Jacky Levi, Israeli columnist and radio and t.v. host, interviewed by Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber, in her Israeli Media and the Framing of Internal Conflict: The Yemenite Babies Affair (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 63.I remember driving one day and listening to a radio talk show, they put on a great song by Amir Benayun and then interviewed Tomi Lapid [an Ashkenazi media icon and a Knesset member]. When he was asked what he thought about the song, he said 'it was disgusting and repulsive, they say that we occupy the Arabs, but they really occupy us.' I was so shocked I almost got into an accident. This was not just a private person making a stupid comment. This was an influential key media figure. I think only then I started to understand what other Mizrahim, like Avihu Medina, are talking about, (Interview, summer 2008)Tomi Lapid's son Yair is head of the "centrist" Yesh Atid party, which won 19 Knesset seats in the January 2013 elections.Amir Benayun, from Beersheva, is the son of an Algerian Jew. He put out an album in 2011 called Zini, a collection of songs sung in Arabic and based on the book of Ecclesiastes. Benayum is affiliated with the right-wing of the Zionist religious camp and with Chabad.Here's are a couple good tracks from Benayun.Avihu Medina, of Yemeni background, is one of the giants of Mizrahi music or more properly, "Israeli Mediterranean Music." Amy Horowitz discusses him at length in her Mediterranean Israeli Music and the Politics of the Aesthetic (Wayne State University Press, 2010).

A while back, I reviewed a book on the sociology of plastic surgery, Making The Cut. That book was prescient and the trends it discussed have not abated in the context of the cosmetic surgical culture: “In the new economy nothing is more sexy than surgery. From Botox to lipo to tummy tucks and mini-facelifts, the number of cosmetic surgery operations undertaken around the globe has soared recently, as consumers spend more and more on themselves in the search for sex appeal and artificial beauty. In a society in which celebrity is divine, information technology rules, new ways of working predominate and people increasingly judge each other on first impressions, cosmetic enhancements of the body have become all the rage.” (7)” And so, the Economist has a chart with more recent data on the trend: And this cosmetic surgical culture has gone global. As Elliott stated in his book: “My argument is that the new economy spawned by globalization intrudes traumatically in the emotional lives of people – with many scrambling to adjust to today’s routine corporate redundancies. (…) The dramatic changes now occurring in the global electronic economy and on the ways in which corporate layoffs, downsizings and offshorings are affecting people’s sense of identity, life and work. (…) Many have reacted to this sense of social dislocation and economic insecurity – what I term today’s pervasive sense of ambient fear – by turning to forms of extreme reinvention in general and cosmetic surgical culture in particular. Many are calculating that a freshly purchased face-lift or suctioning of fat through liposuction is the best route to improved live, careers and relationships.” (9) As I wrote in my review, the cosmetic surgical culture is an individual response to a social-structural issue (C. Wright Mills, anyone?), that is, the pressures of corporate life and the global economy. In the context of general economic insecurity, even for social classes that not so long ago considered themselves secure (after all, the 1980s layoffs affected mostly industrial workers, but, as conventional wisdom went, it is just an upgrading of the economy. Once the labor structure moves away from union-heavy industrial labor towards a more education service-trained workforce, then, everything will be fine… because brown people will never be able to do the educated, technological jobs of the service economy… how did that turn out?). In the cosmetic surgical culture, the personal  / subjective responds to the structural / objective. As the global conditions trickle down to individual societies and ultimately to individuals, they generate uncertainties (and Elliott does not mention the risk society but I think this theory is relevant here) regarding work, relationships and life in general to which the cosmetic surgical culture is a response.

“Our village? If the revolution ever reaches our village, then there really is a revolution in Egypt.”These are the words of Mahrus, a supporter of the revolution from the village of Minyat al-Murshid who participated in “The Secret Capital,” a documentary film Mukhtar Shehata and I made about the Egyptian revolution from the point of view of Mukhtar's home village Minyat al-Murshid.I have spent the last three days in that village, showing the film to friends, relatives, and the people who participated in the events shown in the film. At the same time, a new uprising against the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood has erupted in the streets of the cities. Tens have died (most in the canal cities Port Said and Suez where the police used live ammunition against protesters, but deadly shots have also been fired at the police) and hundreds have been injured, and an urgent political crisis has evolved. There is an escalation of violence that hasn't been seen since 28 January 2011 when nearly a thousand people were killed. The Muslim Brotherhood has become politically increasingly isolated after their only major ally, the Salafi Nour Party abandoned them and changed to the side of opposition. However, they continue to insist on their election-based legitimacy to rule the country, and resort to language and policies very similar to those of the Mubarak regime in its last days. On Thursday, all major political movements signed a document prepared by al-Azhar against violence by any party involved. At the same time, an increasing split between a radical and a pragmatic current in the opposition has become visible. On Friday 1 February, new protest marches went out in the streets of the country. Everything remained peaceful until in the evening clashes evolved between protesters and and the security forces. It began with water cannons against stone-throwing, and later the police resorted to birdshot and live ammunition. One protester was killed by live ammunition fired by the police. Live television images showed policemen pulling an arrested person naked on the street and beating and kicking him. A speaker of the president's office called on Friday night all political movements to refrain from violence, and declared that they will protect institutions of the state “with utter consequence.” In this blog post I will not get into details of the events in the cities, however, but will tell the story of the revolutionaries of the village. Did the revolution reach this village? Has there really been a revolution in Egypt?I already wrote about the village revolutionaries in three blog posts in March 2011 (The village revolutionaries, What is to be done?, Anamazing success and a spectacular failure) when a campaign initiated by a group of mostly young leftist men was still active trying to change local politics and to spread a new political consciousness in the village. They failed. Local politics remained the same. The village revolutionaries were for a large part made of people who worked or studied in the cities, and those who lived in the village found remained relatively isolated and unable to accomplish the radical change. In autumn 2011 and spring 2012, when we made interviews to accompany footage Mukhat and Mahrus had filmed earlier during the actions of the village activists, there was a state of frustration among the village revolutionaries, and a sense of confusion and uncertainty among people who had not been active in the events. There was a big hope, however, that the presidential elections would be a point of resolution and a step from the conflicts and confusion of the revolution towards a better future. al-Hagg Muhammad, an elder fisherman, declared: “The revolution is not over yet. The revolution won't be over until the new president of the republic enters office. With the new president the revolution will be over, for better or worse.” Another fisherman declared, however: “God willing, the revolution will come to Minyat al-Murshid, when there is a new president and he doesn't do what we want from him. Then the revolution will come to Minyat al-Murshid and everywhere, and bigger than the last time!”This is where the story of the film ends. The story of the village revolutionaries does not end here, however. Since last spring, they have become active several times, and despite the sense of frustration and isolation that keeps haunting them, they have proven themselves capable of doing some things.Before starting to tell their story, it is necessary to make a clarification: Who is a revolutionary in Egypt? Almost all political movements in Egypt today make claims to revolutionary legitimacy. The Muslim Brotherhood in particular sees itself as the legitimate and true force representing Egypt's revolution. „Revolutionaries,“ however, has become an established term of a wide oppositional current that has been variously described as liberal, left, secular, or a combination of the three (although there are also some Islamists among the revolutionaries). Their opponents prefer to call them idle kids, communists, or godless liberals. What does it mean, then, to count oneself to the revolutionaries?  I asked H., a self-learned computer technician living from odd jobs how he would locate himself in the ideological spectrum. H.: „Im neither for the bad nor for the worse. I'm against the Brotherhood and against the National Democratic Party (Mubarak's now dissolved ruling party).” I asked:  But what do you stand for, what do you support? H.: “I would want one those who started the revolution on 25 January to lead us.” I asked: But what ideas do you support? H.: „I would like to see one like Nasser, one who cares for the poor. That's why I support Hamdeen Sabbahi.“ I asked him if this would make him a socialist. H. agreed, but without emphasis. In a coffee house round some days later, I asked the same question from others from the same circle of friends. B., a teacher, explained: “We may personally agree with one or the other of these titles. Most of us are leftists, but there is one of who us sees himself as a liberal and not as a leftist. But in the end the difference of liberal, left, or secular is not important. What unites us is that we all want the good of the country, whatever the title you give it – unlike the Ikhwan and Salafis, or anybody from the Islamist current who reiterate whatever their leaders tell you. You can have a good discussion with one of them today but tomorrow he says again what his sheikh says, and it may be completely different from what his sheikh said yesterday. I know somebody on Facebook who is a Salafi. Three days ago, he would be fiercely attacking ElBaradei. Yesterday his tone got softer. And now that Hizb al-Nur has allied with the National Salvation Front, he is suddenly all friendly with ElBaradei.” B. emphatically draws a distinction between people who want the good of the country and do so out of their own accord and by using their own mind, and people who in his view only want the good of a specific group and divide the country into Muslims and Christians, believers and infidels. F., another young man in the group seconds: „Rather than leftist, secular, or liberal, I see myself as somebody who wants to change the society.” S. explains:  “In the village, parallel titles are used according to the actual political conflict line and one's position in it: from our side it's 'the youth' or 'the revolutionaries' against 'the beards', from the Islamists' point of view it's the  Islamic current against communists, liberals, idle kids – which for them is all essentially the same: infidels and enemies of Islam.”The village revolutionaries (very much like their peers in the cities) are ideologically ecumenical, and what marks being a revolutionary is not a fixed ideology, but rather an affect of rejection (a double rejection in fact, aimed at the old system and Islamist politics alike), combined with a belief in rather diffusely defined ideals of social change and the common good, and an outspoken celebration of free and independent thought. It is an attitude that is oppositional not just by the circumstance of their party not being in power, but oppositional in essence: prioritising critique, change, and difference.The village revolutionaries are usually young, but there are some older men among them. They are mostly well-educated, but not all of them are. Some come from families with a history of communist activism (communism was quite influential in the area until the 1980's). Some of the older village revolutionaries were or still are members of the Egyptian Communist Party, but the younger generation tend to support (if they support any party at all –  there is big distrust towards political parties among them) the newly established Constitution and Popular Current parties of Mohamed ElBaradei and Hamdin Sabbahi, respectively. Although actual communists are extremely few among the young generation, the communist heritage and the older men who carry it are an important source of inspiration for the new generation of revolutionaries. The most striking thing about the village revolutionaries, however, is that their overwhelming majority comes from families of fishermen. In a village that is approximately equally divided into families of fishermen and farmers (although most young people no longer work in these trades except seasonally), there seems to be something about the structure of fishermen's livelihood that makes them more likely to pursue oppositional paths.And now back to their story.In the first round of the presidential elections in May 2012, the province of Kafr el-Sheikh (where the village of is located) made headlines by being the only rural province won by the Nasserist socialist candidate Hamdeen Sabbahi (he won in many big cities, but was otherwise very weak in the countryside). Sabbahi won Kafr el-Sheikh with an overwhelming 62% of the vote. In Minyat al-Murshid, I've been told, he won even bigger. How was that possible?B., a teacher living in the village and active in the Sabbahi campaign tells that the key event was when supporters of Sabbahi invited him for the Friday prayer here in the village on his way to a campaign trip to a nearby city. At the Friday prayer in the main mosque of the village, a senior local leftist policician gave him a good introduction speech, he went around the village with his supporters, and he spoke to the people in an accessible way, as a man of the people. The way he spoke reminded the old people of Nasser, which brought him a lot of sympathy. He also declared his engagement for the concerns of fishermen. All this brought him a lot of support beyond the leftist revolutionary circles that were supportive of him anyway (although not unconditionally – many of the village revolutionaries heed a fundamental distrust towards politicians of any colouring). The Sabbahi campaign in the village recruited its activists from a number of families of leftist and Nasserist leanings and from cricles of friends with revolutionary and leftist sympathies. They gained a lot of credibility because the people in the campaign paid the costs from their own pocket, printed posters and went to campaign events all around the district. The campaign events were simple and modest, in contrast to Morsy's who gathered the Muslim Brothers of the province in the stadium in Kafr el-Sheikh City. However, B. adds, this is only a part of the story: There was also the very important factor of regional affiliation: Sabbahi comes from the city of Baltim on the Mediterranean coast, not far from the village. Lots of people voted Sabbahi because he was “from here”, “one of us” not only in a populist sense, but also from the same region. This played a major role in a rural society that thinks more in terms of concrete issues and family relations than ideology. It compelled AA., a long-standing Marxist, to change his mind: “I wanted to vote Khaled Ali but then somebody insulted Sabbahi and claimed that a guy from Kafr el-Sheikh cannot be a president, I felt insulted aswell and decided to vote Sabbahi.”Although regional affiliation was instrumental for Sabbahi's success in Kafr el-Sheikh, it only worked in combination with existing networks in the cities of the villages of the region, some of which predated the revolution, while others had formed only in 2011. This was a battle where the village revolutionaries certainly were successful, even if Sabbahi remained third in the national vote.Following the first round of elections, there was a renewed sense of activism, and when Hosni Mubarak received a life sentence and his sons were released, the village revolutionaries (who, like many others, would not be satisfied with anything less than death penalty) together with their peers from the nearby town organised two demonstrations in the town which gained approximately one hundred participants. It was a big success, and there was a sense that the village revolutionaries were capable of moving things after all. But then, nothing happened. Morsy won the second round of the elections and the revolutionaries could find sympathy for neither, although some voted for Morsy or, more precisely, against Shafiq. Summer vacations began, people who lived in the city were back in the village again, but with no urgent issues at hand, no new actions took place, and life took its normal course again.Some things had changed, however. Hagg L., brother-in-law of my host S., participated in the formation of the village branch of the independent union of fishermen on lake Burullus, which after a year-long struggle managed to get registered and organised. The material possibilities of the independent union are very limited, and they have faced a lot of resistance from both the old guards of the state-affiliated fishermen's association as well as the Muslim Brothers who tried to form their own association to compete with the independent one. But the very existence of the independent union tells that a significant part of the fishermen – who suffer heavily from land-winning projects, pollution, and the illegal planting of water hyacinth to attract fish – put their hopes in neither the old nor the new political powers.At the same time, the Muslim Brotherhood's rise into power began to quite quickly erode the image of a religious uprightness it enjoyed especially in the countryside. The village revolutionaries, however, continued their ordinary lives, expressing their visions of life and politics mainly on social media and in coffee house rounds in their evening. Only after the crisis caused by Morsy's constitutional declaration that granted him immunity against the judicative, did things start to happen again. Some of the young men from the village travelled to Cairo or Alexandria to participate in protests. And when the constitutional referendum was announced, they became visibly active in the village again. A campaign to vote “No” was launched by people who had been active in the actions in spring 2011 and in the Sabbahi campaign. On Friday 10 December, a large protest march started from the village and joined other protesters in the nearby town. Graffiti against the constitution and the Muslim Brotherhood was sprayed around the village. L., a shopkeeper from the leftist revolutionary circle printed loads of leaflets at his own expense, and the village revolutionaries went campaigning. However, B. adds: „it was somewhat chaotic and unorganised. There was not a clear idea about who was doing what and who was responsible for what. In the end, we reached only half of the people.” “Only half of the people” means that in the end the no-vote reached 47% (but the figure includes the surrounded hamlets where the Yes-vote prevailed, so that probably in the village itself there was even a slight majority of the No-vote). On rural standards, it was a huge success of oppositional politics, and although many of those who voted No did so out of anti-revolutionary dislike for the Muslim Brotherhood rather than support for the leftist revolutionaries, it proved that there is some solid sympathy for a revolutionary opposition among a big part of the villagers. But the circle of friends who told me about the campaign were not quite happy of the outcome. It could have beenmuch better, if it hadn't been for the women.H. volunteered at the ballot box in a local school, and told that there had been three distinct waves of voters: Muslim Brothers and Salafis arrived with their families in the morning, all voting Yes. Then at noon came students and civil servants voting mainly No. Then towards the evening came a wave of uneducated people, mainly many women who voted Yes because the Muslim Brothers had told them that it would please God, and because they were not used to saying no. H.:  „Our problem in the village is that we don't have girls among the revolutionaries. We are only guys, and we don't reach the women in the village. In the village society, I cannot and talk with women who are not my relatives.“ The Muslim Brotherhood, in contrast, masterfully mobilised the female vote. Wives and daughters of Brotherhood families went from house to house on the pretext of a friendly visit, and then took up the issue of the constitutional referendum, typically in a religious context arguing that voting yes for the constitution was voting yes for Islam. The revolutionaries, in contrast, have a huge problem to to mobilise and to reach women. B.: “Name three leftist women in the village!” S. names his wife and the mother and sister of one of the village revolutionaries. B. points out that they are from the village, but they all live in Alexandria. Fathi: “Here, the women are simply not allowed to.” B. points at the paradox that while women are the most oppressed part of the society, they are also the most conservative part of it, least allowed to develop their own visions and paths. Men enjoy an entirely different freedom of movement that also opens the paths of developing a revolutionary consciousness. The key gathering space of the village revolutionaries are cafés, which are strictly off-limits for women. And although families that share a strong revolutionary attitude have brought out some women (way more than three, by the way) with an outspoken oppositional consciousness, even the women in revolutionary families are usually quite apart from the men's gatherings and discussions. Furthermore, while coming from or marrying into a revolutionary family seems to a key condition for being a revolutionary woman in the village, leftist families do not excert an ideological power of conformity on their female members – partly because it is against their ideals, but perhaps for the bigger part because in their domestic lives leftist men still act very much according to the logic of patriarchal family, let women take care of the household, and reinforce conventional female roles of domesticity and invisibility. In the big cities of Egypt, women (usually from middle class or bourgeois background) make up a very important part of the revolutionary movement. In the village, it is very difficult for women to develop the revolutionary ethos of rejection and critique, and almost impossible to express it in public (with the exception of those few families which actively encourage their female members to do so).Also among the male population of the village, the village revolutionaries remain somewhat isolated in their community because their topics of discussion, their outlook at the world, and their expectations do not click with that of most of their neighbours. And many if not most of them sooner or later migrate to Cairo, Alexandria or abroad, and only return on holidays. Add to that the notoriously disorganised nature of the revolutionary movement. The Hamdeen Sabbahi campaign was the closest to an organisation that the village revolutionaries ever had, and it is still functional as a network of friends who are well connected both locally and nation-wide. Otherwise, however, the village revolutionaries meet at cafés and guest rooms, spend a lot of time talking, and most of the time do little more. When tempers rise, when there is a sense of urgency, then a wave of collective enthusiasm overcomes them. Newsletters are printed and distributed, debates and marches organised, neighbours and relatives convinced, even if in a disorganised and chaotic manner. But such enthusiasm also recedes quickly, and it is difficult to regain it. There is no leadership, and in fact there is no desire for leadership. There are certain key persons who are able to motivate others and get things done, but the shared revolutionary ethos of thinking for oneself and acting out of one's own accord does not go well with hierarchical leadership or relations of command and obedience.Last Thursday, when Mukhtar and I showed the film to a group of the village revolutionaries in his home, one theme of debate was a demonstration was announced to take the following day in the nearby town. Since a week, fierce protests and clashes had been going on in the province capital, and there was a sense that it would be good to do something here again as well. One of the persons present suggested that it was about time to go and occupy the city council, following the example of stormings (some attempted, some successful) of provincial administrations in several cities. Another countered: What's the point of occupying the city council on a Friday? (Friday is the first day of weekend in Egypt). Do you want to sit there and wait until Sunday when the civil servants come to work? A third argued that he was against the storming of public buildings in general. As people left, it was agreed that people would go to the town after Friday prayer, and would coordinate themselves on the phone. But there was no enthusiasm, no furor. And in the night a seasonal storm covered the village in pouring rain and cold wind that continued for two days. The next day, people I met did not even talk about it. It was forgotten. There was no spirit. Some people may have gone to the town and there may have been a protest, but most people stayed in the village, and no news from the town reached me. This was not the first non-action by the village revolutionaries. Small as their numbers are, they cannot rely on an active core group keeping up the spirit even when others are unmotivated. They are themselves the active group, and few (some dozens) as they are, there has to be enough energy for everybody to move, otherwise nobody does anything.So, to return to the question raised by Mahrus in the beginning of this note: Has the revolution reached the village? I think that it certainly has. There exists a small oppositional core group that is able to attract like-minded people and sometimes to make punctual actions. More importantly, there is a wide-spread sense of discontent that is much more specific in regard to its direction and possible paths of action than the discontent that prevailed before 2010. Right now, in the extremely agitated atmosphere that evolved since 25 January last week, it is expressed in very outright anger towards the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood. A barber in his late twenties (not a member of the circles of the revolutionaries) told to me: „The revolution had to break out again. The revolution originally broke out because of the prices. But after Morsy came in power the prices have gone up even more. Now why did we have a revolution if it's just like before? I hope there will be big demonstrations and a fight on Friday, and the rain will only do it good.“ I have heard such comments from others as well. But what marks the arrival of the revolution more than anything else, is a sense of political polarisation in a place where political stances have historically been of little importance in people's interaction. This blog note reflects that polarisation. It is an extremely partial one, telling the story of those who think that revolution was the solution to Mubarak, and will be the solution to the Muslim Brotherhood. The views of those, in contrast, who think that the Islamic current is the legitimate heir of the revolution and the liberals and secularists up to no good (as well as the views of those who long back to the old system) are missing in my account because political polarisation has reached such a point that even in a village, revolutionaries and Brotherhood supporters prefer to go out of each others' way, or change the topic when it comes to politics. However, while the polarisation is doing some terrible things to Egypt right now, and also limiting my vision of many of the different things going on, it is part of a process that as such is not so terrible at all. Polarisation is for a big part the outcome of a shift in political roles on the societal (and not just on the governmental) level. The problems the village revolutionaries face are the same problems which the revolutionary opposition faces also in the big cities, only graver and more evident. But before 2011 they did not even exist as a political force in the village. Their success does not lie in a capacity to transform society as a whole and to seize power - at least not yet. Instead, they act as constant catalysts of their visions of life, attracting young people to their circles, and influencing the atmosphere in their families. Rather than the society around them, they are busy transforming themselves and those who find sympathy with their doing so. And occasionally, when big and urgent things happen, they get active, march and campaign. Even if punctual, such activist events leave traces. Until last year, the only political graffiti in the village has been by the Muslim Brotherhood, focussed on women's veiling and liberating Jerusalem. This winter, the walls of the village are covered with oppositional graffiti that marks a presence of a revolutionary current just like the Brotherhood graffiti (which interestingly has been discontinued since the revolution) marked the presence of  an Islamist current. The leftist revolutionaries have occupied the position of moral opposition that once belonged to the Brotherhood. For better or worse, there really is a revolution in Egypt.*** You can watch the trailer of The Secret Capital here: [https:] The film will have its first screening in Cairo on Monday, 4 February at 7 pm. in Medrar, 7 Gamal El Din Abou El Mahasen St. Garden City, Cairo, and more screenings in Cairo will follow. The European premiere will take place at the Arabiske Filmdager in Oslo sometime between 19-21 April. An untranslated version will be available on the internet in a few weeks. If you want to buy a copy with subtitles or to organise screening, let us know via [www.facebook.com]

