I’m used to the anthropological idea of cultural equivalence when talking about things like translation or kreplach versus tortellini, but I found the presumably viral listing of 32+ versions of the Jewish prayer song “Adon Olum” that showed up in my in-box today fascinating. For a ‘people’ who were almost eradicated by the Holocaust and who have only had a homeland for 60 years,…
DetailsI’m calling Mae Jemison. And then I’m calling former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. And if that doesn’t work, I’m calling any of a number of outstanding women leaders in Computer Science…. Sure women still lag in jobs in Computer Science (only 22% of all Computer Science degrees when to women in 2004-2005 according to the NYTimes),…
DetailsDid you hear about the controversy around the “Microsoft Photo Swap” last month? Microsoft turned a black man into a white man using Photoshop to reuse a photo on a website that ran in Polish, intended exclusively for Poland. Not sure of any backlash in Poland, but people in the US found out, expressed outrage, and Microsoft apologized…
DetailsObama’s school visit this week is very reminiscent of a program we have in Chicago, called the Black Star Project–the project is all about black male adults serving as role models for black children. In fact, that’s Secrectary of Education Arne Duncan in the photo above in 2008 in Chicago, participating in the Million Father…
DetailsTwo articles posted this week by artist friends on Facebook (“Six Fonts that Piss People Off” written by Cliff Kuang and posted by Tim Frick, Owner and Creative Director of Mightybytes* and “8 Ways to Drive a Graphic Designer Mad” by Ghislain Roy, posted by graphic designer Tom Deja of Bossman Graphics) struck me as…
DetailsLook at this incredible gem I found on alllooksame.com. Having weathered trying to denounce a few over the years in real life, not sure how I feel about his enthusiasm for “crazy Jewish conspiracy theories as entertainment,” but the ‘scientific evidence’ in the clip does go beyond the “big nose on ancient mask must be…
DetailsIn the post “Beyond White Guilt: The Role of Allies in the Struggle for Racial Equality,” at This Week in Race blog, the authors point out sources of “latent racism, not of any conscious bigotry,” using the lesson of Rosa Parks. “As another example, school children who were educated in the second half of…
DetailsHhmmm, so maybe you’re not paranoid to feel vulnerable or anxious when interacting in another culture! And while you don’t want to be overly self-conscious, it is sometimes good to get a ‘double check’ if you are using a phrase book to get around in another country. Case in point: my parent’s first trip to…
DetailsSmart Asian Girl…check! Black Basketball Player…check! Hispanic slut in mini-skirt and heels…check! White/blonde cheerleader…check! I was talking to someone earlier this week about the intersection of anthropology and marketing…how to market to people of different backgrounds without perpetuating stereotypes. “How do you do that?” he asked. While marketing should always start with your objective in…
DetailsI was reading a bedtime story to my 8 year old son Dillon and his 8 year old cousin Noah last night. It was a benign story, geared to a younger audience, but the boys had asked me to read it as a simple ploy to stay up later. We got to the page where…
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