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Well, Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. It’s a little bit late, I suppose, but I passed a generally happy Thanksgiving, so … consider that to be more of a statement of condition than a recommendation. I had a happy thanksgiving. That’s what I’m trying to say.

Thanksgiving dinner would have been better with tofurkey, but, alas, I was unaware such things existed until after the fact. The mashed potatoes were sure good, though!

It was nice to see the family and, of course, to spend some quality time with Chester. =) Jenny and Tory came up from Lubbock, and my Uncle, his wife, my Cousin, and his family came were up as well. Family is nice, ya know? It’s good to see them. It was good to see my parents, too. I’m glad I got to spend some time talking to them.

The down side is that I didn’t mange to get much done. To be where I need to be, I should have been putting in about 12 hours a day with my books. In actually, it was seldom more than two hours, at best. Consequently, I spent all last night writing a paper that was due last Tuesday. I have a research project more or less due on Wednesday. Realistically, I should be putting in twenty hours of research and work on it between now and then. Which might be feasible, if I didn’t have 16 credits of other classes, all demanding my attention (calculus, especially, which is vastly time consuming).

And then there was a lot of time spent thinking and evaluating about this fall. Which was valuable.

And I got to see “the old gang minus Sagar” (heh) on Friday night. It was nice to see everyone. I’m looking forward to Christmas break.

Oh well.

The ride down and up with Dave and Christina was probably more fun than one should have in a car. =) I’ve added a new life goal: to spend a week living in Christina’s house with her family. Odds are, I’d have enough stories to last me the rest of my life. Stories about brothers microwaving their heads. Or sisters being engaged, without the knowledge of the parents. Oh, irony. Or stories about tracking red paint across church floors, or squirting tomato juice into the hair of 70 year old ladies. I mean… c’mon, now. Good times. =)

I’ve discovered something interesting about the way I write papers. It’s impossible for me to write unless I’m in the right mood. Curiously, the right mood usually entails being in some state of somnambulism (I <3 Firefox spellcheck =) ). And then, once I get started, it just works. I don't have to struggle for words. I'm slow and methodical, and what I write is logical and well-presented. And, mostly, it feels natural. It doesn't feel like trying to puzzle together-- rather, it feels more like ... baking a pie? I know what's next. I measure the ingredients and put it in. Then I look at the recipe (a.k.a. my outline =) ) and figure out what the next ingredient is and, after careful measuring, add it. Etc. I just wish I could do it a little more … on demand. For example, when I take the GRE, I’m not going to have 12 hours to try to write, fall asleep, wake up, review the material, fall asleep, wake up, try to write, sleep for another 20 minutes (heaven knows how many times I fell asleep last night between 10:00 and when I finally got going on my paper this morning at around 4:20 a.m.) and THEN, finally, realize that I’m ready to go. There’s a certain element of internalization about it, too. Somehow, sleeping seems to be the magic ingredient (to extend the cooking image, ke ke) to writing papers. Usually, if I review all the material, but have NO idea how to assemble it into an interesting and cohesive paper, all I need to do is sleep for a few hours. When I wake up, I’ve either got it, or I don’t. If I don’t, I sleep some more. Then, magically, I know what to write, I’m in the mood (which is to say I’m mostly asleep) and I write it. The only problem with sleep-writing is that I tend to repeat myself. It’s not an issue if I finish the paper in time to get some sleep and proof it, or if I can have another sober person (and by sober, I mean alert: physiologically, sleep deprivation has much the same effect as alcohol) proofread it to point out the places where I used the same word three times in a paragraph (hey, if it’s a good work, why not?), or where I re-introduce the author two times (like I think I did in the paper I wrote this morning, but I’m not sure). Anyhow. I guess I’ll go ahead and upload the paper I wrote. I’m not sure if it’ll make sense without having read the book cited in the foot notes. Regardless, it engages the way that Indians accommodated, resisted and eventually acculturated the education in boarding schools between 1875 and 1928. Here’s the link: Indian Boarding Schools in Rome

Ah, my love/hate relationship with Dell continues. Wednesday afternoon, my power adapter randomly broke. Which made me hate Dell. But then, I called Dell’s technical support, spoke to a very nice and exceptionally woman named Kalpana, and by 10:00 the next morning, I had my replacement power adapter. Which made me love Dell.

I think the general conclusion is this: if their hardware was as good as their warranty repair and replacement, Dell would be unstoppable.