Japanese in a changing world, 1970

I have tried to avoid the Gangnam Style onslaught, but this Youtube one from Gaza must be seen.

Several people have asked me about Alexander M. Petersen et al., "Languages cool as they expand: Allometric scaling and the decreasing need for new words", Nature Scientific Reports 12/10/2012. The abstract (emphasis added): We analyze the occurrence frequencies of over 15 million words recorded in millions of books published during the past two centuries in seven different languages. For all languages and chronological subsets of the data we confirm that two scaling regimes characterize the word frequency distributions, with only the more common words obeying the classic Zipf law. Using corpora of unprecedented size, we test the allometric scaling relation between the corpus size and the vocabulary size of growing languages to demonstrate a decreasing marginal need for new words, a feature that is likely related to the underlying correlations between words. We calculate the annual growth fluctuations of word use which has a decreasing trend as the corpus size increases, indicating a slowdown in linguistic evolution following language expansion. This “cooling pattern” forms the basis of a third statistical regularity, which unlike the Zipf and the Heaps law, is dynamical in nature. The paper is thought-provoking, and the conclusions definitely merit further exploration. But I feel that the paper as published is guilty of false advertising. As the emphasized material in the abstract indicates, the paper claims to be about the frequency distributions of words in the vocabulary of English and other natural languages. In fact, I'm afraid, it's actually about the frequency distributions of strings in Google's 2009 OCR of printed books — and this, alas, is not the same thing at all. It's possible that the paper's conclusions also hold for the distributions of words in English and other languages, but it's far from clear that this is true. At a minimum, the paper's quantitative results clearly will not hold for anything that a linguist, lexicographer, or psychologist would want to call "words". Whether the qualitative results hold or not remains to be seen. In the 20090715 version of the Google dataset that the paper relies on for its analysis of English, there are about 360 billion string tokens in total, representing 7.4 million distinct string types. Of these, 292 billion string tokens are all-alphabetic (81.2%), representing 6.1 million string types (83%). 66 billion string tokens are non-alphabetic (18.3%), representing 560 thousand string types (7.6%). And 1.8 billion string tokens are mixed alphabetic and non-alphabetic (0.5%), representing 692,713 types (9.4%). More exactly: Tokens Types All 359,675,008,445 7,380,256 Alphabetic 292,060,845,596 6,127,099 Non-alphabetic 65,799,990,649 560,444 Mixed 1,814,172,200 692,713 Why have I referred to "string tokens" and "string types" rather than to "words"? Well, here's a random draw of 10 from that set of 7,380,256  string types (preceded in each case by the count of occurrences of that string type in the collection): 116856 discouragements 2485 NH4CI 42 attorniea 425 PEPPERED 51 prettyboys 191 iillll 506 Mecir 68 inkdrop 3926 LATTIMORE 18631 cart's Here's another: 174 Pfii 51 Lnodicea 126 almofb 82 0egree 672 Garibaldina 47 excllence 5693 Eoosevelt 118 Dypwick 83 opinion19 65 VVouldst And another: 55 txtx 218 suniving 91 fn_ 48 Kultursysteme 54 notexpected 137 handsoap 46 tornarmene 9551 Rohault 48 Blrnstlngl 150 1037C As samples of English "words", these are not very persuasive.  About half of them are typographical or OCR errors, and of those that are not, many are regularly-derived forms of other words ("cart's", "discouragements") or numeric strings ("1037C"). The fact that Google's collection of such strings exhibits certain statistical properties is interesting, but it's not clear that it's telling us anything much about the English language, rather than about typographical practices and the state of Google's OCR as of 2009. Though several of the key results in their paper deal with the full dataset — numbers, OCR errors, and all — the authors do recognize this problem, while (in my opinion) seriously underplaying it: The word frequency distribution for the rarely used words constituting the “unlimited lexicon” obeys a distinct scaling law, suggesting that rare words belong to a distinct class. This “unlimited lexicon” is populated by highly technical words, new words, numbers, spelling variants of kernel words, and optical character recognition (OCR) errors. In fact, the order in which they give these categories is rather the reverse of the truth: "highly technical words [and] new words" are radically less common in this dataset than "numbers, spelling variants of kernel words, and OCR errors". Or to put it another way, the majority of the "words" in this list are not words of English at all — not "highly technical words", not "new words", not any kind of words. The authors propose to remedy the problem this way: We introduce a pruning method to study the role of infrequent words on the allometric scaling properties of language. By studying progressively smaller sets of the kernel lexicon we can better understand the marginal utility of the core words. They set their word-count threshold to successively larger powers of two, ending with a threshold of 2^15 = 32768 as defining the "kernel" or "core" lexicon of English. This reduces the set to 353 billion tokens representing 143 thousand types, of which 286 billion tokens (81%) representing 132 thousand types (92%) are all-alphabetic, 65 billion tokens (18.6%) representing 5 thousand types (4%) are non-alphabetic, and 1.3 billion tokens (0.4%) representing 5 thousand types are mixed (4%). Tokens Types All ("core") 353,131,491,190 142,700 Alphabetic ("core") 286,352,289,855 131,598 Non-alphabetic ("core") 65,465,833,242 5,360 Mixed ("core") 1,313,368,093 5,742 Do we now have a set representing the vocabulary of English? It's certainly better, as this random draw of 20 suggests: 103971 tardive 34879 Lichnowsky 40031 punctiliously 40543 recumbency 85620 Lupton 50627 GLP 156373 fertilize 54410 Niu 139924 ogre 38535 Burnett's 108385 chymotrypsin 70076 rigueur 680293 staunch 56995 56.6 467320 Habsburg 57726 populists 41164 occu 47133 Scapula 42483 Buhl 242641 Olmsted But there are still some issues. We still have about 8% (by types) and 19% (by tokens) of numbers, punctuation, and so on. And about half of the higher-frequency string-types in the "kernel" lexicon are proper names — these are certainly part of the language, but it seems likely that their dynamics is quite different from the rest of the vocabulary. And now that most of egregious typos and OCR errors are out of the way, we need to consider the issue of variant capitalization and regular inflection. Here are the dataset's 22 diverse capitalizations of the inflected forms of the word copy, arranged in increasing order of overall frequency (with 9 frequent enough to make it into the "core" lexicon): 46 copyIng 56 COPiES 83 cOpy 99 CoPY 107 copY 144 COPYing 222 coPy 280 COPy 367 COpy 435 CoPy 484 CopY 4601 COPIED 14651 COPYING 50412 Copied 54338 COPIES 194846 COPY 374302 Copying 545386 Copies 1143116 Copy 2633786 copied 7316913 copies 13920809 copy Here are the 23 variants of the word break, with 13 in the "core" lexicon: 51 breaKs 73 breaKing 82 BreaK 88 BReak 187 broKe 276 breakIng 356 broKen 512 breaK 14875 BROKE 21849 BREAKS 54462 BREAKING 74913 BROKEN 103631 BREAK 132482 Breaks 149392 Broke 560479 Breaking 629544 Break 740875 Broken 4564785 breaks 8538111 breaking 12330476 broke 19325762 break 19617163 broken Or the 14 forms of succeed, of which 7 make it into the "core" lexicon: 46 SUCCeed 51 SUCceeded 4897 SUCCEEDING 6800 SUCCEEDS 7026 SUCCEEDED 12619 SUCCEED 22154 Succeeds 43856 Succeeded 67645 Succeed 88912 Succeeding 1556533 succeeds 3466786 succeeding 6919764 succeed 13166229 succeeded Increasing the threshold successively prunes these lists, obviously. Monocasing everything reduces the number of all-alphabetic types to 4,472,529 in the "unlimited lexicon" (a reduction of 39.4% from the full type count of 7,380,256), and to 98,087 in the "core lexicon" of items that occur at least 32,768 times (a reduction of 31.3% from the full type count of 142,700). Limiting the list to all-lower-case alphabetic words (which will tend to decrease the number of proper nouns) reduces the "unlimited lexicon" to 2,642,277 items (down 64.2%), and the "core lexicon" to 67,816 (down 52.5%). But it's not clear which properties of these successively reduced distributions are due to the nature of the English language, and which are due to the interaction of typographical practice, OCR performance, and sampling effects. And even if we were to limit our attention to alphabetic words, to fold or screenout screen capital letters, and to restrict item frequencies, we'd be left to unravel the (sampled) distribution across time of the various inflected forms of words, compared to the (sampled) distribution across time of different words. Or the development (and its reflection in print) of derived and compound words, or of proper nouns, which probably also differ from that of novel coinages or borrowings. So to sum up: The authors' conclusions about the "unlimited lexicon" should be seen as conclusions about the sets of strings that result from typographical practices, Google's OCR performance as of 2009, and Google's tokenization algorithms. Even their conclusions about the "kernel" or "core" lexicon are heavily influenced, and perhaps dominated, by the distribution of proper names and by variant capitalization, as well as by the residue of the issues affecting the "unlimited" lexicon. Questions about the influence of inflectional and derivational variants also remain to be addressed. Given these problems, the quantitative results cannot be trusted to tell us anything about the nature and growth of natural-language vocabulary. And the qualitative results need to be checked against a much more careful preparation of the underlying data. It's too bad that the authors (who are all physicists or economists) didn't consult any computational linguists or others with experience in text analysis, and that Nature's reviewers apparently didn't include anyone in this category either. Note: The underlying data is available here. For convenience, if you'd like to try some alternative models on various subsets or transformation of the "unlimited lexicon", here is a (90-MB) histogram of string-types with their counts from the files googlebooks-eng-all-1gram-20090715-0.csv googlebooks-eng-all-1gram-20090715-1.csv googlebooks-eng-all-1gram-20090715-2.csv googlebooks-eng-all-1gram-20090715-3.csv googlebooks-eng-all-1gram-20090715-4.csv googlebooks-eng-all-1gram-20090715-5.csv googlebooks-eng-all-1gram-20090715-6.csv googlebooks-eng-all-1gram-20090715-7.csv googlebooks-eng-all-1gram-20090715-8.csv googlebooks-eng-all-1gram-20090715-9.csv According to the cited paper, the authors accessed the data on 14 January 2011, which means that this is the version they worked from for English. A newer and larger English version (Version 20120701) is now available — at some point I'll post about the properties of the new dataset…

