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Lucas Carpenter's "Tumbleweed"
I went to Lucas Carpenter's show tonight (March 13th) at the Milkboy in Ardmore, and this song reminded me of the discussion we had earlier in the semester about the relation between religion and the theory of evolution.
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Memes and "Hidden" Skyhooks
(I wrote this post during an earlier discussion, but I realized I forgot to put it up on Serendip)
In thinking about memes and their origins this week, I couldn't help but think of this particular scene from one of my favorite movies, "The Devil Wears Prada."
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evaluation
I found it exciting in this course how virtually every piece of information we come across is new to me. Coming from a major far outside english or gender studies, I find myself becoming far more knowledgable than I had been, particularly when we had the discussion on all the different terms referring to sex and gender. Like a couple of the other students who mentioned their own areas of study, I also find it refreshing that the class is heavily discussion-based. Most of the classes I've ever taken in the last few years here have been more of a lecture style in the sciences and psychology.
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Humanity as a weakness?
Wednesday class panel featuring different (primarily) imaginary figures was extremely interesting and fun. It was amusing to see how we struggled categorizing each other, with the exception of analyzing one another on the basis on violence. I wonder if the entire class were to participate if this theme would have persisted. For my character personally (Wolverine) I found the following concepts challenging and intriguing:
Role of technology
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Don't Get Stuck on the Idea
I know I've been gone for a while, and I do sorely miss the conversations in class, but I have been keeping up with the postings and I have noticed a trend I wanted to comment on. It seems that no one likes Dennet, at all, at least not the idea of the Library of Babel. If I had been in class and seen more conversation and more ideas, my idea may be different, but this is what I think now. This Library idea is not new to me, it is something that I have read about for years. My classmates seem to be either confused, unhappy, or unaccepting of the idea altogether. While I do not believe this idea is completely valid, I enjoy what it brings to the table. Everyone seems to be hung up on the idea rather than interested in exploring what the idea means.
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Class Notes for 3/2/2011 - Imaginary Panel
Overview:
· Monday panel members were mostly historical, today they are mainly imaginary
· How do gender information science and technology look different for imaginary people than they do for real people
· Consider how these figure may interact with Harroway’s leaky distinctions between human-animal, organism machine, physical – non-physical
· Imaginary vs the Real – both imaginary stimulation and real stimulation affect the equally.
Panel