I am recently back from the Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease (EEID) Principal Investigators’ Meeting hosted by the Odum School of Ecology at the University of Georgia in lovely Athens. This is a remarable event, and a remarkable field, and I can’t remember ever being so energized after returning from a professional conference (which [...]
Entries Tagged as 'science'
Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease, 2013
March 20th, 2013 · No Comments
Tags: Climate Change · Conservation · Human Ecology · Infectious Disease · science
The Least Stressful Profession of Them All?
January 5th, 2013 · 2 Comments
In the spirit of critics misunderstanding the life of university researchers that I started in my last post, I felt the need to chime in a bit on a story that has really made the social-media rounds in the last couple days. This kerfuffle stems from a Forbes piece by Susan Adams enumerating the 10 [...]
Thoughts on Black Swans and Antifragility
December 26th, 2012 · 2 Comments
I have recently read the latest book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile. I read his famous The Black Swan a while back while in the field and wrote lots of notes. I never got around to posting those notes since they were quite telegraphic (and often not even electronic!), as they were written in the [...]
Tags: science · Statistics
On Anthropological Sciences and the AAA
November 19th, 2012 · No Comments
I guess the time has rolled around again for my annual navel-gaze regarding my discipline, my place within it, and its future. Two strangely interwoven events have conspired to make me particularly philosophical as we enter into the winter holidays. First, I am in the middle of a visit by my friend, colleague, and former [...]
Tags: Anthropology · Evolution · Human Ecology · science · Teaching
AAPA 2012 Run-Down
April 16th, 2012 · 2 Comments
I am done with this year’s American Association of Physical Anthropologists annual meeting in Portland. Alas, I am not yet home as I had a scheduling snafu with Alaska Airlines yesterday and there was literally not a single seat on a flight to any airport in the Bay Area. So, I hung out in PDX [...]
Tags: Anthropology · science
That's How Science Works
December 29th, 2010 · 5 Comments
The RealClimate blog has a very astute entry on how the controversy surrounding the recent report in the prestigious journal Science that bacteria living in the arsenic-rich waters of Mono Lake in California can substitute arsenic for phosphorous in their DNA. If true, this would be a major finding because it expands the range of environments [...]
Tags: Anthropology · science
On Husserl, Hexis, and Hissy-Fits
December 9th, 2010 · 16 Comments
There has been quite a brouhaha percolating through some Anthropology circles following the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Associate in New Orleans last month. It seems that the AAA executive board, in all its wisdom, has seen fit to excise the term “science” from the Association’s long-range planning document. You can sample some of [...]
Tags: Anthropology · science · Teaching
An Alternate Course Load for the Game of Life
September 7th, 2010 · 1 Comment
In a recent editorial in the New York Times, Harvard economist and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, N. Gregory Mankiw provides some answers to the question “what kind of foundation is needed to understand and be prepared for the modern economy?” Presumably, what he means by “modern economy” is life after college. [...]
Tags: Anthropology · Demography · Human Ecology · science · Social Network Analysis · Teaching
The Igon Value Problem
November 15th, 2009 · 1 Comment
Priceless. Steve Pinker wrote a spectacular review of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures, in the New York Times today. I regularly read and enjoy Gladwell’s essays in the New Yorker, but I find his style sometimes problematic, verging on anti-intellectual, and I’m thrilled to see a scientist of Pinker’s stature [...]
Tags: science · Statistics
Risk-Aversion and Finishing One's Dissertation
November 4th, 2009 · 1 Comment
It’s that time of the year again, it seems, when I have lots of students writing proposals to submit to NSF to fund their graduate education or dissertation research. This always sets me to thinking about the practice of science and how one goes about being a successful scientist. I’ve written about “productive stupidity” before, [...]
Tags: Anthropology · science