In the last few anthropology report updates, have been featuring some anthropology books along with anthropology blogs, especially the books the bloggers are writing about and reviewing. I hope to keep that as a tradition. This time the featured book is The Foraging Spectrum: Diversity in Hunter-Gatherer Lifeways by Robert L. Kelly, featured in Megan McCullen’s post below, and complementing the news headline of Jared Diamond in row over claim tribal peoples live in ‘state of constant war’. Also featured are The Passion of Tiger Woods: An Anthropologist Reports on Golf, Race, and Celebrity Scandal by Orin Starn and Healing Elements: Efficacy and the Social Ecologies of Tibetan Medicine by Sienna R. Craig. And please scroll down for much more from anthropology blogs, announcements, calls-for-papers, field schools. Explorer Moment of the Week: Agustin Fuentes, National Geographic What initially sparked your interest in anthropology? I’ve always been interested in what makes people tick … in why we do what we do and where it all comes from. Imagine my surprise when I got to college and discovered there is actually a name for that: anthropology. It was an undergraduate course by my eventual graduate mentor, Phyllis Dolhinow (one of the pioneers of primatology), that introduced me to the possibilities of an integrated anthropology. From the first class I took with her I was on the path that shifted a drama and zoology major into an anthropology diehard. The very fact that I could have a career trying to figure out what it means to become, and to be, human pretty much sealed the deal. Agustín Fuentes, Anthropologist, Waitt Grantee, 29 January 2013 Plans and Profiles: Shelby Anderson Researching Northern Ceramic Technology, Tim Rast Shelby Anderson is an Assistant Professor at Portland State University, whose research into hunter-gatherer groups and northern ceramic technology has taken her from Northern Alaska to the Pacific Northwest. She earned her doctorate from the University of Washington in 2011 with her dissertation: From Tundra to Forest: Ceramic Distribution and Social Interaction in Northwest Alaska. I asked her a few questions about her current research, and this is what she had to say… Elfshot – Sticks and Stones, 1 February 2013 NYAS @ Wenner-Gren 1/28 – Audio Now Available! The first NYAS Anthropology Section lecture of 2013 took place Monday evening with Syracuse University Professor of Anthropology Douglas V. Armstrong, who was on hand to discuss his archaeological work in the early modern English Caribbean. Download an MP3 of Archaeology of an Emerging Landscape of Power and Enslavement in Early 17th-century Barbados now, followed by a Questions & Answers session. Wenner-Gren Foundation, 31 January 2013 Money and Mortality: Shifts in Commemoration due to Economic Change, Katy Meyers Money not only shapes the way that you live, it also can determine the manner of your death. From cemeteries we can infer social status and wealth based on the presence of exotic artifacts and more grave goods than other individuals. For example, the Viking boat burials that consist of entire ships being buried in the ground with bronze weaponry is attributed to a chieftains, whereas the primary form of burial was a more simple inhumation or cremation with a collection of one’s belongings. In Roman Imperial necropoli, the wealthy built large crypts or columbarium for the remains of their family and household, and poorer individuals were buried in urns in the ground or simple single individual tombs. Often these practices vary over time as well, becoming more opulent in periods of wealth and restrained in periods of decline. Bones Don’t Lie, 31 January 2013 Forced to Work: U.S. Prisons and the New Forced-Labor Camps, Douglas Reeser Sometimes it takes just a slight shift of perspective to reveal the insidiousness of certain practices of the capitalist regime. Over the last 30 years or so, outsourcing of all types of jobs, from service to production, has enabled increased profits at the cost of worker exploitation in places outside of the major regions of consumption. As the continued globalization of the corporate production machine has taken root, so too have fair trade and other worker’s-rights movements, that have aimed to fight the exploitation of workers around the globe. These actions are beginning to force corporations to seek new outlets of cheap labor, which has led to a turn back to the center: the ever-growing U.S. prison population. Recycled Minds, 30 January 2013 The “human” genome?, Zachary Cofran Finally, and I think perhaps most intriguingly, there is evidence that our own genes may be commandeered by the the RNA produced by the things we eat. . . . One of the most exciting areas of modern biology is the discovery of the various genetic and developmental mechanisms and processes that literally make us human. Of course the genetics of human uniqueness and variation are, to use a phrase I hate, ‘much more complex than previously thought’ (such a pervasive mantra in any field of research…). Not only that, but being human, arguably the most successful complex organism in recent history, is something we cannot even do on our own. Lawn Chair Anthropology, 1 Feburary 2013 Is Poverty in Our Genes? A Critique of Ashraf and Galor, “The ‘Out of Africa’ Hypothesis, Human Genetic Diversity, and Comparative Economic Development,” American Economic Review (Forthcoming), Jade d’Alpoim Guedes, et al. We present a critique of a paper written by two economists, Quamrul Ashraf and Oded Galor, which is forthcoming in the American Economic Review and which was uncritically highlighted in Science magazine. Their paper claims there is a causal effect of genetic diversity on economic success, positing that too much or too little genetic diversity constrains development. In particular, they argue that “the high degree of diversity among African populations and the low degree of diversity among Native American populations have been a detrimental force in the development of these regions.” We demonstrate that their argument is seriously flawed on both factual and methodological grounds. As economists and other social scientists begin exploring newly available genetic data, it is crucial to remember that nonexperts broadcasting bold claims on the basis of weak data and methods can have profoundly detrimental social and political effects. Note: Also see the announcement on the Wenner-Gren blog. This J-Stor article is currently free. Current Anthropology. 2013. IS the purpose of Anthropology to make the world safe for difference?, Rebecca Dean The more I thought about the question, the more I realized that issues of multiculturalism and social justice are at the heart of teaching in anthropology. And you know what, they’re at the heart of our country, too. Need proof? Read some of the angst-ridden articles about demographic trends written by Republican party operatives. So embrace it, fellow anthropologists! Our business is creating paladins for diversity. Let’s teach our students to go out and make that multicultural world safe for human difference! Old Bones, 31 January 2013 Anthropologists Shouldn’t Hate Gov. Rick Scott, We Should Quit Being Lame and Prove Him Wrong, A. Ashkuff Anthropology schools really do need to step up their career resources. Although I learned a great deal from my anthropology school, professionally speaking, I felt a tad forgotten upon graduation–and my career resource center has won awards. Hopefully, if Gov. Scott’s proposal somehow passes, I hope anthropology schools everywhere invest their energy, not in complaining, but in proving him wrong. How to use anthropology, in business and ADVENTURE!!!!, 29 January 2013 Flipping Anthropology, Anne Brackenbury As far as I can tell, flipping the classroom is just one form of a much less sexy concept: effective course design. Just as the hype around hybrid and online learning has started to fade with the realization that technology on its own will not produce good education, so too will the hype around flipped classrooms. But that leaves us back at trying to determine what effective course design means. While I know that there are as many good course designs as there are good instructors (and there are many, many of those), I imagine that one of the rules of thumb may be to use all elements of the educational experience (classroom time, readings, videos, assignments, activities, etc.) to mutually reinforce one another. Teaching Culture, 1 February 2013 Mental Health Care during Conflict: The Case of Colombia, Daniel Lende Vaughan Bell, a clinical psychologist and the main force behind Mind Hacks, spent several years working with Médecins Sans Frontières in Colombia. The MSF (Doctors without Borders) program focused on health in rural areas, particularly those affected by civil combat, and Dr. Bell played a major role in helping to address mental health in those regions. Now Bell and co-authors Fernanda Méndez, Carmen Martínez, Pedro Pablo Palma and Marc Bosch have published a new open-access paper Characteristics of the Colombian armed conflict and the mental health of civilians living in active conflict zones in the journal Conflict and Health. As he writes at Mind Hacks, “while there is lots of research on people who have experienced armed conflict in the past, there was very little information on the mental health of people living in active conflict zones.” This paper addresses that major gap in the literature. Neuroanthropology, 31 January 2013 Jared Diamond in row over claim tribal peoples live in ‘state of constant war’, Edward Helmore A fierce dispute has erupted between Pulitzer prize-winning author Jared Diamond and campaign group Survival International over Diamond’s recently published and highly acclaimed comparison of western and tribal societies, The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? . . . On a book tour of the UK last week, Diamond, 75, was drawn into a dispute with the campaign group after its director, Stephen Corry, condemned Diamond’s book as “completely wrong – both factually and morally – and extremely dangerous” for portraying tribal societies as more violent than western ones. The Guardian – Books, 2 February 2013 Stephen Corry on Diamond, Al West Corry did make a good argument against Diamond’s book – that his category of ‘traditional’ societies isn’t really valid, and that no living human society is a true throw-back to the past. But it was smothered by the incorrect claim that life in a tribal society is about as peaceful as life in a state. That is simply wrong and not borne out by any of the evidence. West’s Meditations, 31 January 2013 Anthropology Books The World until Yesterday vs The Foraging Spectrum, Megan M. McCullen Last night I pulled out my copy of The Foraging Spectrum: Diversity in Hunter-Gatherer Lifeways (1995), by Robert Kelly, and started re-reading it. I’m still in the first chapter, but as always, the book engages me. I’m wondering if others have read it, and what they think of it? What I love about this book is that it takes all of the assumptions you’ve heard about forager homogeneity and tests them, rather than accept them. By showing the variety of lifeways of hunter-gatherers around the world in the past 100 years, Kelly shows how extremely DIFFERENT they are from one another, leading the reader to recognize the problems with using modern hunter-gatherers as cultural correlates for the vast cultures of our human past. If we can have so many diverse lifeways today, think of all the potential variability in social organization, religion, economic systems, and family structure we may have had over the course of the history of our species. Great Lakes Ethnohistorian, 31 January 2013 Book review: Sienna Craig’s Healing Elements: Efficacy and the Social Ecologies of Tibetan Medicine, Stephan Kloos Even though Healing Elements, Sienna R. Craig s most explicitly addresses undergraduate and graduate students in medical anthropology, international health and development studies, this is an ambitious book that also aims to contribute to cutting edge scholarship on Tibetan medicine. It is no small achievement that Craig succeeds in both endeavors: her many, well-chosen ethnographic encounters, dialogues, observations and theoretical reflections not only serve as an engaging introduction to newcomers to the field, but also form, like pieces of a mosaic, a bigger picture that reveals, better than any single article or monograph on the topic so far, the complex interconnections that shape Tibetan medicine today. In short, this is an outstanding and long-overdue book that will doubtlessly serve as the standard monograph on Tibetan medicine for years to come. Somatosphere, 1 February 2013 Orin Starn Interview: An Anthropologist on Tiger Woods, Adam Fish I had the pleasure of pitching a few questions to Orin Starn, Chair and Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University, about “popular anthropology,” golf, Ishi’s brain, and the right PC sports to play if you’re an anthropologist (its not golf!). Orin Starn: I’m a little leery of the term “popular anthropology,” which has a Harlequiny ring of pulpy and lightweight. Margaret Mead, unfairly was never really taken as seriously by some in the field precisely because her work seemed too “popular,” or at least to sell too many copies. I’ve actually found it much harder to write in a more readable, trade press voice than to churn out a jargony journal article. When you’re writing for a larger audience, you still need to try to be smart, nuanced, and drawing on theory, and yet you have to do it in a way that keeps the reader turning the pages. I’m not against jargon or specialized publications at all, but we’ve really failed dismally as a discipline in recent decades to produce much work that has mattered beyond the discipline. I’d love us to pay more attention the craft of writing, and how to communicate our ideas to more than the ten readers of this or that specialized journal. Savage Minds, 30 January 2013 Anthropology Call-for-Papers, Announcements and Related Another Proposed AAA Panel: Human Experience in the Genomic/Post-Genomic Age With the completion of the sequencing of the human genome and subsequent onset of the Genomic/Post-Genomic Age, genetic technology now plays a more prominent role in many aspects of modern day life. Applications of genetic technologies may be found within medicine, law enforcement, food production, and human reproduction. Given the controversy surrounding genetically modified organisms, assisted reproductive technologies, genetic databases used in law enforcement, direct to consumer genetic tests and the like, it is imperative to ask how genetic technologies have affected various facets of the human experience. Have traditional boundaries regarding how people understand themselves and others changed as a result of the use of DNA technologies? How has the relationship between science and cultural aspects of identity, privacy, kinship, food, et cetera been altered as a result of an improved scientific understanding of genetics? Food Anthropology, Due Date April 1, 2013 American Anthropological Association Meetings 2013 The SVA welcomes paper and poster session proposals for consideration at this year’s Annual Meeting in Chicago (November 20-24, 2013). The theme for the meeting is “Future Publics, Current Engagements,” which provides a rich context for exploring the innovative and exciting work conducted under the broad rubric of visual anthropology. Last year, SVA sponsored sessions explored such diverse topics as public art, visual ethics, photography of the unsettling, sensing culture, visualizing history, aesthetic production, digital storytelling and visualizing the technological disjoint in communities. Society for Visual Anthropology (SVA), 1 February 2013 Session Title: Towards An Anthropology of “Divorce” Organizer: Melanie Angel Medeiros, University of Arizona Discussant: Linda-Anne Rebhun, University of California – Merced Anthropologists are witnesses to the global transformation of marriage, the alliance-forming institution our predecessors argued is at the foundation of all societies. The study of marriage is central to anthropological studies of kinship and gender, and more recently studies of globalization, modernization and romantic love. However, divorce, a topic commonly studied by scholars in the fields of sociology, psychology, family studies and women and gender studies, has been relatively neglected by the field of anthropology. As global legal divorce rates continue to rise and anthropologists observe increases in marital dissatisfaction due to modernization, globalization and the rise of romantic love and companionate marriage, anthropological studies that analyze the factors leading to and the perceptions and experiences of the failure of marital relationships make an important contribution to anthropological theories of sociocultural and economic change, love, intimacy, marriage, and kinship. Anthropologists have demonstrated how across cultures “marriage” as a category encompasses diverse relationships. Thus, to understand the experiences and perceptions of marital failure across cultures the anthropological study of “divorce” must also include the failure or end of marital unions (including legal marriage, unions made through ritual or ceremony, hetero-normative, homosexual and transgender domestic partnerships, non-cohabitating conjugal couples, etc.). It should also include a discussion as to what constitutes marital failure, whether it be legal divorce, separation, individuals cohabitating but living separate lives, etc. Please submit abstracts to Melanie atmelanie2@email.arizona.edu by 21 February 2013. Anthropology in Guatemala: Field School in Highland Maya Culture The Global Education Office and the School of World Studies are pleased to offer a unique opportunity for students to study the culture of the highland Maya. The program is based in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala and will allow students to observe the cultural complexity of the Guatemalan highlands. The location provides an ideal setting in which to explore different topics such as cultural pluralism, religious conservation and change, local responses to economic globalization, and cultural revitalization movements. This program is especially well suited for students in anthropology, international studies, history, and religious studies. VCU Global Education Office, 6 credits in anthropology, June 19 – July 31, 2013 Power of Suggestion, Tom Bartlett The amazing influence of unconscious cues is among the most fascinating discoveries of our time–that is, if it’s true. Note: Although not anthropology per se, this long and interesting reflection into psychology’s priming studies and replication attempts may have interesting implications for certain kinds of anthropology. The Chronicle Review, 30 January 2013

