Monthly Archives: June 2012

New Project: Marriage

I’ve started a new project on marriage. I was asked by some Minnesota-based political folks to consider writing a few blog posts on the science and anthropology associated with marriage, to evaluate some of the claims being made by anti same-sex-marriage activists, Republicans and others. I happen to be an expert on marriage, having been married several times. So, I am going to write a stream of posts on the topic on Greg Laden’s Blog starting with this one. There will be occasional posts connected to this stream here on The X Blog as appropriate, or perhaps the occasional cross posting. The entire flow of posts will be framed in intro pointer posts at the Minnesota Progressive Project, such as this one.

So, this is what you should do: Read this, then read this. Then, later, read other stuff.

There may be some guest posts.

Cabin At The Lake Tip # 3342

When installing a “porch light” (to light the entrance way ans any stairs, and the immediate area outside the cabin) do not place the light near the door as is often the custom. The light is meant to be used at night. Out in cabin country, when you turn that light on at night, 22 gazillion insects will flock to it and form a giant swarm covering a blob shaped area several feet in diameter. If the light is placed next to the entrance door, this makes that door unusable unless you wish to admit about half of the insects (about 10 gazillion of them) into the cabin.

Instead, place the outdoor light 15 feet or more away from the door. There will still be light to see and most (but certainly not all) of the insects will be off to the side.

Marriage

I am going to write a bunch of blog posts about marriage.

You should regard my opinion about marriage to be valuable; I’ve had several of them. And in this way, I may be more like a hunter-gatherer than a “modern” Westerner, as the practice among the former is to treat marriage as very important and each partner in the marriage as a critical and similarly empowered member of the contract, while the practice among the latter has been to see women as the man’s property and to form economic, social, and sexual alliances as needed outside the marriage. Who is in on the deal and how they work together to get the job done matters.

As we approach a very important election in the United States, the issue of marriage…what it is and who decides how to do it…looms large as a political issue. People who are of the same sex want to get married, and about half of everybody says no. Why? Why do people of the same sex want to get married, and why does either a slim majority or a bare minority care enough to try to stop this?

One of the things that has been said is that marriage between a man and a woman is what God specified, via his various media outlets. Iron age pamphlets, burning bushes, that sort of thing. That is a religious argument for disallowing people of the same sex to get married, but there is also a secular argument; it ain’t natural. The natural form of marriage is for a man and a woman and nobody else to get married. There are all sorts of interesting questions raised by both arguments, and it is interesting to see where they agree and disagree; almost every person mentioned by name in the old testament who was married whether they were a FOG1 or not was involved in a polygynous union, not a “one man-one woman” marriage. Clearly, the Biblical argument and the Naturalistic argument are at odds.

I really am kind of an expert on marriage, and not only because I’ve had a few. I am an anthropologist and we anthropologists study, among other things, kinship and related social relations. That’s marriage and some other stuff. Also, as a biological anthropologist I’ve had a great interest in the genetical and Darwinian aspects of kinship and marriage. Finally, as a palaeoanthropologist, I’ve studied the origin of marriage. As a matter of fact, I’m the co-author of a peer reviewed paper that explains the origin of marriage in our species, and that paper is in the top ten of all papers ever published in Anthropology’s flagship journal, “Current Anthropology” in terms of numbers of times it has been cited. (This is not to say that all those people who have cited it liked it, of course.)

Marriage isn’t simple. It is about social relationships, economics, child raising, sex, power, and all sorts of other things. It is important enough that The Patriarchy has owned it, in Western Society, for centuries. The politics of marriage will likely shape the nature of politics in general, to a disproportionate degree for a social issue, over the next couple of presidential election cycles, as the politics of abortion and choice have in years past. They are related, as I’ve already suggested–marriage and women’s reproductive activities. Having, or not having, babies is an activity reserved for women, and this worries powerful men. For this reason babies have, in Western tradition, been owned or controlled by men, and marriage is one way in which that ownership is asserted. But I’m getting ahead of my self. Let’s just say that many of the sociopolitical conflicts we are experiencing today can be blamed on that age old problem: The Patriarchy. We’ll get to that too.


