Amalgamated Friday #32

James Watson

Proving that you can be a genius and an idiot at the same time, James Watson (one of the Nobel Prize winners for mapping the double helix of DNA) made the news this week by his comments about the superiority of various races. Excuse me?

• Cold Spring Harbor denounces Watson, from John Hawks on what in the world is up with James Watson
• Watson’s Lecture Canceled, from Greg Laden
• [expletive deleted] of science, more on James Watson from fool for the process (language not terribly safe for work)
• James Watson's greatest hits, Scientific American
• Blackpedal: More from James Watson or race, evolution and intelligence, William Saletan on Slate
• Cold Spring Harbor Lab Suspends Watson, Tim Jones, Remote Central

More Scandalous Ongoings

• Dimitri Kouznetsov, Repeat Offender in Science Fraud, from Martin at Aardvarchaeology
• Federal funding of creationism withdrawn, and not a moment too soon, from Panda's Thumb
• Old collections at the Basel Ancient Art Fair, from Looting Matters

Blog Carnivals

• Oekologie! #10, at Laelaps
• Boneyard #7 , at microecos
• Tangled Bank #90, on the Other 95%

Art History

For some reason, lots of history of art and related arty things this week

• Oldest Wall Painting, Greg Laden
• 11,000 Year-Old Wall Painting Unearthed at Djade-al-Mughara, Syria, Tim on Remote Central
• Exhibition Gallery: Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526-1593), Art History at About
• Friday Cephalopod: Free Octy!, not archaeology, but every Friday PZ Myers posts a picture of his favorite cephalopod and this week's is a beauty.
• New Picture Stone Found at Stenkyrka, Martin on Aardvarchaeology
• I’ve seen Banksy. Have you?, Ian Russell in Archaeolog
• Mudbricks Part 2, Colleen Morgan on Middle Savagery illustrates how to make adobe bricks
• Without Walls: Interview with Lebbeus Woods on BLDG BLOG; not historical or anything, but definitely interesting architecture, if you're into that sort of thing
• A little history of the Chain Stitch, Bookbiding Etsy Street Team
• History of the I Ching, Rick on Cook Ding's Kitchen

Reviews

• Greed and buffoonery in academic publishing, Martin Rundkvist discovers he has to pay to get a book review he wrote published
• Buddha's Golden Period, review of the new exhibit at the China Institute Gallery in New York, from Archaeology magazine.
• Inauthentic Archaeologies: Public Uses and Abuses of the Past, Jamie Brandon on Museum Anthropology Review

Neanderthals

• Neandertals have the same mutations in FOXP2, the language gene, as modern humans, Kambiz on Anthropology.net
• "Neanderthals Could Build Stuff" - A Very Remote Period Indeed, Tim on Remote Central
• The amazing talking Neanderthals, John Hawks

Miscellaneanous Anthropology

• Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza’s Interview and Pardis Sabeti in Nature, Kambiz on Anthropology.net
• Hominin Database, in which Kambiz announces the creation of an online database of information on hominin fossil remains
• Conservation of frequently used words in Indo-European languages, Dienekes Anthropology Blog

Miscellaneous Archaeology

• Pinnacle Point, S. Africa, 164,000 bp - Humans Cooked Shellfish, Used Red Ochre, Tim on Remote Central
• Teaching from the Newark Earthworks, interview with 4th grade teacher Mary Borgia on her use of the Newark Earthworks as a teaching tool, from Brad Lepper on Ohio Archaeology
• The Ötzi exhibit at the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm, Testimony of the Spade, with lots of photographs
• Field photos du jour, architecture at the Egyptian site of Kom el-Hisn, via Anthony at ArchaeoBlog
• Yucatan Jungles Are Feral Maya Gardens, Alexis Madrigal on Wired writes about Christine Hastorf's research in Yucatan

About.com

• The Norman Conquest, Medieval and Renaissance History
• Sparta's Rise to Power, Ancient History

More on Anthro goes to War

• Jonathan Marks on the war in Iraq, comments published on Savage Minds
• Efficacy Issues, Rex on Savage Minds
• Savage Minds on Anthropology and War, Kerim has compiled the two-year catalog of articles about this important issue

Video

• The latest edition of Anthropology Field Notes at The Archaeology Channel has host Faith Haney discussing primate conservation and study with graduate student Mary Jo Austin and primatologist Birute Galdikas. From the Anthropology Department at Central Washington University, 30 minutes.
• Susan Savage-Rumbaugh: Apes that write, start fires and play Pac-Man, TED video lecture on the bonobo, 17 minutes.
• A Vision of Students Today, from Digital Ethnography, made by the 200 students in Prof. Wesch's Anthro 101 class, 5 minutes; also see the summary blog from Wesch, Seeking help with 'A Vision' for tomorrow
• Temples of Doom, from Alun Salt, a pair of 10-minute videos from Al-Jazeera on the threat of rising ground water to archaeological sites in Egypt

Open Source

The original story about this must be on the Alexandria Archive, but for some reason I can't get to it right now

• ASOR's Open Archaeology Prize, an award for "the best open-access, open-licensed, digital contribution to Near Eastern archaeology by an ASOR member", from Peter Suber

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