It’s been a rollercoaster week in US politics! Hope that, no matter where you are in the world, something in the news made you happy this week. Send me any blog links at rebecca.nelson.jacobs@gmail.com.

According to this post on Media/Anthropology, bilingualism has a different social valence in Spain (where it signifies upward mobility) and Denmark (where it signifies loss of competency in Danish): Educating “Bilingual” Children in Spain and Denmark

At Raving Anthropology, a student is chronicling her fieldwork on drug use and harm reduction in electronic dance music halls in Toronto. In Eat, Sleep, Anth, Repeat, she discusses entering the field, and follows up with excerpts from her field notes in Field Notes: This Data Collection is Interfering with My Dancing. (There’s strong language in case you’re squeamish).

This AAA blog post points out that white middle-class parenting standards should not be taken as the norm, with any difference seen as a lack: White+Word Gap=Wrong! 

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I love when good online content finds me! Keep submitting links to me at rebecca.nelson.jacobs@gmail.com and I’m happy to feature them on here.

The title of this Washington Post article is pretty self-explanatory: Why Congress Should Not Cut Funding to the Social Sciences. Takeaway? Aside from having any intrinsic value, understanding social phenomena is important for shaping public policy.

My friends and I were just comparing notes on Ph.D. research with some people we know from the biology department, and they couldn’t understand our view of research as a basically solitary activity in anthropology. This post on the Global Social Media Impact Study Project Blog addresses that very perception: A Methodological Case of Comparative Anthropology 

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It’s unofficially archaeology week here at the headquarters of the Around the Web Digest… Send me anything I need to feature on here at rebecca.nelson.jacobs@gmail.com.

Past Horizons: Adventures in Archaeology features this attractive post about the excavation of a drover’s track and inn from the 18th-19th centuries: Ancient Routeway Revealed in Argyll

The crew at DigVentures obviously loves and hates clickbait as much as I do… Check out these 7 Medieval Medicines Dug Up By Archaeologists – the third one will change the way you see medieval medicine forever!

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Happy Sunday! Did you know the Spanish word for “pansy,” pensamiento, also means “thought,” just as in the French? I bet you did; you’re all so clever. If there’s anything you want me to share with our readers, send me the link at rebecca.nelson.jacobs@gmail.com.

In A Hobby Anthropologist Dissects the Tribes of the Upper East Side, the New York Times pans Wednesday Martin’s new quasi-ethnography on the elite women of the Upper East Side, Primates of Park Avenue. The Othering tone of the title calls to mind “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” but without the famous article’s self-conscious awareness of this tendency in anthropological writing. While she appears to have more of an anthropology background than the NY Times gives her credit for, the work sounds superficial and, according to the review, gender-biased in singling out women for criticism.

Yahoo! News featured this story, New Species of Human Ancestor Found in Ethiopia, with the claim that Australopithecus afarensis (represented by the famous “Lucy” skeleton) may not be humanity’s ancestor. Anthropology.net also profiled this discovery, with a link to the original study, but focused only on the claim that a new species has been discovered with characteristics distinct from A. afarensis: Say Hello to Australopithecus deyiremeda, a Newly Discovered 3.4 Million-Year Old Hominid.

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If you observe it, happy Easter! The theme for this week seems to be “navel-gazing,” with a variety of blogs across the anthroblogosphere focusing on anthropology itself and academia as a whole. Don’t go anywhere, though: these are interesting posts. Please send any cool blog posts my way at rebecca.nelson.jacobs@gmail.com… particularly if you wrote them!

I can sympathize with this topical post on the Scientific American anthropology blog, which takes a jaundiced historical view of childish April Fool’s Day pranks like the one we featured on here… Then and Now: April Fools’ Day—How Did We Get Here?

Moving from one holiday post to another, DigVentures has some lovely visuals in this post on ancient egg decorating: How to Decorate Your Easter Egg Like It’s 60,000 BC

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For those of you in the Northeast like me, spring has officially come so don’t let a little snow fool you into thinking it hasn’t. As always, if you want me to feature anything here, send me the link at rebecca.nelson.jacobs@gmail.com.

In honor of Sir Terry Pratchett’s life and work, here’s a quote from The Science of Discworld II: The Globe: “The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens (‘wise man’). In any case it’s an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.” If you’re unfamiliar with his books, I recommend the Rincewind series, which begins with The Colour of Magic and skewers academic pretensions.

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Beware the Ides of March, pansies. The dedicated anthropology blogs were a bit quieter than usual this week but to make up for it, anthropologists were featured in a variety of other spaces. As always, if you come across anything good or want to bring an anthro blog to my attention, email me at rebecca.nelson.jacobs@gmail.com

Let me take a minute to boost the Savage Minds Reader Survey (after all, survey data shows that people who take surveys are nicer and smarter than people who don’t!).

This is a January post, and it’s not even written by an anthropologist. Bear with me. It blew up my feeds this week when it was republished by The Guardian, so I think it’s worth a look. The title is pretty self-explanatory: Don’t Call them Expats, They are Immigrants like Everyone Else

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