December 2008
“Gays are treated as more dangerous than felons, drug offenders and known child...”
– Gay Adoption: The Real Agenda [via]
November 2008
“In the course of my investigations, I observed that there now exists a new race...”
– ‘Content in their little prisons’: J.G. Ballard on ‘The Towers’
Hoochy Coochy Dancing and Fantasy Love →
American Ethnography collects ethnographic investigations of strip clubs, and the luridness of dancing in general.
“It’s a chance to change the military; it’s a chance to change the Army. It’s a...”
– Marcia Hartwell, of the HTS in a panel discussion at last week’s annual AAA meeting. I don’t see how repeating the tactics of colonial anthropology is necessarily changing the army. Maybe I’m missing something.
"Can Anthropology Ever Be Innocent?" by Gerald M.... →
The point he was making is still brutally direct: at this moment in history there is no such thing as an innocent anthropology. [via]
“Like several other “-isms” (including nationalism, colonialism, imperialism, and...”
– My Problem With Journalism I have my own problems with journalism, but this is more well thought out than anything I have ever had to say about it.
5 tags
"Anthropologists as Spies", a transcript of John...
When I tell people I’m an anthropologist, they often assume that I study tribal people with strange customs in some remote place unaffected by global capitalism. This isn’t true even of the indigenous people that I’ve studied in Mexico and it reflects a false perception of what anthropology is about. Anthropologists have also done fieldwork in capitalist plantations, urban slums and migrant camps....
“The jobs side of the equation has changed but the idea of what is femininity...”
– Sarah Haskins [via]
“Nowadays we loosely attribute the term mistress to any woman who gives a...”
– An old-style mistress would not recognise her successor [via]
“Some ask us: Will you ever stop protesting? Some day we will stop protesting: We...”
– Moonanum James [via]
2 tags
“Close To Me” by The Cure [via One of my favorite...
Patternicity: Finding Meaningful Patterns in... →
Why do people see faces in nature, interpret window stains as human figures, hear voices in random sounds generated by electronic devices or find conspiracies in the daily news? A proximate cause is the priming effect, in which our brain and senses are prepared to interpret stimuli according to an expected model. [via]
Harvard Study Finds Heavy Costs for South Africa’s... →
A new study by Harvard researchers estimates that the South African government would have prevented the premature deaths of 365,000 people earlier this decade if it had provided antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients and widely administered drugs to help prevent pregnant women from infecting their babies.
cost of the bailout
i’ve understood that the bailout was big, but haven’t really understood exactly how big until i saw this comparison. here’s some major american spending areas and their costs, adjusted for inflation:
Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion,...
“Getting drunk, plastered, loaded, tanked, sloshed, smashed, stewed and stoned is...”
– Uneasy About Alcohol - America and the Booze Question [via]
The pitfalls of Africa's aid addiction →
But when 50 years of foreign aid has failed to lift Africa out of poverty, could corruption be the reason? Could that really be all there is to it? It seems ludicrous to write this article, and act as though the only reason social services are underfunded is because of obligations to pay back debts. Perhaps if the aid had not initially come with requirements to cut back on social services, heavily...
“The US has one of the most vibrant, dynamic, and efficient automobile industries...”
– In Praise of the US Auto Industry [via]
“White liberals* in North America often say things like, “White people have no...”
– White people think that people of colour have more culture. [via]
3 tags
“Hopelessness isn’t natural. It needs to be produced. If we really want to...”
– David Graeber, “Hope in Common”
Five Health Myths Busted →
As the economic picture keeps getting worse, the doubts grow about President-elect Obama’s ability to do much of consequence in remaking health care… The reasons health reform remains doable, in their view, boil down to misconceptions about health and reform.
“It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times, it was the age of...”
– AAAs 2008 wrap up
