I’m back. And I am tanned, rested, and ready for the rest of my career. Not that anyone missed me, but I do have an excuse for not showing my userid around here. Being by disposition modest and private (grin), I find it very hard to use this platform to broadcast bits of my life, but, here it is: 1) I have moved to UCLA, 2) I have tenure, 3) my house in Houston was not destroyed by Hurricane Ike, and 4) I’m $700,000,000,000 in debt. Well the last one is not strictly my problem, but I admit to feeling a little bit speechless as a result. My new position is split between the Information Studies department at UCLA, and a new center called The Center for Society and Genetics. Practically this means I have a whole new set of colleagues, societies, publications and grants to think about. Philosophically and methodologically, I would find it hard at this point to stop doing anthropology. I may yet court the UCLA department. But only after I find out how one gets to chill with Jared Diamond, now that he’s my colleague and all.

I plan to make several announcments now that I am back in the realm of normally impossible amounts of work. The first of which is that, now that I live in Beverly Hills, my Incredibly Famous Book is going to be made into not one but two different movies, and I have to say, I couldn’t be prouder. It’s so heart-warming to see Joe Piscopo in the role of Richard Stallman, and Al Pacino playing the Internet as a young Italian boy, tears, I say, tears every time. If my book ever gets re-printed, I may insist on using the phrase “Two girls, a little magic and a lot of horsing around” on the back cover…