Vegetarians have tiny brains…

In a most fascinating study, it confirmed what I suspected all along: vegetarians and vegans lack brainpower. Now the science backs it up.  “Scientists have discovered that going veggie could be bad for your brain-with those on a meat-free diet six times more likely to suffer brain shrinkage. “

Here’s the article:  Eating veggies shrinks the brain.

Go and eat some steak!

Revival of the weblog

I realize that I haven’t written a blog in quite some time. Now that the summer is over, and the new school year is kicking off, I will get back to more fantastic topics on which to write.   Wish me luck this week as I start teaching three new classes!

Choosing a career in this modern world

Last night I was reading in Thomas Cahill’s latest book, The Mysteries of the Middle Ages, and he was talking about the different world of the Middle Ages.  People did not get to choose their profession. It was chosen by their parents, and it usually involved following the family trade or business.  “shoemakers remained shoemakers, and duchesses duchesses and fishwives fishwives, and no one entertained even a whisper of hope for an improvement of status.”

Cahill does, however, point out the possible advantage of this system.  “We fail to acknowledge, on the one hand, how full of anxiety our own society is, how its lack of assigned roles leaves so many individuals woefully isolated, permanently nervous about the random fluctuations of their fortunes. If, on the other hand, one could say, ‘I am the shoemaker of Trier, as was my father before me, as will be my son after me; I am an integral part of my community, even necessary to it; my neighbors respect me and depend on my skill,’ one could own an abiding peace that eludes all but a very few children of twenty-first century.”

I couldn’t help but see my own personal anxieties about what I was going to do with my career. I have often asked questions like these: “What am I going to study in school?  How am I going to make money?  How am I going to be respected for what I do?” et cetera.  I still often ask myself these questions, and I do have considerable anxiety on whether or not I have chosen the right path.  This is a difficulty of our own age.  Certainly, there are many things about our own time that make life easier than those of the twelfth century, but having ones own career given to oneself made other things much easier than today’s open field.  I can’t say that I truly want my career chosen for me, but this passage in this book made me think about my career anxieties, and, for a moment, I wished that our society made it clear our own destinies.

Arizona Eric

This is my first blog. Well, I should specify, I have blogged before on myspace, but that is largely reserved for silly things. My first blog is about my choice for my blog name: Arizona Eric.  When I moved to Arizona to study archaeology at the University of Arizona, my father said that I was going to be like Indiana Jones. Now of course, I couldn’t steal the same name. Besides, I do not have a dog named Indiana (supposedly this is where George Lucas got the idea), nor have I ever been to the state.  Arizona was much more suitable, and my name is not Jones.  So Arizona Eric it was, and for the first year of my residence in Arizona, my weekly phone-calls would begin with my dad asking, “How is Arizona Eric?”