On a down note, it seems that my motherboard is failing again. This will be for the fifth time in just over two years of ownership. The LED status indicator lights (num lock, caps lock, scroll lock) are starting to randomly turn themselves on and off, sometimes the system hangs when it tries to go into hibernate (“Insufficient System Resources to Complete Request”), the volume buttons have all but stopped working, and my wireless adapter is acting a little flaky. Eventually, my laptop just won’t turn on. I might be able to make it to the end of the semester before I have it replaced, but I would probably pretty much die if my laptop decided to kick the bucket just a few days sooner…

So yeah. That’s my life. Exciting, as always.

Anyhow, I’m looking forward to going home on Tuesday– real food, family and friends!

Hoary frost. My window, this morning, was covered with hoary frost.

Granular crust. My eye, my left eye, this morning was covered with granular crust.

Functional literacy. It’s amazing how many college students can’t figure out how to work the printer stations in the computer labs. Someone will swipe his card, wait, swipe it again, wait, start to show signs of agitation, swipe it again, and THEN bother to try to make sense of those four cryptic words printed in plain black ink on the card-reader: “Magnetic Strip This Side”. I’ve watched a lot of students swipe their OneCard four, five times, clearly thinking that there’s something wrong with the stupid machine!! before reading the instructions on how to use it. Man, aren’t we all so smart.

It’s almost as though I’m getting Pink Eye. But I’m not. Maybe I have an in-grown eyelash and a cold. That would explain it. Maybe the cold is in my eye. IN MY EYE!

McDonald’s is hiring. Starting wage: $9/hr. Huh.

Yeah, I guess the economy in Bozeman is strong. A good place to study economics, I suppose.

Speaking of which … eesh. I thought I was only registered for 17 credits in the spring. Not 20/21, as it turns out. I think I’m going to need to drop something.

And, actually, I might drop more than just a class.

For one, I’m thinking about not bringing my car back in the spring. It’s more a hassle than a freedom, really. There’s a good mass transit system in Bozeman these days, and, frankly, I don’t feel that I use my car nearly enough to justify paying to have it insured. Maybe I’ll call State Farm and find out how much I’m going to owe them in January. I need to call them anyway, to make sure that uninsured people can drive my car. Like Quan. And Christina. And Quan. Truth be told, the only reason Quan and I haven’t been in an accident yet is because most of the other drivers on the road are good drivers. Thank god, because Quan’s not. Remotely.

Picture Thursday night: it’s late, and time to go to Pita Pit*. Quan wants to drive; I let him– it should be an easy drive (aside from crossing Wilson St, which is always busy). Stop sign at Wilson; it’s clear both ways. I tell Quan to go, and we start out into the intersection. Then: he panics. There’s a car coming up on the right! We have plenty of time, as long as we keep going. But when Quan panics, he freezes. So, suddenly, we’re at a dead-stop, diagonally, in the middle of the intersection. There’s a car coming up on the right. Rather quickly now. And a car coming up quick on the left, over the hill. And a car straight across from us; we can’t go straight. And we’re just sitting there, at a dead-halt, screaming “Quan! Go!!“

Fortunately, the oncoming cars from both directions saw us (apparently stalled) and they slowed, allowing us enough time to coax Quan into the right line and over to the side of the road. Then there was a Chinese fire drill. As you can imagine. It’s an act that we’ve nearly mastered.

But I digress. I may not bring back my car, but that’s assuming that I don’t get evicted from living on campus. Which is kinda a concern at the moment, as I’ve been recommended for eviction. It’s kinda an odd situation. It’s another one of those “you ran a stop-sign on your bike and now you must pay $1,000,000 and go to prison!” situations. Ask me about it some time.

If I don’t bring back my car, I may not work on campus. I have the luxury of not needing to work. I want to be more involved on campus, in senate, with recycling club, etc. All that takes time. I want to have time for recreation as well. The obvious thing to cut is the number of hours that I work. But if I’m going to cut my hours from 20-25 a week to 10-15 a week, it gets to the point where I wonder if it’s even worth hassle, ya know? I’ve been a less-than-reliable worker as of late, and I really couldn’t be bothered to care.

(*-I never got my pita from the Saturday night previous, which is another story unto itself.)

So. I just cleaned my laptop screen. Which is blog worthy because, well, this is the second time, in two and a half years of ownership, that I’ve actually cleaned my screen. I mean, I used Windex and a paper-towel and everything– more than just brushing it off with my hand.

