I am not a blogger, really, I swear.
Here is what I have been wasting time on today:
http://taxwisdom.org/republican_nemesis.htm
I like this guy. I agree with his analysis of what John Kerry ought to have done in response to Cheney getting all huffy that Kerry said that Mary Cheney was a lesbian - not that it was a surprise, as she had been out for years. Kerry could have come up with something derisive about the hypocrisy of the Cheneys' moral indignation . . . Oh, why do "our guys" suck so much? No wonder people like this, the antithesis of everything I like about where I live, can exist. It's almost funny, except that they're serious.
My esteemed colleague and I have been having an ongoing conversation about the role of emotion in political action. It started when I got upset with him over not being enraged (enough) about gender inequality and repression of women. I argued that without urgency and an emotional response, there would be no impetus, no compelling driving force, for change. He countered that a reasoned analysis was more productive. I think we ended up in agreement that reason is necessary to direct the sense of urgency into useful channels. I would say that fundamentalists tend to lean more strongly toward the emotional response and leave out the analysis, whereas the academics are all in their heads and not enough in their guts. But I don't believe in the primacy of either.
The Dalai Lama says something similar: he says that for a person, or for a society, to change there needs to be education, a sense of urgency, and also discipline. All of these things are critical: information as to what needs to change and why, urgency to impel action, and discipline to carry that action out.
Of course this reminds me of cells, because everything reminds me of cells. If a cell is going to move in a certain direction, it needs a stimulus (information - e.g. a growth factor, or the awareness that women are being repressed), an initial response to that stimulus (emotional or gut reaction - e.g. membrane extension, or a feeling of anger and indignation), and finally a sustained, coordinated response (determination - e.g. directional migration, or political action). If any of these steps go awry, the cells and the people either can't move or move in the wrong direction.
Speaking of arrested motion, my personal activation energy has been lower the last couple of weeks. I think I am making progress on my project and the powers that be seem pleased. Also, a paper that just came out from the Japanese group who gave us our FRET probes that pretty much justifies my exisitence. Woo-hoo!
Finally, would you be offended or pissed off if someone who was related to you looked you up on Google and found something you'd written (for a lit mag thingy) and then emailed, "Did you write that thing about the teeth? If so, YOU FREAK! Just kidding."? I feel like the "just kidding" part was not sincere. But then, this is someone who no doubt thinks poems are about flowers and dewdrops and shit, and who has actual said the words, "I don't know art, but I know what I like," without irony. So in one sense, if she hated my poem, it's probably not bad . . .
Oooh, the other thing I have been looking up today, when not engaged in the pursuit of empirical scientific truth, is Phenomenology. I would like to thank Wikipeida, Edmund Husserl, and Gian-Carlo Rota. I heard of Rota because this guy at MIT who lead one of the January fun-time classes was in love with him. I stole a book by Berkeley from that guy, sort of by accident - in that he loaned it to me and I never returned it. We had a whole day on "Berkeley yellow" which has become a fixture of my personal phrase book. It was windy that day, and I had a migraine coming on, and I remember having very deep thoughts about the red pipe that stuck up from the lawn outside the window. I probably dashed off a little poem about it, but clearly that is because I am a FREAK.
It sucks that Heidegger was a big Nazi. I saw someone reading Heidegger on the bus today, which was before I knew he was a Nazi. It may not be fair, and I have been the guest of some very nice people in Frankfurt, but Germans really freak me out.
Here is what I have been wasting time on today:
http://taxwisdom.org/republican_nemesis.htm
I like this guy. I agree with his analysis of what John Kerry ought to have done in response to Cheney getting all huffy that Kerry said that Mary Cheney was a lesbian - not that it was a surprise, as she had been out for years. Kerry could have come up with something derisive about the hypocrisy of the Cheneys' moral indignation . . . Oh, why do "our guys" suck so much? No wonder people like this, the antithesis of everything I like about where I live, can exist. It's almost funny, except that they're serious.
My esteemed colleague and I have been having an ongoing conversation about the role of emotion in political action. It started when I got upset with him over not being enraged (enough) about gender inequality and repression of women. I argued that without urgency and an emotional response, there would be no impetus, no compelling driving force, for change. He countered that a reasoned analysis was more productive. I think we ended up in agreement that reason is necessary to direct the sense of urgency into useful channels. I would say that fundamentalists tend to lean more strongly toward the emotional response and leave out the analysis, whereas the academics are all in their heads and not enough in their guts. But I don't believe in the primacy of either.
The Dalai Lama says something similar: he says that for a person, or for a society, to change there needs to be education, a sense of urgency, and also discipline. All of these things are critical: information as to what needs to change and why, urgency to impel action, and discipline to carry that action out.
Of course this reminds me of cells, because everything reminds me of cells. If a cell is going to move in a certain direction, it needs a stimulus (information - e.g. a growth factor, or the awareness that women are being repressed), an initial response to that stimulus (emotional or gut reaction - e.g. membrane extension, or a feeling of anger and indignation), and finally a sustained, coordinated response (determination - e.g. directional migration, or political action). If any of these steps go awry, the cells and the people either can't move or move in the wrong direction.
Speaking of arrested motion, my personal activation energy has been lower the last couple of weeks. I think I am making progress on my project and the powers that be seem pleased. Also, a paper that just came out from the Japanese group who gave us our FRET probes that pretty much justifies my exisitence. Woo-hoo!
Finally, would you be offended or pissed off if someone who was related to you looked you up on Google and found something you'd written (for a lit mag thingy) and then emailed, "Did you write that thing about the teeth? If so, YOU FREAK! Just kidding."? I feel like the "just kidding" part was not sincere. But then, this is someone who no doubt thinks poems are about flowers and dewdrops and shit, and who has actual said the words, "I don't know art, but I know what I like," without irony. So in one sense, if she hated my poem, it's probably not bad . . .
Oooh, the other thing I have been looking up today, when not engaged in the pursuit of empirical scientific truth, is Phenomenology. I would like to thank Wikipeida, Edmund Husserl, and Gian-Carlo Rota. I heard of Rota because this guy at MIT who lead one of the January fun-time classes was in love with him. I stole a book by Berkeley from that guy, sort of by accident - in that he loaned it to me and I never returned it. We had a whole day on "Berkeley yellow" which has become a fixture of my personal phrase book. It was windy that day, and I had a migraine coming on, and I remember having very deep thoughts about the red pipe that stuck up from the lawn outside the window. I probably dashed off a little poem about it, but clearly that is because I am a FREAK.
It sucks that Heidegger was a big Nazi. I saw someone reading Heidegger on the bus today, which was before I knew he was a Nazi. It may not be fair, and I have been the guest of some very nice people in Frankfurt, but Germans really freak me out.
posted by Joolya at
2:21 PM
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