The 1st Global Conference Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberpunk and Science Fiction will take place from 11 to 13 August 2003, in Prague, Czech Republic. Marking the launch of a new annual conference, research and publication series, this inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary conference aims to explore what it is to be human and the nature of human community in cyberculture, cyberspace and science fiction. In particular, the project will explore the possibilities offered by these contexts for creative thinking about persons and the challenges posed to the nature and future of national, international, and global communities. Further imformation at Visions of Humanity in Cyberculture, Cyberspace and Science Fiction

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The BBC have an interesting article on XBox Live, regarding the voice communication used in the online games. Some interesting insight into the culture, and politics establishing between the international players. Via Slashdot

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Multinational pharma companies are patenting the traditional medecine of indigineous people. Now activists have created a prior-art website to foil these acts of "bio-piracy." Read more at BBC.co.uk. Via BoingBoing

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Helsingin Sanomat has an article about a doctoral thesis by Minna Saarelma-Maunumaa. Many Namibians of the Ovambo tribe have Finnish names. That can be traced to missionaries who first arrived arrived in the region in 1870. "I wanted to study what happens when a traditional African name system and the European, Christian name culture are combined. The first thought was that the name practices will become more European, but it turned out that it was not so simple", Saarelma-Maunumaa explains.

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The colleagues from the University Trier put a link to the ethno::log from their site. Many thanks for that! Interesting: They filed us under the section "Polpularizing Anthropology". It make me think about this site, it's a totally new view. On one hand, this is really "popular" anthropology, as we collect information in a fairly high amount from popular sources. On the other hand, the intention was not to write for the popular masses. But if I look at our visitors, we have a lot non-scientists as readers. So, in fact, we maybe are popularizing anthropology, which isn't something bad. But mainly we don't carry information from the inside of anthropology to the masses. This is sad, but it's due to anthropology is not happening in the internet. So, aren't we popularizing anthropology? Anyway, main score of this page is to collect all interesting things from anthropology in the internet. Scientific or not, this doesn't care. It's always good to know what's going on, and the news sources of the internet can deliver a lot of actual information about the regions which are of high interest for anthropology.

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A paper in german, from the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fuer Sozialforschung: Internet im Auge der Ethnographin: "This paper presents a general survey of the different cultures of hackers, cyberpunks, unix freaks, real programmers and other proud, knowledgeable and daring users who inhabit this artificial landscape made up of cables, satellite connections, net adaptors, modems and programmes." Via Uni Trier

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Die Bonner Zeitschrift für Erwachsenenbildung has a Interview (in german) with Mike Sandbothe, a philosopher at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena. They are talking about the apparent difference between "virtual" and "real. Very interesting. He says, that in our reality has always been the "virtual", it's nothing new, and connects this assertion to traditional aristotelic ideas. Via plastic thinking

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Die Zeit reports about the little state island of São Tomé. The ocean around is rich of recently discovered mineral oil, and international companies are now very interested in the up to date poor country. Can the country handle the new richness better than Nigeria or Angola?

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Do you remember your last trip to a foreign country? Were you travelling on your own? Or did hundreds of groups follow the same path? What kind of experiences did you have? We are curious and wonder, if students of cultural anthropology found other ways of being a tourist. In order to get to know the anthropological tourist, we have worked out some questions (sorry, only in German). Fragebogen AK Ethnologie Tourismus (application/msword, 38 KB)

It will only take a couple of minutes of your time to fill out the questionnaire and send it back to: AKEthnologie-Tourismus@gmx.net (save as WORD document and send as attachement) – so just try it! It’s anonymous and helps some curious students to find answers… The results will be published in one of the forthcoming editions of the student journal “Ethnologik” of our Institute. Thank you for your support !

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Agenda 21, sustainability, ecotourism, local participation – you’ve already heard about this, haven’t you? All these new words sound great – but what do they mean? Can it be that tourism (again) is regarded as the solution to many so-called “third world problems”? What is behind all those concepts and theories? How can developmental tourism programs work at all? Do you want to know more about it? Well, we do! And we would like to invite anyone interested as we are to join our regular working group. Initiated by students in spring 2002, the working group “Anthropology & Tourism” is engaged in the phenomenon of tourism. We discuss tourism structures from an anthropological perspective and would like to know, what kind of theoretical approach can help analysing tourism development and its social impact.

This semester we focus on tourism and developmental projects: with which ideas do they work, what are the reactions and problems? Which roles do locals, tourism industry and development aid workers play? Each seminar participant will present one project in one region. The working group is open for discussions, ideas and questions. The dates are not fixed yet – for more information send an email to AKEthnologie-Tourismus@gmx.net.

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A new study from swiss and us-american scientist shows, that the end of the middle american maya population probably was at a high rate caused by three draughts in the years 810, 860 and 910 a.D. The Spiegel reports in german, and Science for subscribers.

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"Michael Jackson has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on blood-soaked voodoo rituals in an attempt to create money "out of thin air" and place curses on his perceived enemies, who include David Geffen and Steven Spielberg, according to the latest edition of Vanity Fair. Just when it seemed the stories about Mr Jackson could not be any weirder, the glossy celebrity magazine has unveiled lurid tales involving the ritual slaughter of dozens of cows, sheep and chickens, a witch doctor from Mali and a mysterious Egyptian woman claiming links to the ruling élite of Saudi Arabia", writes The Independent.

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