paleolithnick's Xanga

Update with Bonus Commentary

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 12:47:26 GMT

Hey all,

I've been lousy once again about keeping this 'blog updated. Mostly that's because I haven't really ahd too much to say. School has been consuming most of my attention and energy. While I'm learning a lot in both of my classes, part of what I'm learning is that my brain doesn't operate in the ideal fashion for someone pursuing these hard sciences. Advanced Human Evolution is going fairly well, but while the professor seems to respect my efforts in the class, and he and I seem to use the same vocabulary, we also often seem to talk past one another and end up in confusion. Gross Anatomy is not going well, but I still have a chance at pulling off a passing B- if I get a mid-range B on the final exam this up-coming monday. I feel like I'm learning a lot in Gross, but not quite enough. It's a class that by its nature emphasizes all the learning approaches at which I am the weakest.

That's about all I hae to report right now. In spare moments of flash energy I'm also working on some media projects which are very exciting, so we'll see where those things end up.

So that's the update. Here's my bonus commentary.

There's a huge flaw in the credit system. While it may seem reasonable for lenders to give higher interest rates to borrowers with poor credit, it actually doesn't make much sense. If a borrower has proven themselves to have struggles keeping up with payments in the past, how does it help the lender to demand higher payments? That's sort of like grocery stores charging higher prices to customers with low incomes. Weird.

Illustrations from the Nobel Peace Prize

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:26:33 GMT

Yes, the awarding of the Nobel Peace prize to Al Gore is a farce, but is certainly not the low-point of the award. Never forget that this prize has been awarded to such questionable characters as Yasser Arafat, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Frederick Willem de Klerk. Too, last year's award was presented to two gentlement for, "efforts to create economic and social development from below," and the 2004 award went to the Tree Mother of Africa, so this isn't the first time the award has had little to do with peace.

What makes this award a farce is that Al Gore didn't even do anything.

Whatever your political perspective or your opinions on environmental politics, this award encapsulates the major flaw with so much of neo-liberal politics. Al Gore has received an award for his work on an issue for which he has literally done nothing. He has not produced any original analyses, and he has succesfully produced little or no legislation impacting environmental reform. All he has done is talk about the importance of environmental issues.

And before you argue for the importance of affecting public opinion -- has Al Gore done that? Can any of his various works be credited with changing the direction of public opinion on environmental issues?

Not really. But what you keep hearing, over and over again, is that, "he has people talking about these important issues." And that's the neo-liberal quagmire. In the face of frustration, you settle for satisfation in getting people to talk about an issue. And that itself is seen as important, significant, and award-worthy.

How sad.

There Is No Magic Word

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 23:30:48 GMT

p.s. Be sure to check out my review of a National Geographic article on my Yahoo! 360 blog, http://360.yahoo.com/paleolithnick.

"Can I have a cookie?"
"Say the magic word...!"
"Please?"
"Here you go!"

So begins the downfall of civlized behavior. Intended to teach ettiquette and manners, this whole "magic word" business not only begins a sense of entitlement (If I ask nicely, I shouldn't be denied anything!), but plants a seed that grows in the exact opposite direction parents intend.

Consider:

"Can I have a cookie?"
"No."
"Pleeeeeeaaaaaaase?!"

We've all heard it. Is the kid humbling himself? Remembering that he should be respectful and polite when asking for special favors?

No. To that child, please has become a power word. Its use is intended to force obligation upon the person to whom it is addressed. And some parents even think that it does obligate them!

I witnessed the following scene just the other day.

Child: "Fries."
Dad: "No."
Child: "Fries, please!"
Dad: "No."
Mom (angrily): "He said please!"

So she took fries from the dad's container and stuffed them in the child's mouth. After all, Dad's not allowed to say no when the child says please. What kind of lesson would that teach?

And please isn't the only magic word. What about sorry? Verbal contrition is thought to somehow obligate clemency. "Well, he did say he was sorry." Or even worse, any minor misdeed can be erased by simply saying, "Sorry," after. Or its even more flip and yet inversely more powerful, "My bad."

Then there's the all-powerful excuse me. As in when we were at the zoo the other day, and the little girl muscled Meghan rudely out of the way with a curt, "Excuse me," as if that made it alright. She wasn't being apologetic, and she wasn't asking Meghan to allow her through. She was being rude, and thought it was okay to be rude, just so long as she said, "Excuse me," afterward.

