tech ronin writes the truth: "All of a sudden there's this revolutionary possibility that we can get a ten-fold increase in communication around all this, and we turn it down for small-minded reasons? OK, maybe everyone isn't meant to be a blogger but academics seem like naturals. [...] I suspect that academia might become borderline irrelevant or even somewhat obsolete if its academicians stay cloistered away with their academic journals. Don't get me wrong, this is a very good topic and worth further exploration of all sides of the issue. I'm just coming down hard on the side of academic blogging. We need you." See additionally "Personal knowledge publishing and its uses in research" by Sébastian Paquet in English or French. My usual two cents: Furthermore weblogs are an invaluable opportunity for social/cultural anthropologists who do participant observation among online communities. By means of a weblog the fieldnotes, the field-diary, or parts of it, can immediately made accessible to the members of the observed community. Reactions and comments can be gathered while the participant observation is still under way, and afterwards of course, too. A demand which resulted from the discourse on fieldwork, but more often than not could not be realized. via many2many

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Finally I made it to start to read Lawrence Lessig's new book Free Culture. The only thing I can say is: GO AND GET IT!. Additionally have a look at the comments and insights on it, which Bryan Alexander provides at Infocult (Scroll down and/or search -- updates on the matter come regularly).

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"This is really a very interesting adoption of culture, isn't it?" -- that was Kerleone's comment on the Nigeria Connection (See our older stories.) back in 2002. The advance fee fraud scheme (that has been in existence through regular postal mail for more than 20 years) via e-mail now is internationally known as 419 Scam -- so named after Nr. 419 of Chapter 38 of the Nigerian Criminal Code Act which applies to it. As we reported, the problems with those frauds from Nigeria, which exist since about 1989, grew bigger, the conmen scored big wins and serious incidents have taken place: People who have been lured to Nigeria have been abducted or even murdered. Police forces all over the world go for lengths to fight the scammers: "In one month alone, in the summer of 1995, [U.S. Secret Service] agents extricated seven U.S. victims from Nigeria, though one American was murdered [...]" Apart from this dramatic 'real-life' efforts authorities and others have public education material about 419 online. Nevertheless, maybe due to the nature of the internet or humanity itself, the scamming goes on. P.T. Barnum once complained: "You can't cheat an honest man." -- at other times this saying is attributed to the king of con-men, Joseph R. "The Yellow Kid" Weil. By that logic, if a greedy person is a good target, a professional con-man makes the best "mark", or "mugu", to use the Nigerian scammers' own term, of all. Consequently this 'adoption of culture' has been adopted itself, the scammers have new enemies who entangle them into a complex play of tricksterish reality-satire, deception, and counter-deception, the scambaiters: "Baiting a scammer involves replying to the emails with the knowledge it is all a scam. Often the scammer will think you are a real victim and try their best to extract money." There are different reasons for scambaiting, some want to create amusing stories, others want to educate the public, and some even want to reverse the scam and receive a few token dollars. The hilarious results can be viewed online. Initially via c't 8/2004

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The Royal Museum for Central Africa (Tervuren, Belgium) is the editor of a series of scientific publications (Annals and other collections), publicity material, exhibition catalogues and special editions. Since its' foundation in 1897, the Museum has published nearly 2500 books in different subjects and collections. Check out at least their Human Sciences Publications.

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