baseball magic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDhs-hypmqk&feature=related

In class we talked about baseball magic and how it is only magic if you are pitching or hitting. This video shows the magic of pitching and it is really funny.

I was really surprised by this article; it talks about Jesus in Buddha eyes. When I see different religion talking about each other it is mostly about what is wrong with the belief of other religions. This article is it did both, It started on the good aspects that Jesus proves his followers. It really made me think of what type of person Jesus was. It talks a lot about him giving food to the people and doing everything to help them out. Then it switched to talking about Jesus not being spiritual as Buddha. I think this article is interesting and gives you different perspective s.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism/beliefs/jesusandbuddhism_1.shtml

Politics in my familyt

Last class we talked about politics and power... in my family there are some very heated arguments about politics. My mother, being a democrat, and her brother, also quite liberal, consistently get in arguments with their parents, since my grandparents are very republican. They were huge supporters of the McCain/Palin campaign two years ago when Obama was elected president. Well, shortly after Obama won the election, me and my family went to grandma and grandpa's house for Christmas. I love to mess with my family and play jokes on people, so I did something that would get my grandparents worked up. Every Christmas I get a new Santa Clause figure for our Santa collection and this particular year I bought a very special Santa. One of the reasons my grandparents basically hate Obama is the fact that he's black... yes, my grandparents are racist but that's just the way it is. So, they weren't too pleased to see the black Santa I had bought and set up in their house. I happen to like Obama so I was just representing, but my grandparents weren't impressed by the joke. That's what politics does to my family!

Social Conflict

In our class last week, we talked a lot about social conflict and if they can ever be resolved. This article focuses on how our government needs to make a change to resolve the conflicts that we see today. Also it gave pointer on how we as individual can make a change to end social conflict. I’m not sure if social conflict can end but I did like that this article for giving us a good start on how to changes because its not just about our leader but about ourselves also.

http://www.helium.com/items/974439-how-to-resolve-social-conflicts?page=3

Amazing Journalism

I have to recommend that students try to watch or follow a program called Vanguard on Current TV.  This program has been one of my favorites for about two years and is an amazing source of investigative reporting and global news.  Vanguard is an investigative journalism show featuring highly controversial topics with first-hand reporting.  These topics range from "Soccer's lost Boys" and "American Jihad" to "Narco War Next Door" and "Lost Vegas". These shows were some of my favorites so far but there is a great diversity in the type of stories covered by this group.
We are touching on the topics of warfare and political conflicts in class I thought that one interesting show that related to our class was the episode "Narco War Next Door".  This episode focuses on the drug violence that has changed the towns of Juarez and Tijuana Mexico, both close to the US border. There is a great section in this episode surrounding a drug lord and the influence his cartel has over public relations and communities loyalty.
If this sort of show seems interesting to you, free episodes can be watched at hulu, http://www.slashcontrol.com/free-tv-shows/vanguard
or you can visit http://current.com/shows/vanguard/ for complete details.
Vanguard has earned Peabody Awards (excellence in electronic media) and also the 2010 Television Academy Honor Award for its excellent reporting and journalism.  This show is the new era of powerful investigative journalism.  Also, a three part series looking deeper into our "war on the border" should be featured some time soon so be sure to check it out!
breisig

Journal Articles

Hey everyone,
I was browsing through http://www.sciencedirect.com researching for another class and then realized that you can also find journal articles and books most of which you can read on-line over just about every topic we cover in class. Most of the stuff is research based and I thought it might help you out with your papers. You do have to create an account but its free and last forever so you can use it for other classes too.

Gangs and Families- Examples of Social Groups

After this week's discussion I started to think of examples of social groups in aspects not necessarily covered in class. What came to mind initially was Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and how certain families are major social groups. Romeo is born into the Montague clan and Juliet into the Capulet clan, obviously. In this story, the two households consistently have conflicts and disagree with ideas of the opposite household, much like two different races or countries may. This leads to fighting and bloodshed. We can see families in society everywhere who feel threatened by other family households, causing similiar conflicts. This can be a conflict as simple as fueding neighbors, a little more intense such as famous political families, or to extremes such as families of opposite races or countries literally battling in war. Referencing Romeo and Juliet also got me thinking of another film- West Side Story. This has supreme examples of a class of kinship group that is quite common; gangs. The gangs are formed due to the differences in their cultures and beliefs; the street punk Americans and the Puerto Ricans. People die and are hurt in this movie also due to the fact that the other gang can not accept the differences in race and thus they fight each other for street turf. A film with basically the exact same story (apart from the time period, setting, and cheesy love story) is Gangs of New York. The individuals in this movie belong to gangs according to race or beliefs also. Although the gangs fight over a specific piece of the city of New York, they more so battle because of their cultural differences. An ironic element of Gangs of New York is that the gang entitled "The Natives" are white people who were only just born in America. They hate the immigrants coming to New York, such as the Irish, but in fact, "The Natives" are no more native than the Irish. Actually, "The Natives" are descendants of Irish immigrants and people from other European countries. Often times social groups may hate each other because of differences in beliefs even though they are actually descendants of the same people.

new bball friends

i could really relate to the reading from the textbook where it talked about how baseball is played in japan. in the last few weeks i've been playing basketball with some new friends at halfacre. they aren't japanese but they are all first generation south korean-americans or korean native. they all know and speak english, some better than others. they play by the same rules for the most part but just some of the little things are different. i really enjoyed how they dont do any trash talking at all...or at least not in english. i have now became friends with them and have hung out with them just as friends. we are planning on hanging out one weekend soon and playing poker. i am looking forward to how they play that also.