So can we drop this magic word nonsense out of our child instruction manual?

Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase????!!!!

Long Overdue Update

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 15:57:40 GMT

Hey, all. Sorry I've been so lax in updating. I'll try to get a lot of catching up done in this blog. I'll divide it into convenient sections for intelligibility.

School

Indeed, school as started up. The program at UIndy is a terrific experience. The profs work hard to maintain a balance between research, community involvment, and engagement with their students, and the result is an atmosphere of academically intense mentorship. Right now I'm taking Advanced Human Evolution, which is a reading and discussion seminar, and Gross Anatomy. Gross Anatomy is a lot of work, and we have to dissect a cadaver, but I'm learning a lot, so the effort seems worthwhile.

Dissection status:

Trying to minimize lingo... So far, we have reflected the body wall of the torso as well as the rib cage. We have also removed the heart and lungs and begun our exploration of the GI tract. Next lab, we will dissect the heart itself and remove the GI tract while trying to keep our eyes open for important arteries, veins, and nerves.

Cemetery Project

The exvacation and relocation of the Whitesell Cemetery in Indianapolis began shortly before the first day of classes, so I wasn't able to be in the field as much as I would have liked, but I still had several days work out there. I'm not supposed to talk much about the project, so I'll just mention that the field excavation wrapped up last week, and now we're entering the analysis phase and getting ready for the re-burial of the remains once the identities have been confirmed (or established in the case of unmarked graves).

Casework

Again, I can't really go into mych detail about forensic casework I'm assisting with, but I think I'm safe with a really vague explanation. One case required trauama analysis, and we found definite signs of traumatic injury and then returned the remains to the coroner's office. Another case was a cold case, in which the indentity of the deceased was confirmed by DNA, and we found no particular evidence of perimortem trauama. In another cold case, analysts were surprised to find that their reconstruction revealed previously unknown trauama inflicted upon the skeleton. In another case, we had only part of the remains which the police recovered, and those remains were so framgentary that the team which did the analysis was unable to produce a whole lot of information. Nevertheless, they were able to confirm certain key features of the individual's identity.

I think it's kosher for me to point you to some articles about cases I've been involved with somehow if they mention Nawrocki or our lab, as long as I don't make any specific comments, so here you go for one of them:

http://www.post-trib.com/510328,stewartfolo.articleprint
http://www.thetimesonline.com/articles/2007/08/15/news/top_news/doc2fcb96c52d0e43f7862573380008d408.txt

Still active in the lab are a case where I needed to age a sub-adult from limited remains, another where I analyzed partial remains in order mainly to look for trauama and confirm the likely identity of the invidual. We also recently were assigned another couple of cases from northern Indiana. We need to do full osteological work-ups on both of those, one of which is pretty young.

It's interesting work, but it's emotionally challenging at times, and personally I am doing my best to make sure that it stays that way. I want to remain as emotionally healthy as possible, but it's very impotant to me that I not become dettached and stop recognizing the remains I'm working on for what they are.

Beyond Sustainability

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 11:19:00 GMT

Yesterday, the following was posed on American Public Media's American Weekend radio program, quoted as exactly as I can recall: "As we look at consumer economics, we're interested in the following. What do you really need? What can you live without and what do you need to live? This is an important question for sustainability."

This phrasing suddenly highlighted for me one of the problems with the contemporary approach to sustainability as behavior reform. One of the the great things about being a human, is that you're not limited to what you need to live. That's one of the main things that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.

In other words, in order to honestly answer this question, you would have to advocate a shift from everything that makes us human to a complete "animal" form of existence. Because honestly, what we need to live is the same thing that chimps, gorillas, and baboons need to live. Food that we can dig up, plug, scavenge, or hunt. The ability to defend ourselves with agonistic displays, our own strength, and objects of convenience. Some access to sexual reproduction to propogate our species and a healthy measure of k-selected parental investment to ensure the success of our offspring.

You have to strip out not only those things which we don't need to live but also those things which are the product of other things we don't need to live.

