"The Doctor Told Us What He Wanted": Sam Koenig's Instructions to WPA Ethnic Group Survey Interviewers

The instructions given to Connecticut's Federal Writers' ProjectEthnic Group Survey interviewers seventy years ago by the Survey'sdirector, Samuel Koenig, raise many issues relevant to interviewingin today's digital age. Regardless of technology, or the lackthereof, how such instructions are followed help to determinethe quality of an interview.     

Lithopedion as an archaic occurrence

Identification of a 3100-year-BP lithopedion in the Archaic Southwest antedates its first clinical notation by 2100 years. It was only the ‘autopsy’ of time (excavation of the site) that allowed its presence to be brought to light.     

Big Questions? Big History?

Books reviewed in this article:
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
The Structure of Big History: From the Big Bang until Today by Fred Spier     

Union Responses to Mass Immigration: The Case of Miami, USA

This article places the attitudes of US unions toward immigrants within the context of a "globalized" environment and a contested and problematic history of the US labor movement regarding its conflicting tendencies toward international solidarity and nationalism. Following a review of that history, the article examines the relationships of four unions in the heavily immigrant Miami, Florida area with immigrant workers in the past four decades. The evidence indicates that explanations for differing responses can be found in the union's structure, its external environment, its leadership' vision and ideology, and its internal "cultural" practices.     

Diet choice, risk, and food sharing in a stochastic environment

Foraging models can predict the optimal diet selection for an organism which has the goal of maximizing its net acquisition rate for energy while hunting and gathering. Here a simulation methodology is used to determine the optimal diet selection under the assumption that the forager's goal is to minimize the risk of an energy shortfall. The results show that the rate-maximizing and risk-minimizing diets are similar; that sharing is more effective than changes in diet in reducing risk; and that the risk-reduction which can be obtained from sharing requires quite small numbers of participants. Food sharing may be an ancient and pervasive feature of hominid foraging adaptations.