Academic Clearing House: Classics professor Victor Davis Hanson on the decline of the liberal arts in U.S. Higher Education. Hanson is inarguably on the WRONG side of the academic culture wars, and you have to get past a lot of ethnocentrism to read the article. So, roll your eyes, and then continue. Hanson has some interesting things to say about the transformation of universities into vocational schools, not teaching critical thinking, the problems of internet universities, and how the History Channel has supplanted the classical education.

State Enforced Indigineity: Alexei BarroNuevo at the International Herald Tribune reported from Amazonia that two Mariaçu chiefs have asked Brazilian authorities to enter their community and police community youth.

“We want government officials to help us save our children, so they don’t take part in these ruinous practices,” said Oswaldo Honorato Mendes, a deep-voiced Mariacu chief. “Every day the situation gets worse. The younger generation does not obey. They do not show respect for our authority as chiefs. They need to learn respect.”

Arctic Cities of the Future: Sam Fields at Space and Culture reports on the effects Greenland’s separation from Iceland Denmark will have on indigenous governance, arctic urbanization, and the geopolitical landscape of the great white North.  [Update: I am now convinced that both the Islandic and the Danish hate me).

Stories for Our Times: Sam Leith at the UK Telegraph reports on MIT’s Center for the Future of Storytelling and considers what stories might one day be used to explain people living now. Leith wonderfully proposes an equal access to storytelling. He writes:

You don’t have to be a crazed Jungian, a structural anthropologist, or a seven-basic-plots believer to agree that storytelling is something of universal importance in human experience, and something that exhibits deep and suggestive similarities across cultures.

Stem Cell Tourism: Eliza Barclay at National Geographic News submitted this story on Americans going abroad to get stem cell treatments to alleviate symptoms of degenerative diseases. The article is short but provocative, suggesting the role public conception and affective attitudes towards stem cells are influencing this burgeoning cottage industry.

Wikipedia…Crowd or Collaboration? HASTAC is developing an interesting conversation about collaboration on Wikipedia and the wisdom (or lack thereof) of crowds (apparently a Silicon Valley term of which I hadn’t heard). To me, the argument seems to be more about collaboration and conflict, but it has some intriguing thoughts on internet sociality.

Feeling Good/Feeling Bad…Together: Finally, this week was a big one for the social mimesis of emotions, even if given a bio-bent. Science American posted podcasts on the contagion of happiness and the production of pain.

Have something you want posted? Leave a comment, or email me for next week.