culture - Robert Maguire on Diigo

10 Dec 09

23 Nov 09

Western Men Are Doomed - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com

David Brooks: Asians place emphasis on context while Westerners place more emphasis on individuals. This seems like a gross generalization but it is robustly supported by hundreds and hundreds of studies. Richard Nisbett’s book, “The Geography of Thought” summarizes some of the evidence.

If you show Americans a fish tank, they’ll talk about the biggest fish in the tank. If you show Asians a tank they will make, on average, 60 percent more references to the context and the features of the scene. Western parents tend to emphasize nouns and categories when teaching their kids, Korean parents tend to emphasize verbs and relationships. If you show Americans a picture of a chicken, a cow and grass, they will lump the chicken and the cow, because they are both animals. Asians are more likely to lump the cow and the grass because cows eat grass. They have a relationship.

The mode of thought more common in Asia is better suited to the complex networks that make up the modern world. The contextual, associational style is simply more valid. The linear style we’ve inherited from the Greeks is less adaptive toward the modern age. I think the West may be doomed.
David Brooks: I haven’t even mentioned gender differences yet. I think the same things I’ve said about Asians can be said about women as compared to men.

I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to read this stuff as part of your book research, but my understanding is that the cognitive processing of male and female brains is mostly the same except for in one area: social cognition. Women, on average, pick up more social signals.
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- Gail Collins: Still skeptical. Given the long span of time in which women were said to be particularly well-suited for everything from typing (tiny fingers) to domesticity (“She has a head almost too small for intellect and just big enough for love.”) I’m becoming increasingly leery of giving too much credence to theories about how any group is particularly well adapted to anything.
- Gail Collins: Ah, what I hear is the sound of a group that was on top for so long and then goes into a funk at the first sign of really serious competition. As a nation, we’re in trauma over the very idea that anybody else might be the economic superpower. As a gender, guys who were perfectly fine with the idea of women in business or in Congress are totally unnerved with the thought that their gender someday actually might not be running the show.

18 Nov 09

All presidents bow to foreign leaders | FP Passport

blog.foreignpolicy.com/..._conventions_is_not_submission - Preview

obama nixon mao china japana saudiarabia bush eisenhower culture bow kiss diplomacy

The same thing happened when former President Bush nearly locked lips with
Saudi royalty. When Richard Nixon was in China he gave a
toast to Chairman Mao that included an excerpt of one of Mao's poems.
ThinkProgress points out
similar occurrences and links to some photos of President Eisenhower bowing to just
about anyone he can find, and I doubt there would have been much
speculation about Ike's submissiveness.
1 more annotations...
- Though next time it might be nice if Obama could at least get the gesture right.

04 Nov 09

One Reason You Shouldn't Go to Afghanistan With a Beard | Foreign Policy

www.foreignpolicy.com/...go_to_afghanistan_with_a_beard - Preview

US politics waronterror afghanistan reference mcchrystal beards culture special forces

In
Kandahar province's Zhari district, elders refer to the "bearded
Americans," who they say behave very badly, and the "shaven
Americans," who aren't so bad. Likewise, in Uruzgan province, locals have
complained about "bearded Americans" using foul language and
manhandling respected community elders and government officials.
Moreover, special operations
soldiers tend not to be Rambo-types; they are often unassuming, if quietly
confident, men, chosen as much for their mental as their physical aptitude.
4 more annotations...
- But
  (often bearded) special operations forces are responsible for the most
  dangerous and controversial missions. Special operations forces, not regular
  troops, for instance, capture and kill key al Qaeda and Taliban figures. Apart
  from the civilian casualties these operations sometimes cause, they also bring
  these soldiers into close contact with Afghan society at places and times where
  it is most vulnerable and sensitive. Special operations forces, for example,
  perform late-night raids of Afghan homes, a deeply humiliating and dishonorable
  event in the local culture -- in particular, the searching of women's quarters.
- Further,
  these missions sometimes end in arbitrary arrests and indefinite detentions at
  Bagram Airfield, where the moral, legal, and political conundrums thrown up by
  the prison there perhaps equal those of Guantánamo Bay, but with much less public
  attention.
- By some accounts, McChrystal has adopted the Army's broader
  counterinsurgency mission with all the zeal of a convert.
- the ISAF commander
  emphasized yet again that Afghans need protecting: from the Taliban and other
  insurgents who kill, maim, exploit, and extort, as well as from the warlords
  whose predatory instincts have not been dulled by the fact that some are today
  ministers in the national government.

Matthew Yglesias » Pashto Language Ability

yglesias.thinkprogress.org/...pashto-language-ability.php - Preview

politics reference statistics statedept waronterror linguists pashto afghanistan culture US

But according to an official at the State Department’s Bureau of Human Resources, the United States has turned out a total of only 18 Foreign Service officers who can speak Pashto, and only two of them are now serving in Afghanistan – both apparently in Kabul.
The Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California trains roughly 30 to 40 military personnel in Pashto each year, according to media relations officer Brian Lamar, most of whom are enlisted men in military intelligence.

