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Items of the month:
Note that since April 2014, I am publishing these items in my blog at http://runninginfog.wordpress.com/.

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Selected Recent Presentations and Publication

Story of the month ...

December 2008: At an almost empty restaurant integrated in the hotel at which I was staying during a multi-national conference with many participants from all over the world, enjoying a dinner in refreshing solitude, I witness the following: A young waiter accompanied a woman from Africa to a table where another colleague from Africa was already sitting and waiting for her. Walking past my table, the woman was biting into a small fruit-like piece of a bluish-pink color, which she obviously had picked up on her way into the restaurant at the restaurant's front desk. She asked the waiter "What is this?", and the waiter answered "This is not to eat", to which the African woman replied with the brush question "Then why did you put it there?" The shock in the waiter's face was betraying a complete lack of understanding of this question.

This brief encounter and dialog between an American waiter and an African woman illustrated extremely well the easy misunderstanding that can arise between people from a society dominated by unfulfilled basic necessities and a society dominated by overflowing abundance. In a society where hunger is an every-day experience of many, no one would put out a decoration that looks like food but is not eatable. In a society where many have too much, food-like decoration is common and not considered an unwanted reminder of not having enough to eat.

Which for me raises the question: Can we understand people from other societies without taking in the basic conditions of these societies and making their worries, unfulfilled needs, and longings to our own?


If you have a story, thought, or picture worth to be considered as story, thought or picture of the month, please feel free to inform me about it by sending an e-mail to hpplag@unr.edu.