Category: Personal

Scientific Credit

Blackhole
It looks like black holes are rather unremarkable in appearance (much more remarkable in context), but the hole you see in the center is about the size of our solar system.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the first ever picture taken of a black hole here it is. The image was assembled five days ago using data from a global telescope array that collected around 5 petabytes of data (1 million gigabytes) which was then compiled using this vast amount of data to give you the image you see here, now on my blog.

But I haven’t come here to discuss the implications of the black hole or the methods used to give us this image of a collapsed star located 55 million light years away from the nearest Krispy Kreme. Rather, I want to talk a little more about the process of science and the way things work now. Continue reading “Scientific Credit”

Interesting Books List: The Weird Ones

I’ve been sharing this around a few places as people have been asking me about books on cultural and human evolution. @Bottlenecked_Y specifically asked for a list of books I’ve found influential (meaning aside from evolutionary stuff), so I went ahead and made one. The list is a work in progress and I’m still building it, but you can find it below:

Dropbox Book List

As you go through the list you might come across a few that stand out as bizarre, so I’ll go ahead and explain the weirdest ones here. Continue reading “Interesting Books List: The Weird Ones”

Who Are the Evolutionary Anthropologists?

For those of us who received the non-binding name change survey from the American Association of Physical Anthropology this week, you may have seen the alternative “American Association of Evolutionary Anthropologists” floated as an option. I am somewhat frustrated that this has popped up. Although in Europe Evolutionary Anthropology most certainly describes what we are doing here (see the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology for example), in the United States it has long meant something different. Continue reading “Who Are the Evolutionary Anthropologists?”