Anthropology in Practice

Fantastic! I hope it works out.

2012-01-17T15:59:13.351-05:00

Fantastic! I hope it works out.

This is very interesting! I am an undergrad senior...

2012-01-17T15:39:15.104-05:00

This is very interesting! I am an undergrad senior studying anthropology, and I am considering writing my final paper on death rites and rituals. This would be a very interesting topic! Thanks for the food for thought!

Thanks.

2011-12-01T05:37:47.626-05:00

Thanks.

9$/cup!!!???? Where the HELL did that cup come fr...

2011-09-16T11:11:02.408-04:00

9$/cup!!!???? Where the HELL did that cup come from? I've ordered a 16oz. coffee in New York and it wasn't over $2.75! Please tell me that is a pure over exaggeration on your part, and not a corruption of the book where the authors equate corporation branding for the actual drink of coffee, a Salted Caramel Mocha is not a coffee, it's an angle on corporate branding. I really hope that the authors did not succumb to 'corporate culture', if so that will diminish the book for me. Thanks for the review and the website.

What a sweet story. Thanks for sharing.

2011-07-08T15:31:53.880-04:00

What a sweet story. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks Wendy! Hope to see you over at SciAm.

2011-07-06T09:50:16.479-04:00

Thanks Wendy! Hope to see you over at SciAm.

Congratulations! This is an exciting opportunity a...

2011-07-05T10:27:00.167-04:00

Congratulations! This is an exciting opportunity and it's well-deserved.

1) "The only traveler close enough to have wi...

2011-07-02T17:38:23.378-04:00

1) "The only traveler close enough to have witnessed her sadness" ? I'm confused now. Who's talking ?

2) Looks like the subway flirtation didn't go exactly as expected... :(

Even New Yorkers can occasionally surprise you.

2011-07-02T12:03:56.911-04:00

Even New Yorkers can occasionally surprise you.

The stranger's behavior is uplifting. There ar...

2011-07-01T21:57:24.147-04:00

The stranger's behavior is uplifting. There are kind, empathetic people everywhere.

Oh, do you read John Connolly at all? In Noctur...

2011-07-01T16:41:19.312-04:00
Oh, do you read John Connolly at all? In Nocturnes, there's a short story that matches the final performance of the play in Gaiman's piece. I'm not sure it was an intentional connection as the theme is a common on, but it made me smile.

You're welcome! I had just read it last week, ...

2011-07-01T15:31:09.485-04:00
You're welcome! I had just read it last week, in preparation for Neil Gaiman's 10th Anniversary of _American Gods_, which I was able to attend.

Also, I nominate Neil for second-best author who looks like a terrorist. I'd put him over Alan Moore, except that Alan Moore has the terrorist look down so well.

My friends and I recently lost our favorite coffee...

2011-07-01T15:27:15.301-04:00
My friends and I recently lost our favorite coffee shop.

You see, I'm a relatively new coffee drinker. I barely ever touched the stuff until about five years ago. but I've long been enamored of the concept of the coffee house. When I moved tot he DC area, I set out to find a good coffee shop for "hanging out". With some significant help, my friends and I found a pleasant, local place. Interestingly enough, the presence of couches was a key factor.

Over the course of the last few years, this evolved into running a social group, with regular meetings - once a month at a coffeehouse, once a month at a member's home.

This leads me to some curious places.
You see, I've found it's uncommon - but not "rare", if you grok the difference - to casually speak with strangers, even at a coffeehouse, although that environment is one in which it seems less likely to result in offense. But this means that to synthesize the boisterous, active conversation with which coffeehouses are associated, one must bring the group.
Ironically, this betokens that any coffeehouse into which we settle will be unsuccessful. As we bring a not-inconsequential number of people, we want someplace large but not heavily trafficked - in other words, a coffeehouse which is failing to do much business. A successful business is usually at, or close to, capacity, something we're avoiding.

I'm told that the founders of Starbucks have long been frustrated: they sought to recreate the neighborhood coffeehouse, but the successful business model was that of a fast-paced coffee dispensary.

Interestingly, according to tea advocates, the qualities I desire in coffeehouses are qualities engendered by tea. In fact, most of the tea documentaries I've seen and books I've read tend to cast coffee and tea as antagonists, while emphasizing the differences. Tea, it seems, is associated with quiet contemplation and tranquility, whereas coffee is associated with stimulation and frenetic energy. My own experience has been that these are strictly cultural; the two beverages could easily swap places.

Right about that point, actually. Immediately prec...

2011-07-01T14:47:29.740-04:00
Right about that point, actually. Immediately preceding that reference, the mention of the ash on the mantel tipped me off. "Asteroid" was the confirmation.

Thanks for the recommendation!

When did you figure out who the characters were? I...