02 Nov 09

David Ignatius - David Ignatius on mixing hard and soft tactics in Afghanistan - washingtonpost.com

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2009103002862.html - Preview

US politics afghanistan war military waronterror culture strategy

Hikmatullah, a tall Pashtun farmer dressed in turban and white cloak, looks slightly bewildered as a U.S. Army officer offers him tea and bread and questions him about what he wants from life.
Can these pleasant, tea-drinking American soldiers really be the same people who are assaulting Taliban fighters in this region of eastern Afghanistan?
11 more annotations...
- Even as U.S. forces show a gentler side with their new stress on people-friendly counterinsurgency, they continue to conduct devastating attacks on the enemy.
- this reality is not well understood back in America.
- counterterrorism approach
- counterinsurgency strategy
- The fact is that U.S. forces are doing both missions every day and night -- and indeed are becoming increasingly effective at each one.
- But there's a danger: A strategy that combines stroking your friends and pounding your enemies runs the risk of sending mixed messages.
- the soft approach -- a "population-centric" strategy
- (The problem, alas, is that the Kabul government is distant and corrupt.)
- Assisting him will be the first wave of the "civilian surge" promised by President Obama -- representatives of the State and Agriculture departments and the U.S. Agency for International Development, reporting to a regional coordinator for "stabilization operations." The plan is for nearly 400 U.S. civilians to be working on aid projects across Afghanistan by year-end -- all, no doubt, drinking the requisite three cups of tea.
- The mission, basically, is to make it very dangerous to be a Taliban operative -- and thereby shift the balance of intimidation in this war. The SOF warriors are also targeting the networks that produce the roadside bombs killing coalition troops.
- "It's like all the instruments in an orchestra," says a U.S. military commander of the different parts of the battle plan. "You have to know how to play them together."

01 Nov 09

Federal Eye - Eye Opener: The Halloween edition

voices.washingtonpost.com/...pener_the_halloween_editi.html - Preview

US politics history iran iranian revolution embassy halloween culture exchange perspective

• Tehran, 1979: As Kamen wrote in 2005, "On Nov. 4, 1979, just a few days after Halloween, militant Islamic students took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Various parts of the embassy were still decorated with ghosts and goblins and other scary stuff. So when the hostages were taken to a room with decorations, the Iranians asked what this was all about. One hostage explained, apparently closing the culture gap. "You do this to your children?" a confused militant asked.

29 Oct 09

Culture (Not Just Genes) Drives Evolution : Discovery News

dsc.discovery.com/...culture-genes-evolution.html - Preview

genetics genes culture science statistics reference china asia europe collectivism individualism

Culture, not just genes, can drive evolutionary outcomes, according to a study released Wednesday that compares individualist and group-oriented societies across the globe.
most people in countries widely described as collectivist have a specific mutation within a gene regulating the transport of serotonin, a neurochemical known to profoundly affect mood.
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- In China and other east Asian nations, for example, up to 80 percent of the population carry this so-called "short" allele, or variant, of a stretch of DNA known as 5-HTTLPR.
- Earlier research has shown the S allele to be strongly linked with a range of negative emotions, including anxiety and depression.
  
  Critically, it is also associated with the impulse to stay out of harm's way.
- By contrast, in countries of European origin that prize self-expression and the pursuit of individual over group goals, the long or "L" allele dominates, with only 40 percent of people carrying the "S" variant.
- Ancient cultures in Asia, Africa and Latin America highly exposed to deadly pathogens, they conjecture, may have tended toward collectivist norms in order to better combat disease.

23 Oct 09

On Drones | Center for a New American Security

www.cnas.org/...drones.html - Preview

drones afghanistan war culture military exum politics waronterror

I really think drone strike can be part of an effective, integrated CT and COIN strategy, but they cannot substitute for such a strategy, and I worry that the CIA is carrying out their own campaign in part because a) it's been getting kicked around so much since 9/11 that it is now overly focused on killing high-level al-Qaeda targets rather than gathering intelligence and that b) it's trying to justify and defend its budget through what it can claim is a successful program.
My worries have always centered around how the attacks are perceived on the ground, so it has been frustrating to read careless readers of our argument mistakenly assume we agree with open-source reporting out of Pakistan. To the contrary. I focus on Pakistani press reports because, in a war of perceptions, I am less concerned with how many civilians we are actually killing and more concerned with how many civilians the neutral population thinks we are killing.
2 more annotations...
- We are all slaves to culture, and I worry that a combination of a background in the light infantry, an upbringing in East Tennessee, and a classical education leaves me repulsed by the very idea of remote-controlled war. Mayer mangled another quote of mine (again, insignificantly), when I said, “As a classics major, I have a classical sense of what it means to be a warrior.” As I recall, I asked that more as a question and included a "maybe" somewhere in there. But maybe I do in fact have a cultural predisposition against drones. I know that undermines my other arguments somewhat, but I feel I should be honest with the readership about my own potential biases here.
- our enemy like the humans in the Terminator movies, hiding below ground for fear of our technology.
  
