Archive for December, 2006
Review: 1491 by Charles C. Mann
I had some memorable semi-epic lines laid out for my review of Charles C. Mann’s 1491, but as someone who has only recently discovered xenophobia and it’s joys reading a book about a distant culture and it’s achievements naturally made me feel great. While my inner xenophobia has generally not been taken fearful of American Indians 1491, at the very least, points to what’s wrong with the assumptions of those often in control, we forget that the other has a life too. 1491 consists of a series of semi-histories intended to summarize research on the North American Indians, The South American groups of Mexico and Peru and finally the Amazonian folks. What it shows is what we should naturally assume about any group, that were using their environment and pursuing pathways that often showed quite a bit of ingenuity. Perhaps most impressively, Amazonian Natives developed a form of fertilizer from charcoal and silt that managed to turn rainforest’s clay into farm able land while supplanting the rainforest’s natural plants orchards of cultivated trees and the occasional forest pathway. The multiple cultures of upper Amazonian to Middle America I was already familiar with their invention of zero, pyramids, and other things, but still reading about bolos and other things does make you aware of just how quickly folks have developed different strategies and employed them to good use. What Mann suggests towards the end is inline with contemporary academias ideas over the past 50 or so years, that the world doesn’t work in linear lines of developments, but clusters of blossoming that ultimately lead up to innovations. Hence it is possible the Native Americans didn’t lose their lands to technological unsophistication or cultural “backwardness” but instead of a lack of immunity to diseases and perhaps more likely a feeling that perhaps they could get along with the Europeans coming over the seas. Every story is more compliacted than it first appears, but Manns book isn’t one intended to counter racism (after all I’ve never even heard a genetic arguement about native americans floated in the U.S.) but to make us aware of the realities of current anthropology and to remind us of the remarkable additions they made to world culture as a whole (corn, beans, and squash) and finally to point to their own innovations (the great alliance of North American Indians was a somewhat democratic enterprise). Perhaps if I wasn’t terribly xenophobic these days, I would have read this as a summary of anthropology these days, but as it stands it’s a good book and a rather interesting taken on what were some truly interesting cultures.
technorati tags:reviews
Koki Tanaka Everything is Everything
Koki Tanaka (no not the pop star) uses short films to display small acts of well I don’t know pointlessness? Everything is Everything (which I couldn’t find a picture of) consists of a series of videos and the objects that comprise them. Each object then performs a small task… usually one that involves it’s collapse. Mops, blinds, and other objects lose their purpose and become part of a comic dialogue of slapstick like falls, meandering and never quite coming to a conclusion. Koki’s stuff reminds of childish pranks I used to perform like shaking up cokes to the point of explosion and them throwing them over the fence it our neighboring church where they would explode on suvs spraying sugar and all over cars, and it’s perhaps this exploration of the joy of destruction that motivates his work. Tanaka isn’t taken with the usefullness of objects, but rather the serene feeling we arrive at when we simply deny our will to construction usefullness from the everyday. Koki reminds us that objects only take on their usefullness when we decide use them for their accepted purposes, environments aren’t naturally taken with uses (trust me I teach a group of 5 year olds that are obsessed with racing chairs across the floor) but rather only take on the vestiges of civilization when we decide to use them correctly. Koki’s rebellion might be all the more vital becuase he reconnects with a world of objects before mothers and other figures kindly reminded us not to walk on chairs and sofas, bounce on the bed, play with the blinds, etc. Everything is Everything suggests that any object could be anything if only we could forget it’s rules and merely practice the art of destroying usefullness more often. The world can be play, it need not be as utiliarian of as usefull as we originally purposed it sometimes a spilled coke isn’t really a mess.
technorati tags:art, koki_tanaka, taipei, media, japanese_art, criticism, design
links for 2006-12-29
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it’s about the history of the church.
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recommended reading from Argentinian includes a Mexican Pervuain writer I’m not familar with. via global voices.
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snow in kabul via global voices
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it apparently is a controversial article on postcolonialism in Africa.
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now we have kids who are malnourished and unable to compete. the problem is more complicated, but at least it’s getting better.
links for 2006-12-25
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Remittances from immigrants to Italy are going rather fast.
More on the intelligence of the poor Sengal vs Bangladesh
The Sengalese trader Alioune Ka (economist.com, locked)admits, “They watch the weather forecast and if its going to rain the next day they are all out selling umbrellas” he says of Bangaldeshis. Bangladeshis aren’t the most desriable of immigrants, in England they hardly perform as well as Indian immigrants, but the tracking of weather forecasts to umbrella sales is hardly more complicated than the tracking of key economic indicators to stock indexes, both show how widespread information can benefit both the poor and the well invested. How then are we to the address the poor? Microcredit and other systems might be helping, but it’s really the wholesale designing of new cultural norms and educational practices to make or break a culture. In order to be a physcist someone must spend upwards of ten years studying, a feat that isn’t possible for many in the lower sector. I might add that Bangladeshis in England have a 24% unemployment rate more than 3 times the 8% unemployment for African-Americans in the U.S. while White Britans have 5.4 and White Americans have a 4.0% unemployment rates respectively. I could find no info on Bangladeshis in Italy, but their remittances are much smaller than other Asian groups about 1/4 of Indians. I might add that Senegal ranks fairly high in fact it’s just under Canada and beats Romania and Poland especially by a long shot suggesting that the Senegalese have a lot more going than just a hip-hop scene.
technorati tags:sengal, bangladesh, italy, england, poverty, remittances, the_poor
links for 2006-12-24
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wow, this is interesting. Anyway, Iran claims their new centrifuges are being tested w/o nuclear materials. cameras are in at the atomic power plants etc.
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says it’s better than neural networks
p.s. everything is cheesier when you embarassdly write it down
like 6 months of race though boiling down into an american euphehism that sounds dumb and continues to support views I no longer hold to. p.s. quit smoking… fukaaaaahhhhhsssss.
girl from monday is pretty good.
Various different emotional problems 12/23/06
by Andrew Jones
Fears include almost anyone but ethnicities with darker skins (malays, africans, etc) in paticular
Regular people are frightening too
thinking about race a lot, have come to conclusion things are about the same, when you get down to it
genetics doesn’t determine much, however who we are does. aside from that imaginary lynch mobs haunt my dreams
at times I freeze in public spaces, am I going to offend someone with my fear?
new sexual fantasises of women I met a long time ago, have given up on chinese girls.
not sure I really will ever have a girlfriend, my interests run more to ideas, and most women
want friends not dreamers. working on a gizzallion things in the middle of Hartley’s The Girl From Monday
In addition to xenophobia also questioning previous commitment to tolerance of sexuality, is gay marriage right?
it’s these minor splippages that make me unfit for polite society and most of Taipei seems to consist of the polite
type of westener (recount bashing at bar over politics). Most dreams are of far away, where you can be alone.
Perhaps one day I’ll daytrade myself to an Island. It is strange to be so afraid that socializing seems almost impossible, will have to learn more Chinese soon. p.s. Gears of War is cool for xbox.
December 23, 2006 at 11:00 pm dignifieddevil Leave a comment
links for 2006-12-23
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it’s the system Larry Brilliant likes
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UN trying to develop new methods of polling experts.
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how the un is polling experts
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i didn’t know about it.
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he’s dead. the world loses one more closed society.
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no actually more people need to do this. great idea.
links for 2006-12-22
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jonas mekas in interview
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new films everyday
Chatquah and Galoshes 
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