Spring is in swing

January 13th, 2010 • chatter, education
Tags: college, education

For school at least; we’re still in winter weather-wise. I’m taking general education courses this semester, mostly because I feel don’t feel like writing a paper. However, now I have to suffer through Weather & Climate and World Geography surrounded by 18 year olds who still think college is high school + 1. Taking these low level classes will allow me to focus on other things which should be good. I’ve still got to get my old Shadow VLX taken down to the mechanic to get the carbs cleaned and put back on the bike so I can get her running again. I’ve also got to de-rust and de-scale its gas tank, which will probably happen at the same time.

Yesterday we received our new (to us) Mamiya 645 Pro TL medium format camera. We got it for a steal at $500 plus shipping and handling. Each piece priced out ends up costing nearly $1000 so we’re definitely glad to have this. Since it’s medium format and takes 120 film, we haven’t used it yet except with the Polaroid “land camera” film back that came with it which had three exposures left in it. Only one of the three even worked and it came out blurry and darker than expected. We should be getting some film next week so we can test it out. I will also be purchasing some regular 35mm film and possibly some 126 film to go along with a Kodak Instamatic my girlfriend received over our Christmas break. I have no idea what 126 is or what it looks like but it’s not heavily used these days and is fairly expensive, comparatively.

I’m working on different themes for my photography project so if you have any ideas, please let me know via comment or email!

Uninterested reading

September 23rd, 2009 • chatter, education
Tags: education, music

So I’m over halfway done with Disorderly Women by Susan Juster and I’m still struggling to become interested in the book. The actual content is fascinating enough, sure, but Juster has failed at every attempt to grab my interest by simply being a boring writer. Maybe it’s that I find her style of writing-via-quotes-and-citations boring/annoying. Unfortunately, I’m still trying to figure out the actual point/hypothesis of this book and I’m over halfway through it already. Separating her own information from the flurry of quotes (other writers and church documents) is both difficult and time-consuming given that I’ve found most of the content of the book itself is quotations. I don’t find this occurring as often in anthropology books or in most history books I’ve read, so perhaps this is some kind of women’s history schtick? I have no idea how I’m going to write a three page paper on a book whose point I still haven’t understood (or found). This is why I don’t take subjective history classes. I hate wasting my time wading through ego or fluff information to have to discern a minuscule point.

On another note of annoyance, I don’t like Leaves’ Eyes new CD Njord. I can’t say this CD is boring however, it’s definitely not that good to me. The content of the CD has swayed far from Vinland Saga‘s stories and elegies to the Scandinavians of old and was put together very well musically. However, Njord seems to have kept the musicality of the first CD while stripping out any interesting stories from the songs. This CD is another album about Nordic conquests however, I really fail to see what Vikings and Scarborough Fair have in common since they would not have been frequenting Scarborough in the Middle Ages. I understand this is a cover song but really, it belongs as a bonus track or the end of the CD as it interrupts the flow of the CD. Most CD arrangements are either a V or a descending plateau arrangement. This means that in a V arrangement, the CD starts off strong, has an average/weak middle, and a (hopefully) strong end. A descending plateau is just as it sounds: starts off strong and flutters out as the album goes on. Having Scarborough Fair at track 5 of 12 smacks this straight into V territory as it’s simply in the wrong spot on the CD. The rest of the CD has strong, upbeat tracks and this is just a very odd arrangement especially for Leaves’ Eyes whose last few EPs and last CD had excellent arrangements.

One week down, when is Christmas vacation?

August 28th, 2009 • chatter, education

So the first week of classes is over and it’s been a tough week without even worrying about school. Both motorcycles decided to not work properly this week. My new Shadow 750 figured that the battery should die between last Friday and Tuesday, while my old VLX is limping along like it’s on its last leg. I have no idea what’s wrong with it, it worked fine last month when I rode it and I really do not want to take it to a shop.

Aside from that, classes may be interesting. Both are special topics courses at FAU: LIT4930-003 Reading the Old Testament and AMH4930-001 Women and Religion in America’s History. The former won’t prove to be very interesting but it’ll more than likely be an easy grade and a refresher on parts of the Bible I’ve long forgotten. The latter could prove to be very insightful if the other people in the class do the reading and actively participate. If the introduction to our book was any indication, I’m going to end up pulling my hair out since the author has made it very clear she thinks that history is “not self-interested” and based on singular points of view. Catherine Brekus better prove me wrong!

We want to go fishing again this weekend but that may not happen due to some event changes and some schedule shuffling. But then there’s always next weekend, especially if the hurricanes keep pushing the fish here! I should be cooking the blue runners we caught last week but we’ll see if time permits. If not, they’re still nice and frozen, ready to be used.