1Friend of God

Photo by danny.hammontree

Lonesome George c. 1912-2012

It has just been reported that Lonesome George, the Galapagos Tortoise who was considered to be the last of is kind, has died.

the last remaining tortoise of his kind and a conservation icon, died on Sunday of unknown causes, the Galapagos National Park said. He was thought to be about 100 years old.

Lonesome George was found in 1972 and had become a symbol of Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands, which attracted some 180,000 visitors last year.

“This morning the park ranger in charge of looking after the tortoises found Lonesome George, his body was motionless,” the head of the Galapagos National Park, Edwin Naula, told Reuters. “His life cycle came to an end.”

George is not the last of a species, but he is the last of a subspecies. A necropsy will be performed to try to determine a cause of death. George, roughly a century old, was not particularly old for his kind.

For the record, Charles Darwin dies in 1882.


Photo by doriana del sarto

Happy birthday to me

Yes, thanks to Facebook and Chris Rodda, the word’s out; it’s my birthday! One year has gone by since I promised myself to use a semi-colon at least once in every blog post for one year; that’s done with. And I want to thank all the people who have sent me birthday wishes on Facebook; I tried to “like” all of them but Facebook has rounded out my feed so at one point I see a single entry that says “175 people have wished you a happy birthday” and there’s a picture of about nine people there.

I’ll figure that out later.

Every year, there is one thing I want for my birthday, and Julia finds out what it is, and tells everyone else, and then they don’t get it for me usually because it is not spec’ed out, and later I buy it myself. This year my birthday present will be a small propane grill. Very small. Portable, even. Not a propane stove, but a propane grill. Weber makes one, it’s called the Weber 1520 Propane Gas Go-Anywhere Grill. We don’t grill much at home but when we do the charcoal grill is overkill even though it’s very nice (it was a birthday present from a few years back). And we’ll still use the charcoal grill now and then. But there are those times when pulling the charcoal grill out onto the driveway, getting the coals lit and ready, cooking two hot dogs and a potato or something followed by having this hot grill ready to be knocked down by the toddler for the next two hours seems like the wrong way to go. The small propane grill will require that I get a new and more useful table, which is actually a good thing. It is also portable so we can go down to the river now and then and cook our potato there.

There is also one thing I want for my birthday every couple of years that is too expensive and extravagant but Amanda gets it for me anyway; this was one of those years and the thing is a lens. Since I didn’t bring that camera up to the cabin I can’t show you anything yet, but in a few days you’ll see, I’ll finally be a great photographer! (It is all in the equipment, right?)

The other thing I got for my birthday was this: Two shirts from JC Pennys. Absolutely appropriate since this year my birthday falls on Pride Day in the Twin Cities.

Oh, and about the semi-colon; I was kidding.

Happy Birthday everybody! (Who’s having one, that is.) And thanks for the good wishes.

A sense of proportion

Despite the fact that we observe the world around us everyday, for many common phenomena we have a very poorly developed sense of the important variables of size, shape, position, and motion. As I sit here by the side of the lake and look around numerous examples come to mind. One example arises from a (somewhat) rare phenomenon I’m seeing right now. I’m looking north at a lake. To my right, east, is a cloud looming over the rising sun. The cloud is bight white and the contrast between the top of the cloud and the blue sky above it is sharp, and I can see structure to the cloud … puffiness, wisps of cloudosity, all that. Beneath the cloud is more blue sky, including some distant clouds, then the treeline, and then the lake shore. Although I can not, technically, tell how far away this big cloud is, or how big this distant cloud may be, as my primate three dimensional vision does not work beyond several feet and there is no object for perspective, I sense it is big, far away up in the sky and not anywhere near me. Continue reading A sense of proportion

Dana Hunter and the Big Blast

Are you aware of Dana Hunter’s current project? The author of En Tequila es Verdad, the blog that always makes me want to take a shot, is writing detailed essays that track events connected to the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens. She’s writing them as part of her blogging over at Scientific American, but she just posted an update on Freethoughtblogs that serves as an index to all of the stories so far, so you should click here to get oriented and then click through to the stories.

