Around the Web Digest: Week of April 20

Hello folks. Here’s the news that you might have missed this week, if your 4/20 was as crazy as mine (which is to say, crazy with grocery shopping, house tidying, box packing, and the like. Oh drugs? No. I don’t have time for that.) Lots of news this week, but not a whole lot from the anthro-blogosphere. (We are a couple weeks from the end of the semester, so I imagine people are preoccupied for the moment.) If you have any news or blogs that you want to share with me, please, shoot me an email at richard.powis@gmail.com or hit up on Twitter @dtpowis.

Alright, let’s do this.

I think that the most important things that you can read this week are the following three links. A survey has found that when prospective graduate students reach out to potential graduate advisors, white males are the most likely to get responses. (Inside Higher Ed)

And yet, the Supreme Court has upheld Michigan’s ban on affirmative action. (CNN)

As a follow-up to last week’s post, Julienne Rutherford explains how gender representation works. (BANDIT)

Student evaluations are useless – unless you’re an adjunct. (Slate)

UC-Riverside will hire 300 faculty over five years. (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Infertility, an already complicated issue, is made more complicated when the resources aren’t marketed or accessible for people of color. (New York Times)

Even if infertility services are available and accessible, it may not be easy for women of color in particular to talk about their options with family. (New York Times)

Here are eight of the most absurd lessons that Americans teach kids about sex. (Salon)

If American money isn’t allowed to pay for abortions abroad, how can funding for global health get to the women and families who need it? (Al Jazeera)

With these new laws in Texas, it might just be easier to drive across the border when in need of abortion services. (Al Jazeera)

Simone Maddanu describes (in French) how Tunisians cross both geographic and emotional borders into Lampedusa, and beyond. (Allegra Lab)

What is China’s “moral crisis” and how are children enculturated into it? (New Republic)

Paul Mutsaers wrote on ethnographic accounts of ethnic-profiling and “micro-deportations” in The Netherlands. (Anthropoliteia)

An interesting artifact: A manual for French police on how to “escort” illegal immigrants (in English). (The Funambulist)

The #myNYPD hashtag. facepalm (The Washington Post)

A “catfish” is someone who creates fake social media profiles, usually for the purpose of romantic relationships. Krystal D’Costa explores what that means for today’s internet dating boom, and what Erving Goffman has to say about it. (Scientific American)

The lore was true! There are hundreds of Atari ET cartridges in the middle the desert in New Mexico. (The Guardian)

The price of Bitcoin is way, way down, but the cryptocurrency could make a comeback in African markets. (USA Today)

Check out the first installment of Matthew Timothy Bradley’s series on what the well-dressed fieldworker wears. (Savage Minds)

Here’s a great summary (in English) of the #NonAuMur movement and how it’s a symptom of a much larger problem in Dakar. (Reuters)

A linguist is out to debunk Sapir-Whorf. (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Structural problems caused last week’s ferry disaster in South Korea, not culture. (VICE)

How are farts…received…across cultures? (PopAnth)

Tristan Partridge has reviewed the use of diagrams in ethnography. (Life Off the Grid)

This is what poverty looks like in a coal mining town, USA. (New York Times)

Dick Powis

Dick Powis is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, and is also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His research interests include men and childbirth, prenatal screening technologies, and reproductive health in urban settings in Senegal. Read more at dickpowis.com.