This weekend is the annual Maker Faire in San Mateo, California. This is far and away my favorite event of the year, and I am going to miss it. I have been to CES, NAB, E3, Detroit Auto Show and the original Cabela’s, but nothing beats Maker Faire for kick ass inspiration. The exhibits range from the serious to the fantasy. Where else can you find engineers from JPL in the same building as a guy in a folding chair explaining how all physics as we know it are a fraud? …
Author: mark
A response to the recent Newsweek article on Human Terrain System.
As a long-standing professional rule, I do not comment on or talk about my direct professional work here on Ethnography.com. Clients get a bit touchy about the sort of thing. Long-time readers will note that since joining the Human Terrain System project that I no longer write about it. I can (as can any one in the HTS) blog about my work as much as I care to if I wish.…
How to Cite ethnography.com in an academic paper
I added a section called about ethnography.com to the site. It also includes an example of how to cite posts from e.com in print papers.
Here is an example of how to cite an entry in an academic paper:
Waters, T. (2008, April 4). The Battle for Kosovo on the Internet. Ethnography.com.
Retrieved April 11, 2008, from Ethnography.com: http://www.ethnography.com/.
Just to satisfy all you people that have been rushing to quote us in Scientific American.…
News feed is broken… trying to fix it.
Hello everyone. The anthropology news feed is a very popular feature on ethnography.com, but something has happened on the provider side, and we’re not sure what yet. We are trying to locate someone to help us fix it.
Until then, read up on a few old travel posts… they might be fun.
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What are the most pressing issues for anthropology to work on?
A couple of months ago I spent the evening at CSU Fresno with students and faculty and we had a wonderful wide ranging conversation about anthropology, ethics, war, peace and a few minutes on circumcision just for good measure.
One of the questions we asked ourselves was who is really working on the most pressing issues of the day? Do we really need another study on gender and identity as expressed among pre-schoolers when the ice cap is turning to a slushie?…
Call For Papers: Epic2008, Submission Deadline April 18th
This years theme for the 2008 EPIC conference is Being Seen: Paradoxes and Practices of (In)Visibility. Its being held in Copenhagen, Denmark October 15th to 18th. Go to the submissions page for the most up to date information on the different deadlines for Papers, Workshops and Artifacts.
This is the primary conference for people that do applied work in industry, but it attracts a wide variety of people and professions. Besides, if you can get your company to cough up a trip to Denmark, who are you to complain?…
Of illness and Myth
Sweet mother in heaven. I have been sick as a dog for days with a cold that has been going around laying people up for one and two weeks. You know the one, you think you are getting better one day and are feeling your brains turn to mush the next.
When you have been sick for a while and stuck in bed flipping through History Channel, Discovery, TLC and National Geography channel you really start to appreciate the cottage industry of “The da Vinci Code.”…
I forgot to mention my thanks to the Network of Concerned Anthropologists.
Had it not been for the great controversy over the Human Terrain System spearheaded by the vocal minority at the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, I might have never known about this great opportunity. When I heard about the HTS program through an article mentioning the NCA, my first reaction was “How can I participate?” Using anthropology to reduce death and injury. Sounds like a good idea to me.
So my heartfelt thanks to the Network of Concerned Anthropologists for showing me this new and exciting career path in applied anthropology that I had been unaware of before.…
Changing Careers, Changing Locations
I recently moved on from a wonderful long career in design anthropology to my latest adventure. I joined the Army’s Human Terrain System program and for the next few months I’ll be living near the Ft. Leavenworth area. How much I’ll be writing about my HTS training and work is unknown at this point. Over the years I have tended not to write about any of my professional work directly, but who knows.…
On The Road Again
Hello from a random TA truckstop along I-10 in Arizona. I spent 10 years of my life criss-crossing the country as a performer and I have to say I have a major soft spot for a good truck stop. I have eaten in them, showered there, caught up on the news, and spent many, many nights sleeping in my car at them. TA, 76, Pilot, Flying J, these will be familiar names to any of the over the roaders.…
Thomas Barnett: The Pentagon’s new map for war and peace
Every year in Monterey, CA there is a famous conference called TED. Think of it as the Burning Man of the Digerati and Intelligencia crowd. Invitation-only and a few thousand bucks to attend. The speakers are often very high profile, or obscure and thought provoking. Thomas Barnett has been a Pentagon adviser on how the military and how its used must change for many years. In this talk on the need to two kinds of military force, you can get a glimmer of where cultural expertise can be applied in an ethical and transparent manner: The abstract of his presentation from the TED website sums it up well:
“In this bracingly honest and funny talk, international security strategist Thomas P.M.…
The Ethics of Coercion
Amazon is very bad for my wallet, as I can’t help buying a book with a provocative title. In this case “The Ethics of Coercion in Mass Casualty Medicine” that I happened to spot in my random browsing. It’s one of those titles that seems contradictory on its face, how do coercion and medicine go together? I have just started the book, and its always a good sign with the preface gives you view you had not considered before.…