2011-07-01T14:28:16.655-04:00
When did you figure out who the characters were? I had a niggling suspicion, but it wasn't until "Dynamics of an Asteroid" was mentioned that I became certain.

*Interested. Gah. I'm going to go have a bro...

2011-06-30T13:27:32.744-04:00
*Interested.

Gah. I'm going to go have a brownie.

I would say our initial apologizer is someone who ...

2011-06-30T13:23:54.368-04:00
I would say our initial apologizer is someone who is convinced that she MUST be submissive. I'm not entirely sure where she got this notion; based on her own account and the people with whom she lives, she's never had anyone who demanded the mindset from her. She believes it to be in part due to her religious education; I can't confirm or deny.
I don't know how she delivered the apology, having not been there, but I do know that she can be sometimes rather over-the-top, while she is in fact sincere it doesn't always seem to be that way. In this case, it enraged the man even more. but that could have been due to receiving an apology without any action toward what he desired. By all accounts, this was a very angry person.

I'm also a bit dubious about the supposed contrition. I saw him leave the shop, and personally didn't see anything to indicate the sort, but I wasn't outside, either. And he certainly wasn't as confrontational as his prior behavior was described to me. But the person who claimed that he appeared to be sorry sometimes, I think, assumes that people will be better, kinder, than they are. This is also the person who wanted to go the "kill him with kindness" route.

I very strongly doubt that the "kill him with kindness" route would have worked. It seems to me that it would have reinforced rude and dominant behavior: "Hey, storming into the neighboring coffee shop and screaming at people gets me a parking spot! I should do that next time, too!" I'm assuming the individual was already a very dominant, "Alpha" for whom this behavior already existed; that it wasn't a spontaneous thing. It's an interesting contrast from our "Omega" apologizer.

Personally, I don't think the group could have "corrected" his behavior in terms of getting him to change his ways and feel contrition for what was, by accounts, truly unacceptable. I do think it's possible to at least show that such behavior won't be tolerated - ignoring him, ejecting the individual from the premises, or even calling the police exist as options there.

I do wonder about the meaning of an apology. There's a certain sense of it being an unresolved issue, that contrition is due. I think it'd be nice to have him admit that he was in the wrong, as a form of affirmation. But, we're not going to see this person again, and while he's likely to encounter the same issue in spades in the future, it won't be with us: the coffee shop is closing and is supposedly being replaced with a cocktail bar.

Hasufin, you were spot on about the Gaiman piece. ...

2011-06-30T13:23:22.223-04:00
Hasufin, you were spot on about the Gaiman piece.

If anyone else is interest, you can find a copy here (pdf):
http://www.neilgaiman.com/mediafiles/exclusive/shortstories/emerald.pdf

I've been thinking about this comment for the ...

2011-06-30T12:10:03.269-04:00
I've been thinking about this comment for the last day—in particular, the friend who feels she must apologize. I've known a few people like that, and it's tiresome. And meaningless. But of course, in situations as you have described above, only the people who know the apologetic friend would know that about her, so it is only meaningless in context, and might have helped defuse the situation. So it strikes me that perhaps it doesn't matter what drives the apology, but it does matter how it's perceived. And there is truth to that: even sincere apologies can be ineffective if the recipient does not accept them.

The perception of the rude guitar player "appearing contrite" is also interesting because it is telling about the social expectations we place on people. For example, he behaved badly, he received an undeserved apology, he should be sorry. Whether or not he was actually contrite seems to matter less than if the group is willing to assign this motivation to him.

I'm not sure about the "killing him with kindness" response because I do think it only encourages unacceptable behavior—but I also think it's hard to correct the behavior of strangers. That is not to say that the group should have apologized, or that he should have stormed in and thrown a fit.

Hm, does reconciliation have meaningful purposes beyond connected members of a social group?

Last weekend, a group of my friends was at a coffe...

2011-06-27T18:10:28.313-04:00
Last weekend, a group of my friends was at a coffee shop (I was not present at the time, so sadly this is secondhand). Someone came in and - loudly and vulgarly - demanded that someone vacate a parking space space for him, because he had a guitar lesson next door and so he needed the parking space, unlike the people at the coffee shop.
One member of the party, who doesn't drive and does not have a car, actually offered an apology. She has it so ingrained that if someone is upset at her, she MUST apologize.

Of equal interest, the rude guitar player, exiting the music place after his lesson, was described as "appearing contrite" but he by no means offered an apology for his earlier behavior.

This ensued quite a bit of discussion as to how the group should have responded. A few felt that the proper action would have been to "kill him with kindness", hopefully initiating remorse by showing how people ought to act; others (myself included) think that doing so would have only served to encourage the unacceptable behavior.

Of course, it's mostly moot, since there's no association between the individual and the group, and the odds of further contact are slim - so there's no reason, really, that anyone will care to apologize anyway.

To a large extent, I don't imagine we'll *...