Ah crap, I got distracted by something and forgot what I was writing. Now I need to go to bed.

Vitamins+exercise=bad? Since when?

May 15th, 2009 • education
Tags: chemisty, exercise, science

I came across this article at Corante detailing how “vitamins counteract benefits of exercise”. Now, I may not have done much exercising lately but 10 years ago, I was a trainer and nutritionist and I heavily preached taking vitamins to supplement exercise. Hell, all trainers, dietitians, doctors, nutritionists, and supplement companies do too! And have been for decades. What I want to know is why this new revelation might be important. I, frankly, think it’s a load of bollocks because the test subjects didn’t take recommended values of two specific vitamins, which were no doubt specially selected for the test.

Participants took 10000mg of Vitamin C (yes, a full gram) and 400 IU of vitamin E. Now, the post ends up not talking about vitamin E’s effects whatsoever for some odd reason and instead focuses entirely on vitamin C. The paper and the author — an organic chemist — suggests that vitamin C is inhibiting muscular firing and muscular oxygen production/consumption. Now, is this going to be true when someone takes the recommended value of vitamin C? The patients were taking 1000mg which is actually 1667% RDV. Truthfully, I have a feeling that this much vitamin C was the cause of the observed effects and not the fact that vitamin C itself is the sole cause. Less than 100mg is the RDV of vitamin C and while incredibly difficult to get under doses of a few hundred milligrams, I think focusing on 1000mg was overkill for the entire experiment. Scientists and trainers know that once your body can no longer absorb something, it simply excretes it. In this case, excess vitamin C would simply be sweated out or urinated out.

However, Dr. Lowe didn’t see any of these issues with this study and instead went on to say that the findings were seemingly correct and in fact validate another paper from last year regarding — again, suspiciously — vitamin C inhibiting vascular capacity and growth. I find all of this suspect given that the ingested vitamin is taken in a much higher capacity than our body is known to be able to process. Many of these points are also brought up in the comments without reply from the author. I think this type of experimentation is excellent for understanding exactly what we need and what we should be doing but not when its entire premise is flawed from the beginning. I find it also quite specious that a chemist is backing this up entirely without seeing these same flaws.

Midterms, midterms, midterms

October 17th, 2008 • education
Tags: education

It’s the week college students dread the second most: midterms week. I only had one, really, but it was a real bitch of a test. However, I feel worse for Professor McCarthy and his TA who have to read all of our essays, must be at least 400 pages to plow through. It was a 10 question take-home test in which he wanted us to basically write a whole bunch and I’m sure that about 10 of us actually did, the rest half assed everything. They’re the same bunch (basically everyone) that never does the reading and complains about doing work. Too bad for them because I’m sure we’ve still got our ethnography to do. Not that I’m looking forward to it either.

I went to see Religulous this week, twice in fact. Once just to see it for shits and giggles — of which there were many — and the second time so I could jot down notes for a paper for McCarthy’s class. Like most skeptics that saw the movie, I enjoyed watching Maher poke fun at people who mostly deserved it. I don’t agree with all of the critics who say that the segment with Rabbi Dovid Weiss was anti-Semitic in any way unless they’re referring to Rabbi Weiss. I’ve seen attacks against Maher for comments he made which I’m wondering if we saw the same movie because Maher barely got a word in before he called the interview off…because he couldn’t get a word in. Overall, I enjoyed the movie, even with its quick cuts. I hope the director’s cut will have extended interviews or simply include them on the disc(s) as extra, I know a lot of people would like to see more of what was said.

I’m glad this week is over, it was too stressful. Now I’ve got to read Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson for another paper that’s due soon.

More on Veiled Sentiments

October 8th, 2008 • anthropology, education
Tags: anthropology, education

So I finished the book Veiled Sentiments last week and was thoroughly surprised at how well written it is. It’s the first ethnography that I’ve read in a while, if not ever, that’s written to be read by a normal lay man. Aside from a myriad of oft-redefined Awlad ‘Ali dialectical terms, it doesn’t contain the usual obscuring language of anthropology. Ms. Abu-Lughod succeeded in making this book and the lives of these Bedouin extremely accessible to anyone who’s curious.

That being said, I will probably buy her follow up book called Writing Women’s Worlds. This book was written roughly a decade after her original research in the Western Desert and takes place with the same tribe. I think it would be interesting to see how much has changed socially in that passing decade.

