Gorillas and tools

Very excited to hear this morning about gorillas in the wild being observed using tools for a variety of things. One used a stick to test water depth before stepping in (nice photo here). That is not just tool use, it is pretty high level thinking, in my opinion. Once again, we are not alone...

On a side note, not quite as anthropological, I was also excited to learn this week that a live giant squid has been filmed. Don't think they use tools, but a reminder that quite a bit of science fiction is fact if you look below the waterline is a good thing.

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Storytelling

A couple of years ago I organized a conference session on storytelling as a means to communicate anthropological findings in non-academic environments. Storytelling is central to anthropology as a discipline—not only do we all study some aspect of human story, the stories of the cultures we study are key to our understanding of them. Stories become mechanisms for collaboration and change, as well as carriers of history. But we don’t always stop to think about the stories we tell, even though anthropologists regularly use storytelling as a communication device. In order to be relevant in settings dominated by non-anthropologists, we must not only pass on the data we have gathered, but convey its importance and convince decision makers in business, design, development, public policy, environment, and a myriad of other fields. Constructing these stories involves editing and carefully choosing what to relay to our audience. Delivering the stories involves performance on many scal...

Kids Day and India

Last Friday was bring your kid to work day at Pitney Bowes. It's all very fun, begins with breakfast and a magic show, followed by tours for the older kids, then a big outdoor picnic. I was a tour stop, "Let's Travel to India." They put the kids in groups by age, since some of the stops are better for older or younger ones...I ended up with groups ranging from about 8-13 years old. It was fun but exhausting. I figured the point was more fun than educational, so pretty much I set up a slide show to talk about the fact that we invent stuff by understanding how people live and work, and asking what they knew about India. Answers: lots of people, cows...Showed them pics of cellphones, malls and offices and lots of things that look pretty similar in India as in the US, then pictures of things that look different. Fun to see their reactions. They all noticed the Subway in the mall, and they all recognized the well in the village and understood what it was for and that...

Fishies

Today I am reflecting more on ichthyology than anthropology. Our big event last weekend was setting up an aquarium--10 gallon, freshwater tank. Did a bit of research beforehand, mostly consisting of asking people with some existing knowledge what we should do, but arguably, not very much prior investigations, other than when I was a kid we had several aquaria in the house (not to mention dogs, turtles, birds, snakes--we were pretty well supplied with pets). So, a week ago Saturday we got the tank, set it up, got the water in. Next day went to get fish, relying on the guy at the Petco who assured us our choices were OK for a starter tank. Get home, introduce them to the tank, Kurt decides to read up some more on our new friends. Learn one is in fact not such a friendly species and might torment the others--so back to the pet store for a fish exchange. At that point, we did more web research, which I have to say is more confusing than anything else--a case of too much information and som...

A Visible City

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