2020 in the Rear View Mirror

Janus, the two-headed god looking both forward and back. 2020 was a tempting year to just forget. Ryan Reynold’s humorously captured the spirit when he produced this: Sure it’s a Match commercial but I am a sucker for its dystopian humor. The focus is on the impact of Covid and plays on the forced isolation,Continue reading “2020 in the Rear View Mirror”

MINING THE MOON

Amid the Covid-caterwauling, the media failed to take proper notice when Mr Trump signed an executive order encouraging our mining the moon on April 6, 2020. Mining the moon and its exploitation was the premise for Robert Heinlein‘s, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1966). In Heinlein’s vision, the lunar colony is exploited by EarthContinue reading “MINING THE MOON”

Witches, Populism, Aikido

In the 19th century, anthropology’s great achievement was humility. Cultural relativism and structure-functionalism arose as correctives to imperial arrogance; a way to see “the native” not as savage, but as human within a coherent order. Yet in the 21st century, those same theories can feel dangerous. When all practices are deemed culturally valid, cruelty masqueradesContinue reading “Witches, Populism, Aikido”