Not only does this not sound particularly appealing, but it creates a problem for sustainability advocates. Because most of the same folks are vocal opponents of poverty, strongly in favor of advanced healthcare, and happy citizens of the shrinking global world.

The true, "what you need to live," lifestyle leads to none of those things. There is universal poverty in the strictest sense. (Checkout the material comfort of baboons, yo.) There is minimal healthcare. (You're looking at lifespans of 30 -- 50 with high infant mortality here.) And there is nothing approach multicultural global life. (Yeah, gorillas range over about 14 or 15 square kilometers.)

So, who's ready? Let's see a show of hands!

Oops? What? No.

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:17:13 GMT

White [of the Atlanta NAACP] said the Falcons quarterback [Michael Vick] is a human being who has made a mistake and should be allowed to prove that he has learned from that mistake.

A mistake is something you say oops after. It's an accident. An error, an overight.

"Oops, I just jammed a knife into this dog's skull."

I don't think so.

Making decisions to bad things is not making mistakes.

Regardless over whether Michael Vick will deserve another chance or not, let's remove this tainted language from our discussion. He did not make some mistakes. He did some bad, evil things.

This isn't just semantics either, because calling something a mistake (1) soft-pedals what they did, (2) takes away a sense of deliberate choice and hence some of the weight of responsibility, (3) turns the evil-doer into something of a victim, because who doesn't feel sorry for the guy who's plagued by mishaps, and (4) leads to the idea that someone can "learn from his mistakes."

True, a mistake is something you learn from.

No one in the public eye ever said, "He can learn from his evil act."

Can you imagine?

Human Depravity

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 22:05:53 GMT

(Nothing gruesome, but just be fairly warned that I'll be talking about work and it may or may not be a little disturbing.)

As I work more and more in forensic anthropology, I will be increasingly exposed to the depths of human depravity. I have already seen the results of horrendous, deliberate violence in both active and archived cases. It's one thing to read about, and another thing altogether to hold in your hands the reults of contemporary or past gunshot violence or brutal blunt force trauma.

I hope that as I get exposed to more over the next few years, that I can handle it alright, but I also hope it never stops bothering me. I supposes sometimes it's necessary to become dettached or to even dehumanize the remains you're working with in order to cope with the horror of some things. But I pray that I never lose the sense of sadness that I presently feel for the victims, the desire to honor their families in what I do, and the feeling of active repellance at what the perpetrators or circumstances did the deceased.

For instance, today I'm sorting through something that I hope I never get comfortable with. Naturally, I can't talk about specific cases for a lot of reasons, but in the course of one active or archival case today I was analyzing some juvenile remains for age. It wasn't any particular trauma or any specifics about the juvenile which struck me. It was the taphonomy, or the changes to the skeleton after death. Withour references any conditions particular to this case, think of taphonomy as things like sun exposure, fungal growth, water- or chemical-staining, carnivore damage, root-etching, insect activity, plow damage, mineralization, and so forth.

In other words, I saw various indicators on this skeleton that suggested it had been left outdoors for some period of time, after all the flesh had decomposed.

And it was a juvenile, a kid.

Regardless of what happened to the kid, whether or not there was any trauma on the skeleton or any other evidence of malfesence, the fact that his or her body was just left outside to decompose and the skeleton remained there until recoverd.

And I hope that always strikes me as disgusting.

Jurisprudence 101a

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 23:09:52 GMT

OK, I listen to a lot of sports radio and read a lot of sports news, and one thing which I am absolutely tired of hearing in regards to Michael Vick, erstwhile QB of the Atlanta Falcons and renowned Dog Figthing Czar, is that he is "innocent until proven guilty." The SCLC recently said (quoted in the Atlanta Journal and Constipation today) that, "Everyone is innocent until they are proven guilty."

This is hooey.

And it is not part of the American legal tradition.

The saying goings like this: he is presumed innocent until he is proven guilty. This is the maxim for the jury at his trial. This says nothing about what the rest of us are allowed to think or encouraged to think. Additionally, it says nothing about his essential innocence.

The popular notion has recently become that "innocent until proven guilty" means that everyone has an essential innocence which is their right to claim until a jury imputes guilt upon them.

Balderdash!

