Being Human

New York Times

A surprisingly recent instance of human evolution has been detected among the peoples of East Africa. It is the ability to digest milk in adulthood, conferred by genetic changes that occurred as recently as 3,000 years ago, a team of geneticists has found.

The finding is a striking example of a cultural practice — the raising of dairy cattle — feeding back into the human genome. It also seems to be one of the first instances of convergent human evolution to be documented at the genetic level. Convergent evolution refers to two or more populations acquiring the same trait independently.

For those who missed class on Wednesday (and even for those who didn't), please post your comments about how to make the course better for the next time.

Here are some links that you may find useful in writing your evals.

• Evaluation Process at Evergreen
• Student Self-evaluation
• Student Evaluation of Faculty

Sign up here for a dish to bring to the potluck on our last day.

Here's today's and Saturday's order of presentations:

Wednesday

1. Karley
2. Terri
3. Jen & Amy
4. Ryan
5. Kricket

Saturday

1. Brandon, Alissa, & Brea
2. Mary & Kacy
3. Patricia & Delwin
4. EMDR Group
5. Annie
6. Peter
7. Kim, Sue & Jamie
8. Rachel, Shay & Paula
9. Steven
   

If you haven't signed up yet, you can do so in the comments.

So I remembered at the beginning of the education and creativity TED vid that the speaker mentions something about a talented girl.. I wanted to check it out, and thought others might want to as well. I hope this works. Around eighteen minutes in she does something I would find impossible. of course I am instrument challeged.

It seems like some folks are a little nervous about driving tonight. I'll start class at 6:00 in any case (because of the academic fair), and if you feel like coming in, please do so. If there aren't too many folks, perhaps we'll work on projects for a bit. I'll post some interesting video for those at home.

Everybody drive safe out there!

[bumped to the front by Rick]

Okay, last night I took over Primitive Reflexes.To be more precise, I created Primitive Reflexes and then redirectedfrom Infant Reflexes, Primitive Reflex, and many other terms that meanthe same thing. I also added redirects for terms that didn't haveentries, but that were explored in our piece. I folded in some detailsfrom the Primitive Reflex entry that was written by someone else, andyou can see the history of changes to the entry I combined with here. The change over time of my previous entry Infant Reflexes can be seen here.

I also created pictures for the journal entry.

I took screenshots of infant neurological exam videos with thescreenshot plus widget (with the video on pause), brought the imageinto photoshop and cropped it, adjusted levels and sharpened contrast,greyscaled it, filtered it through drybrush, and then saved it for theweb so that each image would come in at under 5 seconds with a28.8/Kbps connection. These alterations are at least a 15% change fromthe source materials, so they qualify as original works and could beposted.They also are licensed in such a way that derivative works are allowed anyway. :)

I learned how to add images. First you upload them to wikipedia. You go to the Special Upload section (after you are logged in). They have links to info about licensing of images. You can read more about the process at Images and Media. After you've uploaded an image, you have to add code to the page to embed the image. At that point, the picture tutorial was helpful. In my case, I wanted to add thumbnails. So, I used this code:

Opinion - Stephanie Coontz: Too close for comfort - sacbee.com

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Ever since the Census Bureau released figures last
month showing that married-couple households are now a minority, my
phone has been ringing off the hook with calls from people asking: "How
can we save marriage? How can we make Americans understand that
marriage is the most significant emotional connection they will ever
make, the one place to find social support and personal fulfillment?"

I think these are the wrong questions -- indeed, such questions would
have been almost unimaginable through most of history. It has only been
in the last century that Americans have put all their emotional eggs in
the basket of coupled love. Because of this change, many of us have
found joys in marriage our great-great-grandparents never did. But we
have also neglected our other relationships, placing too many burdens
on a fragile institution and making social life poorer in the process.

A study released this year showed just how dependent we've become on
marriage. Three sociologists at the University of Arizona and Duke
University found that from 1985 to 2004 Americans reported a marked
decline in the number of people with whom they discussed meaningful
matters. People reported fewer close relationships with co-workers,
extended family members, neighbors and friends. The only close
relationship where more people said they discussed important matters in
2004 than in 1985 was marriage.

From Talaris.org:

This research-based timeline is organized by a child's age. It serves as a general guide to the five amazing ways a child grows, from birth to 5.

• Social - Emotional - how children feel and how they learn to relate to others
• Cognitive - how children learn and think
• Language - how children learn sounds, words, and sentences
• Sensory - how children hear, see, taste, smell and feel
• Motor Skills - how children learn to skill to sit up, crawl, walk, and run

As you'll see, each milestone shows a range of ages typically
seen in children's development, but a child may not meet every
milestone and still be progressing normally. Don't be surprised if
your child's growth is different from what's included on this
timeline, or if your child develops more quickly in some areas than
in others. Above all, enjoy learning about the many fascinating ways
children develop. If you have any concerns about your child's growth
and development, please seek a health care professional.

