"...my poor heart is sentimental....not made of wood"

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Quotes from Recent Reading that I love

This quote which is from Pierre Bourdieu's Logic of Practice, is one I wish I had committed to memory for the past 4 years. I first read it my second year of undergrad when I was 19. Bourdieu's influence on me I knew had been strong, but being such a dense work, I had never taken the time to go back and re-read the work once I had matured. Obviously, it would've been helpful in many of my discussions with colleagues over my uneasiness with "Science".


In context of a discussion about Structural Anthropology in a section entitled "Objectification objectified" Bourdieu quotes a passage from Wittgenstein (one of my faves!) and follows the passage with this:

"To slip from regularity, i.e. from what recurs with a certain statistically measurable frequency and from the formula which describes it, to a consciously laid down and consciously respected ruling (reglement), or to unconscious regulating by a mysterious cerebral or social mechanism, are the two commonest ways of sliding from the model of reality to the reality of the model."

While the mathematician may have greater awareness of the fallibility of her models, those in general who conduct themselves in the service of Science, I would argue fall prey to Bourdieu's common slide.

and on the importance of historical action: "To make transcendent entities, which are to practices as essence to existence, out of the constructions that science resorts to in order to give an account of the structure and meaningful products of the accumulation of innumerable historical actions, is to reduce history to a 'process without a subject', simply replacing the 'creative subject' of subjectivism with an automaton driven by the dead laws of a history of nature."

Bourdieu puts a final nail into the coffin of objectivity as rule.
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"It is necessary to reverse the common opinion and acknowledge that it is not the harshness of a situation or the sufferings it imposes that lead people to conceive of another state of affairs in which things would be better for everybody. It is on the day that we are able to conceive of another state of affairs, that a new light is cast on our trouble and our suffering and we decide that they are unbearable." - Jean-Paul Sartre

Subjectivist!

"The fact remains that one cannot rationally pursue the project of founding belief on a rational decision without being led to ask reason to collaborate in its own annihilation in belief, a 'disavowal of reason' that is supremely 'in accordance with reason'. To move from the decision to believe, which reason can induce, to a durable belief that can withstand the intermittences of consciousness and will, one has to invoke other powers than those of reason." -Bourdieu pg 48



Friday, September 11, 2009

Prop 8 is a traveling show: Ref-71 in Washington State

A great quote to remember as we approach November in Washington State:

"First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me."

-attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

The Energy Crisis and Seven Year Olds

While my sister read her new library book, I came across an article in the Independent about the oil crisis. When she asked what I was reading I said "A scary article about oil".

She laughed and asked how oil could be scary. I told her that everything we do depends on oil and that we're running out.

Can't we make more?

Well, that's the problem Lilly, we can't make more, we have to find it.

Why doesn't God just put more in the world?

I don't think God's going to do that.

Why? He doesn't want to help his people?

....

We're bad people.

Yeah, Lil' we are.

-- we then spent 20 minutes talking about how all sorts of everyday things use oil. --

There are some people who are trying very hard to think of ways to make things without oil.

Do sleighs use oil? Like Santa's?

Well, no I don't think so, Reindeers pull that sleigh.

What about the toys?

I think the Elves make the toys and they use their hands so, I think the toys don't use oil.

What about computers?

Computers use a lot of oil.

Well, I got a computer from Santa.

....I think Santa bought that computer, Elves didn't make it.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Eighth Grade Sentence Diagrams where are you?!

new challenge:

teaching sentence structure to a 7 year old.

and an old maxim that came unbidden to my lips from my past: Answer questions in complete sentences.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Conversations with a Seven Year Old

"Lilly, I want you to practice more breathing while you swim. Pull your head up and take a breath in between some strokes."

"No, I don't want to. Maybe at the end of the summer."

"Well I think you're capable now. Let's just try it a little bit at a time."

~~10 minutes pass~~

"Why do people need air?"

"Well there is an element in air called Oxygen that our cells need to do their jobs."

"But why do we need it? Why do people have to go around breathing? Why can't they just not breathe?

"Well, when we get home, let's get out your giant sketchbook and we'll draw a story telling why we need air."

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A common phrase I hear: out of frustration "Why did mom have to bore you?!"

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"Are you glad you don't have a sister who likes Jonas [brothers]?"

"Why would I be glad you don't like Jonas?"

"If I liked Jonas, would you think it was bad?"

"I'd be upset if you spent a lot of time watching it and wanted to be like them."

"Well I don't like Jonas."

"Why?"

"Because their show is just weird. I don't like them."

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Reform Liberal Arts Education

I'm with her until I see the concept map....


Not sure what to make of it.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

oh the last post was a reaction to reading In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan author of The Omnivore's Dilemma.

so F-ing stupid, to listen to food scientists, and nutritionists and all the idiot "experts" literally piece by piece try to retell us what for centuries we've already known and known better. if only we gave any credit to things such as story, and myth, and culture, and convention, and freaking intuition.

We are NOT stupid creatures. We already know how to live in this world. Grow up science and stop being so dang angsty.

plus, progress is not only achievable by science. so don't go accusing me of extreme conservatism.