Savage Minds » Around the Web

Around the Web Digest

Matt Thompson — Tue, 01 May 2012 21:40:58 +0000

Is it just me or were our tweets a little anemic in the month of April? It seems we here at Savage Minds were pretty busy with end of the semester madness. Nonetheless here in handy digest form is everything we saw fit to share over the last four weeks on the topics of anthropology, academia, politics, and a couple of things on Mongolia I had lying around in my bookmarks. If you’ve seen something around the web that you’d like to share with the Savage Minds community send me the links in an email, MDTHOMPS @ODU.EDU. And if you want to hang on our every word this summer but haven’t already signed up go ahead and follow us on Twitter @savageminds or like our Facebook page which is pretty much the same thing but, you know, on Facebook.

Around the Web Digest

Matt Thompson — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 02:36:39 +0000

Every month we collect our semi-daily tweets from @savageminds in an easy to swallow pill. Was there one you missed? If you see something around the web that you’d like to share with the Savage Minds community shoot me an email at MDTHOMPS {at} ODU(.)EDU. The digest for the month of March is a bit late. Apologies, I was occupied by public school spring break which never ever corresponds with university spring break.

Around the Web Digest

Matt Thompson — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 04:19:01 +0000

Being enthralled with the joy of grading papers over spring break, I’ve shirked my duty to collect our tweets from the month of February in digest form. We share anthropology news, blogs, politics, and world events via @savageminds on a semi-daily basis. There might be some memes comin’ across the wires too. Okay, so it this month might be more jokey than others…

Have you seen something around the web that you’d like to share with the Savage Minds community? Email me at mdthomps AT odu.edu. To the links!

Around the Web Digest

Matt Thompson — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:13:40 +0000

With all the lively debate here at the blog, maybe you’ve missed the fun we’ve been having on the @savageminds twitter feed and Facebook page. There you’ll find fresh daily links to internet flotsam that’s semi-interesting and even occasionally relevant to anthropology! Once a month I collect all the tweets and post them here. Below are some of the news stories, blog posts, book reviews, and more that we read in the month of January. If you’ve seen something you’d like to share with the Savage Minds community send email me at MDTHOMPS at ODU.EDU.

Around the Web Digest

Matt Thompson — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 03:35:25 +0000

In academia the month of December is a crescendo of responsibilities, but our Twitter feed of links to anthroblogs, world news, and internet flotsam sailed on. This handy monthly report is a sample of what we were reading. If you’ve seen something around the web that you’d like to share with the Savage Minds community, email me at MDTHOMPS @ ODU.EDU.

Military Assc of Atheists & Freethinkers wants the military to provide chaplains for estimated 40,000 atheists //MT

Around the Web Digest

Matt Thompson — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:03:28 +0000

If you’re already following @savageminds or liking us on FB then you had the chance to read Kerim tweet:

The following Brilliant Anthropological Insight™ comes to you courtesy of Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski (cont’d)…

“Two human beings of different sex who are engaged in the business of reproduction…cannot be separated by a great distance in space.”

For those of you not being bombarded by our extraordinary insights and clever #timewasters here’s your chance to catch up on what we were reading in the month of November. Note that last month was the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association and so I chose to be selective in which conference related tweets got preserved in the digest. If you’ve seen something around the web that you’d like to share with the Savage Minds community, email me MDTHOMPS @ ODU.EDU.

Around the Web digest

Matt Thompson — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 02:03:18 +0000

Each month we do a round up of weblinks, current events, and anthropologists in the news that were originally broadcast daily (or at least in semi-reliable fashion) via @savageminds. Here’s a sampling of what we were reading in October. If you’ve seen someting around the web that you want to share with the Savage Minds community email me MDTHOMPS @ ODU.EDU.

Around the Web Digest

Matt Thompson — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:40:54 +0000

Here at the master control center for the Savage Minds Twitter feed, @savageminds, when we’re not out scouring the web for the finest in links we’re cutting and pasting them into a text editor at the end of the month. So here is your Around the Web Digest for the month of September dear reader. We hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed tweeting them. If you’ve found something around the web that you’d like to share with the Savage Minds community feel free to email me at mdthomps AT odu.edu. You can also “like” us on Facebook. See you round teh Interwebs!