The paper I had to write on the book is simply abysmal but it seems I wasn’t the only one. Practically everyone else in class had the same problem I did with the topic. This was essentially a book report that could be backed up by some research but the lives of these people are so complex to Westerners, it’s quite tough to cram 260 pages into 5 pages. Almost everyone loved the book, that was overwhelmingly apparent but everyone suffered the same issue with the bounty of the subject at hand. Hopefully I’ll get a decent grade that I can more than easily make up for with our next two papers.

Veiled Sentiments and human brain evolution

September 18th, 2008 • education
Tags: education

I’ve been busy since my last post, somewhat with school but more with work. Due to Hurricane Ike, our headquarters in Houston (smack dab in the MIDDLE of downtown) has been powerless and waterless since last Friday. Since then, we’ve worked all weekend and this week and are frankly pretty tired. Classes have come and gone, I too think some brain cells have as well.

Politics of Identity is actually getting to be a bit easier. We’re transitioning from metacontexts and rote theory to applicable situations and more grounded contexts. This week’s discussion was about spatial identities and the specific identities and meanings groups and individuals place on space. Our reading focused around the identity placed on Stonehenge by both hippies and Britons alike and how identifying yourself by country or homeland is becoming less meaningful in globalization. I also started reading Veiled Sentiments by Lila Abu Lughod tonight. I’m only about 50 pages in but it’s very interesting so far. It’s an ethnography about the Awlad ‘Ali Bedouin of Northern Egypt, with a very specific focus on both poetry and the women of the society. We’ve got a paper due on it on my birthday so I need to buckle down and read.

Evolution and Creationism is starting to drone for me. The class has gone from what could’ve been decent discussion, even with oddball opinions, to displaying that nearly everyone is in the class for an easy grade. Those of us who participate are the only ones who took the class because it was a discussion-based class and want to discuss. We spent all day Tuesday discussing the evolution of the human brain in terms of what’s drastically different versus other apes and other animals. Most people had no idea what the frontal cortex was (or that we had one) or that brain size has little to do with intelligence. And that IQ tests don’t determine how intelligent you are. The only time so far that most of the class participated in any discussion was when we watched South Park last week and that was only because it was a topical cartoon. I suspect that when we watch Expelled, most people will fall asleep or…actually believe the crap Ben Stein flings. That and all of the side conversation that goes on while Professor McCarthy is talking really makes the class not only less interesting and inviting, it also dismisses the entire framework of a discussion class.

I hope tomorrow’s class will prove to be much more eventful than the last two have been but we’ll see how that works out.

The wonderment of creation myths

September 3rd, 2008 • education
Tags: creationism, education

This week’s class focuses on creation myths, specifically the one in the Book of Genesis. Most of us know the story, God creates everything we know in 7 days including the Earth, heavens, and all living creatures. That was the first book. In the second one, basically the order of events is changed slightly but the story remains the same. For an allegory, it’s not bad at all. For literal fact, it’s absurd. But if you take one of the creationist screeds and attempt to work within that framework, it makes slightly more sense. The belief that each of the 7 days it took is roughly 1000 years can make sense except for the reliability of radio carbon dating showing things are much older than 7,000 years. By leaps and bounds. Although, still, if you want to believe wackaloonery that belief is much better than man and dinosaurs and everything lived at the same time and it only took a day to create things like humans, cypress trees, and birds.

But this discussion finally got more people talking in class, it’s always boring hearing the same people talk over and over, myself included — although, I’m beginning to just sit there and keep quiet as to not laugh. The religious folks have some interesting rationale and the wannabe Bible scholars keep floating about as much as they can. I appreciate that there are other people who’ve looked into things like this as I have but when they don’t cite where it came from, I tend to put less credence into it. I wonder what we’ll talk about tomorrow since we’re supposed to watch part of Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth (wikipedia).

Oh boy, I thought class was going to suck

August 29th, 2008 • 1 comment education
Tags: creationism, evolution

But I’m now assured that it will never be uninteresting. We actually had a new student today join us. In her defense, I don’t think she read the course description at all. She looked like a nice Jewish girl but has punctuality problems. But then she ended up leaving less than halfway through. I guess she didn’t think to READ the course description and realize that this probably wasn’t a class she’d like. Tough tits for her. This Evolution and Creationism class is going to be great. Not because it’s a discussion of a very pertinent and very current topical issue but because of the people in it. We’re all in school. We all got there somehow, hopefully retaining some intelligence on the way there, right? HA! Boy, am I wrong. Now, I’m not discounting the average IQ of the class at all. I know full well it’s right in the ball park of the average 7th grader. I’m not discounting the fact that this is a class mostly full of people who don’t know what Anthropology is although it is the first word of the proper course title. Hell, most probably don’t know what creationism is exactly. But they’re finding out.

