Sam Han | Eportfolio

via video.nytimes.com Fun little bit by the Times on the politics of accents, elites and social class. Major blindspot is the racialized accents in New York, not just the “hood” accent but also West Indian and other accents that become a source of anxiety for those who wish to disembed from their neighborhoods. Posted via […]

via opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com I guess the Times is running this online only series under its Opinionator banner called “Townies” which consists of folks who live in New York writing about New York things. (Thus providing more fodder for right-wing political commentators to source when bashing liberal elites…maybe? I shudder to think such a thing.) But, my […]

via nytimes.com Major. Posted via email from sam han’s posterous

A die-hard trend of cyber bullying has a university professor campaigning against hate comments on the internet. In recent years, well-known singers and actors have committed suicide out of depression, probably aggravated by hostile comments from anonymous netizens. Their suicides alerted the nation to the need to stand up to the anonymous cyber attacks. South […]

Kelly is strangely keen to tie his theory of technological development to biological evolution. I am not sure why; perhaps he thinks his progressive view of technology is more credible if it’s seen as an extension of the established scientific vision of evolution. But his take on biological evolution is one that, while beloved of […]

via nytimes.com Taoism and Confucianism really begs the question of what “religion” is. What counts under its definitional umbrella? I’m not sure if this article does enough to scrutinize that. Posted via email from sam han’s posterous

The memorial, the first public service at the site for as long as anyone can remember, was organized by the Association of Jewish Soldiers, a small but growing group in the German military whose existence testifies to the feeling by at least some Jews that it is possible for them to be patriots again in […]

via nytimes.com Oh capitalism, you are so good at uprooting extant social-structural relations. China on the verge of a religious revival? This will be something to watch… Posted via email from sam han’s posterous

About this project Earlier this summer Jonas gained unprecented access to a reclusive and largely hidden immigrant community in Italy. He spent one month living with undocumented migrant workers in makeshift camps in the southern Italian town of Rosarno and in the ghettos of nearby Foggia where he met the characters that will populate this […]

via nybooks.com I thought I was going to hate it and then lose my admiration for Smith as a writer. But that didn’t happen. Though she draws from Jaron Lanier, who she mistakenly calls as an early innovator of the Internet (he’s really an innovator of virtual reality), she doesn’t really import his reactionary rhetoric […]