Michael Vick is already either innocent or guilty, depending on his actions. The status of his soul has been already determined. The jury in the American system, however, is recognized as not being privy to the the status of his soul. Therefore, the jury in his trial will be asked to presume that his soul is innocence, and weigh the evidence to determine whether or not he is guilty in the eyes of the law, i.e. culpable for a crime.

Which brings me to the most ridiculous refrain heard along these lines: "he is innocent until a jury proves him guilty."

Holy cow!

A jury doesn't prove anything!

(sigh)

A Little More Jordan Cavenaugh In Our Heads

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 20:43:32 GMT

(see part one here)

Last time I posted it was about how I can relate the experience portrayed on Crossing Jordan corresponds to my introductory experience and the experienc I've learned of from other involved in forensic anthropology.

Here's another little bit of that. On the CSI-type shows, the techs and geeks not only get involved in the search for suspsects, but often in the interrogation of those supsects. It's not normally that way. Remember the TV show Dragnet 1967? When Joe and Bill would go talk to the guy in the Scientific Invetigations Division? They would give him evidence (it was always a him and usually played by all-star utility actor Olan Soule), and he would give them analysis, and then they would do the running around and asking questions and so forth.

Crossing Jordan shows the little bit of tension that can come along with that. When you're a forensics monkey you take the peanut you're thrown, you analyze it, you write a report, and then you fling it back at the cops with a hearty HOO-HOO-HOO HA-HA! But you're interested in the peanut. You want to make sure what happens to it is right. But you stay in your cage and wait for the next peanut.

Jordan, of course, breaks down the cage and goes and annoys the crap out of the cops, and somehow keeps her job.

In real life that doesn't happen and can't happen. But if you're even the least bit invested in the victim, you start to feel an interest in making sure things happen right. I obviously can't take about active casework, but think of it this way. You get a skeleton in your lab. You analyze it. Certain things strike you as significant, and you stress that in your report. Once the report is with the cops and the skeleton is with the coroner, you're done. You may find out through the rumor mill what's going on. More likely, you read it about it in the news. But you just have to sit back and hope that the things you were so sure were important are treated with the regard you think they should be during the rest of the investigation.

Of course, what Jordan never has to face up to is that there's tons of evidence that as a pathologist she has absolutely nothing to do with, probably doesn't even know about, and which may, in the end, be way more important that what she thought was so important in her own research.

A Little Jordan Cavenaugh in All of Us

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 17:30:18 GMT

It's interesting to realize that of all the shows out there that somehow touch on the sort of thing I'm involved with now as a budding forensic anthropologist, the one that seems to resonate most strongly with the experience of it is Crossing Jordan. Perhaps in many ways more contrived than some others, I already see hints, though, of some of Jordan's driving forces in myself and in others.

The shows of the CSI universe tend to really stress the evidence. I've spoken before about how actually unscientific their notion of, "letting the evidence speak," is. Good ol' Quincy, ME stressed the notion of the truth. While Jordan always ends up going that direction (or farther), one of the basic principals dear to her character and others on the show is the idea of serving as the victim's voice. And it's interesting how that works. In a practical sense, all it means is that the forensic anthropologists recreate as much as possible about the identity and final moments of the victim, as well as what happened to them after they died. But it also means taking on a smidge -- and I emphasize a smidge -- of Jordan's "victim advocacy." Because, yeah, a lot of these folks are living high risk lifestyles, and probably no one should be totally shocked that some of these folks died in pretty rough circumstances. But that doesn't matter when their skeleton is laid out on your table. All that matters at that point is doing your part for them. As forensic anthropologists we're not really catching the bad guys and we're not necessarily helping the good guys. We're doing our best to serve the dead guys.

It reminds me a little, too, of jurisprudence class with Dr. Loy. When were talking about the right to a good defense, and I said that I could defend a man I knew was guilty, most of the other students in the class were uncomfortable with that, and a couple suggested that my motivation must have been monetary. But, no, it's a matter of respecting the system and respecting the person. That's the same thing forensic anthropologists do. The person whose skeleton we're examining might have been a scuzz-bucket. But that doesn't matter. We still have to, and want to, do our best to help identify them and to reconstruct their last tragic moments.

And, yes, no matter the person, when you're looking at someone bashed-in skull or disease-riddled vertevbrae, their last moments become tragic.

More on the little Jordan Cavenaugh in our heads another day.