Finding out real fast. Today Professor McCarthy trotted out a PowerPoint slide based on Eugenie Scott’s Creationism/Evolution continuum from the NCSE. Most people got lost right there. A simple slide outlining what she wrote, with pictures nonetheless. Many of my classmates couldn’t fathom the different types of creationism. Now, Professor McCarthy didn’t give the best descriptions but most of the names are self-explanatory. Flat Earthers? Well, that’s easy. Young Earth Creationist? Fairly easy too. Old Earth? Just as easy. But no, it was still difficult. This is further compounded by people who don’t know what evolution is or what creationism is (or was, now they do). I know Florida’s school system is a laughing joke but really, where were these kids in Physical Science or Biology? Just keeping quiet in class is an exercise all its own.

Then we leaped off on a groupthink about whether religion is ‘hard wired’ — meaning, in our DNA now — versus being nothing more than a behavioral or social construct or idea. First we were asked “what do you think religion is for?” and there was silence. My friends and myself were just waiting for answers, the most proper of which came about 15 minutes after the question was proposed and more people were suffering from footinmouthitis. One squeaky voiced guy, whose yet to hit puberty I believe, stated religion is hardwired into our DNA for social cohesion. I let this sink in for about 5 minutes before I said anything. At all. I was laughing inside but I stayed quiet. Then I valiantly raised my hand and simply stated “Well, if it’s hardwired for social cohesion, wouldn’t that mean that it would bounce back and forth between the two extremes [in our DNA versus behavioral adaptation]?” The teacher tried not to agree in order to stay non-biased but he did agree. I was accused of making the “chicken before the egg” argument which I’d made no allusions to doing so. I merely stated what I said I did, nothing more. I didn’t propose which came first or second, nor did I want to, purposefully. I pretty much got the reaction I was looking for. Mr. Balls-not-yet-dropped got huffy and defensive trying to back up his point. But does he not realize you cannot have a social construct without a pre-existing society? Religion could not have become part of our DNA without it first being socially introduced. For that, you need a society first. Societies develop just like humans do, in small stages. We don’t run before we walk and societies do not develop widely held beliefs of any kind on day one. According to this kid, they pretty much do and it’s in our genes. That was but one highlight of the day. We still had people positing the idea that if we evolved from Great Apes, they must have religion too because it’d serve monkeys and apes some great purpose for societal means, like keeping alpha males from killing each other (actually said by some girl today). Yep, religion keeps people from killing each other. Oh, hello Crusades. Hello, Inquisition. Hello, West Bank. I’m going to try and record this class just for the laughs.

And we’re not even close to getting into any material at all, today’s class was merely about defining the debate between evolution and creationism, and outlining why this is and has been an issue. We haven’t touched The God Delusion yet, haven’t read any nonsense from Behe, or struggled through The Wedge Document (that’s later in the class!). People got to hear about the Disco Institute but haven’t yet even begun to hear anything about that mess. I’d love to know that when we get to Joseph Campbell’s movie, it’d open some eyes but I know it won’t. Crazy wonks will always be crazy wonks.

So far, I love ANT4930-009 because I don’t have to take any notes or really even listen at all. I get to do some light reading, watch South Park and Expelled and The Power of Myth, and along down the road read excerpts from PZ Myers. In other words, I get to basically do everything I already do and get a grade for it. How sweet! A class where I get a grade for merely being a science-loving atheist.

I have returned

August 26th, 2008 • chatter, education
Tags: creationism, school

The blog hiatus was over and I was due for one. The Olympics really helped steer me away from my huge daily intake of news articles and blog posts, I was beginning to get a little burned out. Also, school started this week and it’s going to be a doozy for sure.

Today’s class was aptly titled Anthropology, Evolution, and Creationism. I didn’t make a typo, this is my new Tues/Thurs. class and it’s definitely going to be interesting. Professor McCarthy was trying his hardest to maintain a non-biased stance in class but I certainly didn’t make it any easier for him. It was interesting to hear comments from people who didn’t really know what evolution or creationism were, I’m wondering why they even signed up. If they weren’t scared off after today’s all over the place discussion, I’m not so sure they’re going to enjoy the ensuing weeks.

I got a huge chuckle out of our syllabus. We’re watching both the South Park episode on Scientology (and discussing Mormonism the same week) and watching Expelled in class! I thought I was seeing things at first until the teacher began talking about the syllabus. Yeah, it’s no joke. We get to talk about Xenu, the Disco Institute IDiots, and all sorts of crazy stuff interlaced with Dawkins and Nietzsche.

Anyway, I’m neck-deep in two weeks’ of RSS feeds and I need to go read for class on Thursday. I’ll be back to update on the next real class we have of Evolution and Creationism.