Humans Have Spread Globally, and Evolved Locally

Another interesting anthropological article, this time from today’s New York Times. It’s based on kind of a ‘duh’ premise, which is that

Historians often assume that they need pay no attention to human evolution because the process ground to a halt in the distant past. That assumption is looking less and less secure in light of new findings based on decoding human DNA.

I’m not really sure that strawman is at all valid, but it makes a good setup for the rest of the article’s premise. Either way, the thing that I found most interesting was the little map of human DNA geographic distribution. Here’s a small version which, if you click it, will, in fact, enlarge!

It’s interesting to see how this map also correlates to language distribution (aside from the obvious migration patterns that made extinct certain languages and ethnic groups).

—Bryan Klausmeyer

Adam Kotsko on Generalizations

A very insightful and understated analysis of generalizations, with a particularly scathing analysis of how racist big Others function in American society:

At its most insidious, this “nuanced” form of racism amounts to an accusation that it is really the black people who are all a bunch of racists — they hate whites, they don’t want to join the cultural institutions we’ve so generously opened up to them, we bend over backwards and look what gratitude we get…. These “subtle,” supposedly “non-racist” points are the way white racism circulates in more respectable circles today; the figure of the openly racist hick provides a nice inoculation against feelings of guilt (“I’m not some hick racist — but I’m just saying…”).

The claim that one is not personally a racist thus completely misses the point. Despite the violence they sometimes engage in, the people who are self-consciously virulent racists are arguably the least dangerous on the grand scale — it’s actually the continual disavowal of the existence of racist structures that keeps them inscribed in the white symbolic order. That is to say, it’s precisely because no individual white person directly “is” racist that “white people” are racist.

—Bryan Klausmeyer 1 Comment

Viewing American Class Divisions Through MySpace and Facebook

A highly suggested read by Danah Boyd. Here’s the kernel of the argument:

The division around MySpace and Facebook is just another way in which technology is mirroring societal values. Embedded in that is a challenge to a lot of our assumptions about who does what. The “good” kids are doing more “bad” things than we are willing to acknowledge (because they’re the pride and joy of upwardly mobile parents). And, guess what? They’re doing those same bad things online and offline. At the same time, the language and style of the “bad” kids offends most upwardly mobile adults. We see this offline as well.

Of course, this shouldn’t come as a real surprise given the fact that Facebook started as a college-student-only website (originating at Harvard). The far more disturbing conclusion, which this article does not get into, is the class stratification in regards to what Facebook supplements (in the Rosseauist sense of the word): education itself, which can be observed apropos the aforementioned closed-community (Facebook) and the inherent class divisions it has subsequently produced. But rather than attempting to mediate or agitate class divisions vis-a-vis social networking websites, the digital-symbolic divide should serve as a warning to bridge the class-gap in American education. The perfect representation of this socioeconomic (and racial) divide is the Duke rape case, the outcome of which, tragically, was both obvious and expected.

(Thanks to Eric Tobis.)

—Bryan Klausmeyer 3 Comments

Rise of Man Theory ‘Out By 400,000 Years’

The Times Online has an interesting article today about some new archaeological findings in North and East Africa that suggest Homo erectus took up settled life 400,000 years earlier than previously thought. Here’s an excerpt:

The accepted timescale of Man’s evolution is being challenged by a German archaeologist who claims to have found evidence that Homo erectus — mankind’s early ancestor, who migrated from Africa to Asia and Europe — began living in settled communities long before the accepted time of 10,000 years ago.

The guy who made the discovery and is positing the claim, Professor Helmut Ziegert, has a great quote:

The first archaeological revolution in fact was not triggered by anatomically ‘modern humans’ in the neolithic, or indeed in the technological and cultural revolution associated with the upper palaeolithic, but by Homo erectus, upright Man, an altogether different ancestral species making waves at the dawn of humanity.

—Bryan Klausmeyer

Infinite Thøught Sums Up ‘Materialism Today’

Here’s a good excerpt from infinite thøught’s “hysterical materialism” post apropos the Materialism Today Conference at University of London Birkbeck, which featured Slavoj Zizek and Alain Badiou:

The Materialism conference was fundamentally flawed and floored by fundamentalists - Christian of course: John Milbank’s weird Daily Mail-ish clerical Schmittian fantasy for a Feudal nationalism delivered in a bellowing windbaggish way was deeply reactionary and a pompous flirtation with fascism. It is not enough that we are all ‘anti-capitalist’: we are not the same kind of anti-capitalists as you, ‘sir’, nor will we ever be!

(Via An und für sich)

—Bryan Klausmeyer

AFI Updates Top 100 American Films List

While there are some long overdue changes (Vertigo moving up from 61 to 9) and a several judicious additions (Do The Right Thing and Bladerunner), there are quite a bit more baffling ones, for instance: Saving Private Ryan, Toy Story, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Titanic and The Sixth Sense. Who votes for this shit? There’s no fucking way Lord of the Rings is better than Taxi Driver.

