Culture in the Blender

While getting my iTunes library in order and exploring some new music suggested by a friend, I started looking up old Europop on YouTube. Following a trail of “Oh, it’s this song!”, I found Dr. Alban’s Look Who’s Talking. I do not feel that that listening to that song says anything about the race of […]

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Latoya Peterson at Racialicious has written a post about American hip-hop politics. The post and the comments revolve around weighing the poor quality of music on American radio channels in general (there are few non-commercial channels that focus on bringing quality or novelty to American radio, meaning that radio channels mostly cater to mass markets […]

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When I was a college freshman (first-year university student in the US), I wrote a paper arguing that CNN delivers objective news, because their market niche is just that. The professor gave us an assignment to write about bias in the media, or something like that. The only thesis I could come up with was […]

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A few days back, I found out in my cultural psychology class that it is true that those expats who believe in essentialism (with respect to either culture or race) have more problems integrating. A study was done at Bei Da of foreigners in Beijing (by sending out researchers to talk to foreigners at Sanlitun, […]

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All day today, I’ve been listening to a song by S. H. E. (Taiwanese band) called Ni kuai le wo shui yi.

It has some clear r&b influences in both singing and the music, and the play with the words is fun. (On a more third culture analysis level, I think the American influences are easy […]

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A while back, my boyfriend’s (sambo/avomies) sister told him, after him mentioning that the dollar was falling, that the dollar falling was some kind of lie or conspiracy or misrepresentation. I’m not sure how the wording was put, I wasn’t there. But she clearly hadn’t heard of it in the probably 2+ years that it’s […]

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You know you’re not American when the first thing that pops into your head as a defense when people accuse you of being classist, even as a joke, is to confess your bourgeoise background (because you know you’re not talking your way out of that one) and proclaim the insignificance of your suffering compared to […]

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America and the consequence of her foreign policy is an insitution of things to talk about, even when something else is the main point.
Ultra Bra - Kahdeksanvuotiaana
Kahdeksanvuotiaana tiesin
että maailma tuhoutuu
kaksintaistelussa suurvaltojen
kahdeksanvuotiaana tiesin
että ihminen murskautuu
silmänräpäyksessä
historiaan
Kävikin niin, että sodat ovat
monimutkaisia kansallisia konflikteja
joissa ammutaan
ja joissa kuolee
aina vähän ihmisiä kerrallaan
joissa kuolee
aina vähän ihmisiä kerrallaan
Kahdeksanvuotiaana tiesin
että maailma tuhoutuu
kaksintaistelussa suurvaltojen
kahdeksanvuotiaana etsin
kartalta […]

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logodaedaly pointed out to me what the culture wars are, and in my happiness over a new-found word I googled for it. I found something interesting: an article that argues that the divide is over modernity, not politics per se. This made much more sense to me than the culture wars as apparently usually thought […]

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The post-Cold War world is one of speed and change. It requires constant re-evaluation, assessment, and flexibility. No set of ideas, religious or not, will be a floating device. You actually have to learn how to swim. And the world is more complex now than it was, so understanding what is going on and even […]

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