Caroline VanSickle (she/her)

How a Black fossil digger became a superstar in the very white world of paleontology In South Africa, paleontology has been dominated by white people. Lazarus Kgasi is changing that dynamic — and coloring in the picture of the world our distant ancestors once inhabited.

In South Africa, paleontology has been dominated by white people. Lazarus Kgasi is changing that dynamic — and coloring in the picture of the world our distant ancestors once inhabited. n.pr/49WF6w1

The Making of Mr. Gray's Anatomy: Bodies, Books, Fortune, Fame Bodies, Books, Fortune, Fame

This one? It sounds fascinating and is definitely going on my To Read list. Thanks!

bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

Gray of Gray's Anatomy died at age 34??

I need to learn more, but what a legacy. I always assumed he lived to old age and published a lot over a long career, thus the fame!

That's why I had to check. I thought Zotero was broken.

Screenshot from the Purdue OWL APA 7 citation page on Reference List: Author/Authors (link: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/reference_list_author_authors.html). Text reads: [Section Title] Two or More Works by the Same Author in the Same Year [Section Text] If you are using more than one reference by the same author—or the same group of authors listed in the same order—published in the same year, first check to see if they have more specific dates ([noted in red font] this recommendation is new to APA 7). Works with only a year should be listed before those with a more specific date. List specific dates chronologically. If two works have the same publication date, organize them in the reference list alphabetically by the title of the article or chapter. If references with the same date are identified as parts of a series (e.g. Part 1 and Part 2), list them in order of their place in the series. Then assign letter suffixes to the year. Refer to these sources in your essay as they appear in your reference list, e.g.: "Berndt (2004a) makes similar claims..." Berndt, T. J. (2004a). Children’s friendships: Shifts over a half-century in perspectives on their development and their effects. Merrill Palmer Quarterly, 50(3), 206-223. Berndt, T. J. (2004b). Friendship and three A’s (aggression, adjustment, and attachment). Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 88(1), 1-4.

TIL that in APA7, your first in-text reference might have a "b" after the year (e.g., "(Berndt, 2004b)"). And that the new suggestion is to include more specific date info if available.

Purdue OWL: Teaching me about citation styles since, uh, forever!

owl.purdue.edu/owl/research...

I bought them twice and each time had my rx change a year or 2 later, which didn’t feel worth the cost!

Ooh and while I’m at it: wear sunglasses!

I recently learned that sun exposure may increase risk of cataracts. Totally regretting my childhood of no sunglasses (I wore prescription glasses and there generally weren’t great sunglasses alternatives, though over the years I tried them all).

I feel like hearing protection is the new “wear sunscreen”, but also wear sunscreen if you missed that message in the late ‘90s.

Also: use ear plugs. I live by my loops for any event involving a crowd (hockey games, I’m looking at you!). Planes, too.

If you see babies with ear protection, consider using some yourself!

I’ve been guilty of thinking I can project loudly enough. I’m grateful for the HoH folks who took the time to inform me that wasn’t enough. Always use the mic.

Screenshot of a page from the ebook of The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan. The page starts with a drawing of a green bird on a branch, labeled “Anna's Hummingbird (female)”. Under the image, text reads: “Like most kids, I enjoyed drawing and I laid down enough "pencil miles" (a fun phrase I just learned in this book) to develop some skills at a young age. So by the time my own bird obsession started to take hold, drawing was a natural part of that. I consider drawing mostly a brain exercise. The hand that controls the pencil to make lines on paper is a small part of the whole process. You can learn how to draw, and then drawing anything becomes easier, but drawing is really a different way of seeing, converting something from three dimensions in the real world to lines on a two-dimensional sheet of paper.” From the book’s forward, written by ornithologist David Allen Sibley.

