from Holocene to Anthropocene

"The scientists, led by Jan Zalasiewicz at the department of geology at Leicester, say: "Sufficient evidence has emerged of stratigraphically significant change for recognition of the Anthropocene - currently a vivid yet informal metaphor of global environmental change - as a new geological epoch."

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Gender at the Olympics

"The International Olympic Committee (IOC) introduced sex testing in 1968 at the Olympic games in Mexico City, after the masculine appearance of some competitors, many pumped up by anabolic steroids, had started to raise questions about the gender of athletes in female events. Unsurprisingly, gender-determination tests were seen as degrading, with female competitors having to submit to humiliating and invasive physical examinations by a series of doctors. Later, the IOC decided to use a supposedly more sophisticated genetic test, based on chromosomes. Women usually have two X chromosomes; men an X and a Y chromosome. So, according to the rules of the test, only those athletes with two X chromosomes could be classed as women. However, many geneticists criticised the tests, saying that sex is not as simple as X and Y chromosomes and is not always simple to ascertain.

It is thought that around one in 1,000 babies are born with an "intersex" condition, the general term for people with chromosomal abnormalities. It may be physically obvious from birth - babies may have ambiguous reproductive organs, for instance - or it may remain unknown to people all their lives. At the Atlanta games in 1996, eight female athletes failed sex tests but were all cleared on appeal; seven were found to have an "intersex" condition. As a result, by the time of the Sydney games in 2000, the IOC had abolished universal sex testing but, as will happen in Beijing, some women still had to prove they really were women."

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'Credit crunch'

decent comment from GU article on the "credit crunch" euphemism by edevershed

"Take my housemate Leo as an example. Leo's so in debt, that he's being charged loads in interest every month on his debts. But he can't pay his debts, so the amount of interest is getting compounded, and he finds the whole thing too baffling and frightening to do anything about it. Recently, he's been summoned to court for non-payment of debts, but the fact remains they can't squeeze blood out of a stone.

But by spending way beyond his means for several years, Leo was a useful and productive member of society, in that he sustained economic growth, and by being in debt, he became an asset to the financial insitutions that had given him credit.

I'll run that past you again. In our somewhat insane financial system, it's normal practice to call a loan an asset.. That means, if I'm owed £1000 by you, or £5 per month, then I can describe what I'm owed as part of my assets, or income.

The problem is that that practice continues, in many cases whether or not the interest on the loan is being paid. If the interest isn't being paid, then the notional size of the loan is increased, and since it counts as an asset, the company who the money's owed to looks as if it's balancing its books.

And this can go on quite a while, - until someone comes along, and points out that actually, this notional asset isn't worth much, as even if you take Leo to court, he still can't pay his debts, and so suddenly, the asset, becomes a bad debt, and has its value instantaneously reversed. Suddenly, the company/bank is worth much less than it appeared to be. Its value tumbles."

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Mandisi Majavu on Fanon

"The appreciation of certain Western ideas and the fact that certain postcolonial writers are influenced by Western writers and write in European languages should not be presented as a failure to create an authentic postcolonial cultural work, as Fanon presents it.

To write in an African language, or to quote only African writers, does not necessarily translate into originality. A radical postcolonial vision on culture ought not to be opposed to diverse cultures, including Western cultures, or a reduction diverse cultures to a least common denominator. The point is to enjoy their benefits while transcending prior debits."

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imposter

the country he inherited, the country he left behind

“Animals don’t do sexual identity. They just do sex,"

"Unlike most humans, however, individual animals generally cannot be classified as gay or straight: an animal that engages in a same-sex flirtation or partnership does not necessarily shun heterosexual encounters. Rather many species seem to have ingrained homosexual tendencies that are a regular part of their society. That is, there are probably no strictly gay critters, just bisexual ones. “Animals don’t do sexual identity. They just do sex,” says sociologist Eric Anderson of the University of Bath in England"

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A truly brilliant lecture by Lloyd Best delievered in 2001

So many quotes to write, and ive made notes on so much of this paper...the gifts are so many but essentially his point is that Caribbean scholars need to look at our society from the inside out, not use the concepts and ideas brought from the outside...the potential of his ideas for not only the Caribbean but corrupting the narrative of modernity itself is limitless if only people could read this stuff. its really easy too, he was a man of wit as well as intellectual brilliance.

“It is not only that mas compels you to play many different roles, so today you are Catholic, tomorrow you are Hindu; today you are white, tomorrow you are mulatto. Depending on where you find yourself, you are all these things. The reason mas is necessary is that you have to do that; but the more intriguing thing is that mas also requires you play yourself in many different incarnations. So you are not only playing the Other you are playing yourself. So the Caribbean personality is very complex. A Trinidadian comes to Brooklyn, the first day he talking Yankee. The first day!”

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Paris is 3,000 years older than first thought

"You could say that we've come full circle," said Bénédicte Souffi, one of the two archaeologists in charge of the site. "Our ancestors were sorting rubbish from usable objects here in 7600BC. We are going to be doing much the same thing on a more elaborate scale. Maybe, there is a lesson there.

The oldest previous human settlement discovered within the Paris city boundaries dates back to about 4500BC – a fishing and hunting village beside the Seine at Bercy near the Gare de Lyon railway station. The new exploration – by Inrap, the French government agency for "preventive" archaeology on sites where new building is imminent – pushes back the history of the city to the mysterious period between the Old and New stone ages."

