Category Archives: Blogs

Grant McCracken, my favorite contemporary ethnographer-provocateur, writes:

We are adding a new name to our blog roll. Please welcome Ruby Kariela. Ruby is 10 and I believe this makes her the youngest ethnographer working today. I like to think of her as “reporting from childhood” but she will have her own way of describing what she does. Please visit her blog at here.

Visiting the blog, you might see an extraordinarily precocious ten-year-old. Or not. While I just might buy most of it, I cannot believe that a ten-year-old would think to use one of my favorite bizzaro cultural incidents from 1986 as the title for a blog post. I suppose it is vaguely possible she heard the 2008 REM song, but I doubt it.

I, for one, salute our new South Florida blog overlords.

Gary Farber writes, Health Care Reform Won't Save Me. In a saga that I bet will end up something like the famous Mathews case (where the local guys keep rejecting the disability application and it takes multiple appeals to get it reinstated), Gary has had his social security disability claim rejected.

The consequences are very serious, and he may be evicted.

Brad DeLong has renamed his blog to J. Bradford DeLong's Grasping Reality with a Prehensile Tail. (It used to be “J. Bradford DeLong's Grasping Reality with Both Hands.”) I am not making this up. I have known Brad since grade school and I can testify that if he has a prehensile tail, it is either a recent growth or he hid it very well.

Incidentally, the page I linked to above includes the following line, which I quote out of context since it is funnier that way:

But when I look at Senators Conrad and Gregg, I don't recognize fellow members of my species.

Perhaps they lack a tail?