Sneeze On Me
From pandemic panic to party mode–all in one week.
Author Archive
Going in for the Kill
The wolf-pack is tearing away at Jared Diamond. Opportunity knocks: part of the reason…is to reclaim some of the ground among general readers lost to “experts” like Jared Diamond. With this series, StinkyJournalism.org and SavageMinds.org seek to capture that wider general audience for writings about anthropology. If the first essay is any indication of what’s…Continue Reading…
Dowie's Bombshell of a Book
Whoa, this headline should snap a few necks back: Is modern conservation linked with ethnic cleansing? It’s a link to this article by Mark Dowie, which is based on his new book, Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict Between Conservation and Native Peoples. Anyone who knows Mark Dowie (and is familiar with his last few books)…Continue Reading…
The Climate Debate Litmus Test
Nothing bugs me more than when so-called progressives have their own litmus test on political issues. In the last two days, blogger Joe Romm has taken his fellow climate advocate, Jim Hansen, to the woodshed (see here and here), because of Hansen’s vocal opposition to cap and trade. One irony is that Hansen, in this…Continue Reading…
The Value of Fakes
An archaeologist discovers a very curious thing: It appears that electronic buying and selling has actually hurt the antiquities trade. How can this be? The short answer is that many of the primary “producers” of the objects have shifted from looting sites to faking antiquities. I’ve been tracking eBay antiquities for years now, and from…Continue Reading…
That Explains It
I’m so naive. I had no idea Romm was dictating his posts. I had pegged him as the fanatical obsessive type, singularly focused, the way he cranked out those multiple 2,000 word-plus posts every day. So now I’m wondering: is this de riguer? Or am I misunderstanding his comment about the perils of voice dictation…Continue Reading…
The Art of Commenting
I’m ambivalent about the value of blog comments. Part of me loves Andrew Sullivan’s blog because he spares us from having to wade through the bushels of crap he undoubtedly receives– though Sullivan often highlights and edits the best of his reader emails in a way that provides excellent counter-perspective to a particular topic or…Continue Reading…
He's Wrecking Their Brand
Anthropologists are fretting over the Jared Diamond fallout. Dudes, you can’t have it both ways; you can’t engage the public (which is what many of you want) without risking that your work will be interpreted in ways that you never intended. Diamond is an easy straw man because he’s not a member of your club….Continue Reading…
Black Carbon's Pandora Box
The riddle of EPA’s reluctance to consider soot a contributor to global warming has befuddled me since I read this story, which I thought made a solid case: While carbon dioxide may be the No. 1 contributor to rising global temperatures, scientists say, black carbon has emerged as an important No. 2, with recent studies…Continue Reading…