Even though we know how the story turns out, Dana’s posts make for an edge of your seat thriller. Also, you probably don’t really know or remember exactly how it turns out because it was a while ago. The main thing I remember about it was hearing news from my sister who lived pretty close and got pretty heavily dumped on, and my other sister who lived a little farther away but mostly upwind, but who’s travel plans got messed up for a long time.

I hope Dana turns her story into something people visiting the region can carry along and learn stuff. There is a lot of interest these days in the Yellowstone Caldera and related magma movements and earthquake. This story, about Mt. Saint Helens is in many ways more interesting and more immediate.

Skeptically Speaking: Don't miss these shows

I hear things are pretty busy in the Upper Upper Midwest of Alberta, Canada, and I suppose because of that, Skeptically Speaking has two off-air productions, one with the podcast just out, the other, this week’s show, coming out next week. Both are really interesting to me, and I’m sure to you as well. Here are the details:

#169 Play Reality

… we’re looking at the intersection between science and play time. Guest host Julieta Delos Santos talks to Dr. Jayne Gackenbach and Teace Snyder, about their book Play Reality: How Videogames are Changing Everything. And we’ll listen back to “The Petri Dish,” a panel discussion by kids for kids (and parents), about getting kids interested in science, recorded live at LogiCON 2012.

The podcast is available now, here.

#170 Infrastructure and You

This week, we’re taking a break from live recording. Guest host Marie-Claire Shanahan spends the hour looking at the infrastructure that makes our modern, increasingly urbanized lives possible. She’s joined by journalist Scott Huler, author of the book On the Grid: A Plot of Land, an Average Neighborhood, and the Systems that Make our World Work. And she’ll speak to environmental journalist and urban design critic Tim De Chant, about his population density blog Per Square Mile.

The podcast of this episode will be available to download at 9 pm MT on Friday, July 29.

Details, and eventually, the podcast, HERE.

Cabin Cooking Tips

Tip 1: Get some corn-on-the-cob and a large pot for which you have a tight fitting top. Husk the corn while you boil a large amount of water in the pot (salted if you like, for flavor). Put the corn-on-the-cob in the water and leave the heat on only for a minute, put the top on and turn off the heat. Since there is no more boiling the corn will not likely overcook. In ten minutes or so it will be ready, but it will sit there in the hot water for a long time (did you remember to keep the to on?) as long as you keep the top on.

Variation: If you have a smallish pot, microwave the corn for a few minutes before you put it in the boiling water. You’ll get less long term holding because there is less heated mass.

Tip 2: First, decide if you want to use catchup or ketchup. If you find people objecting to the use of either, call it Umami Sauce. Then, put the Umami sauce and the mustard on the hot dogs BEFORE you grill them. Ketchup, er, I mean, Umami sauce and mustard makes an excellent BBQ sauce. Add any available cooking oil to make more spectacular fire.

Tip 3: The main use of inexpensive bottled beer is to manage the above mentioned fire. Acquire long-necked bottled beer. Hold with fingers around neck, thumb over opening. Shake lightly and using thumb to regulate flow, the beer bottle now becomes an effective and tasty fire extinguisher. As the amount of beer goes down more shaking will be needed. When it is mostly gone feed it to the dog and get another one.

Tip 4: You probably don’t really want to feed that to the dog.


More “Notes from the North Country” here

Photograph by Amanda Laden, used with permission.

Art Imitates a Video Game

I’ve been watching old World War II era movies lately. I just watched The Last Escape starring Stewart Whitman and a cast of dozens. The plot: A British unit (sort of) led by an American is trying to sneak a German rocket scientist out of Germany as Russian units move into the area. It turns out the Russians are also after the rocket scientist and his colleagues.

There are two things about the movie that were interesting, one of which anyone will understand, the other for a select audience.

The first thing: Most of the scenes were of the English and American soldiers and the Germans that were with them. In these scenes everyone spoke English. But there were extensive scenes with the Germans, with lots of activity and conversation, and those scenes were all in German. And there were a few scenes with the Russians with dialog and action, and those were all in Russian.

There were no subtitles. You kinda had to know all three languages.

The second thing: Near the end of the movie is all became a chase scene with large strange looking trucks, tanks, and guys on foot with bazookas. And it looked exactly like one or two of the challenges in Lego Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues