Subtitle

The Not Quite Adventures of a Professional Archaeologist and Aspiring Curmudgeon

Friday, April 20, 2012

The Talk is Over, on to the Next One

By the time this posts, I will have delivered a paper at one of the symposiums (symposia?) at the Society For American Archaeology's 2012 meeting in Memphis Tennessee.  Hopefully, at the time that this posts, I will be sitting in a barbecue place with a former boss of mine who is originally from Memphis enjoying some ribs.

I deeply, deeply loathe public speaking, and yet I keep agreeing to do it.  I am always concerned that I am going to come off sounding like an idiot, especially in a case like this, where my actual paper topic diverges from the symposium topic (for the record, I checked the topic with the symposium organizer before I wrote it, and she said it was fine).  The truth of the matter is that very few people will likely hear the paper (I am the last speaker in my symposium, and all of the big name speakers will already have come and gone by the point that I end up at the podium), and those who do will likely forget it after they leave - I am picking on a little-known subject in southern California archaeology, which doesn't tend to lend itself to being memorable for anyone who doesn't share my particular interests and irritants. 

So, now that I have spoken, and hopefully not made myself look too terribly foolish, I am hopefully enjoying a nice lunch, and tomorrow I catch a late flight back to California, and a 3.5 hour drive back to Fresno from the San Francisco Airport. 

And then I start on the next project.  I will be speaking to the Fresno County Archaeological Society [http://www.scahome.org/about_ca_archaeology/fresno.html#fcas] on May 7th (anyone in the Fresno area should feel free to come see the talk).  I will discuss the history of research in the Santa Ynez Valley, in Santa Barbara County, California. 

And then?  Well, hopefully then I will have nothing pressing that needs be done for a while.  I have realized recently just how stressed-out and tired I have gotten lately, and I need some time to relax, especially considering that I am going to be a father come September and that I need to be able to devote my energies to that when the time comes. 

That being said, there are a few projects that I would very much like to do - some small writing projects, and a paper that I would like to publish on an abnormally old projectile point found in Yosemite.  But I think that I need to balance my research interests against my impending family life, my job, my non-research writing interests (such as this blog), and my non-archaeology interests, and the fact of the matter is that the research is probably the thing that can be most easily minimized without impacting the overall quality of my life. 

So, we'll see.  I'd like to publish more, but I may very well decide that it's not worth the effort when compared to other things that I could be doing with my time.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Pinhole Pictures

So, Kaylia gave me a pinhole camera kit for my birthday last year.  A pinhole camera, for the unaware, is a light-proof box in which you can put film, with a small (usually around 0.2 millimeter) hole (AKA, the pinhole) on the side opposite the film which can be opened and closed with a manual shutter.  The pinhole allows light in to expose the film, but the lack of a lens means that the images all have a "soft" quality - not simply unfocused, but unfocused in a particular way.  However, unlike a standard lens camera, where there is a finite field of focus (anything within that field is in focus, anything out of it is not), the pinhole camera has essentially an infinite field of focus, so everything might be fuzzy, but it is all equally fuzzy.

Anyway, these qualities make for some interesting images, and I have been having fun with it.  So, with that in mind, and seeing as how I don't have time this week to write anything more expansive, here's some examples of the photos that I have been taking.  You may notice the orange blotches in some of the outdoors photos - that's light leakage, places where the box is letting in too much light under certain circumstances, and I am trying to fix it.  Also, the fridge photo - the blur of light is due to the exposure taking half an hour, and people walking in and out opening and closing the fridge door - it's a neat effect, I just want to learn to control it better.









Monday, April 16, 2012

Talks, Conferences, and Downtime

So, this coming weekend, I will be in Memphis, TN attending the Society for American Archaeology annual meeting.  I have to finish a paper and presentation (the paper's written, I'm working out the details of the presentation), and as such I will be pretty busy this week.  I may post a few photograph blog entries, as I like posting photographs, and this requires minimal effort from me, but otherwise I am unlikely to post much this week. 