The thing is, though, that the dust never becomes more than partially opaque. It’s like making your bed– your bed can either be “made” or “not-made.” When made, it will inevitably become not-made again, in short order. But if it isn’t made, it will simply remain not-made, and will certainly be no less useful for being so. I guess it’s like that with my laptop screen. It could be not-dusty, or dusty. Once it’s dusty, it doesn’t really get any dustier. It just stays dusty. Having cleaned it, however, I’m sure it’ll only be a few weeks, and it will, once again, be dusty. So … I learn to deal with the dust. I just turn up the backlight a little more, yeah? Like my bed. Ya know? I think I’ve made my bed on three or four occasions this year, including sheet changes. But… who am I trying to impress? Quan? Psh. If anything, I’m sure he appreciates that I don’t try to make my bed in the dark at 5:00 in the morning (which is, painfully enough, the hour I find myself waking up with an increasing frequency… ug!).

In the mean time, though, it’s 61′ in Bozeman, and people are walking around in t-shirts. All I can say is … damn the Bush administration for not signing the Kyoto Protocol! It’s the 6th of November. There should be two feet of snow on the ground.

That aside… it’s a short week for me. No class tomorrow, and no class on Friday. Which means I’ll have lots of time to catch up and get ahead with, uh, my school-work. Yeah. That’s the one!

In the mean time, I guess it’s time for me to see what the rest of the internet looks like with a clean screen. I’m excited! Onward!

So…

I realize that I drank two Red Bulls and the better part of a pot of coffee this morning in a span of about three hours. THEN… I tried to play my guitar with my teeth. Uh, yeah. It was a little awkward. I’ll have to work on that. I think when I …

whoa. I just lost that train of thought completely. Where’d it go?

I think I slept on the floor for like two hours this morning. I don’t quite remember though. That was between Red Bull one and Red Bull two. I’ve realized that it takes upwards of an hour for a Red Bull to kick in… which totally kills me because, usually, I don’t start drinking caffeine until I’m tired. So I think I need some cocaine. That’s FAST, right? So I can just do coke until the caffeine kicks in?

I actually got like 6 hours of sleep on Wednesday night. THEN, I got up (at like 5:00… to work on stuff), ate breakfast, played my guitar, then took a two hour naps… then got up again, ate breakfast again (second breakfast! hurray for hobbits!) and went to class. It’s a good thing that I got that nap, though– I have no idea when I went to bed last night. And no, there was no alcohol involved. I mean– who needs alcohol when you have sleep deprevation?

I’m wearing shorts, which makes no sense. It was like … 2 yesterday. By which I mean two degrees. But now … it’s warm?

Oh my. I have until 4:00 to write my second essay for my 447 take home exam. I don’t even have a thesis. Heck, I haven’t even chosen a topic. But my first essay is mostly done. Six hours. I’ll make it. I just need more … Red Bull?

Time to pay attention. Heh. That’s a JOKE! I’m going insane.

today:
2:10am – bed
6:00am – shower
6:30am – reading
8:30am – on-campus. library –> work
11:00am – class
12:45pm – econ mid-term
2:00pm – class
3:00pm – work
12:00am – off-campus –> social?

objectives:
-submit uh400 questions
-econ re-cram session
-finish 100 pages: Amusing Ourselves to Death, 90 pages Understanding Popular Culture, 40 pages New Worlds for All
-uh400 research
-brainstorm hist447 essays

tomorrow (projected):
2:00am – bed

oh, good god. and it’s only tuesday.

Firefox 2 is now available. Based on my first ten minutes with it, I’m absolutely thrilled. It’s packed with awesome new features– features that I’ve been wanting, such as better RSS handling (I can now add RSS feeds directly to MyYahoo or Google portal with two clicks, rather than a lot of copying and pasting), and features that I never expected from a browser, such as a built-in, inline spell-check feature.

And yeah, the spell-check feature is pretty awesome. When filling in text forms (such as the “comment” box below), it automatically checks your spelling, and underlines misspelled words in red, a la Microsoft Word. Right-clicking on the mis-spelled word presents a list of possible correct words. It’s super slick, and, goodness, it makes so much sense. No more pasting my blog entries into Microsoft Word to do a spell check before I post!

It also has an updated visual interface–probably a preemptive response to I.E. 7–that looks really slick.

It also builds a list of suggested search terms when you use the built in search bar with Google, Yahoo or Answers.com. Talk about slick!

