A new collection of Mayan ruins has been discovered deep in the Guatemalan jungles thanks to satellite imaging. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23282045/?GT1=10856
And you were using it to watch T.V.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Technology: old and new
Where does the time go? Not into sleeping, I'll tell you that much. Here are a few of the lovely tidbits I've picked up in the past month, all with a technology/innovation theme:
First pair of ice skates discovered.
A 2300-year-old shipwreck carrying wine cargo was also discovered.
The Lemelson center for the study of innovation and invention. Makes the argument that science, technology, innovation, invention, and play are all connected (we've established this already, but for all the slow-learning, non-innovators out there, there is this). I actually found a whole bunch of groups that were working on this same idea - a collection of sci tech museums, conferences, and several academic groups. There is definitely a trend to combine computer science studies with creativity.
First pair of ice skates discovered.
A 2300-year-old shipwreck carrying wine cargo was also discovered.
The Lemelson center for the study of innovation and invention. Makes the argument that science, technology, innovation, invention, and play are all connected (we've established this already, but for all the slow-learning, non-innovators out there, there is this). I actually found a whole bunch of groups that were working on this same idea - a collection of sci tech museums, conferences, and several academic groups. There is definitely a trend to combine computer science studies with creativity.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Time to Get Opinionated
Nothing worth doing an entire blog about, but just some stuff I needed to get off my chest:
Discourse analysis and semiotic analysis for that matter are much, much, much too broad and loosey goosey to be of much use. If you believe Foucault that EVERYTHING can be a discourse, then you'll spend your entire life trying to determine if every thought you share or action you take is your own creation or just another discourse that has been ingrained into you. Semiotics is a different story in that you can say anything symbolizes anything, but you end up in the same pickle.
Power DOES exist, thank you very much.
There needs to be a word that describes the study of Family Structure in Archaeology. Maybe I just coined it, I'll have to look it up.
Graduate school is very time consuming, and while I love it, I wish I could afford to be a starving college student so I had more time to work on my schoolwork (I say this while writing in my blog instead of doing my reading), because they expect you read (ahem *skim*) so freakin' much! And fit in research papers and thesis work at the same time.
Anthropology needs to be a more holistic approach. There, I said it. Maybe I'm taking too much of a "four fields" approach, maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, maybe I'm oversimplifying, whatever, but I say that the study of human beings needs to be an integrated study, looking at all aspects of being human, bones to brains, and separation of biological from cultural from physical from linguistic anthropology is going about things all wrong. We need integration of the disciplines, we're supposed to be studying human beings as a whole, not looking at bits and pieces and then arguing about how these bits and pieces are the one truth, or how they obviously don't fit together, so the other bits and pieces must be wrong. ACK!
The U.S. Government is making it harder and harder to leave, visit, work, or even share ideas with the U.S. So much for freedom and liberty and international ambassador-ness and all that.
Discourse analysis and semiotic analysis for that matter are much, much, much too broad and loosey goosey to be of much use. If you believe Foucault that EVERYTHING can be a discourse, then you'll spend your entire life trying to determine if every thought you share or action you take is your own creation or just another discourse that has been ingrained into you. Semiotics is a different story in that you can say anything symbolizes anything, but you end up in the same pickle.
Power DOES exist, thank you very much.
There needs to be a word that describes the study of Family Structure in Archaeology. Maybe I just coined it, I'll have to look it up.
Graduate school is very time consuming, and while I love it, I wish I could afford to be a starving college student so I had more time to work on my schoolwork (I say this while writing in my blog instead of doing my reading), because they expect you read (ahem *skim*) so freakin' much! And fit in research papers and thesis work at the same time.
Anthropology needs to be a more holistic approach. There, I said it. Maybe I'm taking too much of a "four fields" approach, maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, maybe I'm oversimplifying, whatever, but I say that the study of human beings needs to be an integrated study, looking at all aspects of being human, bones to brains, and separation of biological from cultural from physical from linguistic anthropology is going about things all wrong. We need integration of the disciplines, we're supposed to be studying human beings as a whole, not looking at bits and pieces and then arguing about how these bits and pieces are the one truth, or how they obviously don't fit together, so the other bits and pieces must be wrong. ACK!
The U.S. Government is making it harder and harder to leave, visit, work, or even share ideas with the U.S. So much for freedom and liberty and international ambassador-ness and all that.
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