It's over! Sort of...still, whoot! Now there are edits to do and some new interesting stats to run (like sexual dimorphism indexes which I will use to compare possible changes in sexual dimorphism between my two time periods), all within two weeks. Ha! So, my master's career has essentially come down to a fun race to see how fast I can type. Hilarious.But I am pretty excited about the sexual dimorphism indexes. The way it works is this: there is a certain amount of sexual dimorphism in humans (and most animals), which means something that you notice everyday - guys are bigger than girls. Now the ratio may change - for instance, the ratio is less, meaning males and females are closer in size, in certain groups in Asia, for instance. But you find that when a group goes through periods of stress - like they can't get enough nutritious foods or food in general - sexual dimorphism decreases, meaning men and women are closer in height. So this will be interesting to see in the Town Creek population.I'm going to see "How to train your dragon" on Friday (tomorrow), it looks pretty awesome. I'm especially looking forward to this summer's movies like Iron Man 2. I've never been a Robert Downey, jr. fan, but he did an excellent job in the first film. He is great at being cool and disaffected. I like that, in the same theme as the X-Men, Spiderman, and the Hulk, updated the setting to more current issues. He's an arms dealer and the Global War on Terror is on and he ends up being taken hostage by a warlord or terrorists (I'm not sure which) in Afghanistan. Awesomeness ensues after he builds his suit and makes an escape. But I thought it was poignant when he ends up becoming friends with a fellow prisoner, a local man who talked about trying to get back to his family. I know this was set up as a foil to Ironman's (I forget the character's name) profession as an arms dealer and puts a face to the destruction that comes from that, but I was pretty sad when the guy sacrifices himself so that Ironman can get away. As he runs towards the oncoming bad guys, Ironman tries to stop him reminding him that his family is waiting for him. And the guy remarks that yes they are, they've been dead for some time. Ugh, sad. And then Ironman exacts revenge and it's incredibly fulfilling.
And that's just the beginning. So I can't wait for part dos.
Tomorrow's the day. And I didn't realize I was so nervous. I ended up having a small panic attack in the dressing room of Old Navy. I have excellent timing ; ) Thank God for friends that can talk you down off the ledge and His good timing.
On the upside I find a nice sweater for cheap and my hands have mostly stopped shaking. Let's hope I can get everything under control by tomorrow at 9 am and that I don't throw up the bagel bribes I'm bringing in for my committee. Maybe I should just stay away from food altogether tomorrow morning.
On the upside, this whole process is mostly over. I'm looking forward to the enormous nap I'm going to take after everything is over tomorrow.
So at 9 am tomorrow, say a little prayer that everything goes smoothly and I don't fuck this whole thing up. ; )
One more week...this time next Monday, I will either be someone with a positively defended thesis or I will be crying into my textbooks looking up job openings for Target.
Say a prayer next Monday at 9 am!
Well, here I am again. Yeah, I know it seems like I might be using this blog as a way to procrastinate my work, but I like to say my storm of posts is because of my previous months of neglect...of the three people (including my dad) who read this silly, narcissistic thing. : )
At least this time, I can share some fun knowledge. I'm working on my third case for my forensics class, sad this time because its a little baby. And for obvious reasons little kids are difficult to figure out for a couple of reasons. Small children are essentially the same sex-wise. This is because they haven't gone through puberty, which brings on the hormonal changes that instigate the muscular and skeletal changes that give indicators of male/female-ness.
I do use the word 'sex' here because we are talking about someone's sex which is a biological reference and not their gender, which is a cultural creation. 'Gender' goes beyond male and female - it gives social cues to indicate proper behavior and roles. 'Sex' is just about the plumbing.
So I can't figure out if its a boy or a girl, but aging is a lot easier in kids. This is because the timing of growth, while slightly variable between different populations, is pretty standard within populations. You can figure this out based on the formation and eruption of teeth and the amount of growth of skeletal elements.