Screenshot of a page from the ebook of The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan. The text reads: “Drawing something, like birds, actually depends more on your knowledge of the subject than on your drawing ability. And it is a deep and intangible sort of knowledge. Imagine your very wise birding mentor saying, "Yes, it is black with a yellow head... but do you really know what that bird looks like?" Drawing requires you to absorb details and then to combine them into a simplified and unified whole. Watching birds for countless hours is the way to get to know them, and drawing is the test to demonstrate that knowledge. The drawing is, in a way, like discovering the birds anew, as they appear on your paper. It usually means testing lines and shapes, erasing, adding a curve, sharpening or softening an edge, working to find the details that re-create the essence of the bird in a drawing. And when that happens it feels like a small kernel of truth has been revealed.” From the forward of the book, written by ornithologist David Allen Sibley.

I started reading The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan & found myself impressed by this take on drawing in the forward by David Allen Sibley.

I draw fossils (often poorly) to get to know the details of the bone fragment, so I agree that “drawing is really a different way of seeing”.

Imagine how much writing I (or anyone) would get done with help like that!

All it takes is being ok taking advantage of and disenfranchising half the population.

So glad you could enjoy the museum!

I like this assessment. I’ve not read Pratchett widely, but the books I have read all has surprisingly philosophical commentary tucked into what was otherwise a “fun fantasy”.

As my training is not in EB, I can’t speak for how they are trained.

In anthropology, I was trained to recognize that there have been a lot of human cultures and that social structures are not determined or predicted by the population’s biology, that’s way too simplistic for understanding humans.

I consider myself a biological anthropologist who sometimes has to engage with evolutionary biologists.

In EB, too often the conclusions are about how biology determines culture. In BA, we learn that culture & biology are interrelated, affecting each other but not determining (that’s too narrow).

I just wish someone would be honest and say “we are ending civilian science in favor of science that is focused on serving national security and war”

💫New research out now!💫

Hutson and colleagues demonstrate that men get hired as faculty in archaeology PhD programs more often than women, putting strain on women PhD mentors. And they have some suggestions about what to do about it, too.

Read here:
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Ah I missed the part about wear earlier. Yeah that would require really knowing a lot about gender norms and roles in the population. For a lot of ancient cultures we don’t have that info, so such estimates are dicey. Thanks for sharing!

Another story from my years as a manager: there was a period of time when my group of I think eight direct reports consisted entirely of women, and one day a man from a different group made a comment about how "people are wondering when Snitty is going to hire some men."

Methods exist to estimate sex from all regions of the skeleton. These methods will yield a male/female answer because that is what they are designed to do. The concern is accuracy (shoulders differ less by sex than the pelvis) and research design (is the method capable of ID-ing intersex people?).

An Anthropologist’s Perspective on Sex and Gender in the Skeleton Anthropological methods show that skeletal sex is an estimate, not a certainty, revealing the limits of binary claims about human identity.

Will an anthropologist be able to identify your sex and gender from your bones 100 years from now? I sure hope so!

Read my essay on the limited and limiting methods we currently have for sex estimation to learn where the science has room to improve.

www.prosocial.world/posts/an-ant...

* I haven’t read the article nor do I plan to. I recognize that merit based hiring has its issues (e.g., who defines merit) and that the academic hiring system is very broken. None of this changes the fact that guys crying anti-DEI want to perpetuate an unjust system to their benefit.

Some guy on the internet is apparently complaining about not getting hired because he’s a white dude.

It’s like he doesn’t realize his position is “white guys should get unfair advantages because we’re better” — aka classic white supremacy.

And he’s allegedly a historian! 🤦‍♀️

*

THIS!!!

In other work-related musings: I love it when my concern is not having enough to say in an article, only to find out I have too much to say. Future me will hate cutting this down, but right now, this draft is fun to write! Maybe I’ll find a way to save the cut text for a future piece.

Rescheduling December due dates for January (or later) is already normalized, but for me feels like a failure. My goal would be to be more intentional about it earlier on. This year is definitely going to end with at least one task getting reassigned to January!

Intentional due date free December.

…. I tried looking up what “Eastern Pacific“ means and our media stenography situation is such that they all reported that phrase without asking ANY questions

Oh no I just sent a package with that service!

🤞🤞🤞🤞 for both of us!