On the other hand, it’s not as though these “Top Whatever” lists ever had any actual grounding in reality (e.g., U.S. News & World Report’s Top 100 Universities). Interestingly, the updated Top 100 list is now removed from the AFI’s website unless you register for one of their stupid, useless accounts. Maybe instead of concentrating on how to get more advertising money on their website through user registrations, they should devote more than three hours a year to rethinking what films should go in the list to begin with. Or, better yet, abandon the whole project because it’s an unbelievable waste of everybody’s time and completely self-defeating.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

—Bryan Klausmeyer

New Web 2.0-ish Dylan Compilation Album

As if we didn’t need anymore Bob Dylan compilation albums, Columbia Records has announced another new one!—but wait, it’s different! How so? Well, as if we didn’t need anymore proof that Web 2.0 is just a meaningless marketing buzzword, they’ve also announced that the final tracklisting will be “greatly influenced by impassioned fan lobbying” (uh huh…). One look at the ridiculously obscure selections made by Dylan fanatics over at the Dylan Pool just goes to show that (1) another Dylan compilation album is a terrible idea and (2) having Dylan fans vote on the songs is an even worse one. Good job, Columbia.

Rolling Stone’s Rock & Roll Daily blog (which is where I got a bunch of these links from!) then asked its readers to respond with their own suggestions for the album, some of which are great (ridiculous and/or completely irrelevant):

Marty P does his best to combine Comic Book Guy with Yoda, resulting in the supremely idiotic post below:

How about the sound of Bob’s resperator when he breathed in the bat poop dust? That would be better than anything he tried to sing. Most overrated ‘artist’ in all music history, bar none. On this there can be no debate !!

Scotty plays amateur psychoanalyst, but is unknowingly entangled in his own scathing wit:

its always funny all the people who are so angry with the fact that their life sucks that they want to get onto a “Bob Dylan news section” on the INTERNET and complain about something as mundane as their views of Bob Dylan….get a life people…

Sy attempts to form a coherent thought, joke:

yu know i realli love dylan a whole lot, but i dont need 2 have 24 hour news about every single thing he does or is happening. every day there is a new dylan story out on rollingstone.com and im gettin tired of it. Breaking news: Bob Dylan has just sneezed. more info after the jump.

And, my favorite, Dirty Marty writes not once, but twice, and in all caps so you know it’s important:

CORRINA, CORRINA OUTAKES

Maybe Masked & Anonymous was just a way to alienate his stupid fan-base, like when Zizek lauds totalitarianism and The Fountainhead…

UPDATE: The more I think about it, the more this additional greatest hits CD might actually be advanced, especially given the “technology” aspect of it (having users vote on the songs). Hmm..

—Bryan Klausmeyer

Summer Solstice Draws Crazies Out of the Woodwork

From The Times/AP:

STONEHENGE, England (AP) — Druids, drummers, pagans and partygoers welcomed the sun Thursday as it rose above the prehistoric monument of Stonehenge on the longest day of the year — the summer solstice.

Clad in antlers, black cloaks and oak leaves, a group of druids cheered and danced at the Heel stone — a twisted, pockmarked pillar at the edge of Stonehenge.

This is probably my favorite quote:

”I love the whole vibe, and the energy, and the fact that these stones, that they are alive, they do breathe, and they do grow … and they’re massive!” she said.

Damn you, New Age obscurantists and neo-pagans! And lest we forget the druids! Oh, the druids! I bet Stonehenge was a prehistoric quarry site (or perhaps a “Hello!” to the Tralfamadorians). Crazy New Agers tend to resemble Ray Walston’s Uncle Martian (or perhaps you prefer Christopher Lloyd from the critically acclaimed film?)

—Bryan Klausmeyer

For All of You Budding Ornithologists

One of today’s editorials in The New York Times makes an urgent plea to citizens of the world following the Audubon Society’s report last week that the average decline of 20 selected bird species is 68 percent. Here’s a good part:

In our everyday economic behavior, we seem determined to discover whether we can live alone on earth…The trouble with humans is that even the smallest changes in our behavior require an epiphany. And yet compared to the fixity of other species, the narrowness of their habitats, the strictness of their diets, the precision of the niches they occupy, we are flexibility itself. We look around us, expecting the rest of the world’s occupants to adapt to the changes that we have caused, when, in fact, we have the right to expect adaptation only from ourselves.

Hmm.. I’m tempted to care, but, on the other hand, birds are not mentioned in the Constitution and protecting them just leads down the slippery slope of socialism!

—Bryan Klausmeyer 3 Comments