Another element of information you are generally looking at forensically is ancestry. Now some anthropologists thing ancestry is essentially racist and it has been used in that vein in the past. But I am of the school that thinks trying to figure out the general places of a person's geographic history is only helpful in identifying this person. Further, some things, like estimating a person's stature, are group specific. I can't use equations that estimate height for a person of European descent and expect them to work for someone who was of Asian descent. So I think its fine to figure out ancestry. We are all the same species, but because our descent groups moved around, settled in certain places and adapted, we all look a little different. The funny thing is, while we Americans think of ourselves as mutts from whatever conglomeration of home countries, we actually are creating our own phenotype. There is an 'American' skeletal type. European Americans do not look like Europeans and the same goes for African Americans. There has been so much admixture between people from different countries that we are both culturally and skeletally American.
So when figuring out ancestry, there are certain traits that can point towards a certain broad geographic group. One I thought I saw was a Carabelli's Cusp. It is an extra cusp found on the molars of the maxilla (your top row of teeth) on the side facing the inside of your mouth. Go ahead and poke around with your tongue, if you feel an extra little bump on the side of your tooth, generally above the biting surface, you may have one. Ask your dentist the next time you go.
This trait is found in people of European descent among other groups. Prehistoric Japanese skeletons (Jamon period) have been found to have it in pretty high frequencies, too.
Well, I needed to make sure carabelli's was what I was looking at (it wasn't), so I googled this trait to figure out what it would look like in an infant. But I was surprised that the third return on my Internet search was a message board on a white supremacist website. Just as an FYI Google, you can ignore any hate group website returns when I surf the web. I don't care if they have the exact answer for what I'm looking for, it's ok, I'll find it some other way.
But what started this whole post was that I found myself reading this message board - yeah, I might be on some govt list now because I clicked over, I just wanted to know what they were saying about some random dental trait. I mean why would anyone besides anthro kids care? What they were discussing was that the carabelli's cusp can be used as an ancestry trait. And they saw it as proving their white-ness (see: questionable 'awesome superiority-ness').
So this does prove the point that ancestry can be used in a racist and discriminatory way. I see that. But lets look at it this way, anything can be used in a good v bad way. Cars, guns, superpowers. Ancestry skeletal studies are a tool that can help better understand our population similarities and differences, trace population movement, and identify skeletonized forensic cases. It's important and just because some people want to choose a few traits and say it shows how great they are, well, someone will always say they have 'stars on thars', it doesn't make them right.
But there were some inaccuracies in the few posts I read that I feel compelled, as an anthropologist and supporter of ethical ancestry skeletal studies, to clear up. They won't read this, it's silly to even get worked up about, but it's my blog and I can rant if I want to. ; )
The carabelli's cusp is found in higher percentages among groups of European ancestry, but it's also found in pretty high frequencies among Asian and Australian aboriginal groups. Not to mention the fact that, while not seen often, is found in African groups.
So congratulations, skinheads, you could be white! Or you could be something else entirely. Welcome to the wonderful world of tens of thousands of years of human migration and admixture. We really have no idea who our ancestors were sleeping with, just general ideas. My people are Irish (among other things), but they weren't always in Ireland.
Ok, so I know I just posted, but I noticed that the ad at the bottom of my blog (which makes me no extra money, thanks for giving me false hope of an easy income Adsense), is advertising for Single Seniors. What? No wonder I'm not making any money, there are apparently no single seniors reading my blog. I'm not sure if this is my failing for not appealing to a wider audience or if adsense has completely misinterpreted the eclecticism I promote here.
I had a really good joke, well more like a funny pun featuring the patella, but all I can remember is the punchline which rhymed with the main part of the joke and ended with patell-ya. Let me reassure you, dear readers, that it was hilarious when I thought of it during my forensics class. If I ever remember it, I'll post it. One can only hope it happens soon as punny little things and a good laugh is the only thing getting me through the last few weeks. That and massive amounts of caffeine (and a weekly dose of cinnamon role, which is being discontinued this week as being both expensive on my poor grad student checkbook and counter-productive to the healthy kick I've been working on - who knew you couldn't lose weight while happily diving into a cinnamon sugar mountain every Tuesday?)
On the bright side, I'm pretty competent at forensics. Good to know I've absorbed some knowledge over the past two years.
Thesis defense is the last Monday of this month. Praise the Lord and pass the Pillsbury.