Timeline.

You’re invited to a public lecture by this year’s Evans Chair Visitor, Peter Irons. Professor Irons has had a distinguished career as a scholar and authority on the Supreme Court, and constitutional law and litigation. He has written and edited more than a dozen books, including A People’s History of the Constitution; The Courage of their Convictions: Sixteen People Who Fought their Way to the Supreme Court; and Jim Crow’s Children: The Broken Promise of the Brown Decision, which was selected for the 50th Anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education. He has earned an unprecedented five Silver Gavel Awards, the American Bar Association’s highest honor that recognizes exemplary contributions that foster the American public’s understanding of the law and legal system. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Boston University and a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School.

This presentation will be based on Professor Irons’ forthcoming book, God on Trial: America's Growing Religious Wars, which deals with the social, political and legal conflicts over the place of religion in American society. It will be held in the Evergreen Recital Hall, located on the first floor of the Communications (COM) building on Thursday, November 9, beginning at 7:00 p.m. Doors will open at 6:30. A question-and-answer period will follow.

Facial Expressions, Teen Brains and More...I ran across a couple of articles while looking for information about teens & brain development. The difference of teens discerning emotions vs. adults was eye opening in relation to our recent discussion of facial expressions being universal. The research on teens and the brain is fascinating. I’m finding the information very helpful, as I am parenting a teen. There is also a separate article that discusses brain differences and some of the impacts of this knowledge. One of the topics is minors and death penalty cases.

Article #1: In a recent study mapping differences between the brains of adults and teens, Todd put teenage and adult volunteers through a MRI and monitored how their brains responded to a series of pictures. The volunteers were asked to discern the emotion a series of faces like this one. The results were surprising. All the adults identified the emotion as fear, but many of the teenagers saw something different, such as shock or anger. When she examined their brain scans, Todd found that the teenagers were using a different part of their brain when reading the images.

One of the implications of this work is that the brain is responding differently to the outside world in teenagers compared to adults.

[via Onegoodmove]

Here is an excerpt from Julia Sweeney's "Letting Go Of God" part of the
"This American Life: In Defence of Godlessness" program on WBEZ

Program Date 06/03/05

Julia's faith began to crack after reading Biblical passages like the one
pictured here, of Abraham about to cut the throat of his beloved son,
Isaac.

Here's an interview with Julie Sweeney on Fresh Air with Terri Gross.

If you would like to contribute to the writing project about identity from the world cafe, send your thoughts on the following topics to the email below:

1. Is race a social construct? Email Erykah erykah.sutton@gmail.com
2. What is the function of identity and how does it relate to self and personality? Email David Eaton eatdav03@evergreen.edu
3. How does US culture as a whole and or learning another culture influence the identity of and individual? Email Glorianna gmnichgram@yahoo.com
4. When we prejudge others and make assumptions we foster labels. How does the internalization of labels change our identity? Email Kathryn kaskat31@evergreen.edu
5. How do we recognize oppressive situations, as opposed to legitimate differences, and what ways of working for equality do we have when we do? Email Yael Hoffmanjonathan@yahoo.com

Lab report: James Morgan on the science that's shaping our futurePeople often say there's no such thing as true altruism. I'm willing to bet that those people are Audi drivers.Have you seen the new Audi advert yet? A man looks up to see silver light streaking across the night sky. After a montage of clips from the Apollo landings, we learn it is not a Nasa space shuttle, but the Audi A6.Then comes a subtitle which reads: "To date, Nasa has filed 6509 patents. In developing the A6, Audi filed 9621."That's quite a boast, but, hang on, isn't there an irony here? In the words of one blogger, "To paraphrase Audi, 'We're better than Nasa, because they let everybody else benefit from everything they learned during Apollo. We're making sure you can't. Please buy our car, though.'"

Too good to be true? Altruism’s better for you - The Herald

Use this thread to post what you're doing your Wikipedia project about. Let us know also who's on the team.

Do we have a “God gene,” or a “God module”? I'm referring to claims that a number of you may have noticed. Just last week, a cover story of Time magazine was called "The God Gene: Does our deity compel us to seek a higher power?" Believe it or not, some scientists say yes. And a number of years earlier, there were claims that the human brain is equipped with a “God module,” a subsystem of the brain shaped by evolution to cause us to have a religious belief. "Brain's God module may affect religious intensity," according to the headline of the Los Angeles Times. In this evening's talk, I want to evaluate those claims.

Link

I'm a Paul Ekman fan, and there is a great post about him at Mind Hacks (with lots of cool links). Go check it out.