After I finish the conference, I will be preparing a talk for the Fresno County archaeological Society (to be delivered on May 7th, in case you are in the Fresno area), so I will remain a bit busy for a few weeks to come.

I am looking forward to being done with all of this, and not having big things that I have to do for a while.

Friday, April 13, 2012

New Age Energy vs. Anthropology and History

In a recent argument regarding Reiki, the person with whom I was arguing (who is fully convinced of the efficacy of Reiki*) made a number of supporting claims.  There were the usual citing of anecdotal claims and dubious readings of situations, and claims of big pharma cover-ups, of course, but in the middle of it there was the following claim (paraphrased by me, but close enough to the original that the claimant is unlikely to take any issue with it):

"All cultures have some form of energy healing, which makes the claims of Reiki practitioners credible!"

Really?  All cultures do, eh?

No.  Not really.

There are numerous problems with this claim - not the least of which is the notion that a commonly held belief is inherently true (AKA, the bandwagon fallacy).  Let's start with the first one - the imposition of the concept of energy onto the practices of cultures that would not have recognized the concept itself.  Most New Age beliefs tend to refer to mystical energies, but the problem here is that energy is well defined within physics (go here for a good explanation of what it is, or here for a good explanation coupled with how it is abused by New Agers), but not within the various New Age schools of thought.  In fact, my own experience has been that pursuing the New Age definitions of energy invariably results in either non-answer deflections ("well, you see, energy is vibrations!" "Huh?") or muddled nonsensical answers that collapse in upon their own weight. 

The problem, I suspect, is that because energy is not a physical object, but rather a potential for work/force, a property of physical objects (so, kinetic energy is the energy of an object in motion, electrical energy is the energy of electrons moving through an object, thermal energy is the heat generated by a chemical reaction within an object, etc.).  Because energy is physical in nature, but as a property does not manifest as an object itself, people tend to view it as a weird, ethereal thing, even though it is really a very simple concept that is quite clear once properly explained.  It is similar to quantum physics - a very real subject of scientific study the name of which is routinely employed by people who want to push their made-up crap.

So, the first problem with the claim that every culture has some form of energy healing is the fact that the term "energy healing" as used by New Agers reveals a deep ignorance of what the term energy means, and a replacement of its real definition with a hazy "mystical force" definition.

The next problem is that it's not at all clear that energy healing beliefs are all that common.  Many New Agers will refer to shamanic practices geared towards manipulating a person's energy to remove illness as a form of energy healing.  However, as described by ethnographers ranging from Claude Levi Strauss to Alfred Kroeber to J.P. Harrington and Franz Boas, these practices were geared towards removing illness-causing agents, not energies.  These agents might have been spirits, but they were at least as likely to be thought of as physical objects (for one example, Levi-Strauss documented cases where shamans claimed that bits of blood mixed with other objects were the causes of sickness).  Similarly, both anthropologists and journalists working in rural Asia have documented cases of local healers claiming to pull physical objects out of an individual in order to heal illness.  In other cases, shamans and healers fought to stave off illness caused by sorcery. 
So, many of the cases that get cited as "energy healing" are, in fact, viewed by the practitioners not as energy healing in the New Age sense, but as the removal of physical objects causing illness.  In those other cases, where spirits or sorcery are viewed as the cause, a reading of the actual anthropological literature demonstrates that the people who engage in these practices do not see spirits or magic as vague "bad vibes" in the way that so many New Age healers do, and that the claim of these being energy healing is a post-hoc rationalization and imposition to try to bring their beliefs into line with those of the New Age believers, and not an acceptance of the actual practice as viewed and experienced by the actual people doing it.