It’s tabbed browsing is improved as well–links to an external window open in a new tab, for example– which only makes a great thing better.

With better tabbed browsing, however, comes the desire to be able to save and resume sessions. Firefox to the rescue! Filling out an online form and your computer crashes? No worries– Firefox even has the ability to resume sessions and repopulate form fields from before a system crash. Let’s see the I.E. Monkey do that!

The only bad thing is that Firefox isn’t on EVERY PC, so sometimes I’m going to be forced to Internet (EW!) Explorer, which lacks a fast and functional search feature, competent RSS support, or a spell-checker. And, until I.E. 7 becomes standard, it also lacks tabbed browsing.

So yeah. Download on. Here’s a link:

Catching snowflakes is such a singularly beautiful human endeavor… (Especially when it has just started snowing–) Thick, heavy flakes– that fall with a certain, profound serenity, in a thick and muting deluge…

Mmm. To live in Bozeman is such an immense privilege!

Every time I go to the gas station these days, I’m possessed by an unshakeable feeling of being cheaply used.

As the gas prices fall precipitously (which, curiously, doesn’t quite make the news, with detailed analysis, quite like the prices going up did), I once again feel the sickening presentiment of shameless profiteering I had when the U.S. first invaded Iraq.

“When Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast in late August,” according to PBS, “it shut down many of the region’s key oil production facilities for over a week.” The net effect was to reduce “U.S. oil supplies by about 1.4 million barrels a day, or 8 percent of total U.S. production.” That’s what we’ve been told over and over again by the media. (Just like “there are WMDs in Iraq!”) Somehow we seem to forget about the for over a week part. Suggesting that, what? it took up to two weeks for most refineries to return to full production? It’s been fourteen months!

During the summer of 2006, gas prices set record highs. In the two months leading up to an election whose prospects look quite dim for the Republican Party, the national average gas price has dropped $0.84/gallon– from $3.07 at the end of August to $2.23 in mid-November (Source: MSNBC 16-Oct-06). Doing the math, that’s a 27% price drop–in a widely traded commodity–in two and a half months. 27%!

But, wait– commodity prices are determined by the market. They can’t be arbitrarily set, right?

Wrong. See: The California Energy Crisis of 2000 and 2001– a crisis largely the result of Enron’s exploitive corporate policies. Enron took advantage of California’s deregulated energy laws to fabricate (or exacerbate) an “energy shortage,” that they used, in turn, to inflate energy prices. While Californians were experiencing widespread brown-outs and black-outs, the California energy grid was producing at well under capacity. By scheduling excessive amounts of routine maintenance at mission-critical times and the use of other blatantly fraudulent excuses to reduce the production of dozens of power plants, Enron artificially created an energy shortage it used, over the course of two years, to nearly double electricity costs for Californians.

So when the prices of a widely consumed commodity drop by 27% over a two-month span, I get suspicious. I mean, surely this price drop couldn’t have come any sooner. Surely, the gas prices weren’t artificial inflated this summer– when lower-class Americans suffered and stock-holders celebrated. Right? These seem unthinkable. But is it a coincidence that oil companies were recording record profits this summer while gas prices were at a record high? Shouldn’t their profits have been slumping, as more consumers found ways to reduce their gas consumption as prices rose? Even with a relatively inelastic good like gasoline, an increase in price will cause a decrease in quantity demanded.

To be honest, I really did believe the now-apparent lies about increased efficiency, streamlined corporate structure and better refining processes being the sole causes for the oil companies’ soaring profits this summer. Just like I believed that increasing demand and decreasing supply caused the rising prices. Were gasoline prices still increasing, I’d probably still buy that line. But they’re not. They’ve plummeted. Doubtless, efficiency aided profit margins. But if prices can drop by 27% and the oil companies are still making profits, then something rotten happened this summer.

Prices at the pump increased because supply was limited. That’s a fact. But it’s like, all of the sudden, someone turned off the “high price” machine. Or like oil companies stopped deliberately under-producing oil– out of preservative self-interest, or at the Republican party’s cue.

Speaking of artificially adjusting prices, an article on the BBC’s website drew an uncomfortable parallel between the dropping gas prices and Bush’s new appointed treasury secretary, “Hank” Paulson. Paulson has been the CEO of Goldman Sachs–a powerful and influential commodity bank–since it went public in 1999. Commodity banks, incidentally, are one of the few institutions capable of influencing commodity prices. Paulson resigned from Goldman Sachs at the end of June, but, while serving as the US treasury secretary, he remains an active Sachs board member until the year’s end. His departure, conveniently, netted him an $18.7m bonus, based on the bank’s performance this year.