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Lords of Capital Versus The Planet

"The corporate mega-criminals are all pleading not guilty to speculating the price of oil into the stratosphere, while their servants in the Bush administration rush to appear as character witnesses for the perpetrators. Oil prices have multiplied seven-fold in the last seven years of Bush-Cheney rule - a time of unceasing American wars and threats of war in oil producing regions. That alone should have pushed oil prices far beyond peacetime levels - and it has. The U.S. Congress pretends it's trying to find out what's behind the ever-escalating price of crude oil and gasoline at the pump, even mustering up the courage to make threatening noises at Wall Street's Lords of Capital. But it's all a front to appease desperate and angry consumers, who are urged by the U.S. Secretary of Energy to put the blame on the uppity and unworthy Chinese and Indians, who insist on trying to catch up economically with the Americans and Europeans after suffering so many centuries of white Western colonial and imperial rule.

But even such political insanities cannot begin to account for the price madness of recent years. Only concentrated, organized capital, relentlessly distorting economic realities as it moves through international markets - much as gravity bends space and time - can wreak the havoc we have witnessed in oil trading. The tracks of the criminals are clearly seen, leading straight back to Wall Street.

However, the current oil price crisis should be viewed as an episode in a much larger saga. Over a generation ago, finance capital, which produces nothing, won its long struggle against productive, industrial capital. The Lords of Finance rule. They make money through manipulation of markets, or even by compelling the governments they control - like the U.S. government - to print money for them. They scheme and conspire to create artificial wealth - and in the process hem in and hold back the world's productive capacity. A group of European luminaries including former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt issued a warning against what they called "fictitious capital... that does very little to improve the human condition...." Actually, it's worse than that. The Lords of Capital and their accomplices have drowned the world in non-productive, "fictitious" money that is constantly bet on one non-productive proposition or another - including betting that something horrible will occur very soon to halt the flow of oil."

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Blogging as a community building strategy

"I've been thinking (and talking) about community a lot recently, and it was while speaking to about 50 people at a seminar held by Sift last Friday that I had an epiphany: most media people don't realise that blogging is a community strategy."

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the unfortunates

“…You’d be reading a physically different book as you technically read the same one, just as the narrator reflects that, “everything we know about someone is perhaps not the same, even radically different from what others, another, may seem or understand about them, him.””

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Im gonna be thinkin a lot about ethnicity over the next few months

"But one thing lacking from so many conversations about “Britishness” is any reference to a link between religious and ethnic identity.

In contrast to the decline of Christianity in Britain, Islam and Hinduism are thriving here. One reason is that for Muslims and Hindus, wherever they come from, their religion is inextricably linked with their sense of identity."

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(c) Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, 1985 (obama's wife)

"My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my “Blackness” than ever before. I have found that, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my White professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong. Regardless of the circumstances under which I interact with Whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be Black first and a student second. These experiences have made it apparent to me that the path I have chosen to follow will likely lead to my further integration and/or assimilation into a White cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant.This realisation has, presently, made my goals to actively utilise my resources to benefit the Black community more desirable. At the same time, however, it is conceivable that my four years of exposure to a predominantly White, Ivy League University has instilled within me certain conservative values ... I find myself striving for many of the same goals as my White classmates ... is it possible that other Black alumni share these feelings?"

Liverpool

"Football got rich on the back of the 96," he said, referring to the grants of public money paid to clubs to improve their grounds. "The safe stadiums were built as a direct result of the recommendation of the Taylor Report. Football became a popular sport ... Sky TV stepped in and suddenly football became lucrative. Premiership clubs became a very attractive proposition for overseas investors. At their peril," he concluded, "do those overseas investors forget the heavy price that we paid."

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Philanthrocapitalism

"Philanthrocapitalism is a transposition of the corporate model into the charitable sector. Having made their fortunes in the market, new philanthropists see no reason why the same tight, business strictures cannot simply be applied to the non-profit domain. Instead of bureaucratic government initiatives or the cosy, self-satisfied ethos of established charities, philanthrocapitalists like Bill Clinton want to "repurpose business methods and business culture to solve the world's problems". This means, in the words of one philanthropic consultancy, "an entrepreneurial results-oriented framework, leverage, personal engagement and impatience". Indeed, the entire vocabulary of Silicon Valley is applied to social rather than corporate enterprise.

Of course, in our media culture of Dragon's Den and The Apprentice, commerce can do no wrong. But Edwards suggests that the bottom-line ethos of the business world is not necessarily in accordance with the demands of accountability, voice, and an engaged public sphere that effective charity requires."

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Dialogue

"How do you make characters talk?" "You don't," Penny said. "You listen to them."

John Lahr on August Wilson

Great Zico interview

"In the round of 16, against Sevilla at the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán stadium, goalkeeper Volkan Demirel is preparing for the penalty shootout after two big mistakes that resulted in two goals. Zico ambles over and tells his keeper: 'Football is a great sport. It gives you the possibility of redemption in a matter of minutes. Forget what happened. You've got the chance to be the hero.' Demirel saves three penalties and Sevilla are defeated."

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Me, getting ripped over at Savage Minds

This is not an argument about one tradition as a truer producer of anthropological knowledge than another. Of ‘us’ being better than ‘them’ or the powerless writing back to the powerful.

It is rather the claim that some voices are louder, and speak more often, than others.

That some ideas, concepts and bibliographies have more paradigmatic weight.

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MA in Medical Anthropology reaches

"what is the relationship between culture, health and people’s sense of wellbeing? Why do many aspects of our lives appear to be understood increasingly through the language of medicine? How is it that while there are extraordinary technical advances taking place, so many people turn to alternative therapies? And do we really have to cope with more health risks nowadays?"

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