Savage Around the Web

News Recap: Although both Strong and LL Wynn mentioned David Price’s article on leaked HTS handbook. For other current news, in contrast to USA Today’s article on HTS: read Nature’s editorial calling for the end of HTS. Also John Stanton reports on Fraud and Waste and military/civilian tensions in HTS (posted on Open Anthropology).

Open Anthropology has also been a doing a good job pulling together information and resources on the eruptions of actions and riots in Greece in response to police abuse.

The Kids are All Right: Cathy Davidson at HASTAC offers some reflections on her own research on youth and video games and reposts a summary and commentary on Mimi Ito’s research with the Digital Youth Project. On the history of scholarly attitudes to children and video games, Davidson writes:

In doing research for a chapter of my book on digital youth, I went back to dozens of studies from the 1980s and 1990s, the years of Pac Man and Space Invaders, and found study after study praising the benefits of video games for kids, on a cognitive level, a social level, a technological and learning level, and on an imaginative level. But after Columbine, not only were video games blamed for this tragedy but became the scapegoat for all the ills of digital youth today.

Pornography for Export: Thanks to John Curran for emailing about the Japanese pornography studio producing a series of “charity porns,” where Japanese actresses go to poor regions of the world and have sex with local men. The profits are sent to communities and development agencies where the erotic film was shot. The main article is at Sociological Images, with further commentaries at Jezebel, Feminist Law Professors.

Language Rights are Human Rights: Jane Simpson at Transient Language Rights and Cultures used the sixtieth anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights to give a thorough examination of the state of Language Rights and conservation in Australia.

Theater of the obsessed (over): The Guardian asks whether an upcoming spate of London theatrical pieces dealing with Iran may change public perception of the ‘axis of evil’ country. Included is an all-to-brief recap of the reporter’s conversation with William Beeman.

Urban Intimacy: The Seattle Times posted an intriguing article on changing attitudes of U.S. Pacific Northwest urbanites with regards to urban density and close-contact with others. The article is a nice take on social science truisms and local folk wisdom on urban social life:

Everyone just “knew” density caused “tensions, anxiety, family troubles, divorce, aggressiveness, neurosis, schizophrenia, rape, murder and even war,” said Columbia University’s Jonathan Freedman in his 1975 book “Crowding & Behavior.

Anthroman and Spike Lee, together at last: John L. Jackson posted a summary of the class he just finished teaching at Penn on the films of Spike Lee. The class was capped with a visit by Lee, when students had the chance to ask Lee about his ouvre and politics.