Bush’s cabinet? Commodities? Soaring stock prices? Huge bonuses for executives? Sounds like the usual suspects are back again to celebrate another American tragedy.

Is this all just coincidence?

The oil companies know that they’re in big trouble if America sees a big swing to the political left– not unlikely given the general American malaise about the War in Iraq and, until recently, rising gas prices. It goes without saying that the oil companies have a large vested interest in the success of the Republican Party at the polls this November. And if gas prices are $3/gallon in November, you can bet the incumbent controlling party won’t be controlling for long.

So is this another case of shameless profiteering by corporate America? Have the oil companies used the American tragedy of Hurricane Katrina as a cover for the artificial inflation of gas prices? Is this profiteering, or just modern economics? Are oil companies necessarily any more scrupulous than energy companies like Enron? Or is it all just coincidence: the record profits, the record prices, the sudden drop and the coming election?

It’s too much for me to say. But it all leaves a bad taste in my mouth– a sick feeling in my gut. Who profited the most by the 2,917 deaths on 9/11? Probably Halliburton– the oil company that got first bids on Iraq’s “liberated” oil fields. Now it looks like the oil companies win again– this time by the deaths 1,836 and displacement of hundred of thousands in America’s southern states.

Background information on Kennewick Man is available here.

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When two men, watching boat races on a lazy July afternoon along the Columbia River, happened upon a set of exposed bones, it’s unlikely that they could have apprehended how important of an archaeological discovery they’d made, or the furor it would cause over the next ten years –both in the archaeological and Native American communities. This furor, surrounding the discovery of the Kennewick Man, informs a myriad of social and anthropological issues. Notably, it reminds both the press and the modern archaeologist to be sensitive to the precise use of language, which wields a supple and potent power. Moreover, for a larger audience, it refreshes to the mind the Native American resistance to Western archaeologists and anthropologists becoming what Vine Deloria Jr. caustically termed the “custodians of the Indian Past.”

Archaeologist James Chatters assisted local authorities with the excavation of the bones–finding a nearly complete skeleton–and it was Chatters who first described the now-Kennewick Man in terms of “Caucasoid traits,” noting a long, narrow face, narrow cheekbones and a protruding upper jaw. Expecting that the bones were several hundred years old, one can imagine Chatters’ surprise when Carbon 14 results came back dating Kennewick Man at approximately 8,400 years old.

The press, in turn, was equally impressed, and Kennewick Man made his debut on the proverbial front page. Looking at two news sources in particular, the Washington Post published an article claiming that because of its “Caucasoid look … the Kennewick skull might alter conventional views of how, when and by whom the Americas were peopled.” Similarly, the New York Times, several months later, published an article discussing the skeleton as having “Caucasian features, judging by skull measurements.”

Unfortunately, America’s media was rather hasty in its public announcement of the discovery–announcing “Caucasian origins” and revisionist histories well before the archaeologists themselves had formed their own opinions. Doubtless, Kennewick Man made good copy–especially given America’s keen interest in archaeological news–but these hasty and unsubstantiated announcements call into question the sensitivities of both publications. Stuart Fiedel, discussing Kennewick Man, notes that “the press is drawn to the David versus Goliath theme of tenacious upstarts successfully challenging scientific orthodoxy” – a theme the press’s version of Kennewick Man certainly fulfilled. Unfortunately, to extend to the metaphor, these publications pre-empted the death of the giant, even before the first stone flew.

Even when news agencies guard carefully against overstatement, the reading public tends to accept the reporter’s implied assumption about an unconfirmed event. (e.g., North Korea’s recent announcement of a nuclear bomb detonation, despite the careful inclusion of modifiers like “may,” “claim,” or “supposed,” amounts to an actual and successful nuclear detonation in the minds of most.) Thus, when the New York Times described “Caucasian features,” a nonscientific public understood the article to imply the possibility of European origins.