Around the Web Digest

Matt Thompson — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 01:58:03 +0000

Enjoy this sampling of what we Minds were reading and linking to in the month of August. You can also receive them instantly and on a daily basis by “following” @savageminds on Twitter or “liking” Savage Minds on Facebook. If you’ve found something around the web that might be of interest to the Savage Minds community email me — mdthomps AT odu.edu.

Around the Web Digest

Matt Thompson — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 14:12:07 +0000

Not long ago this was the spot where a (semi)weekly Around the Web column appeared. I wrote those columns for a few months, fell behind, and declared web-link bankruptcy. In the interest of experimentation I moved Savage Minds’ collection of links to news, anthro blogs, and internet flotsam over to our Twitter account. If you do the Twitter you can ‘follow’ us @savageminds and get your links on a daily basis. I try to do 2 or 3 a day, Kerim writes them too, and every now and then Rex cleans the baby drool off his laptop to write a couple.

If you’re not the tweeting type, the twitter feed is reproduced on our Facebook page, which you can join by ‘liking’ Savage Minds. And both the Twitter and Facebook accounts automatically post when a new article shows up here on Savage Minds. For those of you who do neither… you’ve got a lot of nerve. Here’s a digest version of what we were reading in the month of July:

PS. If you’ve found something around the web that you’d like to share with the Savage Minds community, just email me mdthomps AT odu.edu. Sorry, we don’t do CFP’s.

Around the Web moves to Twitter

Matt Thompson — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 17:26:36 +0000

I’m changing the format of Around the Web. I’ve had some difficulty keeping the feature regular, especially during busy times of the semester. It’s not for want of links – I have pages of them to share! By moving to Twitter I hope to get the links to our readers in a more timely manner. If you aren’t already following Savage Minds on Twitter consider this your invitation.

See you in the Twitterverse!

Around the Web: Sex and Gender Edition

Matt Thompson — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 04:30:52 +0000

Non-scandal at Northwestern

Psychology Prof. John Michael Bailey organized a optional outside of class lecture for his Human Sexuality class that concluded with a live sex act using a toy to demonstrate female ejaculation. This generated a bit of media attention, both the NYT and the BBC picked it up, prompting bloggers to leave first hand accounts of what really took place. The President of Northwestern was embarrassed. Prof. Bailey stood by the educational value of the demonstration but also apologized and said he would never do it again.

Women and Islam

Max Forte starts off this post critiquing the Western imaginary of non-Western women, in particular “the liberation of women” discourse that has circulated around the current American wars, with a brilliant quote by anthropologists Cathy Lutz and Jane Collins. More links follow about representations of Muslim women in popular culture, sexual assault in Tahrir Square, and the culture of rape in the U.S. military.

Marriage in India and the United States

The payment of dowries was banned in 1961 but remains a commonplace practice in contemporary India. The Independent reports that the dowry is at the heart of what in the U.S. would be termed “culture wars” as the Indian government contemplates amending the legislation.
According to a recent Time/ Pew poll, marriage has become a prestige commodity, “the relationship equivalent of a luxury yacht” and thus an unrealistic goal for many people. A savvy post at Brainstrom matched links from the mainstream media reacting to the poll – many read it as a about the “decline” of marriage – with commentary that recognizes the massive and ongoing structural change that has reshaped how Americans do work and friendship.

