Yes I have indeed mentioned it before. I like it so much because he starts at a place that anthropologists are trained to not go: the sheer love of the unexpected. We are trained to avoid being Indiana Jones, we are not just globe-trotting dilettantes, we are scientists! Well, that really takes the fun out of it doesn’t it? Boursain makes no claim to be anything more than a chef and writer that really digs food, people and instructional misadventures. There is no other phrase for it, his show is simply open-hearted. He does not start from a scientific mind set, he starts by asking “where can I share food with people, drink, laugh and sometimes be truly horrified”? The respect he shows for other cultures, his willingness to stumble his way through cultural faux pas without worrying about his ego is an example to any social scientist.

Don’t look for insight out of the program, look for joy and the reason you got into this game to start with.

Paris Hilton, satire, segway

I am indeed one of those people that was a bit pleased that she was hauled screaming out of the court room and back into a cozy little jail cell, and following the unfolding circus on TMZ.com all week. Americans love to see this scenario played out over and over again. Leona Helmsley (aka The Queen of Mean), Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Martha Stewart and of course who can forget the boys of Enron?

People don’t feel this way because we are inherently mean and cold-hearted. When the rich and famous run afoul of the law and vice, it speaks to a number of social rules that Americans in particular cannot abide being broken. I have written previously about one reason why we are so obsessed with celebrity in the entry “Quick, look over there. No, don’t stare Dammit!” They are as close as we get to the tangible, knowable gods we used to have in the past.

There are several elements at work when people are dismayed at this preferential treatment and pleased with a heavy punishment. But here are just a couple.

To start with, we are fascinated by and resent people that are famous for being famous. They confound the American protestant work-ethic ideals. Fame and wealth belong to those that can somehow prove they deserve it. Attached to this is the idea of adding some value or service back to society. We resent those we see as just taking up space without seeing anything valuable coming back. (ironically some of the same resentments we apply to this genre of celebrity are also applied to the homeless). We are curiously socialist when it comes to wealth. Bill Gates who, depending on the stock market at the time, can be the world’s richest man and seen as an innovation crushing monopolist. However, here is no question that he actually did something, something very important. His social reputation improved as well with his 33 billion dollar Gates Foundation. We may whine about his wealth and business practices, but as a culture we would be horrified to seem him go to jail. Its why we love/hate lottery winners: when the family on hard times wins an unimaginable amount of money we feel like “the little” guy is getting a break. At the same time, they will get mountains of mail from people demanding they cough up some of that cash (its not like they earned it) to them, for no reason as well.

The other element why we love to see Paris Hilton and Martha Stewart go to jail or prison is because they screwed up a good thing. They had a deal that 99% of us can only dream of (and of course we imagine ourselves putting to much better use…indeed) and got nailed because they wanted more, or flaunted the rules or engaged in some other form of hubris. When I was doing my graduate fieldwork in a state prison, it was a common attitude among the inmates with long prison and / or criminal records. Sure they were pissed off about a lot of things, but a rich, well educated person that that seemingly has it all and winds up in jail for doing something stupid? Make no mistake, they hate you and resent you for being a screw up.

See how much in common you have with an inmate? That always good to bear in mind.

How many people are like me, so enamored of the latest technical plaything our personal sense of risk and reward is totally out of whack?

In what I am readily recognizing as my continuing quest to give up all privacy, I have been playing with Google My Maps feature that lets you create and make public maps that reflect your own interests. In my case, it is the start of my autobiography in map form. It’s both interesting and disquieting. I have tried to place the markers as close to the actual locations as possible. For Example, if you zoom into New Delhi close enough, the marker is directly on top of the hotel I stayed in. So that’s cool, but something bothers me about it too that I can’t quite decode. Maybe what is disturbing about it is realizing just how much I am willing to give up in the name of technological exploration. How much privacy have I given up?

My DNA is on file with the Genographic project.
My DNA is also on file, with my full identifying information at FamilyDNA
All my purchases at Safeway in exchange for discounts
My life history from birth to the age of 32 or so to the Central Intelligence Agency
My current and former Blogs of course
My home and work address, birth date, credit card and personal credit information at numerous places
All my television viewing habits to Tivo and Comcast
All of my e-mail to Google before I went to a private ISP (and now the ISP has all of that).

That’s just the list off the top of my head. If I really sat down and did a census, how spooky will it get? Yet, I shred a lot of my analog Junk mail like bank statements and credit card offers. Yep, that’s making me feel secure.

It's always interesting to turn questions around to ask the mirror-image.  People are very concerned about the power of a connected world to threaten our given notions of privacy.  But what about the mirror image of that question, what do we ask about the internet exhibitionists, like me? 

You name the new on-line doohickey and I promise you I have a profile on it.  From Friendster to tribe.net and flickr to filmloop I will sign up for any digital magic beans the carnival barker tells me about. 

How many Myspace pages are going to come back to haunt people?  It’s not even considered invasion of privacy to Google someone anymore.  A poll of single friends tells me that about 30 seconds after they meet someone that name is being searched.  Far from being an invasion of privacy, its more often considered only common sense.

So my latest thing has been www.twitter.com (I'm user anthro61 if you want to follow my mutterings).  The concept is fairly simple; all you're doing is writing small short snippets about what you're doing at that particular moment in time.  It's like being able to get small slices of many people’s days.  Now personally I think this particular website is a non-starter.  Do we really need yet another stream of content popping up on our phones, sites, IM’s, etc?

What is a little interesting is how the Edwards campaign is actually using it.  Supposedly John Edwards (read: the intern that can spell I-N-T-E-R-N-E-T) sends a message a couple times a day to twitter that says where he is and where he is going to be next. 

But, at the end of the day… who cares?  Who wants a blog in minature?