2011-06-27T11:19:43.254-04:00
To a large extent, I don't imagine we'll *ever* sift through the data. Many large companies now have a policy of basically never deleting. There's too much risk of losing important, or even legally necessary information, and the cost of keeping the data is so trivial, they simply migrate whole databases to new servers, not unlike a hermit crab. Actually sifting through data takes a great deal of time, effort, and informed judgment - in other words, it's expensive.

HOWEVER there are major risks all the same. Document formats change. Storage methods change. And, perhaps worst of all, a great deal of data can only be accessed in a worthwhile fashion with a separate tool: ostensibly, a file may contain all the marketing figures for IBM from 1987-2006, but without the labels found in the display tool, they're just random numbers; archaeologists will likely spend a great deal of time putting such parts together - the pottery sherds of the future.

James, both you and Hasufin seem to agree on Point...

2011-06-27T10:25:56.676-04:00
James, both you and Hasufin seem to agree on Point Four: "focus alone does not a geek make." Elemental to geekdom is a willingness to ask why and delve deeper, often at the expense of popular opinion. For geeks, I think it is not that the focus is singular, but that the focus is a driving force, which certainly encompasses a past, the present, and a reach toward the future.

Hasufin, thanks for the recommendation. I've found a PDF of Gaiman and I'll add it to my commute reading. S is also quite pleased with my tech and science inclinations—the holds me to a higher standard when it comes to fixing things, and typically wants to know what I've done already in detail before he'll troubleshoot things for me.

As for being a female geek—there's no denying it's hard. It's hard within the subculture, especially when you don't fit the Velma-stereotype for female geeks. And it's hard in the mainstream, precisely because you don't fit the Velma-stereotype. Male geeks have been dismissive and condescending, and mainstream folks have done the same. Having to straddle both worlds means finding a way to be comfortable in your own skin, and learning how to continue to assert yourself—which fortunately, has not been a problem for me!

I do have hope that this will change, as I fully plan to encourage an entire generation of female geeks, who currently call me Aunt Krystal.

Hasufin, I don't think your projection is too ...

2011-06-27T10:13:27.998-04:00
Hasufin, I don't think your projection is too far off. While the concern that formed the basis of this exhibit was the loss of potentially important websites, you are right about the accumulation of data. Over the weekend, I moved several folders of pictures from my laptop to an external drive, and as usual, I was shocked at the number of digital photos S and I have accumulated over the years. They need to be sorted as we have lots of duplicates and pictures that just don't need to be saved, and we've started, but the process always peters off because (1) we have the space to store them and (2) it's an overwhelming task.

At what point do we need to start sifting thru data? And who will be the people to do so?

I had something different in mind with respect to ...

2011-06-23T14:25:11.434-04:00
I had something different in mind with respect to "digital archaeology".
You see, going over old data and figuring out what should be kept and what can be deleted takes a considerable amount of effort - it takes *judgement*. And data storage is cheap and getting cheaper.
When a company goes out of business, it doesn't just disappear. Usually the company's assets are sold off. In order to keep the user base, servers are left running. The net result is that sometimes existing corporate infrastructure gets migrated to newer and newer servers without ever being culled.

I wonder how long that cycle will last? Will there, in a millennium, be people who sift through corporate servers to find centuries-old documents? Will the discovery of the cafepress website on a server based in a lunar colony be the biggest archaeological find of 3324CE?

Point the First: my girlfriend has long idealized ...

2011-06-23T11:49:55.595-04:00
Point the First: my girlfriend has long idealized Lady Ada. I do not consider this a bad thing.

Point the Second: Have you ever read Neil Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald"? I've a suspicion you might like it.

Point the Third: While female geeks do seem ascendent, they are not fully accepted into the geek community. I've seen this being explored both within predominantly male geek community, and by female geeks. I can't say I've found an easy solution, but what I've noticed is that the explorations of the issue seem to result in more, not less, divide.

Point the Fourth: "Geek" as an identifier, and as a community, is a relatively new phenomenon. Historically (for relatively short definitions of history) identified geeks with technology, and even with specific technology - there was never a "printing press geek" culture. However, geeks have been a driving force in our cultural shifts for the last fifty years - it is geekery that has yielded the telecommunications infrastructure we have today, after all, and one cannot understate the importance of fundamentally changing the way we communicate. Resultantly, the technology with which geeks have been identified has become mainstream. This, yields something of an identity crisis. The cure, I think, is to understand how "geek" identifies a mindset and not a specific field of interest. I have a hard time personally defining it, but I think geekery revolves around a culture of speculation and curiosity. This is why there can be a Lord of the Rings geek subculture, but not so much a Desperate Housewives geek subculture: for all that there is a community of people who analyze Desperate Housewives or Jersey Shore, they fail at being geeks by virtue of focusing on the here and now, on a world that really already exists. That is not geekdom; focus alone does not a geek make.