If we look into European history, we likewise see a mix of magic, spirit/demon beliefs, and physical causes for illness.  Folk beliefs often cited witchcraft as a cause of some illnesses, and depending on the tradition being examined, witchcraft might include anything from simple folk magic to attempted deals with spirits and demons, but, again, not some fuzzy, ill-defined "energy."  Early European medical doctors were often dependent on the concept of the "humors" - blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm.  While the concepts surrounding the humors often ranged into the mystical, they were, nonetheless, real physical things that could be manipulated by physical means (fr example, bleeding a patient), and not "energies." 

Even in east Asia, where so many New Agers get inspiration for claims about "healing energies", the notion that this was a common belief is a bit dubious.  Certainly, the notion of Chi (or ki, or qi) as currently used seems to meet it, but it is itself a term that has had many different definitions throughout history (read up on it here), and the notion that it was an "energy" as opposed to something else post-dates European contact, and historically it has even been thought of as a building-block of physical matter, rather like many similar concepts held by Greek philosophers.  Prana is a similar concept with a similar history.  So, even here, where we have the closest approximation to New Age energy, the history of the concept doesn't quite line up with what the Reiki practitioner with whom I was arguing claims. 

Are there cultures which do have beliefs that have rough similarities ot New Age "energy healing" practices?  Yes, there are.  But, again, they line up roughly, not precisely, and the New Age tendency is to tend to force the "energy healing" concept onto these beliefs and practices rather than take them as they are.  Moreover, while these types of concepts are not unheard of, they are FAR from universal, and someone who claims that every culture has them is someone who has demonstrated that they are disinterested in the practices of other cultures.  






*For the uninitiated, you lucky bastards, Reiki is the practice of waving one's hands over someone to manipulate their "energies" [in keeping with it's Asian origin, this is usually referred to as "ki", "qi", or "chi", and heal them*, with some people doing actual massage, which does have limited but real therapeutic value, and claiming to be doing Reiki simultaneously.  Though often claimed to be an "ancient healing art, Reiki is, in fact, quite modern, dating to the 1920s.  However, its adherents are usually very clear that it comes from Asia, which, as with so many culture-porn related things, seems to give it an aura of mysticism in their minds.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Yogurt, Science, and Lies

I was just listening to an episode of WNYC's Radiolab which focused on the digestive tract.  One of the issues that is discussed in the episode is research into the role that intestinal bacteria play in altering brain chemistry, and therefore, mood.  As goofy as this may sound, it makes a certain degree of sense when you look at the map of nerves within the body and the roles of the brain and the gut in making sure that we are nourished and surviving. 

One researcher being interviewed claims that the results that he has gotten from altering the gut bacteria via diet is comparable to many anti-depressant drugs.  These results have been published int he Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.  Specifically, the researcher used different types of yogurt.  Now, this is one researcher, and there is still a long, long way to go in figuring out if and how these findings could be adapted into meaningful treatments.  But, the research is interesting, and on-going, and does seem to show some promise.

I write about this not because it is interesting in and of itself, though it certainly is, but because this is precisely the sort of research that most people who subscribe to naturopathy claim isn't occurring, or claim is being suppressed by "big pharma" - and yet, here it is, occurring, being published in major journals, and being discussed in a national radio show.  In other words, people who claim that non-pharmaceutical interventions are never examined or considered by doctors, because they are in the thrall of their "big pharma" overlords, you can point to this and call the claimant on their bullshit. 

And this is hardly an isolated incident.  Research into the role of diet in preventing/causing disease, and of general preventative medicine (including diet, but also exercise, emotional well-being, etc.) is done constantly in  major labs around the world, and published in major journals.  In fact, it is a rare occasion that someone will tell me that some non-pharmaceutical or surgical intervention is "not being studied because of big pharma" and that I can not immediately go to PubMed and pull up studies proving that the person making the claim is wholly ignorant of what is actually being done.

