There are two kinds of academic conferences: those that require participants to submit their final papers, and those that don’t. Neither the Association for Asian Studies nor the American Anthropological Association require participants to submit a final paper. I consider this to be the main reason that I don’t much care for these conferences. The [...]
Death used to be viewed as a natural phenomenon. Now we know better. The average life expectancy of adult humans has more than doubled in the last hundred years, and shows no signs of slowing down. The obvious conclusion from this is that if anyone dies it is because they are lazy. They either failed [...]
I recently described working in a coal mine in China as one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. The most dangerous factory job in the United states, on the other hand, is working in a meat packing plant. Workers in the U.S. meat and poultry industry endure unnecessarily hazardous work conditions, and the [...]