Archive for March, 2004
Eugenics
The March 8th issue of the New Yorker has an excellent article (by Claudia Roth Pierpont) on Franz Boas (1858-1942), the “father” of American cultural anthropology. His influence can be seen by a short list of some of his most famous students: Ruth Benedict, Melville Herskovits, Zora Neale Hurston, Alfred L. Kroeber, Margaret Mead, Ashley [...]
Corea
Although I’ve read some Korean history, and I’ve watched Korean soap operas when I was in Taiwan, I still know very little about Korea. I’ve always been curious why so many academic events related to Korean studies spell Korea with a “C” instead of a “K” (Corea). Now, thanks to a comment on a recent [...]
Taishang
Taishang is a composite word combining “Taiwan” and “Shanghai” “Shangye” (meaning business) [thanks to Jonathan for correcting my mistake!] - it refers to Taiwanese businessmen who live and work semi-permanently in Mainland China. Most live either in Shaghai, or in Fujian province, across the Taiwan Strait. Many have “second wives” in China. According to this [...]
Thumbs
In an interesting post on Japanese cell-phone e-mailing (not instant messaging, it turns out), Mark Liberman said something which made my thumbs ache:
I was told that a well-known violin soloist, Senju Mariko, is also a novelist, and does her writing by cell phone, because this enables her to integrate her writing into her busy daily [...]
Pink
One group I never “got” are the “Gay Republicans.” But two news stories, one in the New York Times, and the other in the Washington Post, have revealed that this seemingly incongruous category, which I assume must be small to begin with, contains a wide array of identity and political positions. One division stands out: [...]
Skills
I once had a summer job renovating apartments in New York city. Not having much experience at this kind of thing, my Jamaican co-workers always assigned me those tasks they thought I could manage. Once, when I clearly was in over my head, doing something “easy” like mixing cement, one of them commented:
Back in Jamaica, [...]
A-N-W-A-R
It sure is a shadowy world out there when you’ve got the wrong damned name.
Wind
In this AlterNet article, Kevin Griffis travels around the South, trying to figure out why poor whites vote for Bush, even though it is clearly against their own interests to do so. I particularly liked this quote:
Like much of the rural South, each town I visited was relatively poor, overwhelmingly white and voted for President [...]
Approval
Calpundit
Although I’ve had my disagreements with Kevin Drum (the biggest, of course, being that he has never linked to my blog!), there is no doubt that he is one of the best bloggers out there. He writes clearly, thinks clearly, covers issues of pressing national importance, and seems like an all-around good guy. I do [...]
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
