erik.w.davis

yo, KS!

This is an absolutely amazing, and amazingly clear, explanation of the challenges that gave rise to the differential machine, how it works, and the challenges faced in its creation. Truly a wonderful explanation.

You must watch this video lecture of Gregory Schopen, the Buddhist Studies author whose work has made quite substantial waves in the field. Hat tip to Danny Fisher, whose birthday is today!

Tagged: buddhism, business, danny fisher, schopen

4Am in Kannur, India. Theyam mediums start their ritual possession in the cobra temple.This ritual was about 4 hrs in length.

Emerging from the deserted train station through the Bundi gate we run into a religious procession...

Jared Diamond, professor of geography at UCLA, received the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 1998 for Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. In 1999, he received the National Medal o...

I feel that there’s a deep-seated state of ignorance, on the part of outsiders and non-Cambodians, as to what “communism” and “capitalism” mean to most Cambodians. Mind the semantic gap, folks….

more about "Former Cambodian communist stronghold…", posted with vodpod

This from Al-Jazeera, covering the latest religious commodity craze out of Thailand: mass-pansukula initiation-style rites. I didn’t hear the word Pansukula here, and maybe it’s called something else, but the ritual is quite clearly a pansukula initiation rite of the sort discussed by François Bizot in his book Le don de-soi-même (1981), done in a modern style and mass produced.

more about "Mass Pansukula Initiation Rites in Th…", posted with vodpod

Abhisit Vejjajiva, the Thai prime minister, has promised new spending to counter unemployment in an effort to boost the country's economy.

Al Jazeera's Selina Downes reports from central Thailand ...

Excellent two-part documentary from Al Jazeera on the ongoing Cambodian tribunal of the Khmer Rouge. There’s little discussion (but some) on the extremely limited number of leaders in the dock, but some great discussion. The talented Nic Dunlop, author of The Lost Executioner, takes lead on this report.

In the clip above, starting at about 10:43, note the following quote, which is characteristic of the way in which people have talked to me about ghosts and the dead during the Khmer Rouge period (Democratic Kampuchea, 1975-1979). Seng Yao, 81 year old survivor of prison camp M-99, says
At least ten prisoners died each morning and we would take the bodies away. We kept moving the corpses. I was not afraid of ghosts at that time. I would sometimes sleep on graves but ghosts did not haunt me. Maybe the ghosts did not have the energy left to haunt us because they died of starvation.
[Note that the speech in Khmer is actually somewhat less conditional about the reasoning]
I only interviewed a few survivors of Khmer Rouge prisons during my fieldwork. But such expressions and reasoning about ghosts were common among many survivors, not just former prisoners.  I was frequently told that “there were no ghosts during the Pol Pot time,” because “they had nothing to eat.” I had a hard time understanding this at first, because it was my assumption that whenever there was mass death there would necessarily be more ghosts, not fewer.
But the explanations I received were consistent with what Seng Yao expresses in the documentary clip above. In January 2005, an 85 year old man in rural Kompong Cham province expressed it this way:
When the country is rich, there are lots of ghosts. When there is nothing to eat, what will the ghosts eat? Nowadays, there are lots more ghosts than during the Pol Pot time.
Note that the reciprocity between humans and the dead is assumed to be the basis of the ‘health’ of the dead, and that the basis of this reciprocity is food. This point

People&Power looks at case of Comrade Duch a leader in the Khmer Rouge.

People&Power looks at case of Comrade Duch a leader in the Khmer Rouge.

A guerrilla press conference which was given outside of the 13th St. building Thursday morning 2.12.09.

I haven’t talked much about the tribunal, largely because while I think a good tribunal would be truly beneficial for Cambodia, this tribunal, it is increasingly clear, is little more than another fig leaf for a political regime. The last one was a fig leaf for the recent invading Vietnamese; this one is a fig leaf for the international donor countries, some of who re-armed the Khmer Rouge in the eighties, while allowing their representatives to retain their seat in the UN.
My anger and disappointment about this entire thing is nearly incandescent.

more about “Khmer Rouge war crimes trial begins -…“, posted with vodpod
François Bizot, one of the greatest academic authorities on Cambodian Buddhism, has a somewhat more measured statement on the beginning of the trial. One of Duch’s few survivors, Bizot was held in a prison camp by Duch north of Siem Reap prior to the victory of April 17, 1975, and was one of the only prisoners of that camp released. He has told his story in the bestselling book The Gate. His opinion piece in today’s New York Times deals with Duch as his own personal savior (insofar, I suppose, as Duch released him) and as a murderer of tens of thousands, in his capacity as the head of S-21. It’s definitely worth reading.
AFTER 10 years of detention, Kaing Guek Eav, alias Comrade Duch, is to appear today before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. He was arrested in 1999, after 20 years of living incognito, for crimes committed on his orders as commander of the Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh from 1975 to 1979, when the Khmer Rouge controlled Cambodia and were responsible for the deaths of more than a million people.
Bizot, “My Savior, Their Killer.”
Tagged: eccc, justice, Khmer Rouge, krt, tribunal, Violence, war crime

I haven't talked much about the tribunal, largely because while I think a good tribunal would be truly beneficial for Cambodia, this tribunal, it is increasingly clear, is little more than another fig leaf for a political regime. The last one was a fig leaf for the recent invading Vietnamese; this one is a fig leaf for the international donor countries, some of who re-armed the Khmer Rouge in the eighties, while allowing their representatives to retain their seat in the UN.
My anger and disappointment about

Somongkol alerted me to the presence of a new video from Licadho on the eviction and leveling of the Dey Krahom neighborhood. Warning: it is a scary one, and includes a clip of one man running over another with a large construction vehicle, and refusing to stop.

Somongkol has another video as well.
Meanwhile, in what has become a tradition over the last decade, Dey Krahom evictees have gathered to protest their landlessness in front of Hun Sen’s villa near the Independence Monument. The large tree just across the street from his house was fenced in and all the cult elements (neak ta houses, incense, bay sei, altars, etc.) removed by force, while I was there. The tree itself was also rather viciously pruned at the time, and guards posted to prevent the establishment of new altars. I was told at the time that because the tree had been attacked, ‘it had lost its power.’ The altars were back when I visited in January. So are the protesters.
Tagged: cambodia, dey krahom, eviction, hun sen, landlessness, neak ta, parami

Short skit from the series finale of Kids In The Hall. My personal fav. I changed it from color to black and white.

Kids in the Hall sketch.