It Gets Better

Dan Savage made a name for himself with his kinky, political, and frequently hilarious sex advice column, Savage Love, which has spawned a bevvy of internet memes and catchy acronyms like GGG, DTMFA, and, of course, Santorum. Now there is the “It Gets Better Project” which has quickly evolved into something of a movement in which adults address video messages to queer youth that the struggles of growing up can be overcome! Dan and his husband-in-Canada/ boyfriend-in-the-United-States Terry Miller gave a fantastic interview on NPR’s Fresh Air promoting “It Gets Better,” which has now come out as a book.
Also on the LGBT front, Two Spirits, is a PBS documentary about the hate-crime death of Navajo teen Fred Martinez.
Enjoy this absolutely incredible performance from Thailand’s Got Talent (I love the big hug at the end):

Beauty

Meet Sandra Dubose-Gibson, Mrs. Black North Carolina who, diagnosed with alopecia from age 25, is totally bald. Hat tip to Racialicious, from whom I steal links all the time.
Book review – Pretty Modern, an ethnography of beauty, race, and plastic surgery in Brazil.
Oprah talks to Lea T, a transgender supermodel for Givenchy who has appeared in French Vogue and is becoming one of the most sought after models in the industry.

Sex and Performance

In Quebec an administrative assistant at a local high school was suspended when it was discovered (by a male student) that she was also a porn star. A harsher fate for a psych professor who was fired for appearing in burlesque act. Thank you Gawker, this is why you exist!
A contributor to the Ms. Magazine blog remembers a short-lived career stripping on Bourbon Street. The transformative experience wasn’t shaving her legs or wearing pasties, it coming off the stage to serve drinks to the customers.
The NYT reports that on the popularity of Japanese porn stars in Indonesian domestic films. Even though the performers leave their clothes on their very presence in the country brings negative attention from Islamists and production companies must operate under secrecy or else be subject to protest or vigilante action.

Representing Women in Popular Culture

Sociological Images links to a short video critiquing female characters in video games. Another one presents an awesome music video, “Do it like a Dude”, that plays around with gender imagery and language.

Violence

Another from Sociological Images:

Seen something around the web that you’d like to share with the Savage Minds community? Email me at mdthomps AT odu.edu.

Around the Web

Matt Thompson — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 16:26:59 +0000

This week Around the Web is all about language and the mind. Let’s kick things off with another of those clever RSA Animate features, this time starring Steven Pinker as he discusses what language can tell us about social relationships.

BRAAAAIINSS!!!

The phenomenon of Alien Hand Syndrome: after doctors cut her corpus callosum to treat her epilepsy a patient finds that her left hand often acts against her will. “I’d light a cigarette, balance it on an ashtray, and then my left hand would reach forward and stub it out.” She was featured in the BBC series, The Brain: A Secret History.
Anthropology in Practice takes a pinch of folklore mixes a little evolutionary psychology and stirs in a heaping helping of Disney World.

“Come to my senses sometimes”

Book review – Suffering and Sentiment: Exploring the Vicissitudes of Pain and Experience in Yap, an in-depth ethnographic study of the experience of physical pain.
Metaphor shapes our perception of reality – portraying crime as a virus plaguing a city leads people to call for social reform, describing it as a beast preying on the city leads people to call for tougher law enforcement.
Philosopher Alva Noe favors a view of consciousness as embodied cognition. “Consciousness is not something that happens in us. It is something we do.”
Book review – High Society: Mind-Altering Drugs in History and Culture.

Artificial Intelligence

NYT on the Jeapordy trouncing computer Watson. Mind Hacks has the run down.
In the Atlantic linguist Ben Zimmer, for one, welcomes out new computer overlords. More links here.

Politics of Language

Language Log writes on the deliberate affectation of a Southern accent in Republican Presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty. There’s a follow up here.
In my General Anthropology class I used selections from this PBS series, “Do you speak American?”. I might write up a full review on it at a later date.

An Evolutionary Perspective

Primatology. net on the Vervet Monkey, which is known to produce predator-specific alarm calls. Here’s the second part of that entry.

Wor(l)d History

Does Language Log even know what they are talking about? Contemporary use of the word “even” reflects 16th Century origins.
BBC on the spread of “OK” as documented by Allan Metcalf in OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word. Incidentally I had a professor in grad school who held that the word “okay” was African in origin.

Language on the Internet

A cross-cultural investigation of Smileys – not all emoticons are the same.
Check out the new online magazine, Popular Linguistics.
How much do you use your office phone? Dean Dad wonders whether they’ll go the way of the typewriter.