One rendition of the putative [and now forever debunked] Younger Dryas Impact theory.Kathleen Nicoll (U. Utah) alerted me to this yesterday when she sent a reprint. Tip o' the hat, Kathleen. She's second author on this paper. The news is all over the science pages on the web, too. So, I'm certain that you all prolly know evrything 'bout it. Still, there may be one or two. Well, this one's for you!M. Boslough, K. Nicoll, V. Holliday, T.L. Daulton, D. Meltzer, N. Pinter, A.C. Scott, T. Surovell, P. Claeys, J. Gill, F. Paquay, J. Marlon, P. Bartlein, C. Whitlock, D. Grayson, and A.J.T. Jull (2012), Arguments and evidence against a Younger Dryas impact event, in Climates, Landscapes, and Civilizations, Geophys. Monogr. Ser., vol. 198, edited by L. Giosan et al. 13–26, AGU, Washington, D. C., doi:10.1029/2012GM001209.A Clovis 'point' [or double-edged sword, if you prefer]This paper exposes the fanciful nature of claims made for an extraterrestrial body that was supposed to have created an environmental cataclysm at the beginning of the latest of the Pleistocene glaciations---the Younger Dryas. Alongside these claims was the argument that this would have spelled doom for the so-called Clovis people who inhabited North America between about 14 and about 12 kyr ago.Boslough et al. first give lie to the various scenarios that the Younger Dryas impact proponents have erected to explain a) an impact with no impact crater, and b) the impossibility of an 'airburst' of sufficient magnitude to have spread its destructive energy across North America south of the ice margin. Put simply, even if a sufficiently large object had made contact on the waning Laurentide Ice Sheet there would have been impact evidence on the ground in the present. No such exist. As for the 'airburst' idea, physical principles tell us that to have been large enough to create a continent-wide cataclysm it needed to have broken up well above Earth's atmosphere [i.e. in space, fer gawd's sake!] and unless there had been a gigantic explosion inside the offending celestial body, and that even if had broken up through some mysterious, previously unheralded physical laws, such a missile would simply have continued on its course, with the various bits in close formation, and have had the same 'footprint' as if it had been all one piece.Planet Jupiter. The four brown patches are, give or take, the impact points of four fragments of the Comet Shoemaker--Levy 9, in 1994. This was the first time a human being had witnessed the collision of two celestial bodies.If that weren't enough to put the YD impact idea in the circular file, the authors go on to point out the shortcomings of the sedimentary and chronological record that YD enthusiasts claim amounts to de facto evidence of an extraterrestrial impact: specifically, the so called Black Mats that in places occur around the time of the Younger Dryas. They occur at other times, and far enough away from the lower half of North America that they can't be used as a time marker, much less as evidence---in and of themselves---for such impacts. The authors also find erroneously identified materials used as evidence, contaminated samples, poorly dated sediments, and on and on. Read it. This paper eviscerates the YD impact theory. And, although we're not treated to the actual physics computations I think we can be fairly certain that the counter-claims made in this article will stand up in the court of archaeological opinion. That's because Boslough is the guy who accurately predicted the effects of the break up and impact on Jupiter of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in mid 1994, and whose model won out against the prognostications of the rest of the scientists in the field.An example of the sediments referred to as Black mats,from Chile's Rio Salado. (CREDIT: Photograph courtesy of Claudio Latorre.)The team that put this paper together comprise the glitteratti of a half-dozen scientific disciplines, including our own. Not that I'm appealing to authority here [everyone knows THAT's fallacious]. I'm merely pointing out that this is no *cough*cflash-in-the-pan, slash and *cough, cough* burn, criticism. They dismantle the YD impact theory. Full stop.This is the kind of scrutiny that needs to be applied to every [and I mean every] one of the claims of the kind the Subversive Archaeologist is determined to overturn. I've been going to say this for a few weeks now, but couldn't find the right platform. Now I can. With independent and non-partisan examination, could we not---for example---once and for all, address the possibly erroneous early dates for modern human behaviour from the caves of southern Africa? I focus on this one simply because I'm not a physicist. Neither were the YD impacts proponents. And, although the OSL daters of those south African caves are physicists, too, I think their technique [or more correctly, their method] is due for a thorough going over.As for the other kind of issue---e.g.purposeful burial in the Middle Palaeolithic. I think these can be dealt with just fine, thank you, by unblinkered archaeologists [with a little informed help from geologists]. Early claims for fire use, however, can't be dealt with by us archaeologists alone. Even the much touted record of presumed 'hearths' at Kebara Cave could do with a re-visit [I believe]. Patrick Randolph-Quinney, one of the SA's staunchest supporters, is ready, willing and quite able, I think, to apply forensic science approaches to the early fire question. [Hope ya don't mind me singling you out, Patrick!]The point is: the work is there to be done. And although several people have asked me to work with them on some of the issues, I truly believe my mind is best applied to my activities at the Subversive Archaeologist. I'm happy pointing you in the right direction.With that in mind. Get busy! Great things are afoot!Oh. And. I still have work to do on the "Out of Africa, Out of Africa Again, and Yet Again Out of Africa" business recently posited by Boivin et al.Thanks for making my day!SA announces new posts on the Subversive Archaeologist's facebook page (mirrored on Rob Gargett's news feed), on Robert H. Gargett's Academia.edu page, Rob Gargett's twitter account, and his Google+ page. A few of you have already signed up to receive email when I post. Others have subscribed to the blog's RSS feeds. You can also become a 'member' of the blog through Google Friend Connect. Thank you for your continued patronage. You're the reason I do this.

