GOT PYRAMIDS?

Pyramid of the Moon.

When El Cabrero was a little kid, I used to have a recurring dream (or one that I dreamed was recurring, anyway) about sitting among old stone ruins. Every time I get around some, even little ones, I kind of bliss out.

Visiting Teotihuacan was right up my alley.



This civilization thrived from a century or two before the common era and peaked around 350-650. At one time, its population was higher than the city of Rome.


Pyramid of the Sun.

It began to quickly decline in the 7th and 8th centuries for reasons that are still debated, including internal unrest (it takes a ruthless class system to make people build pyramids), invasion, climate change, famine, disease, etc.


Lesser pyramids.

Good though!

GOT FOOD? Here's another take on the world food crisis by Frances Moore Lappe.

MEASURING POVERTY. The latest snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute suggests the official federal poverty measure is obsolete and underestimates the real poverty level.

MILITARY FORCE is a blunt instrument for solving the world's problems or protecting national security, according to this item from the Center for American Progress.

CHICKEN OR EGG? A recent study suggests human thought may not follow the same flow as many human languages. Many languages follow the subject/verb/object sequence but when subjects who spoke different languages were given the task of conveying a message with hand signs, most followed the subject/object/verb pattern. Wasn't that the way Yoda talked? Interesting that is...

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

ONE BLUE HOUSE

If these walls could talk. Pictures of the home of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

El Cabrero is back in WV after 10 days in Mexico, split between Mexico City and Oaxaca. There were plenty of things to see and plenty of native speakers for me to torment with my horrible Spanish. Thanks to good farm-sitters, no mass animal graves were required on our return, which was a plus.



I enjoy traveling but always have this haunting fear that I'll miss something interesting while I'm gone. The great Greek sage Heraclitus said that you can't step in the same river twice, but given the state of some of our rivers, that might not be an altogether bad thing.



There were several places I wanted to see, one of which was the Casa Azul, home of revolutionary artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and currently a museum in the Mexico City neighborhood of Coyacan.



There I learned that every home should have its own pyramid. I've got it on my to-do list.

Now, where were we...

MISTAKES WERE MADE. A new Army report finds major faults with the early stages of the occupation of Iraq.

RETIREMENT. More older workers are working longer as economic conditions decline, according to this Economic Policy Institute snapshot.

CAN WE TRUST OUR BRAINS? Maybe not so much...

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS. Supporters of clean elections will celebrate the state legislature's recent passage of a bill that requires financial disclosure for political ads. A previously passed law was struck down in a court decision.

A LITTLE FORGOTTEN HISTORY was the subject of an op-ed of mine in yesterday's Gazette-Mail.

URGENT EARLY TETRAPOD UPDATE. A new fossil from Latvia shows the link between fish and land animals.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

SYMBOLICALLY SPEAKING

Caption: Fuzzy roosters discuss the social construction of reality.

Every once in a while, El Cabrero teaches an off-campus evening sociology class for my alma mater. I have several reasons for doing this, not least of which is the privilege of getting a university library card so I can find obscure books with which to regale you, Gentle Reader.

As is usually discussed in most any such class, there are several different ways of approaching the study of society. It's common practice although somewhat problematic to break down theoretical approaches into three main orientations: functionalist, conflict, and symbolic interactionist.

Functionalist approaches can run from the ridiculous to the sublime but generally focus on how various activities or institutions affect the overall social structure. One of the best functionalist theorists was the late great Robert Merton, who was featured here a while back.

Conflict theory is pretty much what it sounds like. It tends to focus on inequalities of power, wealth and privilege between groups and how these are fought over or rationalized or some combination thereof.

The branch that I find to be increasingly interesting in my old age is the symbolic interactionist approach, which studies the way people create and interpret meanings through communication. Symbols can include anything from language to clothing to sacred images. For some reason, this approach developed primarily in the United States.

More on this tomorrow.

POVERTY and the political will to do something about it is the subject of this Paul Krugman column.

PLAY ON. the NY Times Magazine has a huge article about it which takes it pretty seriously.

CHRONICLES OF PHILANTHROPY. Here's an op-ed by yours truly on recent "charitable" efforts to plug Ayn Rand's ideology.

AFTER NAFTA. Thousands of Mexicans are organizing against the aftershocks of the North American Free Trade Agreement. As Jim Hightower pointed out recently, people who get angry over immigration to this country might want to consider that one reason for it is that many Mexicans have lost jobs or seen living standards fall since its passage in 1994. According to Hightower, 19 million more Mexicans live in poverty today than when NAFTA was passed.

FULL COURT PRESS. The WV Supreme Court story just keeps getting better and better. Justice Larry Starcher, who has been publicly critical of Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, announced Friday that he would recuse himself from a case involving Massey. If you recall, Justice Spike Maynard recused himself after pictures surfaced of Blankenship and him vacationing in Monaco after the court agreed to hear the case. Starcher has urged Justice Brent Benjamin to recuse himself as well. A political unknown, Benjamin was elected to the court in 2004 with the help of millions of Blankenship's money. No wonder WV's court debacle was the inspiration for John Grisham's latest novel.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED