Savage Minds Around the Web

Harvey on Keynes: David Harvey is not impressed with the Obama administration’s stimulus package (actually, ‘bound to fail’ are his exact words.) Harvey centers his critique on fundamental (or in his words, tectonic) changes in global capitalism, and the impossibility of continuing U.S. global hegemony and a Keynsian solution in the 21st century.

The World Goes to the Box Store: While Harvey warns us haughty Americans that our time has come, the Economist is celebrating the worldwide triumph of the bourgeoisie. According to the Economist, the bourgification of the world will usher a new era of global middle-of-the-road politics. Woo hoo, break out the Zima! (I know someone is still hoarding it).

Earth’s Academics (Broadcast to your Computer): Pamthropologist at Teaching Anthropology posted a link to this new(ish?) site: Academicearth.org. Despite the self-centered title, the site has a nice smattering of lectures on video, definitely slanted towards the ‘popular’ sciences, with some philosophy and literature. And it looks like it’s setting to grow.

Objectification (due to popular demand): Material World guest blogger Aaron Glass writes on the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI)’s decision to begin to make the exposition of its collection of objects more available online. As Glass points out, this is a reversal of its founding mission to be a museum about people, not objects and is a return to a more conservative paradigm of salvage anthropology.

Sex, Ethnography, and the Blogosphere: Daniel Lende at neuroanthropology has a very special roundup of the latest sexy social science talk on the internet. It’s four fields of fun reads.

Justice By Any Other Name: The LA Times ran a story about a man in on trial for murder in Los Angeles who only spoke fluent Quetzaltepec Mixe, a dialect of Mixe with about 7000 speakers. The U.S. court system eventually found an interpretor who could call in from Mexico to interpret Spanish to Mixe. But, as John Haviland (interviewed and quoted on the second page) suggests, many U.S. juridical concepts don’t have translations.

Freedom for Dissertations: danah boyd at apophenia posted on the problems she encountered on licensing her dissertation under creative commons and how you can avoid the same problems.