Against atrocities: “A Saudi cleric who raped his five-year-old daughter and tortured her to death has been sentenced to pay “blood money” to the mother after having served a short jail term, activists have said. Fayhan al-Ghamdi, an Islamic cleric and regular guest on Islamic television networks, confessed to having used cables and a cane to inflict the injuries, activists from the group Women to Drive said in a statement on Saturday. Lamia was admitted to hospital on December 25, 2011 with multiple injuries, including a crushed skull, broken ribs and left arm, extensive bruising and burns, the activists said. They said the father had doubted his daughter Lama’s virginity and had her checked up by a medic. She died last October. Randa al-Kaleeb, a social worker from the hospital where Lama was admitted, said the girl’s back was broken and that she had been raped “everywhere“, according to the group. According to the victim’s mother, hospital staff told her that her “child’s rectum had been torn open and the abuser had attempted to burn it closed.“ The activists said that the judge had ruled the prosecution could only seek “blood money and the time the defendant had served in prison since Lama’s death suffices as punishment.” Three Saudi activists, including Manal al-Sharif, who in 2011 challenged Saudi laws that prevent women from driving, have raised objections to the ruling. The ruling is based on Islamic laws that a father cannot be executed for murdering his children, nor can husbands be executed for murdering their wives, activists said.”

Thomas Lumley sent in this nice multilingual pun from Sydney, Australia: The Chinese part of the sign reads: Xīběi fànzhuāng 西北飯莊 ("Northwest Restaurant"). While the quality of the sibilants is quite different (Mandarin "x" is a postalveolar sibilant, viz., a voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative; English "s" is a voiceless alveolar sibilant), the person who thought up this clever English name for the Xīběi fànzhuāng 西北飯莊 ("Northwest Restaurant") recognized them as being close enough for the pun to work. Now would someone in Sydney please call up the restaurant to ask whether they serve northwestern Chinese cuisine or seafood? The telephone number is right there on the sign.

Now these are interesting regional patterns in terms science education and gender: This visual is interactive so go click on the link above. It is interesting to see that the US is not the only Western country where boys score better than girls. Actually most Western European countries are the same category.  On the other hand, see all the yellow dots on the right? Better test scores for girls in Eastern and Southern European countries as well as the Middle East. The same pattern applies to Asia and Pacific Islands. Actually, it is almost exclusively in Western countries that boys lead over girls in these test scores. So, what’s wrong with Western countries? What is the big secret that Eastern and Southern Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Pacific Islands have discovered? Also note the difference in scale between the “boys lead” side of the graph (from 0 to approximately 5 %) and the “girls lead” side of the graph (from 0 to almost 9%). I am sure the explanation involves a multiplicity of interacting variables but I would still be interested to know whether someone actually did the research on this and figured out these variables and their impact. Unfortunately, the article does not really give an explanation.

I have been blogging a lot on guns lately, and there have been a lot of interesting visualizations offered on this topic. Yet, I had never seen anything like the visualization below (via Nathan Yau). Take a look: US Gun Deaths – Stolen Years from SocProf on Vimeo.

by Carlin Romano, The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 14, 2013 Is it possible all those young men clashing in the streets of Cairo and Damascus aren’t getting enough? Democracy? No, I mean that other thing people seek and are willing to die for. Talk of the “Arab Spring” now forms a clichéd part of pundit chatter in America, with plays on “Arab Winter” and “Arab Fall” depending on the politics of the speaker and the troubled country dissolving at the moment. But few talking heads know enough about Arab culture to tie the massive Mideast street actions we’ve seen to matters behind surface politics. And those background matters include the state of Arab marriage, the tension between so-called Western norms and Islamic pieties, and the suppressed sexuality among Arab youth who face financial and theological obstacles to fulfilling their desires. Is it tasteless to mix somber stuff like political rebellion with sub-rosa lust and denial? Could be it’s truthful rather than tasteless. Thank you, then, Shereen El Feki—Cambridge-educated immunologist, former science writer for The Economist, current vice chair of the U.N.’s Global Commission on HIV and Law—for adventuring beyond the headlines in Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World, forthcoming from Pantheon Books. It’s a trenchant exploration of the uncertainties filling the humble abodes that Tahrir Square demonstrators go home to. A truthful book may not set you free when you’ve suffered under centuries of misguided interpretations of Islam and sex, but one prays that El Feki gets an Arabic edition. In the West, her blunt examination of sex and its attendant practices and paraphernalia—topics include vibrators, Viagra, virginity codes, marital rape, and homophobia—would hardly raise an eyebrow. We Westerners live now in a Fifty Shades world, a publishing culture in which Naomi Wolf’s Vagina gets reviewed on the front page of The New York Times Book Review by former ballerina Toni Bentley—she of The Surrender (a title meant to evoke the offering of another body part)—and one hopes the kids aren’t watching. (more…)

Shànghǎi Hézuò Zǔzhī   Ya da Shankhayskaya Organizatsiya Sotrudnichestva. Evvelemirde bürokratlarımız hızlandırılmış Çince ve Rusça kurslarına… Zira Başbakanımızın 75 milyonun istikbali için belirlediği uluslararası teşkilatın resmî dilleri Çince ve Rusça! Türk addettiğimiz diğer dört üye Kazak, Kırgız, Özbek ve Tacikler güzel Türkçemizi üçüncü resmî dil yapmayı becerememiş. Zira kendileri de Türkçe değil Rusça danışırlar mâlum. Gayrı üçüncü dil meselesini Başbakanımız çözer.   Evet, nevzuhur haricî maceramız hayırlı uğurlu olsun, 21. yüzyılda Yeni ve Büyük Türkiye’nin şanını yürütsün. “Alçak emperyalist Batı”ya istikbalin, yükselen güç Asya’nın olacağını göstersin. Dışişlerimiz, geçen hafta Şanghay İşbirliği Teşkilâtı (ŞİT)’in üç kademe üyelik sürecinde alt kademe olan “Diyalog Ortaklığı”ndan “Gözlemci” kademesine geçilmesi için adımı attı. Tam üyeliğe giden yol açık; öyle AB’ninki gibi “uzun ince” filan da değil.  Üye olmak için yapılacak iş basit. “Akraba topluluklar” pek sorun çıkartmaz. İş Çin ile Rusya’da bitiyor. Putin ile ön istişarelerin şaka yollu da olsa yapıldığı anlaşılıyor. Üyelik muradımız ilk telaffuz edildiğinde herhalde ciddiye almamıştır. Öyle ya NATO üyesi komşusunun böyle bir radikal karara imza atacak olmasına kendisi de inanmamıştır.   Çin’den vize çıkmış. Uygurlara soykırım yaptığı yollu efelenmeler Beijing’in verdiği notanın akabinde yutulduğundan aramız iyi, ticaret mükemmel, kimse diğerine karışmıyor. Afrika’nın doğal kaynaklarını paylaşma konusunda sorun çıkabilir ama bu “sağlıklı rekabet”tir. Orta Asya’da ise ne Çin ne de Rusya ile bir sorun çıkması mümkün. 1989’dan bu yana bir türlü kurulamayan “din, dil ve kültür temelli nüfuz alanı” Türkiye’nin varlığını ticaret ve birkaç altyapı yatırımına indirgemiş durumda.   Çin ve Rus emperyalizmlerinin arka bahçesi   Şanghay’ın en önemli vasfı neo-emperyalist Çin ve Rusya’nın Orta Asya coğrafyasında neden olabilecekleri sıcak sürtüşmeleri “güvenlik işbirliği” adı altında engellemek. Yeri gelmişken, emperyalist, Ankara’da bu aralar sanıldığı gibi sade Batılı Hıristiyan’dan olmuyor. Nitekim Şanghay, Soğuk Savaş sonrasında Çin’in Sovyet emperyalizminden yeni kurtulan kaotik Orta Asya bölgesindeki yeraltı kaynaklarına olan ihtiyacını garantiye alma arayışlarının sonucunda ortaya çıkar. Şanghay aynı zamanda Çin, Rusya ve 4 Orta Asyalı üyeden oluşan üç odağın birbirlerini dengeleyerek varolma ihtiyacını da karşılamakta. 4 Orta Asyalının kendi aralarındaki derin husumetler de bu denge arayışının bir nedeni. ABD’nin Afganistan’daki varlığı bölgenin bir diğer ortak güvenlik endişesi elbet.   Diğer bir husus Çin ile Rusya’nın Asya üzerindeki kadim ve çelişen hak iddiaları. Bu, stratejik anlamda, Türkiye’ye ışık yılları kadar uzak bir sorun. Keza Türkiye, bütün Asyalılık edebiyatına ve eksik demokrasisine rağmen Şanghay zihniyetine çok mesafeli bir ülke.   Şanghay ve İslâm   Altılının insan hakları ihlalleri sicili tahmin edileceği üzere son derece kabarık. Ama ilginç olan, otoritarizmle totalitarizm arasında gelip giden bu ülkelerin gayridemokratik uygulamalarının “güvenlik işbirliği” marifetiyle artıyor olması. Bu konuda yapılmış ciddî çalışmalar mevcut. Uluslararası İnsan Hakları Federasyonu’nun FIDH’ın “Shanghai Cooperation Organisation: a vehicle for human rights violations”; “ŞİT: İnsan Hakları İhlalleri için bir Vasıta” çalışması anlamlı. Türkiye’nin daha yeni yeni sıyrılmaya çalıştığı, her etnik itiraza terör damgası vurma âdeti Teşkilâtın temel doktrini. Üyelerin, etnik talepleri olan stk ve yayınlara doktrin uyarınca getirilen yasakları ulusal mevzuatlarına uyarlamaları gerekiyor.   Diğer taraftan hükümetin gönlünde yatan bir nevî İslâm temsilciliği o coğrafyalarda hiç kâbul görecek bir mefkûre değil. Sovyet modeli katı laik olan dört Orta Asyalı akrabanın dinle hiç arası yoktur. Çin de Uygurlara yaptığı baskı üzerinden İslâm karşıtı bir politika uygular. Rusya’nın İslâm’la olan ezelî sorununa hiç girmeyelim. Teşkilâtın “İslâm karşıtı” işbirliğine manidar örnek Rusya’da var olup olmadığı bile kesin olmayan Nur Cemaati’nin 2008’de yasaklanmasının hemen ardından Kazakistan ve Kırgızistan’da da yasaklanmasıdır.   Büyük güçlerle eşit bir şekilde hareket etmek, fillerle dans etmek misali, mümkün değildir. Nasıl bugün ABD ile mümkün değilse, Şanghay’a üye bir Türkiye’nin görünür bir zaman diliminde Çin ve Rusya ile eşit bir ilişkide olması mümkün olmayacak.   Türkiye açısından Şanghay, güvenlik sorunsalı bağlamında NATO ile karşılaştırılabilecek bir kurum. Ama her ikisine de üye olmak bir dolu nedenden mümkün değil. “AB mi Şanghay mı” sorusu ise bu iki yapının karşılaştırılamayacak kadar farklı olmasından ötürü, abes. Related posts: Cengiz Aktar: Arap uyanışı üzerinden yeni Soğuk Savaş Cengiz Aktar: Sahipsiz Kıbrıs sorunu Cengiz Aktar: 300 dakikalığına Sarkozi Cengiz Aktar: Akıllar yine tutuldu Cengiz Aktar: Çavuşeskular ölmez Beşşarlar da!

