Dancing pandas grace the stage for Chinese punk (pop) bands:
Why don’t American pop bands have giant bald eagles dancing around, or at least brown bears and beavers?
I think Caffe-In’s best song is “Mario and Peaches”. An arguably better band, with an awesome name to boot, is Carsick Cars. Their “Zhong nan hai” is catchy but they also play a song called…”Panda”. Could the image of a panda be so ubiquitous in China that it also provides a form of shelter for commentary and dissent? On the other hand, maybe the pandas are state spies observing the crowd.
Some speculate that separating the polar bear and his keeper led to a decline in both their health:
The celebrity polar bear was pictured walking morosely around his enclosure and staring at the ground, a far cry from the happy images of him with ‘surrogate father’ Thomas Doeflein as a young bear.
Mr Doerflein, 44, was found dead amid fears that he became depressed after he was told to stay away from Knut because they were too close.
Doerflien had to give up playing with the bear due to Zoo administration fear for his safety. It would seem the separation was more dangerous.
What Michelangelo was doing was trying to remind Rome five centuries ago that Jesus was a Jew, he came from Jews, and that Christianity is based on Judaism. Florence in his time was proud of that connection, whereas Rome was not only trying to separate the two religions but to negate in great part its roots in Judaism — and even forcibly separate Jews and Christians. There were many Papal bulls outlawing fraternization and friendship between Jews and Christians, whereas in Florence everybody was partying together.
Q: Was Michelangelo simply promoting the Florentine agenda in Rome?
Absolutely. In his poems he complains about the abuses of power and hypocrisy of the church. It’s not us imagining it; it’s in his own words and work. This was not somebody who was thrilled about working for the Vatican on a ceiling.
Although today the message might be subtle, perhaps in his lifetime it was as open as his poetry.
One only has to be
finding windows and doors
a member among those with a key
to unlock what we all stare towards
I just heard the news that Mike Wesch, an untenured assistant professor at Kansas State University, was chosen as National Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation (CASE). It soon will be announced in an official ceremony in Washington DC.
Congratulations to Mike as well as Marty and Harald. :)
Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:19:51 -0600
From: Mike Wesch
Subject: Mike Wesch is 2008 National Prof of the Year
Winning this has been a bit surreal and has inspired quite a bit of reflection on what led up to it. When I walked into Marty Ottenheimer’s class in Fall 1995 I had no idea what anthropology was. As you know, Marty speaks smoothly and almost serenely, even while lobbing out intellectual fire bombs that blow minds. My mind was blown. He had me asking questions I had never asked before. Soon after that I was TAing for Harald. I remember him describing teaching the Intro class as akin to an act of shamanism. It is not just about teaching a bunch of facts, but guiding students through a transformative initiation. That imagery has guided my approach to teaching ever since. I have no doubt that it was the extraordinary attention our program places on undergraduate excellence that propelled me to this point in my career. I feel blessed to have stumbled into KSU Anthropology in 1995, and even more blessed to be a part of it today.
~ Mike
If you deal with the safety (security) of social networks, you definitely should watch Mike’s presentation at the Library of Congress, June 23rd 2008:
a blog about the poetry of information security, since 1995
