... I'll be going along just fine and then all of the sudden everything I try to type into a form field ends up popping up the Firefox search field and I can't type in the forms anymore. The only way to clear it it is to close out of all tabs and re-launch the browser, too.

Makes extended research kind of a pain at times!

/sumbitted by E-mail/

Fossilized Blood Protein and the Rock of Love

2005-11-09T16:41:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: It was an amazing +13F this morning for the drive in
Now on iTunes: Jimmy Eat World, "Bleed American" + Falling Up, "Symmetry" + Poor Old Lu, "What if Uncle Ben had Lived"

Today, PhD student Sveta Yamin was a guest lecturer in ANTH100x, talking about ethnography and her work in Chukotka. Sveta is in love with her work and the place she studies, so she's always an entertaining speaker with a lot of good information. Since I don't want to pre-empt her dissertation work at all, I won't go into a lot of details, but her basic study is on mushroom gathering culture in the most remote region of Russia from Moscow.

She did give a great anecdote, though, that I wanted to share. When she arrived in one coastal village, everyone she talked to kept asking her if she'd seeen the Rock of Love yet. She hadn't, and wasn't even familiar with it. She would go back to her literature and try to figure out what the Rock of Love was all about, but she couldn't find it in any mythology or historico-religious records. Finally, she asked someone to explain it to her.

Turns out, the Rock of Love was the make-out point when the Russian military used to occupy the village, and its traditional use has continued on. As Sveta put it, "The military has left, but the love remains."

***

On a totally different note, I wanted to give you all a glimpse of what was definitely one of the academic highlights of the semester: the visit of Dr. Jerry Lowenstein. Meghan and I were able to attend both of his presentations, and I was able to go with some of the other grad student to lunch with him. I was very much blown away by his amazing work. Allow me to to just cut and paste here from something I already wrote up about it...

Dr. Lowenstein spoke about the development and application of his work on the radioimmunology assay technique, which is able to isolate protein molecules from fossilized bone and ancient blood stains (among other things). The basic technique involves the diffusion of a specimen material solution in a plastic microtiter tray cup so that the proteins adhere to the plastic surface and can then be tagged by the infusion of species-specific rabbit antibodies and radioactively flagged anti-rabbit goat antibodies. This technique is useful broadly in the field of phylogeny, where it is handy both for establishing relationships between fossilized species and for identifying the specifies of an unknown fragment or blood residue in the fossil record.

Among numerous other examples, some specific uses for the technique mentioned in this particular talk were the phylogeny of the Tasmanian wolf (it turns out to be related most closely to Australian carnivores); the species-identification of two Jivaro-collected shrunken heads in the British Museum (both are human); and the identification of blood on ancient stone tools (multiple species have been so identified). In the case of the latter, Dr. Lowenstein also referenced some follow-up re-validating of the method by a blind study organized by UAF faculty member Craig Gerlach and spearheaded by a UAF student.

//PaleolithNick//

Not Truth but Human Action

2005-11-08T13:18:00.000-09:00

Weather Factoid: Long evening shadows have set in (~1pm)
Now on iTunes: REM, "Losing My Religion" and The Red Paintings, "Mad World"

Well, now you have lots of reading to catch up on just here on the blog. LOL So far the new site is working out pretty decently. We'll see if it keeps up!

OK, still have reading to finish for Structures but I wanted to throw this out there while I was still thinking about it after AnthRel.

I think perhaps the reason that so many believers (be they religious, philospophical, materialist, or whatever) are uncomfortable (confused, confounded, frustrated, or infuriated by) with anthropology is a misapprehension of what the aim of the discipline is. Religious adherents can alternately feel attacked by statements of anthropologists, or can introduce their own spiritually-informed outlook on their interpretations. The devoutly irreligious can immediatley discount everything about religious experience in anthropology, from spiritual explanations of the observed cultural behavior to the people's own credited emotional experience.

In fact, anthropology per se is not interested in truth statements. The anthropological interest in a religious cultural event is not in the veracity of its claims or the relaity of any spiritual dimension to it. The anthropological interest is in the realm of human action: what the people are doing and what they think about what they're doing.

The same principle applies to any strongly held belief. For intsance, when anthropologists say (within the field of academic research) that kinship, marriage, and gender are socially constructed, they are not speaking to any biological, religious, political, or matieral aspects of those things. Instead, they're saying that, in the realm of human action, there is variation in practice surrounding those ideas and variation in the way people think about them. Hence, in the relam of human behavior, they are socio-cultural categories not tied to an unchanging external reality.

It is true that outside of their academic domain (and sometimes inside, as with any field), many anthropologists do make religious or political statements based on their anthropological knoweldge. But those statements are based on anthropology; they are not the content of it.

OK, time to finish getting ready for class. :)

//PaleolithNick//

Ethnography of a Bus Hut (1)

2005-11-08T08:55:00.000-09:00

This morning's drive-time temp: -16F
Now on iTunes: Collective Soul, "December" & "Where the River Flows"

So while waiting in the bus hut for the campus shuttle this morning to take me back up to Eielson / Signers' Hall after dropping Meghan off, there was a guy in there who was using his cellphone. As more people gathered in the hut rather than wait outside (arguably quite sensible of them), the guy on the cellphone started to get frustrated. Apparently he was having a hard time hearing his phone conversation while other people chatted and passed the time. He finally stormed outside into the cold to wrap up his call, and when he came back let us all know how incosiderate he deemed us -- "Couldn't you see I was on the phone?!"

/submitted via e-mail/

School Update

2005-11-07T22:27:00.000-09:00

Quick update to what's going on in my studies...

Human Osteology: learning bone pathologies and identifying bones of the feet
Structures of Anthropological Argument: starting in-depth examinations of the sub-fields
Anthropology of Religion: looking at death and funerals, etc...

Projects: working on sexing and determining ancestry of the skull I'm reconstructing; pulling together a ton of courses and ILL requests for my term paper on dualism in Andean curanderismo and brujismo; working on a synthesis paper on functionalism.

The Fallacy of Taxonomy

2005-11-07T22:10:00.000-09:00

Well, we'll see how this goes. New 'blog location to perhaps ease the process of keeping things updated for people.

Tonight, a little more about my continuing discombobulation over Fairbanks. I think I suffer from the malady ascribed by so many now-discredited anthropological theorists to traditional ("primitive" people): the drive to classify and categorize. A lot of the reason I'm still struggling at times to figure out how I feel about Fairbanks is because so much of it is difficult to classify or else outside of my experience.

For instance...

It's all outdoorsy and remote, yet it sounds and smells like car traffic.
There's a right way to do everything, but you kinda have to figure it out on your own.
People can die on their own out here, but they'd rather do that rely on one another at all.
Nature here is ancient, but human history is either transient or recent.
There's less wind, but -15F is still dang cold as far as my body is concerned.
There's less water in the air, but the ground is thoroughly saturated.

Or some more positively-phrased examples, but equally bewildering...

It's incredibly cold, but it's not really hard to continue life more or less as normal.
It gets dark early, but Monday Night Football is also over early. :-D
There are cars and pre-industrial sludge everywhere, but it is only 10 minutes 'till the middle of nowhere -- or less.
The nearest other city of note is about 8hours away, but Denali National Park is only 2 -- 3 hours.
People may not go out of their way to be social, but they also tend to be all-around agreeable.

Et cetera. And so I think part of my problem is that there's all this ambiguity. I may thrive on paradox, but I get slugged pretty good by ambiguity. Go figure that one out. :)

//PaleolithNick//