Geeks Are the New Guardians of Our Civil Liberties from Mashable! by MIT Technology Review Now is a good time to re-set your Twitter password and disable Java in your browser from Boing Boing by Xeni Jardin Twitter says that it was hacked and 250,000 users may have been compromised from The Next Web by Ken Yeung Three Things Students Can Do Now to Promote Open Access from EFF.org Updates by Adi Kamdar The open access movement is a long-standing campaign in the world of research to make scholarly works freely available and reusable. One of its fundamental premises is that the progress of knowledge and culture happens scholarly works of all kinds are widely shared, not hidden in ivory towers built with paywalls and shorn by harsh legal regimes. Safer Internet Day: How we help you stay secure online from The Official Google Blog by Emily Wood Technology can sometimes be complicated, but you shouldn’t have to be a computer scientist or security expert to stay safe online. Protecting our users is one of our top priorities at Google. Whether it’s creating easy-to-use tools to help you manage your information online or fighting the bad guys behind the scenes, we’re constantly investing to make Google the best service you can rely on, with security and privacy features that are on 24-7 and working for you. Rebooting Computer Crime Law Part 2: Protect Tinkerers, Security Researchers, Innovators, and Privacy Seekers from EFF.org Updates by Cindy Cohn and Marcia Hofmann In the wake of social justice activist Aaron Swartz’s tragic death, Internet users around the country are taking a hard look at the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the federal anti-hacking law. As we’ve noted, the CFAA has lots of problems. In this three-part series, we’ll explain these problems in detail and why they need to be fixed. The Creepy Side of Facebook Graph Search from MediaShift The new Facebook Graph Search, currently in beta and only available to some, is a powerful search engine capable of revealing and uncovering incredibly detailed information about you, your friends and total strangers. It allows you to search for fun facts like “Former actors who are currently employed as waiters,” “Which games do Dutch Defense Ministry employees like to play?” (Battlefield and Call of Duty) and “People who like Lance Armstrong, who like steroids and who like fairy tales.” Who Really Owns Your Photos in Social Media? (Updated 2013 Edition) from MediaShift A recent U.S. court decision clarified that media organizations cannot assume that photos shared via Twitter are rights-free, to be used as though they were in the public domain.     Assange to run for Australian senate: WikiLeaks from Hurriyet Daily News WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will run for a seat in the Australian Senate during this year’s elections. Build a Better Password: Secrets to Protecting Your Identity from Background Check 2013: The Year of Responsive Web Design from social media vb by thezenagency With the continued growth of smartphone and tablet usage, will 2013 be the year that we see many websites adapt to responsive design technology? Take another look at responsive web design. Facebook Graph Search: Privacy Control You Still Don’t Have from EFF.org Updates by Adi Kamdar Facebook’s Graph Search has certainly caused quite a stir since it was first announced two weeks ago. We wrote earlier about how Graph Search, still in beta, presents new privacy problems by making shared information discoverable when previously it was hard—if not impossible—to find at a large scale. We also put out a call to action—and even created a handy how-to guide—urging people to reassess their privacy settings. Google latest FCC filing reveals details about its Google Glass project from The Next Web by Ken Yeung Congress Will Battle Over Internet Privacy in 2013 from EFF.org Updates by Mark M. Jaycox Last year, we saw more battles in Congress over Internet freedom than we have in many years as user protests stopped two dangerous bills, the censorship-oriented SOPA, and the privacy-invasive Cybersecurity Act of 2012. But Congress ended the year by ramming through a domestic spying bill and weakening the Video Privacy Protection Act. Kim Dotcom: Mega Search Engines Have to Play by the Rules from TorrentFreak by Ernesto Yesterday a flurry of bogus DMCA notices made thousands of Mega files unavailable to the public. The actions appeared to be targeted specifically at Mega search engine Mega-Search.me. Cloud Tech Job Descriptions for 2013 from Daily Bits by noemi Related posts: Cyberculture roundup: Majestic Mega launch, The Next Five Battles For Internet Freedom, from Crowdsourcing to Microtasking… Cyberculture roundup: Google Releases Transparency Report, Effects of the Internet on Legacy Institutions, Facebook Graph Search… Cyberculture roundup: EFF: “Governments Still Present Biggest Threat to Open Internet”…Digital Battles continue over Gaza… Cyberculture roundup: Modern day internet 30 years old now… EFF’s 2012 reviews…”WCIT and its Relationship to the Internet… Cyberculture roundup: United States Refuses to Sign UN Internet Treaty, Google Zeitgeist, Microsoft’s 2013 security predictions..and more

Embassy attack has drawn US, Turkey closer: Envoy from Hurriyet Daily News The Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C).. US-Turkey Relations in The AK Party Decade by Acturca SETA Policy Brief, No. 62, January, 2013, 13 p. Kadir Üstün & Kılıç Buğra Kanat * Turkey’s relations with the United States over the last decade witnessed wild swings and shifts. Turkey’s past decade under the AK Party coincided with the US invasion of Iraq, the financial meltdown in the US (which transformed into a Können wir tadeln Deutschland für diese Terrortat from Mavi Boncuk by M.A.M Pictured in 1997 Ecevit Şanlı  on the right.   A DHKP/C [1]suicide bomber detonated a vest with 6 kilos of TNT and a hand grenade outside the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, killing himself and a security guard.   Turkey: At Least 2 Dead in Suicide Attack on US Embassy Democracy Now An Icelandic media report has revealed new details about U.S. attempts to investigate the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson told the broadcaster RUV that FBI agents landed in Reykjavik in 2011 without warning REVOLUTIONARY PEOPLE’S LIBERATION PARTY/FRONT (DHKP/C) from Mavi Boncuk by M.A.M Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) are designated by the Secretary of State in accordance with section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). FTO designations play a critical role in the fight against terrorism and are an effective means of curtailing support for terrorist activities. Legal Criteria for Designation under Section 219 of the INA as amended: US happy with Turkey cooperation after embassy attack from Hurriyet Daily News The U.S. Embassy in Ankara, the U.S. Consulate General in Istanbul… Turkish police spot DHKP/C suspects near US association: sources from Hurriyet Daily News Some of the people arrested as suspected members of the outlawed DHKP/C appear US bodies, sources claim Turkey: US embassy suicide bomber was member of outlawed leftist group from Yahoo news Today’s bombing of the US embassy in Ankara, which Turkey has blamed on an outlawed leftist group, comes amid warnings that Turkey could soon face jihadist spillover from Syria. Analysis: Cold War-style proxy war via US Embassy from Hurriyet Daily News I must say I wasn’t surprised by the news of a terrorist attack at the U.S. Embassy in Ankara. Gül sends message to Obama, says attack targeted Turkey as well from Hurriyet Daily News Turkish President Abdullah Gül has sent a message to U.S. President Barack Obama and expressed Turkey’s solidarity. US embassy bombing in Turkey called ‘act of terror’ by Obama administration from World news: Turkey | guardian.co.uk by Constanze Letsch, Chris McGreal Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan says early information links Ankara bomber to a domestic militant group The Obama administration has declared a suicide bomb at the US embassy in Turkey (video), in which the attacker and a local guard died, as an “act of terror”. Journalist injured in attack on US Embassy in Ankara loses sight in one eye from Hurriyet Daily News Didem Tuncay, a journalist who was injured in the Feb. 1 attack on the U.S. Embassy.   ******************* Who killed an American mom in Turkey? from Yahoo News Photos Trace Gallagher reports from Los Angeles FBI joins search for murderer of US mom Sierra, Istanbul police to take DNA samples from Hurriyet Daily News The FBI is playing role in the investigation into the death of Sarai Sierra, US congressman says A Slain Artist in the Making Daily Beast The coroner in Istanbul has released her body, and soon Sarai Sierra will be flown back to Staten Island for a funeral at the church where she met and later married her husband. Turkey US Missing Woman. A view of the street with the hostel, in yellow FBI investigating NYC woman’s death in Istanbul Wall Street Journal Sierra’s husband, Steven, is in Istanbul, where he traveled last week to help in the search. He intends to accompany her body, but the family is still determining how to fund the transport. Their church and friends are working to raise money to help   Sarai Sierra: FBI investigating New York City woman’s death in Istanbul CBS News (CBS/AP) NEW YORK – A U.S. congressman says the FBI is playing a significant role in the investigation into the death of Sarai Sierra, the New York city woman found dead in Istanbul while on a solo vacation. PICTURES: N.Y. mom found dead in Turkey   Istanbul feminists protest attacks on Armenian women Panorama.am Activists of the Istanbul Feminist Collective held a march in Samatya district of Istanbul against recent attacks on elderly Armenian women, Bianet.org reported. The protesters, carrying placards saying “Armenian women are not alone,” Sarai Sierra killed with blow to the head, official says from Hurriyet Daily News Sarai Sierra, an American woman who went missing in Istanbul. Istanbul police search for clues in NYC woman’s death; DNA from autopsy goes … Washington Post ANKARA, Turkey — Turkish authorities finished an autopsy Monday on a New York City woman found dead in Istanbul and submitted DNA samples from it to a crime lab for testing, Turkey’s state-run media reported. Sarai Sierra, a 33-year-old mother of two, On Sarai Sierra’s Death and the Failure of Istanbul from The Istanbulian by Emre Kızılkaya Sarai Sierra, an American woman who went missing in Istanbul in Jan. 21, has been found dead at the Seraglio Point.   Istanbul police find body thought to be missing US tourist Reuters “(We are) 70 to 80 percent sure the body belongs to her but this is not absolutely certain,” anIstanbul police official told Reuters on condition of anonymity, adding more tests needed to be completed. Anatolian said the cause of death had yet to be Missing Staten Island woman found dead in Istanbul: reports New York Post A Staten Island mother of two was found dead in Istanbul after she went missing during a solo vacation, Turkish news reports said. The grisly discovery of Sarai Sierra, 33, who was stabbed in the abdomen, was made by residents near an ancient city wal Related posts: Istanbul news roundup… Missing American hits the news… Suicide bomber attacks U.S. Embassy in Ankara, 2 dead.. the Pretext used to attack American entities is a bigger insult to Islam… 32 detained in Turkey as collaborators to Anonymous attack… Blood politics continues: 10 Turkish soldiers killed in PKK attack this morning…

