HBES 2012 Roundup 4: Father’s Day & the Parasite-Driven Wedge
So I blew Father’s Day. Totally didn’t realize I’d booked myself to go to HBES on Father’s Day. And much as I love my dad, it wasn’t because I wasn’t going to be with him. It was because my wife …...
View ArticleThe Adaptiveness of Gossip re HIV in Africa
I was listening to an old This American Life podcast from 2011 the other day & heard a great piece about the work of sociologist Susan Watkins. Watkins runs the Malawi Journals Project, thru which...
View ArticleParasites & Religion in Costa Rica
I really don’t have anything to report about parasites in Costa Rica yet, or religion for that matter, but we did arrive yesterday to begin preliminary data collection for the Costa Rican Religious...
View ArticleThe Campfire as a Social Nexus
Wrangham (2009) & McClenon (2006) describe the campfire in evolutionary history as something like a social nexus. Wrangham says it’s where hominids came to & learned to tolerate each other....
View ArticleMagicians are Scientists with Street Smarts
In his conservationist plea to fundamentalist Christian religious leaders, The Creation, E.O. Wilson reminds me of a recent essay by Teller (of prestidigitator duo extraordinaire Penn & Teller)....
View ArticleSignaling Religious Commitment in Brazilian Candomble
I was critiqued in a recent NSF grant proposal review that, while I elegantly integrated signaling & cultural consensus theories in my research design, my statements that (1) signaling theory...
View ArticleFireside Trance drives Selection for Enhanced Attention & Working Memory via...
Fireside hypnotizability Following up on a previous post tracking down the original sources for the December Smithsonian piece about hearth fires & cognitive evolution, evolutionary psychologist...
View ArticleThinking Like an Anthropologist from Mars: Crucial for Good Human Science
Don’t worry, just as I promised you recently that the odds of an all-out zombie apocalypse are very low, I seriously doubt that there are any anthropologists from Mars among our ranks. This said, as a...
View ArticleIs Cunnilingus an Adaptation to Increase Intercourse Length & Increase the...
Several years ago a student of mine (Christy McGee) in my “Anthropology of Sex” class was studying highly promiscuous women with the hypothesis that they would be averse to cunnilingus. She suggested...
View ArticleReflections on the Costs of Evolved Self-Awareness: Comparing Trajectories of...
I’m going to be writing on the costly implications of self-awareness in a forthcoming book & was walking around listening to Reagan Youth on Spotify & David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest on...
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