Category Archives: Anthropology

Candyassification

Posted on May 18, 2013 by

Admit it, the world if getting more candy assed. Gone are the tough handed men of the past who dragged canon over mountains; who sailed wooden ships into the unknown with both skin and bone in the game. All we … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Anthropology | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Passwords and GDP

Posted on May 1, 2013 by

Passwords suck. Be fair, how much of your life have you wasted for a lost username or password? It would be one thing if it were airline security, but mostly it is some random website you don’t give a rat’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Economics, Having one's head up one's maths | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Subjective and Objective

Posted on April 19, 2013 by

Those who have studied English might call this a “watershed”. As a carpenter and mountaineer I always objected to this term as imprecise because what is really meant is ridge or divide where water flows one way or the other. … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Biology, History, Metaphor | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Something In Us Loves a Witch

Posted on April 14, 2013 by

Something in us loves a witch. We’ve already explored the irrational behavior demonstrated by Prohibition and the Salem Witch Trials. See “Global Warming and Prohibition”. The nature of the human condition is that we are constantly confronted with forces beyond … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Climate, History, Metaphor | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

El Patron, El Sol

Posted on April 2, 2013 by

This is what I will be looking like soon. The wages of a Nordic phenotype who spent his life in the sun. Not so much at the beach, although there too when I was younger. High altitude sun, Radon and … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Biology, Wilderness | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Wine, Volcanoes, and the Dioxides

Posted on March 24, 2013 by

Making wine teaches important lessons about the wee beastie soup we live in, call it the dim sum. It also holds lessons about Carbon and Sulfur. Carbon and Sulfur were instrumental in the evolution of life on this planet, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Biology, History, History of Life, Metaphor, Ocean Acidification | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Here’s the Beef, Or the World Economy Explained by a Billion Cows

Posted on March 9, 2013 by

Grasses coevolved with ungulates (we can call them cows). About 30 million years ago due to declining temperature, humidity, and atmospheric Carbon dioxide a bunch of plants including grasses evolved a more efficient form of photosynthesis called C4. This allowed them … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Climate, Climate Change, Economics, Geography, History, History of Life, Paleoclimate, Salvation from Cows | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Charybdis and the Oldest Ocean Floor on Earth

Posted on January 6, 2013 by

A few years back there was a much ballyhooed drilling effort to find some 175 million year old sea floor touted as the “oldest”. Incorrecto qui mo sabe. That particular ocean floor is interesting in its own right (see our … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Geography, Geology, Paleogeography, Plate Tectonics | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Global Warming and Prohibition

Posted on January 3, 2013 by

We like to think we live in an enlightened era, but even modern history keeps reminding us that a rigid and intolerant side of human nature lies just beneath the surface. It is ironic that Prohibition, and a corresponding amendment … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology, Carbon Theology, Climate, Climate Change, Global Warming | Tagged | 5 Comments

Creatures of Metaphor

Posted on December 26, 2012 by

We humans are creatures of metaphor. Our signal character, the sole remaining bastion between us and less godly creatures, is language. Language is metaphor, a music we infuse with meaning, infused with thousands of different meanings in as many different … Continue reading →

Posted in Anthropology | Tagged , , | 1 Comment