three wise monkeys

Riots over rising grain prices are ripping through the developing world and the United Nations warns there’s worse to come. Was Malthus right? Are we getting too numerous to feed ourselves?

Apr 12, 2008 04:30 AM
Lynda Hurst
Feature Writer

The warning bells are ringing, furiously.

This week, food riots paralyzed Haiti, with angry marchers outside the president’s palace shouting “We are hungry!” Five people were killed in the chaos.

In Egypt, a 15-year-old boy was shot and killed this week in two days of violence over food shortages. Last month, a two-week protest at government-subsidized bakeries ended with the deaths of 10 Egyptians in clashes with police.
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New research into inter-ethnic unions suggests we’re reverting to a less romantic idea of marriage

Mar 15, 2008 04:30 AM
Nicholas Keung
Immigration/Diversity Reporter

I grew up in a traditional Chinese household, where I was taught my future life partner must have an equal, if not better, upbringing than mine. That mentality is embedded in the ancient saying, “A bamboo door should match a bamboo door; a wood door should match a wood door.” Essentially, what it means is you have to marry someone in the same social class if you want the relationship to last.

The Chinese are not alone in this worldview. Many Indians are still bound by caste and the arranged unions that flow from it. And acute class-consciousness is a persistent feature of British identity.
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Why is a man who has sex with a 12 year old girl branded a paedophile, but a woman who does the same is not?

*****
Sex with boy, 12, woman jailed 15 months

Mar 29, 2007 06:01 PM
Canadian Press

QUEBEC – A woman collapsed and burst into tears today after being sentenced to 15 months in jail for having sex with a 12-year-old boy.
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If you haven’t read Donovan Webster’s book, or watched the associated documentary, Aftermath: Remnants of War, this story is a timely reminder that war stays with us a very long time indeed.

Highly recommending reading and viewing.

Italian woman finds live grenade in potato bag

Grenade was harvested in French field, officials explain
Feb 28, 2007 12:03 PM
Reuters

NAPLES, Italy – A 74-year-old Italian grandmother who bought a sack of potatoes at the her local market found a live grenade among the spuds.

“I found a bomb in the potatoes,” Olga Mauriello said in a telephone interview with Reuters.
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originally posted on Anthropology.net

The Queen has the Power, but the Ants See the Sun, or Some Such Parable

Revisiting the anthropology of the office motif, I was thinking the other day about what it means to define a job as a “support position”. An incident comes to mind when I was having a conversation with a friend, who happens to be a professor, and I told her that I am a secretary as well as a student. She often responds straight off the hip, with pep, and she said incredulously: “Why are you a secretary?! How can you take classes?” “Well, it pays the bills, and the benefits are good,” I said.
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