Category: Culture
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Give the West a rest
I’m pretty critical of the tendency to fixate on the “West vs. the Rest” which is common today across the ideological and cultural spectrum. Frankly, I think Zach does it a little too much for my taste, but that’s a separate issue. Rather, I want to highlight this bizarre tendency to fixate on the West…
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The Afghan sunk cost
As U.S. Pulls Back, Fears Abound Over Toll on Afghan Economy: While President Obama’s announcement of troop reductions is not expected to change much here right away, American and Afghan officials are already worrying about the impact of the eventual withdrawal of international forces on Afghanistan’s struggling economy. Very little will happen immediately. “What’s going…
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The assimilated model minority
Well played Hermon Kaur Raju! Or not. Not to be a bigot or anything, but I didn’t pay close attention to the video when I saw it first, and assumed that the obnoxious passenger was a blue blood WASP product of one of the tony Connecticut towns. As it is, she hails from a very…
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The trials of the “content slave”
Some of you may have read Oliver Miller’s AOL Hell: An AOL Content Slave Speaks Out. If you haven’t read it, please do! This section is important: “LADY GAGA PANTLESS IN PARIS” is the example given in “The AOL Way” internal document…
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Grain, disease, and innovation
I just finished reading a review of the literature since 1984 on the bioarchaeology of the transition to agriculture. Stature and robusticity during the agricultural transition: Evidence from the bioarchaeological record: The population explosion that …
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Muslim over-reliance on logic
I’ve been mulling over omar’s comment below: And about women, he made the argument that all this equality business is a sideshow and even a net negative. We dont have to buy this silly notion that “we are wasting the talents of 50% of the population”. Once we sort out our technology issues, we will…
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Brown Pundits in SFGate
Jeff Yang wrote up an article for SFGate, the San Francisco Chronicle’s website, All brown everything. Here’s the section on Brown Pundits: That’s been a recurring theme on Brown Pundits, a blog community cofounded by Berkeley-based Bangladeshi American Razib Khan, who writes the Gene Expression blog for Discover magazine, and Zachary Latif, a London-based finance…
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Where are you from, etc.
I have no idea how old Jordan is. But I’m 34. Here is my experience in a graph, where the Y axis represents frequency: I look as brown as I used to, and I never dressed “ethnically.” So my own hunch is that the social environment has changed greatly since the early 1980s. When I…
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No Khannnn!!!!
Very strange. I just saw referrals from this Rupee News website that Omar mentioned earlier today to my Discover blog. Here’s a comment from Dr khan: really interesting piece revisionist history, although quite easy to argue for and against! its a matter of hook or by crook or an easy fit for the glove, if…
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Gay girl in Damascus and “Orientalism”
I already pointed out at my other weblog that the writers and editors at The Washington Post are as ignorant of Western history as Malcolm Gladwell is of linear algebra, but the “self-outing” post of Tom MacMaster-a.k.a.-”Gay Girl in Damascus” is pretty self-serving A Gay Girl in Damascus: I never expected this level of attention.…
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A mismeasured Mismeasurement of Man
I would say The Mismeasurement of Man is one of the most commonly cited books on this weblog over the years (in the comments). It comes close to being “proof-text” in many arguments online, because of the authority and eminence of the autho…
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Against social constructionism
My first post over at HAP. The theses of some scholars who argue for social construction of caste has obviously gone too far, but I do want to add that I suspect there’s a lot correct about specific details. For example, it seems possible that the class “Kayastha” broadly refers to groups which uplifted from…
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HIV and Asian American women
HIV/AIDS Shows Alarming Rise Among Asian American Women: The increase in HIV infections has risen alarmingly among Asian American women, and will soon surpass the rate of infections in high-risk populations unless intervening measures are taken, noted a panel of experts here May 17. The panel discussion was held at the San Francisco Public Library…
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Farrokh Bulsara rockin’ it
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A lighter shade of brown
Kalki Koechlin: Kalki was born to French parents in a small village in Pondicherry. Her parents had come to India 38 years ago and settled there after they fell in love with the country. Her parents are devotees of Sri Aurobindo. As an American I really get aggravated at some of the exclusionary “race popery”…
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The revolution swallowing Powell’s Books?
A friend asked me today if I thought that Powell’s would be around a year from now. I had no idea what he was referring to. By that, I don’t mean that I didn’t know he was referring to Powell’s Books of Portland. I mean that I h…
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Let a thousand Thiel fellows bloom!
Now that the Thiel Fellows have been announced the media has been pouncing. If you don’t know, Peter Thiel is giving a bunch of bright-young-things some money to drop out of college (or not go to college). Here are the details: As the first membe…
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There was scale and structure before history
Until relatively recently the spread of agriculture in Europe, and to some extent the whole world, was pigeon-holed into two maximalist models: cultural or demographic diffusionist. Neither of these models were maximalist in that they denied the impac…
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Humanity invented in 1800 by the French
A comment from earlier this week struck a nerve with me. I’ll repost it in totality first: I find it interesting that Fox Keller seems to be assuming that human interest in “nature” began only in the 19th century. Rather, the concept of manki…