  "Yeah," Pete wisely asks, "but weren't the humans the heroes of those movies?"

24 Aug 09

World Values Survey

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values statistics reference research politics culture religion tools sociology

13 Aug 09

'American Chinatown' Through Residents' Eyes : NPR

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culture US chinatown chinese china race society

30 Jul 09

YouTube - (1/5) Risky Business (A Financial History Of The World)

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niall ferguson history money economy economics society culture risk insurance

25 Jun 09

Korean-American Police Officer Sidesteps Tradition : NPR

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race identity racism korea korean americans US politics culture society

07 Jun 09

Hello Kitty Wedding Theme in Hong Kong • VideoSift: Online Video *Quality Control

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hellokitty marriage wedding culture popculture asia

Larger Populations Triggered Stone Age Learning : NPR

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humans culture history pre-history evolution intelligence community society learning population

04 Jun 09

Wild Girl Goes Urban Foraging in Portland : TreeHugger

www.treehugger.com/...urban-foraging-in-portland.php - Preview

urban foraging food cities agriculture culture botany urban foraging

18 May 09

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/...the-north-repopulates-ctd.html - Preview

fundamentalism islam muslims politics europe immigration society religion culture

31 Mar 09

Telectroscope Allows View Across the Atlantic • VideoSift: Online Video *Quality Control

www.videosift.com/...llows-View-Across-the-Atlantic - Preview

art culture communication interaction

18 Mar 09

PolitiFact | Executives in Japan do not regularly commit suicide

www.politifact.com/...o-not-regularly-commit-suicide - Preview

japan business businessmen culture US politics finanfialcrisis aig

15 Mar 09

The coming evangelical collapse | csmonitor.com

www.csmonitor.com/...p09s01-coop.html - Preview

religion evangelicism us christianity politics culture culture wars evangelicals collapse society

Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism.
Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider
us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.
9 more annotations...
- Being
  against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals
  can't articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.
- We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the
  secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media
  has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our
  young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology,
  or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant
  and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.
- There are three kinds of evangelical churches today: consumer-driven megachurches, dying churches, and new churches whose
  future is fragile.
- Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and
  talk to itself.
- Even in areas where Evangelicals imagine themselves strong (like the Bible Belt), we will find a great inability to pass
  on to our children a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith
- Aggressively evangelistic fundamentalist churches will begin to disappear.
- Some Evangelicals will work to create their own countercultures, rather
  than try to change the culture at large. Some will continue to see conservatism and Christianity through one lens and will
  engage the culture war much as before – a status quo the media will be all too happy to perpetuate. A significant number,
  however, may give up political engagement for a discipleship of deeper impact.
- Will it shake lose the prosperity Gospel from its parasitical place on the evangelical body of Christ? Evidence from similar
  periods is not encouraging. American Christians seldom seem to be able to separate their theology from an overall idea of
  personal affluence and success.
- Michael Spencer is a writer and communicator living and working in a Christian community in Kentucky. He describes himself
  as "a postevangelical reformation Christian in search of a Jesus-shaped spirituality." This essay is adapted from a series
  on his blog, InternetMonk.com
  .

Robert Maguire's Library tagged culture → View Popular

Zwarte Piet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Western Men Are Doomed - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com

All presidents bow to foreign leaders | FP Passport

One Reason You Shouldn't Go to Afghanistan With a Beard | Foreign Policy

Matthew Yglesias » Pashto Language Ability

David Ignatius - David Ignatius on mixing hard and soft tactics in Afghanistan - washingtonpost.com

Federal Eye - Eye Opener: The Halloween edition

Culture (Not Just Genes) Drives Evolution : Discovery News

On Drones | Center for a New American Security

World Values Survey

'American Chinatown' Through Residents' Eyes : NPR

YouTube - (1/5) Risky Business (A Financial History Of The World)

Korean-American Police Officer Sidesteps Tradition : NPR

Hello Kitty Wedding Theme in Hong Kong • VideoSift: Online Video *Quality Control

Larger Populations Triggered Stone Age Learning : NPR

Wild Girl Goes Urban Foraging in Portland : TreeHugger

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Telectroscope Allows View Across the Atlantic • VideoSift: Online Video *Quality Control

PolitiFact | Executives in Japan do not regularly commit suicide

The coming evangelical collapse | csmonitor.com

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