First off, power scares and sickens me.  I don't associate myself with people who relish and strive for it. Power-trippers make my blood boil and turn me into a confrontational savage.

I was a victim of departmental politics years ago, and it was an experience I would not wish on the worst of my enemies.  It was the first time I got disillusioned with anthropology as my chosen career.  Anthropology, from studying to publishing, is a matter of numbers like politics, where the…

The best thing here at OAC is that anyone can write a blog post or a comment or a discussion topic about anything as long as there's a discernible anthropology in it.  Other anthropology sites are too academic and formal; thus the posts and the comments seemed restrained, awfully familiar, and vanilla--that's not out of the box.  It makes me wonder if anthropologists in those sites are really sharing their best or if they are being careful not to sound unprofessional or come out unacademic.…

I have been writing sad poems lately, and the sadness is not mine, but from the people I see and know.  I wonder how would an anthropologist write about sadness.  It is easy for a poet to be emotional since logic is not the foundation of poetry.  Can an anthropologist rely on his emotion about someone's feelings or sadness?  Since anthropology is a science, should logic supersede emotion?  I just don't think anyone can write about someone's sadness without empathy or sympathetic feelings.  I…

While writing my last blog post, Losing To Win, I felt my assertions were somewhat vague and lacking in substance. Even though I hate copying and pasting citations and passages in quotations, I always try to find papers or books I can cite to support my views in case push comes to shove.  I hate when someone accuses me of relying on my opinions and irresponsibly passing them around as facts.

So, I…