Around the Web Digest: Week of November 1

Ben Carson made our week by opining about Egyptology, a topic he has clearly researched extensively. Help us all stay equally informed by sending me links at rebecca.nelson.jacobs@gmail.com to include in the digest.

Material World reviews the new 9/11 memorial and museum, suggesting that while it may have suffered from a certain degree of curation by committee, it’s more nuanced than other reviews have suggested in its treatment of radical Islam and the bombers: Some Thoughts About the 9/11 Memorial and Museum

Don’t read this post on Harris-Jones Anthropology while eating breakfast… How Do Beliefs About Pollution and Dirt Relate to Systems of Classification? Apparently the Hua are so far from viewing vomit as dirty (as long as it comes from a real or classificatory father) that they rub it into their skin.

In this post on Somatosphere, a researcher shares how her research and personal experiences intertwined when she went from studying reproductive technologies to using them to have a child with her partner: When Research Bleeds into Real Life: Studying Reproductive Ageing While Ageing Reproductively

FocaalBlog features this two-part interview about the worlds and public activities of hackers, particularly focusing on their ambivalent relationship to privacy and secrets: Gabriella Coleman on the Ethnography of Digital Politics Part 1, Part 2

IFL Science presents the results of a study of the village of Ceren in El Salvador that suggests that it was more independent of the centers of power of the Mayan empire than archaeologists had thought: Ancient Mayan Village Preserved In Volcanic Ash Lets Us Peer Into The Lives Of Ordinary People

In the midst of the excitement over whether Tutankhamun’s tomb might have previously undiscovered chambers and Carson’s odd remarks, Mashable featured this (dubiously colorized) photo essay on the original discovery of the tomb: Nov. 4, 1922 The Discovery of Tutankhamun, in Color

Kristina Killgrove’s Forbes archaeology page responds to Carson directly, explaining how we know what we know about the pyramids: Archaeologists To Ben Carson: Ancient Egyptians Wrote Down Why The Pyramids Were Built 

The New Yorker’s humorist Andy Borowitz also weighed in on the archaeological mystery: Carson: Loss of Keystone Leaves U.S. With No Place to Store Grain 

Finally, joke newspaper The Onion brought us this headline: Archaeologists Discover Ancient Femur That Could Make Mouthwatering Broth 

See you next week!

Rebecca Nelson

Rebecca Nelson is the executive director of América Solidaria U.S. She recently graduated with a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the University of Connecticut. Her research focuses on volunteer tourism in Guatemala and how it is opening up new avenues for tourists and hosts to develop more cosmopolitan understandings of the world (as well as opening up new forms of friction over the circulation of knowledge).