Kennewick Man’s fame was bolstered by the well-publicized legal battle that quickly erupted over the custody of the bones–the anthropologists, who wished to study Kennewick Man, on one side, and the Native Americans, who wished to properly bury his bones, on the other. On July 28th, 2006–six weeks after its discovery–a group of five Native American tribes claimed ownership of the bones under the 1990 Native Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). In response, a group of eight anthropologists quickly filed suit to prevent tribal burial of Kennewick Man and his potentially invaluable anthropological evidence. Kennewick Man remained in the custody of the Burke Museum at the University of Washington during the eight years of judicial proceedings. In February 2004, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Native Tribes’ claim to the bones, on grounds that they were unable to show sufficient evidence of kinship to satisfy the NAGPRA.

Certainly, each side had a vested interest in gaining ownership of the bones. For archaeologists, Kennewick Man, as one of the most-complete skeletons of an early Holocene era human, represented the possibility of new archaeological insight and discovery. Specifically, the skeleton still may yet prove to be a key link (or counterproof) for the currently much-debated multiple-migration theory of Pleistocene American peoples.

The Native American interest in the skeleton is more complex. Ostensibly, the Native interest in Kennewick Man (and the idea behind the NAGPRA in general) was simply to prevent the desecration of an ancestor’s bones–which anthropological scrutiny would be in the first degree. The fact that not just one tribe, but four (the Umatilla, Colville, Yakama, and Nez Perce) carried the case all the way to the Supreme Court, however, suggests that more than a sense of sacred was at play. Rather, the Native American legal appeal seems more likely propelled by American Indian Movement ideas–ideas of self-determination, the control of Native American identity, imagery, and, most importantly, the control of Native American history. These ideas gained primacy, especially during the 1970s, through authors and activists like Vine Deloria Jr. Thus, to quote D.H. Thomas at length, “the lingering issues between Indians and archaeologists are political, a struggle for control of American Indian history. Although Deloria and [N. Scott] Momaday disagree about the relative merits of scientific knowledge and the role of Red Creationism, they agree on the most basic issue of all. The American academic community–led by grave-digging archaeologists–has robbed the Native American people of their history and their dignity. ”

Invoking a larger audience, the public’s response to Kennewick Man highlights both the power of language and its need for use with deliberate caution. Thomas quotes Chatters (who originally introduced the “Caucasoid-like features” description) as later complaining that “newspaper accounts had ‘confused the description of the remains as ‘caucasoid-like’ with an assertion that the skull was European.'” The blame for this ‘confusion,’ Thomas asserts, falls not with the reporters or newspapers, but rather squarely on the shoulders of Chatters and his fellow archaeologists. “As scientists repeatedly used everyday racial terminology to describe the Kennewick bones,” Thomas says, “they inadvertently stirred up some of anthropology’s most hateful and threatening ghost–the legacy of scientific racism.” The suggestion that Native Americans are the distant descendants of Europeans does more than deny the legitimacy of Native creation myths–it asserts a sort of paternal ownership over the Pleistocene and early Holocene peoples of North America.

The very use of the term “Caucasoid” is inappropriate, to the extent that to speak of the “race” of an ancient people is “bad science.” Nearly a full century ago, anthropologist Franz Boas proved experimentally that “race, language and culture are independent variables.” Underlying this was Boas’ discovery that a people group’s cephalic index (head form) is more affected by geography than by heredity–thus repudiating anthropology’s previous long-standing use of the cephalic index to trace the origins and movements of peoples. By July, 1996, the “American school of racial determinism” had been dead for more than half a century. C. Loring Brace asserts that in modern anthropology, “terms such as ‘Negroid,’ ‘Caucasoid,’ and ‘Mongoloid'” have become “biologically … worse than useless” –leveling a potentially deserved accusation at Chatters’ inapt word choice. Thomas continues in the same vein: “In the aftermath of Kennewick, any scientist using the term “Caucasian” … to describe a 9,400-year-old skull is both practicing bad science and painfully naive about the power of racial language in modern America.”

In February of 2006, a team of scientists and anthropologists were, for the first time since its discovery, given full access to the skeletal remains. Conclusions are outpaced by questions. How did this man arrive in present day Washington State? Did he cross the Beringia Straight? Is he, in fact, an ancestor of any of the tribes that have laid claim to him? And who will get to interpret the significance of Kennewick Man in terms of Native American history? To what extent has that role been assigned by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court? In each case, while we wait for time to answer, we do so with a reminder of the perception-carving power of language and the assurance that, should David should slay his Goliath or otherwise, Kennewick Man will continue to ripple outwards in our intricately-woven fabric of society.

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PDF version with citations:
https://eateggs.com/files/2006.10.18-Kennewick-Faux-Pas.pdf