Cartoon by Jorge Cham from www.phdcomics.com
Australia is a beautifully multicultural country, which means that fruitful and efficient pre-fieldwork training and post-fieldwork analysis can be done in Sydney. Or does it?
Neuroprospecting: Mining cultures for neuro-behavioural data
Bioprospecting: pursuit of plant-derived chemicals for pharmaceuticals: the process of searching for and extracting potential pharmaceutical compounds from plants.
Neuroprospecting: pursuit of culture-specific behaviours for neuroscience: the process of searching and extracting potential neuro-behavioural data from cultures.
Group Sari Bunuan Macan Andaleh play Gendang Tambuah in a procession
Photo: Paul Mason
Continue reading “Neuroprospecting: Mining cultures for neuro-behavioural data”
A bad case of the Humans
Let’s imagine your name is Gaia, you’re a planet and you have a bad case of the humans. For many years you lived in symbiosis with humans, but then they evolved exogenetically, adapted in ways you were unprepared for and started to multiply in extraordinary numbers. Suddenly, the delicate balance of bacteria in your ecological gut got out of whack and now you have a bad case of gas, greenhouse gas! And no Rennie tablet is going to get you out of this one. Continue reading “A bad case of the Humans”
La théorie du mouton
Pour les personnes qui aiment la bierre Belge et un Vendange Tardives autant que moi, voici un petit ‘forward’ que j’ai recu cette apres-midi: Continue reading “La théorie du mouton”
Synaesthetic Poetry
Synaesthesia is a catchy area of research. A few years ago, when I was doing research in the area I was quite dissatisfied with the translations of some frequently cited poems by Baudelaire and Rimbaud. So, being the Francophile that I am, I endeavoured to translate them myself. Of course the feel of the poems is just not the same, but I hope that they will bring readers closer to a better understanding of some of the early meandrings of synaesthetic poetry:
translations of corresondances_by_baudelaire & voyelles_by_rimbaud
The Adventures of Little Sacc
Little Sacc was a happy little dude who liked to eat sugar and liked to make beer,
He was always polite and never rude, he liked to smile and he would never sneer.
But the story of Little Sacc isn’t so happy it’s true, his plight is somewhat tragic let me make that clear.
In all the happiness of making a drink, His real future just went down the sink.
But is his destiny so different from our very own?
Should we really smile on this fella whose death we condone?
Dying in his own excrement is no heroic fate,
But who are we to judge? Let me explain, just wait;
Neuroanthropology 