There are legitimate concerns with private industry funding research (though, it should be said, there are also benefits to it - it's not all bad or all good), and these issues do get discussed and are actually routinely brought up in the very professional journals that the naturopaths falsely claim won't publish findings critical of industry.  However, there is a good deal of medical research funded via a number of different avenues with both public and private funds, and the research covers a wide range of subjects.  Whenever someone claims that a particular subject is not researched because "big pharma doesn't want it researched" or because "there's no money in it" or because "scientists are afraid it will overturn what they want you to believe", you are dealing with someone who is wholly and completely ignorant of science, of medicine, and who is likely to hypocritically accuse others of "being sheep" while uncritically swallowing nonsense themselves.

So, there you go, regular old yogurt studied by legitimate scientists as a stress and depression control therapy.  It's in it's early stages, but the research is on-going, and it's existence proves many of the popular claims regarding medical research oh so very wrong.  Keep that in mind the next time someone tries to make you believe that some miracle cure isn't being studied because of some massive corporate conspiracy.

Monday, April 9, 2012

Betting on Pascal's Wager

Every few months or so, I will find myself in conversation with someone who is religious, and will eventually bring up some variation of Pascal's Wager.  Sometimes it's very clearly articulated in it's classic form (follow the link above for an example), but most of the time it's done in a less formal way (likely not even intentionally referring to Pascal's idea, but nonetheless echoing it) by saying something along the lines: "but, aren't you afraid of Hell if you don't believe?" or, more common "but doesn't believing that death is the end just make you sad?"

I have described my view regarding death before, and see no reason to go into depth about it now.  Suffice to say, I have the same healthy respect for death that most adults do, but I don't think that I fear it overly-much.  So, no, the thought of death being the end doesn't make me sad, it makes me want to make my life better and make the world around me better.  And as I don't believe that there is any sort of torturous afterlife for the infidels, I don't fear that, either.

However, how I feel about death is, really, rather irrelevant.  I am, as far as I can determine, incapable of consciously making myself believe something that I know to be untrue.  So Pascal's wager simply doesn't work because I can't "wager that there is a god and heaven" because I can't force myself to believe in something without cause or evidence.

But there's another aspect of this that has always sort of bothered me.  It seems to me to be astoundingly sacrilegious and offensive to adopt the mantle of a faith for personal gain, as opposed to because of sincere belief.  The difference between joining a church in hope of eternal rewards and joining a church in hopes of some sort of material gain (say, for example, business contacts) is a difference of degree, not of type.  And it seems insulting to those who do sincerely believe that someone would join in hopes of avoiding punishment or gaining a reward, as opposed to joining because they honestly believe the tenets of the religion. 

As a result, whenever someone brings up Pascal's Wager in some form or another, I find myself wondering whether the person doing so is actually one of the faithful themselves, or if they are someone without severe doubts who professes a stronger belief than they actually possess out of a hope for reward or an avoidance of punishment, and is somehow seeking group absolution in trying to get others to join them.

Friday, April 6, 2012

Sore Legs, Sore Feet, Back on Survey

Although CRM archaeologists do field work throughout the year, the winter tends to be a relatively fallow period (though, as you will see if you go back through the December and January entries on this blog, I was pretty damn busy this year).  Regardless, it's a been a little while since I last surveyed, and oh do my legs know it.

We had a field project this week, a 450-acre survey in agricultural land in Madera County, in preparation for a major energy installation.  We walked straight a north-bound line, half a mile long, and at the end of the line, we shifted over so that we would walk over ground not yet covered, and headed south.  The ground was rolling, but not difficult terrain by any means.  The air was cool, but not cold, and ti was, on the hole, very good survey conditions.  We easily covered 60 acres per person each day that we were on the ground.

So why the hell are my legs and feet so damned sore?

The reason, I know, is that all of my field work for the last few months has been excavation, and survey works a different set of muscles.  While I routinely take long walks, I normally don't do so for eight hours straight, while carrying equipment.  Also, I have always had bad feet, and they are just bound to be sore. 

Still, it's good to get broken in again.  We have four more energy-related surveys coming up, and each of them will require that I be back in shape.  Better to start with the easy one.