I first heard of Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor during an interview on Fresh Air, it is a great conversation (Listen to the interview, not just the text, it is more in depth than the TED talk you see here). Thanks to my friend Mariflora for bringing the TED link to my attention. How often do we get the emic on such a matter? Well worth watching and forming your own ideas from.…
Category: General Anthropology
The growing work of anthropologists with the military parallels the evolution of design anthropology – 15 years later…
Lord knows I would welcome much stronger examination of the credentials of people that claim to be social scientists / anthropologists that are working in the military. There is the potential for the development of an excellent sub-discipline of anthropologists doing direct applied work for various forms of the federal government and the military (which for all I know already exists, I am new to this arena). I have no doubt there have been anthropologists working in all levels of Government/Military/Intel worlds for many years, but they may have not been/are called anthropologists in most official job titles I suspect.…
Go Barney Go!
I am a registered independent, I always have been. I have voted all over the political map because I don’t think I should have to vote for a party but the person. With the health care debates its hard NOT to see the republican party as the greed supporting evil empire. There have been death threats of people attending meetings, republican operations to disrupt meetings. Look, my late father.. a die hard conservative republican family practice doctor… spend some time as the medical director of an HMO.…
Patience 101: Just Wait Until You Hear This
CNN has reported that Trina Thompson, age 27, is suing her alma mater, Monroe College (New York), for not being sufficiently helpful in supporting her efforts to find a job since her graduation this past April. Headlines describing the suit sum it up as follows: “Alumna Sues College Because She Can’t Find a Job.”
Recently, for personal reasons, I have become very interested in what social sciences might have to say about the personal quality we call patience. …
A Rejuvenating and Inspiring Experience.
I had the opportunity to attend a youth summer camp that the company I work for (http://www.uaii.org) holds every year in Big Pine, CA. The camp is for American Indian children (ages 5 to 17 years) residing in the Los Angeles, Bakersfield, and Fresno areas and it is a week long. This is the second time I’ve attended, as I did attend last year’s camp as well, and just like last year I was so inspired about the overall
experience and specifically a couple different things.…
I like celebrities that turn out to be, well… normal.
Jodi Foster is one. She seems normal because she aggressively stays out of the public eye. This is interesting given that Howards Huges self-imposed isolation was seen as anything but normal. On the other hand, that seems to have been borne out. Lately I have been reading the blog WWdN: In Exile. This is the blog of Will Wheaton, most well known to people as the character Wesley Crusher on the television program “Star Trek, The Next Generation” and also, like many, I came to wish the same fate on the character Crusher as many Star Wars fans wished in the character JarJar Binx. …
So long Billy, we walked a bit of the same road
I like pitchmen, well the good ones and Billy Mays was that. He was one of the best known pitchmen of the last decade.
You have to understand, for nearly I decade I performed in the streets, festivals and fairs in the U.S. and Canada, and encountered the pitchmen, talkers, hawkers and shills of all manner. Billy was the logical evolution. Were the things he pitched sometimes crap? Of course. Caveat Emptor has been the motto of all performers, not just the pitchman, since people started to barter. …
If a tree falls in the forest and no one posts it on Youtube, does the tree actually have a healthier sense of self?
As many of you know from earlier posts, I am the mother of a 15 year old. Although I have certainly been aware of the need for constant email, phone, and camera usage everywhere she and her friends congregate, it came to me this spring that although she embraces this practice enthusiastically, it seems to place an unnatural burden on her I am only too glad I did not have in my teenage years.…
Random Hitchhikers, Episode 4 of The Ordinary People Project
People that I picked up in Whistler and Pemberton, BC in June:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2PL9E55EGc
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Call for participation in AAA survey of anthropologist working outside academia
The American Anthropological Association is expanding its resources, services, and professional networks to anthropologists practicing outside academia. A key step toward achieving this goal is to conduct a survey aimed at understanding the careers of MA anthropologists.
Each year there are at least 1,000 anthropology Masters degrees granted in North America . Based on anecdotal information, we know that many MAs pursue careers at the types of companies associated with AnthroDesign(editors note, this is a yahoo newsgroup).…
The Problem with Valedictorians
Every May, colleges trot out their straight-A students to give valedictory speeches. These are the unusual students who made their way through a complicated system, complying with the diverse, often obscure, and even arbitrary wants of a variety of professors, without tripping or stumbling. This is a difficult task and worthy of admiration.
As for the words themselves, the typical valedictory speech asserts that life is about accepting challenges and the role of determination in success.…
Episode Three of the Ordinary People Project: Cara from Pemberton
This is Episode Three of the Ordinary people project. You can see the previous episodes here and join the OPP group on Facebook.
Introducing Cara
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qy_a_EaUw0
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