For anthropologists and ethnographers of yore, grandmothers were crones, an impediment to "real" research.(...) But [now] for a growing number of evolutionary biologists and cultural anthropologists, grandmothers represent a key to understanding human prehistory, and the particulars of why we are as we are. This article in the New York Times also reports about some anthropological research about grandmothers in rural Gambia. If you don't have a free login for the NYT, use this one: User:"ethno" Password:"log123")

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Wired did another interview with the cyberspace-thinker Howard Rheingold about his new book "smart mobs". In eight chapters, Rheingold chronicles how "smart mobs," defined as "people who are able to act in concert even if they don't know each other," are reshaping the way societies organize and interact. My comment: He always cooks the things too hot. And the praise of the mobile internet he does: I don't believe this hype. Nobody is watching TV although we have mobile TV-devices. We're just not a mobile society - so why should the internet get us to be more mobile? Would be something different, if you give mobile internet devices to nomads.

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A half century of artificial-sight research has succeeded. And now this blind man can see. Wired with an impressive, well written (but long!) story about an american lab, that is working with cameras that bring vision directly by cables into the brain of a blind.

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Yes, and now to something completely different. A gay spiderman. For example. Because this is the section for posting all things that don't belong to the main page of Ethno::log. And spiderman doesn't -- although he is on a poster which resides in zephyrin's office, but this is definitly not enough anthropological relation. It's the place for ethnologic poo, for jokes, for asking where the library of the institute is and for telling who is going out with whom. Things like that. If you post something in here, just select the topic "something different" and as status "online in topic". (BTW: It's matching our colors again ... )

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