“This year Halloween fell on a weekend”

Seen something around the web that you’d like to share with the Savage Minds communtiy? Email your links to mdthomps AT odu.edu

Around the Web: Web Edition

Matt Thompson — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 14:49:02 +0000

I gave up Facebook for Lent, but perhaps a more fitting penance would have been to actually write a column a week for Savage Minds. Though I haven’t done a good job of staying on top of Around the Web, I have been saving links for weeks now. This week its all about the interwebs. To the linx!

Best of Media/Anthropology:

John Postill has a lot to say about social networks. Like why Twitter is best as a human-mediated RSS feed.
He’s also thrown together an annotated bibliography on researching social networks.
Could it be that the anthropology of the internet is the second coming of culture-at-a-distance?

The digital family

Material World explores the intertwining of family relationships and digital practices.
Apophenia is a great blog about social media, youth and parenting.

Social media and social change

We’ve heard about the role of Twitter and Facebook in the Middle East rebellions, has anyone seen anything connecting social media to the disaster in Japan?
Indigenous youths in Taiwanare using social media to make their voices heard.
Anthropology in Practice reports on tweeting from the homeless. And gamer site Kotaku reports on a video game designed to teach you about living in poverty.

The internet and religion

Pope Benedict weighs in on social networking. In related news, the Church has approved an iPhone confession app.
NYT reports on live-streaming of funerals for far flung families unable to travel.

Cultural diversity online

Researchers at Carneige Mellon find that regional variation in American English is manifest in tweets.

Whither anthropology in the digital age?

Daniel Lende, in a wide ranging post about the “science” debate in anthropology and the recent response, published in Nature, from Adam Kuper and Johnathan Marks offers up a vision of anthropology: major changes to traditions of the dissemination of knowledge – open access and blogging.
Ethnografix has an appreciation of Lende’s post and offers an interesting idea too: how about a online anthropology publication modeled after literary magazine The Sun?
Another model might be First Monday, a peer-reviewed online journal about the internet (h/t Material World).
For more interesting ideas check out this recent Wednesday Round Up from Neuroanthropology which has a neat section heading on online anthropology.

Seen something around the web that you’d like to share with the Savage Minds community? Email your links to mdthomps AT odu.edu.

Around the Webs of Significance

Matt Thompson — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 04:34:34 +0000

Around the Web is back and, with a nod to one of the most writerly of anthropological writers, this week’s column is dedicated to putting pen to paper. To the links!

The writing process

Lifehacker explains why you learn more effectively by writing longhand than typing.

Teaching writing

A neat little exercise to get your students to write a tight, concise precis.
Directed writing can improve every student’s performance. Even in physics!

Words of affirmation

A little coaching from the Chronicle’s Brainstorm blog lifted my spirits. It’s a quickly little ditty on what you really need to write. All the time I tell myself I need childcare to write or at least peace and quiet, but look I’m writing this while my third child lies next to me on the couch smashing her foot into my face, demanding “Can I ha’ more?”
Got writer’s block? You’re closer to creativty than you think! Read: How to have ideas.

Publishing

Science-fiction blog io9 forsees a publishing world of 2021 where e-books have taken over and book retailers are doomed. I wonder where this will leave textbooks in ten years?
More io9: How to publish your book on Amazon Kindle. Your work can be available for sale on Amazon in 24-48 hours. Why do we need academic presses again? Oh yeah, peer review.
The blog Anthropologi considers the possibility of combining publishing formats: conventional book and web download.

Writing for a broad audience

John Hawks on good science writing and the beneficial role it plays in the production of new knowledge.
Ever want to start your own anthropology blog? Here are some tips.

In memoriam

Alison Snow Jones who blogged as Maxine Udall, girl economist, recently passed away. Ethnografix has an appreciation that is, dare I say, right on the money.

Got some tips on why a raven is like a writing desk? Send ‘em to me at mdthomps AT odu.edu.