Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Honoring America's Heroes

With the help of the VFW and the Hemet Fire Department, the Western Science Center proudly raised our new flag over the campus on November 10, 2009. The flag, flown over the United States Capitol on October 15, 2009, was provided by the Honorable Mary Bono Mack of the US House of Representatives.

Set at half mast in rememberance of our nation's recent tragedy at Fort Hood, the Western Science Center flag will be raised on Veteran's Day to honor those who have served our country.

This Veteran's Day, it is our honor to offer free admission to all veterans and active military.


DA

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

A Goodbye to the "Father of Modern Anthroplogy"

October 31, 2009 anthropology lost one of its greatest contributors, Claude Levi-Strauss. At the age of 100, the "father of modern anthropology" quietly passed away in his Paris home. Levi-Strauss was a leading post-war intellectual who inspired academics in multiple fields with his studies in structuralism, and is the leading contributor to the structural anthropology school of thought.

Defined as an approach to studying the structures and oppostions that make up human phenomenon, Levi-Strauss used strucutralism to analize myth, language, religion and food preparation of serval cultures. He proposed that all humans see things in binary opposites and that culture interpretes those opposites in a way that is unique and logical to its members. He went on to study commonalities between tribal and industrial communities, and a better understanding of universal human patterns of thought. With his research, Claude Levi-Strauss published some of the most influential academic works of the post-war era, including The Savage Mind, Tristes Tropiques and The Elemental Structures of Kinship.

A noted and respected author, teacher, and academic, Claude Levi-Strauss will be remebered for his great contributions to the study of anthropology and the humanities as a whole.


DA