Archive for September, 2004
Leverage
Carlos Fuentes on why multilateralism matters to Latin America:
U.S. support for brutal dictatorships in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay in the name of anti-communism caused great suffering. The overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and Salvador Allende in Chile. The Central American wars in the 1980s and their high body counts. These Latin American grievances were […]
Encouraging Words
Those of you who have gone through the hell of writing a thesis know what I’m going through right now. My oral defense is scheduled for 60 days from today. On top of that, I have to apply for jobs in an increasingly tight Anthropology job market.
So, I just wanted to thank two former Temple […]
Responsibility vs. Rights
I don’t normally resort to name-calling on this blog, but Ted Rall is an idiot. Here is what he says about voters who don’t know that Bush is rich, or that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11:
The fact that these yahoos are allowed to vote is an abomination. Their ill-considered ballots cancel or dilute […]
Debate
I only participated in a formal debate once, in high school, so I can’t really comment on the ground rules for the presidential debates; however, the “town hall” meeting sounds like a farce:
In the “Town Hall” debate, audience members will ask their moderator-screened questions, but they won’t be allowed any follow-up, and if they deviate […]
Complexity
When the world’s problems come up in conversation, as they often do, there is a tendency for some people to sigh and complain about how “complex” it all is, or to wish that “someone” would figure out how to “solve” all these problems, etc. To which I emphatically say: “We already know what to do. […]
Dangerman
Who is the most dangerous man in America? Thudfactor has the answer.
珍珠奶茶
I wrote a post back in March about how Taiwanese politics was all about food. Well, today the BBC reports that the ministry of defense is responding to attacks that money spent on new weapons systems could be better spent on social services and education by declaring that it isn’t spending any more money that […]
Distracted
My only post here about “Rathergate” was to say that it was an unfortunate distraction. Well, I didn’t realize how much of a distraction it really was:
When CBS rushed the infamous Killian memo story to air two weeks ago, they bumped a story about the forged Niger documents to make room for it. Via […]
Yang Huanyi
[Yang Huanyi] China’s last inheritress of the mysterious Nushu language, probably the world’s only female-specific language, died at her central China home earlier this week. She was in her 90s.
More information on Nushu, including some corrections to common mistakes (such as the claim that no men were able to read the script), and […]
George Bush
Not the President, or his father, but the brother of their ancestor, Timothy Bush. I just visited the New York Public Library’s exhibit: Jewes in America: Conquistadors, Knickerbockers, Pilgrims, and the Hope of Israel. One of the more “recent” items in the exhibit is a text entitled The Valley of Vision, or, The Dry Bones […]
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
