(no subject)
There's a lot I've been meaning to write about here, but I've been too stressed out to sit down to write any new free and deep thoughts. Instead, I've been tinkering endlessly with the GUI for the experiment I'm supposed to already have five participants' worth of data for. I finally thought I had settled on something, and so ran Katie through it. She found it miserable, and led me to realize that I need to overhaul some of the design, again, which will put me another week behind schedule.
After the experiment, I unexpectedly cut loose when Howard Prospect invited Katie and I out to dinner with he and a couple other friends across town. Ate Mexican food, got drunk off margaritas, moved on to a dessert shop for sample cakes. Then H.P., Katie, and I moved on to see 300, which was entertaining. On one level, it was just a pretty action film. But the temptation to read into it was overwhelming: did anybody else find it comically conservative in its themes? I.e. straight white men defend their freedom and families via violence against assorted persons of color, who are of course allied with the physically deformed in a conveniently Other axis of evil. To top it off, we're pretty sure that the depicted Xerxes was gay. I think the ironic but automatic reading of the movie in this way got in the way of my really getting into the whole "wouldn't it be sweet if I were trained from birth to be an unthinking patriot who would care for nothing more in life than to kill a lot and eventually die" thing I was supposed to get out of it.
So much for politics. Actually--I'm going to right a longer post about identity politics soon, sort of...once I get some of my sociology reading done. Consider this a frivolous warmup.
In the meantime, the latest joke around the house is Ken Wilbur and his Integral Institute. Howard Prospect introduced us to him at dinner yesterday. There's been lots of laughter since then, but I have an interest in investigating further. He clearly has every indication of being a complete quack, but I haven't yet figured out where in his thinking he goes wrong. After delving into it a little, I can only say that it may cross over the line of being unsubstantiated into being insubstantial. What's odd is that while there is apparently a lot of controversy around his work, there doesn't seem to be anyone noteworthy on any side of the debate. So...is there this whole subculture of insulated and impotent "thinkers" who are working on this kind of theory outside of the academic mainstream? Where do they get funding? Who listens to them?
After the experiment, I unexpectedly cut loose when Howard Prospect invited Katie and I out to dinner with he and a couple other friends across town. Ate Mexican food, got drunk off margaritas, moved on to a dessert shop for sample cakes. Then H.P., Katie, and I moved on to see 300, which was entertaining. On one level, it was just a pretty action film. But the temptation to read into it was overwhelming: did anybody else find it comically conservative in its themes? I.e. straight white men defend their freedom and families via violence against assorted persons of color, who are of course allied with the physically deformed in a conveniently Other axis of evil. To top it off, we're pretty sure that the depicted Xerxes was gay. I think the ironic but automatic reading of the movie in this way got in the way of my really getting into the whole "wouldn't it be sweet if I were trained from birth to be an unthinking patriot who would care for nothing more in life than to kill a lot and eventually die" thing I was supposed to get out of it.
So much for politics. Actually--I'm going to right a longer post about identity politics soon, sort of...once I get some of my sociology reading done. Consider this a frivolous warmup.
In the meantime, the latest joke around the house is Ken Wilbur and his Integral Institute. Howard Prospect introduced us to him at dinner yesterday. There's been lots of laughter since then, but I have an interest in investigating further. He clearly has every indication of being a complete quack, but I haven't yet figured out where in his thinking he goes wrong. After delving into it a little, I can only say that it may cross over the line of being unsubstantiated into being insubstantial. What's odd is that while there is apparently a lot of controversy around his work, there doesn't seem to be anyone noteworthy on any side of the debate. So...is there this whole subculture of insulated and impotent "thinkers" who are working on this kind of theory outside of the academic mainstream? Where do they get funding? Who listens to them?