MAIN FOCUS: Match-fixing scandal rocks football world | 05/02/2013 from euro|topics The European Union’s law enforcement agency Europol has announced that it has uncovered the biggest match-fixing scandal in the history of football. It presented a report in The Hague on Monday according to which more than 380 games worldwide were manipulated. For some commentators the scandal is further proof of the extent to which the top sport is under the control of the betting mafia. Others believe that the revelations will have little negative impact on profession football. Same-sex marriage dominates French agenda from FT.com – World, Europe Hollande’s ‘marriage for all’ with its discussion on allowing same-sex couples to adopt is vehemently opposed by Jean-François Copé, the leader of the UMP February to be a big month for same sex marriage in Western Europe from The European Citizen by Eurocentric French deputies voted by 249-97 in favour of redefining marriage as applying to same sex as well as opposite sex couples. The change is not law yet, but the vote represents one of the bill’s main hurdles, and it has been passed in a very passionate political atmosphere, with rallies on both sides. France 24 reports that 63% are now in favour of marriage equality, with almost 50% supporting equal adoption rights as well. Cameron opens Europe’s Pandora’s box from open Democracy News Analysis – by Denis MacShane As the dust settles on David Cameron’s speech, what real impact has it had? Despite being met with scepticism throughout Europe, it has above all highlighted the need for an open discussion on the EU in Britain – and how the left has so far failed to address the European question. Political corruption in Spain: will this be Rajoy’s Watergate? from open Democracy News Analysis – by Cristina Manzano As each day progressively reveals the extent of corruption inside the ruling People’s Party, the Spanish people are disheartened by the conduct of their politicians, including that of Prime Minister Rajoy. But there are things that they can do. Why Did Mali’s ‘Soldier of Death’ Go Viral? from Global Voices Online by Diana Rhudick Since the start of Operation Serval in Mali, this photo has been seen and shared around the world. French soldier in Mali wearing a scarf with death’s head motif – from odieux connard – public domain Next Pentagon Chief Doesn’t Want to Get Sucked Into France’s Mali War from Wired Top Stories by Spencer Ackerman Something the next Pentagon chief really, really doesn’t want to do: deepen the U.S. involvement in France’s war in Mali. MAIN FOCUS: Funding for African mission in Mali | 30/01/2013 from euro|topics At a donor’s conference in Addis Abeba, the international community has pledged roughly 456 million dollars for an African peace mission in Mali. France’s President François Hollande then announced that he intends to withdraw his troops from the country as quickly as possible. Now politicians must take command, commentators urge, putting their hopes in a peace plan for the entire region. Mali, war after war from open Democracy News Analysis – by Paul Rogers The combination of western advance and rebel retreat in northern Mali echoes the initial phase of the anti-Taliban campaign in Afghanistan. Britain’s upgraded military commitment makes the parallel even more acute. France’s military operation to take control of the last main towns in what was rebel-held northern Mali is in effect complete after the reported entry into Kidal early on 31 January 2013, with a sudden dust-storm creating more of a delay than any armed resistance by the retreating Islamists. Mali: Totalitarian vs. liberal Islamists from Hurriyet Daily News I’ll be honest, I am certainly not an expert on African politics. When it comes to Mali, I would even plead.. Time to bite the bullet on European defence by Centre for European Reform Europe’s military spending is in free fall. As highlighted during a seminar organised by the CER in December as part of the FR-UK Defence Forum, the EU countries combined have reduced defence spending from €200 to €170 billion since the start of the economic crisis in 2008. In response, governments have signed up to a variety of new bilateral and multilateral initiatives. These are designed to limit the impact of budget cuts on their armed forces. But so far, the savings incurred pale in comparison. At the December discussions, participants estimated them at €200 to €300 million. Many sensitivities relating to national security make it hard for governments to implement collaborative defence efforts. But at a time when Europe’s neighbourhood is replete with instability and the United States is scaling back its own armed forces, Europeans need to do more to stem the damage to their militaries. Cameron’s backward-looking speech from open Democracy News Analysis – by Mark Leonard Britain is at a fork in the road with a choice to make about what role it will play in the 21st century. Yet, David Cameron’s long-awaited speech about Europe is a miscalculation that will leave everyone frustrated. Stuffed – hospital closures and chaos in England’s health service from open Democracy News Analysis – by Roy Lilley Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s decision on Lewisham hospital is a clear signal that some fundamental and bold changes are needed on NHS (National Health Service) structure, PFi debts and the private sector. Roy Lilley sets out a five point action plan. Conflict at the EU’s southern borders: the Sahel crisis from open Democracy News Analysis – by Simone Tholens and Raffaella Del Sarto Gradually, EU systems of governance have extended into the southern Mediterranean, linking dynamics in the Sahel with European interests through its borderlands. This could be a test of the EU’s foreign policy ambitions. But is the Union ready and capable to act, and if so, what is at stake? Spanish economic decline worsens from BBC News | Europe | World Edition Spain’s economic downturn worsened in the last three months of 2012, official data indicates, while across the eurozone retail sales continued to fall. Dangerous delusions: British expectations of the future UK-EU relationship from Docuticker Source: European Policy Centre The reaction in the UK to Prime Minister David Cameron’s long-expected confirmation that the UK Government (or at least the Conservative part of it) intends to hold a referendum on EU membership by 2017 illustrates just how remote and UK-centric British public debate on the issue has become. Czech presidential vote: a society divided from open Democracy News Analysis – by Jan Hornát This Saturday’s election saw the victory of former PM Milos Zeman over current Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg. The duel between a decried populist and an old-school aristocrat revealed a division previously unseen in modern Czech society. ‘Brexit’: a view from Norway from open Democracy News Analysis – by Heming Olaussen Norway has often been cited as an example of what Britain’s future relationship with the EU might look like. One of the most prominent Norwegian opponents to EU membership shares his thoughts on David Cameron’s speech Is two speed Europe beneficial for everyone ? from Ideas on Europe by mateusz The need to balance between unity and diversity is a dilemma faced by the European Union. With different currencies and different politics pursuing by the members, the multi-speed Europe is a reality. The debate about an integrated Europe is widened and deepened by the possible withdraw of the UK from the European Union. MAIN FOCUS: Rajoy denies corruption allegations | 04/02/2013 from euro|topics Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Saturday denied accusations that he and other high-ranking representatives of the People’s Party received payments from slush funds over a period of several years. He announced among other things that he would make his tax returns public. Rajoy’s transparency offensive is utterly implausible, commentators say, calling for new elections and a complete overhaul of the public administration. Rise of Golden Dawn: A presage of doom? (Opinion) from EurActiv.com pAs Europe turns a blind eye to the immigration crisis, many impoverished foreigners find themselves trapped in an economically crippled country that can’t sustain them, says Hatef Mokhtar./p The folly of Britain’s immigration policy Bring to immigration the ‘can do’ approach of the Olympics. Make good your promise that ‘Britain is back open for business’, writes Robert Hahn The European radical left and the international economic crisis: opportunity wasted? from open Democracy News Analysis – by Luke March Has the European radical left missed an unique opportunity to advance its ideas and political weight in the wake of the global economic meltdown? Related posts: Eurosphere roundup: Croatia says yes to EU; ACTA on the agenda… Eurosphere roundup: France at war in Mali… Eurosphere roundup: Eurobonds and more… Eurosphere roundup: Eurozone vs. Britain, Berlusconi defends Mussolini, France at war in Mali… #Silivri Saracoğlu- Turkish match-fixing trial starts; Fenerbahçe fans stand by FB president Aziz Yıldırım

Steve Butcher and Maris Beck, "Journalists appeal in bid to protect sources", The Age 2/5/2013: The grounds of appeal announced on Monday state Justice Sifris erred in not finding Mr Goldberg was wrong in failing to set aside the summonses. Five negatives. Degree of difficulty: E. Judges' score: 9.6. I believe that this one comes out right, as a bit more of the context helps to verify: Mr Goldberg had earlier ruled subpoenas compelling the journalists to give evidence in a bribery case had a legitimate forensic purpose. The journalists then sought a review of that decision to Justice Michael Sifris in the Supreme Court who ruled the magistrate had "acted properly and within jurisdiction". The grounds of appeal announced on Monday state Justice Sifris erred in not finding Mr Goldberg was wrong in failing to set aside the summonses. Overall, an impressive performance. [Tip of the hat to Andrew Gaylard]

Editor’s note: While ethnographers sometimes encounter resistance from their research subjects, it’s not everyday that these subjects threaten to harm or otherwise humiliate the researcher. In her second guest post,Whitney Phillips @wphillips49  tells us how she responded to threats from the community she was studying. Whitney also shares with us how she adjusted her everyday life to her research, [...]

The International Cultural Neuroscience Consortium has put out a call for papers for their May 2013 conference. This year’s topic is “Cultural Neuroscience and Health: Closing the Gap in Population Health Disparities.” Here is more about the conference from the ICNC: The conference will foster interdisciplinary, international approaches to studying culture and health and highlight advances in cultural neuroscience that address closing the gap in population health disparities. Speakers from across the world will present cutting-edge research at the intersection of epidemiology, psychology, anthropology, neuroscience, and genetics. The conference will be held at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL from May 10-12, 2013. The topics and speakers already show that this will be an outstanding event. Abstract and poster submissions are due on March 1, 2013. Registration is suggested on or before April 15, 2013.