In Harmonium

Being in the main the musings of a Symbolic Anthropologist

Ethics, honour and the dangers of over-ritualization, part 2

Marc | July 11, 2010

In the part 1, I tried to establish certain guidelines for how I am looking at ethics, morality and, to a much lessor degree, group dynamics surrounding these issues.  The overarching model I use for this is taken fairly directly from Wm. Calvin’s work on Darwinian bootstrapping (op.cit.) which I have found to be both [...]

Too much work…

Marc | June 29, 2010

Apologies for not posting much in the past while.  I have been prepping a new course that started last week and, what with my singing commitments, I just haven’t had the time or energy to do much posting.  I am hoping to get a series of new posts out over the next week or so.  [...]

Critical Social Thought

Marc | June 1, 2010

In my last post, I talked about critical thinking and noted that one of the problems I have been seeing recently lies in the communicative nature of thinking / research.  I wanted to expand on this idea a bit, and look at some of the issues surround what, for want of a better term, we [...]

Ottawa Imam gets visa

Marc | April 8, 2010

CBC.ca has just announced that local imam Khaled Abdul-Hamid Syed gets to stay in Canada until the end of his contract with the local, Ottawa mosque is over in 2011.  Now, I have never met him, but I do know a bit about the local mosque, and I am glad that he has been granted [...]

Marc | February 17, 2010

The people in the past used to worship the idols which they used to make with their hands. Nowadays, people worship idols which are more intellectual – like democracy, liberalism, freedom, and so on. So these need to be destroyed as well, and replaced with worshipping and obeying Allah. (source: Anjem Choudary) I rarely write [...]

The value of the Arts to Economics

Marc | January 29, 2010

Margaret Atwood was recently honoured with a Chrystal Award at the World Economic Forum.  The true esteem in which the Arts are held by the WEF, however, was clearly shown in how they handled the acceptance speaches by the various winners: the canceled them. I really can’t let this go by both as an Anthropologist [...]

A new year, a new start

Marc | January 1, 2010

Back on the 12th, I put up a short post about December having been a trying month.  What I didn’t mention then was that my wife Leslie and I were separating.  We have spent the last 18 months trying to see if we could work out our differences but came to the conclusion early last [...]

A trying month

Marc | December 24, 2009

December has, for me at least, been a very trying month, and I just have not had the time or energy to blog despite many interesting happenings.  I am hoping to return to blogging early in the new year once things have settled down somewhat.  I wanted to take the opportunity, however, to wish all [...]

Lynddie England and Free Speech

Marc | August 15, 2009

Yesterday, Friday August 14th, was to have seen a talk given by Lynddie England at the Library of Congress on her new biography Tortured: Lynndie England, Abu Ghraib and the Photographs That Shocked the World. The talk, however, sparked a very strong reaction from Morris Davis, a veteran and employee of the Library of Congress [...]

Small Wars Journal writing competition

Marc | July 17, 2009

The folks at SWJ have been talking about this for a while, and now the preliminary announcement has come out.  This is a great opportunity for people to put together 3,000 – 5,000 words on one or both of the topics.  The prizes are not shabby either: US $3,000 for the winner in each category [...]