Archive for May, 2006
Brave New China
In Aldous Huxley’s book Brave New World writers and intellectuals are banished to an island where they have complete freedom to say and do whatever they like - as long as there is no risk of them infecting the rest of society with their ideas.
From what I’ve heard about intellectual freedom in China, it follows […]
Indexicality
According to Wikipedia, one of the characteristics of indexicals is that “in order to successfully interpret them the hearer must know the respective speaker, time, and place of utterance.”
Amardeep’s latest poem plays with indexicality and how it is conveyed (or not) on the web:
If you’re reading this in Delhi, Bombay, Chennai, or indeed, Taiwan, either […]
911 for Beginners
One of my Taiwanese students was watching “The West Wing” and had some questions for me. Blaming the poor coverage of America’s War on Terror in the Taiwanese press for not knowing more (a perfectly valid excuse), she asked:
Did the patriotic passion change into hatred after 911 in US? Or the hatred existed long time […]
Adivasi Rebels
In April I wrote about the growing Maoist movement in India, and how the Maoists are increasingly getting support from rural peasants and Adivasis (India’s indigenous population). I later added a link to a story about how the Maoism, in its most violent form, is growing as a global movement. Only recently has the press […]
Brokeback
I finally got to see “Brokeback Mountain” today and I was surprised at what a cold film it is. The two main characters, apart from being somewhat nice to their kids, are pretty aloof, selfish, and uninteresting when they aren’t with each other. There are two possible explanations for this, one more generous than the […]
Shimu
Who the hell is this “shimu” everyone is talking about? Well, not everyone - just our department’s always helpful and infinitely polite administrative assistant. After noticing my blank stare, she explained that shimu 師母 was another word for my wife.
More precisely, it is a way to refer to the wife of a teacher. Not surprisingly […]
Uptown
One of the things I love about riding the NY City Subway is how much individual personality each of the train conductors has. They each have different ways of announcing the stops, of telling people to get away from the closing doors, etc. The lack of standardization can be annoying at times, for instance, some […]
Pity the Fool
On the social news site, Digg, someone with the alias “homerfink” posted a link to a story about Mr. T’s return to television. The show is called “I Pity the Fool” and features the former A-Team and Rocky III star traveling the country giving Dr. Phil-like tough-love personal advice.
In their blurb, homerfink wrote:
Pity the fool […]
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