Margaret Mead v. Derek Freeman

Margaret Mead is one of the most well known women in the field of anthropology. She is known for her book Coming of Age in Samoa published in 1928 as well as for her conflicting views with Derek Freeman. She is so well known that there was a stamp made with her image on it. She was the head of the AAA and one of the three best known women at the time of her death.

Margaret and Derek both studied the women in Samoa. They both came to very different conclusions. Freeman had many good cases built against Mead; at least they looked good until you did some research on your own. Derek accused Mead of being tricked by the Samoan girls. He said that when Mead was asking them what they did at night and they said they were “out with boys” that they were tricking her. Derek went back to Samoa after Mead and found the same girl that Mead interviewed and she said that Samoan girls are “terrific liars”. Upon further research it is discovered that in the Samoan culture you do not talk about things like sex in public or around someone of the opposite sex. The girls said they were joking around because that was what was culturally acceptable.

When another anthropologist, Paul Shankman, decided to look into Derek’s work things started to get ugly. Freeman wrote many letters and cards to Shankman that were mean in nature. When Shankman asked Freeman if he could see him postgraduate thesis and his field notes, Derek refused. It wasn’t until Freeman’s death in 2001 that Paul was able to see them. When Paul went through Derek’s field notes it showed something completely different than what Freeman had been saying. Basically his field notes completely contradicted just about everything he had said about Mead and the Samoans.

Polygamy

I thought this video was interesting because it shows the women's point of view of polygamy. It showed that their are different types of polygamy beside the Mormon polygamy. You would never think that the women in this video were in a polygamy relationship. In my Religion class I learned that you can not judge a religion based on your religious belief. When I look at this video it seem that polygamy is not always a bad thing. The women and children in this video seem happy and do not mind whether or not their children choose to have a polygamy relationship.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OEaRn3uHsc&feature=related

Western Tribes

This website shows some interesting facts and stories that can be found in some western cultures.


http://www.papuatrekking.com/Dani_Lani_tribe_Baliem_valley.html

Wedding Traditions and Customs

Every country and every culture has their own definitions for what a marriage is and how it should be (or not be) celebrated. I managed to find a few websites about just this topic. The first is about simple wedding traditions and the second is a short article on why and where some tradtions are performed and come from.

http://www.worldweddingtraditions.com

http://searchwarp.com/swa294727.htm

Revolutionary Road- Kinship

Seeing that we have been studying marriage and family in class for the passed week, I thought that I would mention a film that focuses on a 1940's couple and the pressures that come along with being the model suburban American married couple. This film is called Revolutionary Road and it is quite an effective film in showing what often times really goes on in a marriage due to society and other outside pressures. Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet play Frank and April Wheeler who are stuck with the label of the perfect married couple. They desperately want to break away from the norm and achieve their dreams, but factors such as children, their careers, and security in the average life disrupt their plans. Societies' pressure on people to fit the roles of the traditional family actually ends up making Frank and April very unhappy and leads to problems such as adultery, unfaithfullness, extreme fighting, and very cruel actions towards each other. It is interesting that at this time in America, and still today, it is looked down upon to not fit what is considered traditional positions, but this strain ends up causing even more problems that are also frowned upon, such as cheating. Instead of being happy and in love, and doing what they are passionate about, Frank and April are stuck doing what does not make them happy and even start to despise each other. Not only is Revolutionary Road a great film, but in relation to what we've been learning in class it fits perfectly to many of the topics, such as sexual regulation and the social organization of societies.

I just attended a talk by two very interesting people. One speaker talked about indigenous languages in the Rocky Mountains. The other speaker spoke about the layers of history and his tribes stories and beliefs.

The first speaker covered a lot of information very quickly so there was a lot that I didn’t catch. There were some points that he made that I thought were very interesting though. He said that we, as human beings, are expendable, but language stays forever. This is in reference to the fact that even when people or a race die, their language can still persevere. When we looked at a map of the language boundaries in the Rocky Mountains I noticed that all of the boundaries are either on the left or the right of the mountains ridge. The speaker explained this, it is because no people live on the very top of the mountains, they all live in the valleys. It is easier to live in the valley and on the side of the mountains, so that is where the languages are.

Also in his speech he talked about how many of the languages are dying. He said that there is only good information on about 11 out of the 30 languages that are, or once were, in the Rocky Mountains. One of the great anthropological figures that documented some of these languages was Franz Boas. Even some of the languages that we know of now are dying. The people of the Rocky Mountain area are trying to teach their native language to young students in school in hopes of preserving the language.

The second speaker was part of the Maori tribe in New Zealand. He spoke a lot about how important history is, and the layers of history involved. In his tribe there are many stories that can explain various historical facts. For example the story of how the Northern island was created. It is said that their great ancestors went out fishing and didn’t want to bring their little brother with them. But the little brother snuck into the canoe anyway. When they were far enough away from the shore the brother popped up and surprised them. The older brothers said that he couldn’t fish anyway because he didn’t have any equipment. But the little brother was prepared, he used his dead grandmothers jawbone as a hook and his own blood as the bait. Of course he caught a huge fish, but the little brother asked the others to look away while he recited and incantation before reeling him in. The brothers did not look away and so the fish fell apart, creating what is now the northern island. When you look at a pictures of the island you can see that the fish was a sting ray, and in the southeastern part there is a chunk missing where the hook was.

Another thing that he talked about that I found very interesting was topophilia. Topophilia is the affective bond between people and place. One thing that they believe a lot in is mauri, which means life force. Everyone has a life force, a mauri, and there are certain places where a persons mauri can be replenished. Waterfalls the place with the strongest mauri, so that is where people will go if they need to be healed. He said that people go to waterfalls to be cured of sickness, depression, or even just to “recharge your batteries”.