Highlighted in my ResearchBlogging.org column this week: At Geneaology of Religion, Cris Campbell has a nice summary of dissociative speech patterns—in layman’s terms, that’s to say he breaks down different ways of “speaking in tongues.” The Neuroskeptic discusses a small, self-selected study on “bi-gendered” individuals which highlights the ways social pressures can color our identities. At NeuroDojo, Zen Faulkes [...]

I have three beautiful nieces. One is thirteen, one just turned two, and the littlest one will be celebrating her first birthday on Friday. They’re all experiencing various stages of change and undergoing assorted adjustments. The thirteen-year-old is in middle school, and is negotiating a new social landscape with both her friends and her parents. [...]

‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What’s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would [...]

As an anthropologist, I realize I’m sometimes hyper-aware of social norms—particular those that I find offensive—so I work to ensure that my responses are as balanced as they can be. This is my version of looking before I leap so I don’t stick my foot in my mouth. (How’s that for a metaphor mashup?) Every [...]

The Miss America pageant is often judged to be somewhat of an insult to women. So I was once surprised to learn that the Miss America Organization is the world’s largest provider of scholarship assistance to younger women. A total of $45 million in cash and scholarships was given out last year by MAO and [...]

As a decades-long fan of The Golden Girls, I was saddened to learn of the death of Rue McClanahan last week. In fact, I think I genuinely shed a palpable, detectable tear, which is something I can’t remember ever doing on the death of a celebrity, with the exception perhaps of Bea Arthur and Estelle [...]

"I’m from Britain, and when I first moved here I couldn’t believe that American kids got three whole months of summer vacation. Back in England our children only get six weeks. But here…it’s…bleech!" This rather unkind comment was uttered by a woman sitting next to me at Mathnasium, a math tutoring center located in Chatham, [...]

Men tend to get coronary artery disease much earlier than do women. For some men, the reason for that might be in part because of their fathers—and their father’s father—according to a new study, published online Wednesday in The Lancet. The study analyzed data from 3,233 unrelated white men enrolled in previous U.K. studies. From [...]

Blogging and other Web activities have allowed members of many marginalized communities to open previously locked media doors. But women still rely more on back channels and ask for less help than men do in the digital realm. This tendency and other issues of concern for women bloggers were discussed Sunday at the ScienceOnline2011 conference [...]

In May of 2010, two influential Science papers changed the way that we think about the past and future of genomes. The decoding of the Neandertal genome showed that humans and Neandertals interbred some time before Neandertals went extinct some 30,000 years ago. A couple weeks later, the J. Craig Venter Institute announced their chemical [...]