Its been a while, I know. I apologize for the long absence to everyone subscribed. When I got back home following my honeymoon school and life just refused to slow down. I realize now that its less a matter of slowing life down and more a matter of making a point to take at least 30 minutes two write something here.

The need finally came this morning, when I saw a commercial for the Save Ellis Island organization. The commercial brought together actors, athletes, role models, making a plea to help them save this hugely important monument to American History. And indeed it is a great monument, to the young and idealistic years of our nation. A lot of great things happened at the hospital at Ellis Island, and i believe that it should not be allowed to fall into ruin. (more…)

It is no wonder that for over two decades (half the duration of its statehood), Alaska has been home to a viable political party seeking independence from the Union. When one spends time here, one begins to notice the many ways that Alaska is ignored by the rest of the nation, unless, of course, oil is the topic of conversation. What politicians call a “bridge to nowhere” we call Ketchican’s bridge to the airport - crucial to the community’s long-term economic viability. They call ANWR a snow-covered void, we call it productive and diverse landscape from which people have subsisted for millennia. And the documentary that Ken Burns calls The War, I call a gross oversight of more than a year of Japanese occupation, of the territory’s role in the Pacific Theater at large, and most importantly, of the forced internment of 881 Alaska Natives by the United States government.

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“There is an essential problem with the thesis… [values] have no place in an academic article.” - anonymous reviewer

Oh for the days when intellectuals were (dare we speak the word) advocates allowed to possess values and put forth arguments for action. Francis Bacon, Georges Hebert, Che Guevara, Salmon Rushdie, Rigoberta Menchu, these were people writing on science (natural, political or otherwise) AND values, ::gasp:: in the same breath. OK so lots of people like them were excommunicated, exiled, maimed, killed, but hey those were different times. These days what’s going to happen -the president at best puts you under a federal gag order, and at worst threatens naming you as an enemy combatant destined for Guantanamo Bay.? Ok maybe times aren’t that different. But I digress. (more…)

You might be surprised to hear that most scholars of social organization think that marriageis evolving itself out of existence, or at least out of its social relevance, replaced by things like cohabitation, civil unions and any number of other imaginable secular and non-secular configurations of households. Now maybe this is just a red herring meant to distract us from how relatively slow the academic community has been to join this important yet contentious social discussion (Think of same-sex marriage as the climate change of the social sciences). But can we really sum up all the emotion and debate over this evolving ‘institution of marriage’ into what is really no more than a disagreement over the definition of terms? Yes and No.

The No: Lots of people want to define marriage, but is there or has there ever really been a universal definition? (more…)