Online papers on consciousness, a collection of over 1000 papers on consciousness and related topics. Via Social Science Weblog

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"The 2001 national survey suggests that just 24 per cent of North American Indians, Inuit and Metis can still converse in their ancestral tongue. That's a drop from 29 per cent measured five years ago. " Read more at Associated Press.

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The Guardian has a book review of Marcus Boon, "The Road of Excess. A History of Writers on Drugs", Harvard 2002. It is not devoted to anthropologists, it's rather about all kinds of writers on drugs, also from science. But as cultural anthropology is undoubtly still a science, where some fieldwork was done under the influence of drugs, (I remember Malinowski, and also Johannes Fabian proved it (Im Tropenfieber. Beck, 2001)), this book could give an interesting additional view on the history of writers on drugs. Yet more, as it seems to stay without opinion if this is a good or a bad thing.

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Raph Koster, an sf writer and game developer, wrote some thoughts about the question, if avatars (game characters in computer games played by a human), have civil rights. He raises some theoretical problems with that, for example: Does the right of property, which the owner of the server has, count higher than a supposed right of existance of an avatar? Or freedom of speech: What if a game is designed to not having this right? Weird, but interesting. Via Boingboing

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A anthropological study from the university of Utah in Salt Lake City now want's to correct the image of the ancient homo erectus. He was not as much a hunter and carnivore as we think today. Hunting, he argues, was much more a social event. Alimentation was in fact much more solved by gathering, and thus by the woman. Read more at New Scientist and Telepolis (german).

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In Berlin a meeting of mesoamericanistics will be held from 31.01. to 2.2.2003. Take a look at their program, it's always interesting to know who is specialised in which topic.

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This article at wired shows, how difficult it is for the search engine Google to fullfill all the different needs for different cultures, governements and companies. Sergey Brin, co-founder of the company, is trying to manoeuvre between the ethical conflicts, his company is exposed by it's importance for the internet.

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An ESRC * Wenner Gren funded Conference linked to the British Museum, Goldsmiths College and University College London ESRC project "Clothing the Pacific: a study of the nature of innovation" on 23rd - 25th June 2003 The conference will focus on the impact of imported cloth and clothing in the Pacific region. It will study the innovations and cultural transformations that have developed in response to the experience of conversion and other colonial intodustions.

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At the University of Cologne is a interesting study (in german, but completely online) from Michael Bollig und Christoph Brumann about how the chances are finding a job in anthropology and what former students actually are working. It's not new (from 1997), and well known, I guess, but anyhow interesting. And don't forget the event about this topic in Munich in two days (we already reported!).

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Iraq has blocked access to the Internet in response to a US-inspired e-mail campaign calling on military and civilian leaders in Iraq to turn away from President Saddam Hussein, Iraqi sources said Sunday. Albawaba and Spiegel (german) are reporting.

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Unknown field researcher. Photograph by Howell Walker. From Paul Bohannan: "We, the Alien. An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology", p. XIV

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