. . . . . entries for 28.2.09 . . . . .
I wish I could convince myself. I wish I could conclude and move along. But it just isn't in me - it has not been in me for a long time.
The quadmates three just had a very emotionally charged discussion, originally about Georgian history, that became about the possibility of calling a human being good or evil.
I don't think you can, because I don't believe in free will. I don't think there is a thing external to a person's genes and environment - a soul - that can opt one way or the other. Funnily enough, the one of our number who would attribute "good" and "bad" to people doesn't believe in a soul either.
In the past hour, I have said these things:
"So long as we all accept our inconsistencies, I guess we're on a level playing field."
"It's easier to believe in objective morality when you're on the side that's been slighted."
"'We always want to see what is hidden by what we see.' Is the man the sin, or is the man what is behind it?"
I think what we need is an understanding of what makes us call things good or evil. First, let's take morality as something to ascribe to actions, not to people. This, in itself, is problematic. If all actions issue from human entities who are not, themselves, good or bad, how do we act to prevent bad actions? The person doesn't "deserve" punishment. We only want them to inject less evil into the world in the future, to make up for what they have done.
We "know it when we see it," with actions - we can say if it's good or bad. But why? How? What are we looking to achieve through "good" actions, what is it that "bad" actions harm?
I would call it The Good, I guess, after my WWS admission essay's use of the silly, awkward, adolescent term - a world of vision, a scenario we each paint independent of the other, yet peeking over canvases, wondering what our fellow humans dream. This world we want our grandchildren to live in is the reason we act morally, the end to our infinite means. It is a world no worse than ours - hopefully with less sorrow from war and hatred and shortage of things we need. By "we" I of course don't mean you and I - I mean those who actually have unmet needs.
So how can we justify directing behaviors - punishing bad actions, rewarding good actions, engineering the outward moral selves of people? It is for The Good. Why is it Good? I don't know - evolutionary psychology. Future preference. A miracle? Perhaps of a natural kind.
But if we think this way - that we act to maintain a positive state in society, to lessen harms to all people, present and future - then we must realize that our way of directing behavior is misled. Coming times will bring changes we can't predict; they will bring challenges to our custom and habit. We can't just raise people as "good moral Americans" - not insofar as we conceive of "good," "moral," and "American" as static and absolute. People have to be more adaptable - they have to have a willingness to bend and learn and see changes as they happen. Without that, stress on the system will shatter it.
I'm not sure what it means for the indefinite future, which I guess makes sense, given the nature of the problem. But I think we need to begin by recognizing that we are, like everything else on the planet, subject to natural law. And, as members of the same species, similarly determined by our genes and circumstances, we are equal in a vitally important way. If we work to change one another, it must be to the end of ending pain for every other. We must understand that there will be others who are now yet unborn, yet undreamt, and those, too, will be our people. This is where the adaptation has to begin. What actions seem good now, for us, are not necessarily good for The Good.
This is what I believe. It might even be everything I believe.
May I focus epically.
. . . . . entries for 25.2.09 . . . . .
Do you ever think, perhaps, some people do things just to annoy you?
. . . and if they do, then why?
On an unrelated note, my left hand is kind of achy, and my right has been within the past week. Carpel tunnel finally rearing its ugly head? And headaches, too - in quite novel bits of my head that have never really been achy before. Ho hum.
. . . . . entries for 24.2.09 . . . . .
I have decided it'd be kind of delightful to have a son named Fyodor and another named Theodore. I could call them Fyo and Teddy. One could be darkly intellectual, and the other could be totally badass.
It is good that I had this idea, anyway, because I have issues with accumulating lots of pretty girl name ideas (Rhodora, Jophiel, Sophia, Marguerite, Hope, Faith, Epiphany) and relatively few boy name ideas (Raphael . . . um. . . basically just Raphael - oh wait, no, Joshua too, maybe James).
And others I forget. And who knows what I'll want to name whatever kids I do or do not have down the road. A lot of the names I like either have weird meanings (I mean for me - like Joshua, kinda weird, given how agnostickish I am), weird sounds, and just . . . weirdness.
Theodore, though. Really. Really. :P
. . . . . entries for 23.2.09 . . . . .
So. Just got back from watching Gandhi. So, so, SO heartbreaking and amazing.
Here's a question, prefaced with a disclaimer. I know that nonviolence can't work so strikingly against all evils; in some places, it can't work at all. But I can't help but wonder: what would happen if a Palestinian charismatic started a nonviolent movement against the war in Gaza - against both Israeli aggressors and Hamas itself? Would that even apply, since Hamas was elected? Because as I understand it - though I understand it poorly - Hamas does not represent Palestinians. It has fooled many of them into believing that it does, but it doesn't. So what if - what if?
My WWS/ENV professor just called polar bears "charismatic megafauna, who may not be long for this world." I like her.
So . . . yeah. I have quite a lot to do these next three weeks. I think I am going to try to off my POL paper early this weekend - it's not a huge undertaking, relatively speaking - then move on to work on my Science in Society article, for whose quality I fear. I may end up caving on it, though I really, really don't want to.
After this class: reading, dinner, Gandhi movie, caffeination, reading, PPN meeting, reading, reading, reading, sleep, class, reading . . . and so on.
I've never before been in this situation: so many different papers to write, no ability to focus on just one, to gather enthusiasm slowly, to snowball into completion breathlessly. Let's see what it does to me.
And, as I study the Philippines for one class, I study South Africa for another. Score.
The illness that helped bring down President Marco, who ruled the Philippines under martial law in the 70's and early 80's: lupus, actually.
Weird thought: I, and all other girls at Princeton, and everywhere else, are capable of one day producing milk. Why is this so weird? I dunno - it makes me think of us as more animal, I guess.
Milk. Weird.
. . . . . entries for 22.2.09 . . . . .
Sometimes a novel realization comes with a "eureka!" and, other times, it comes with a whimper, a falling feeling, a sickness. Guess which one I like better. :P
Durkheim. Forever. And ever. And ever. Oi vey.
Note to self: write a poem about resilience. Several different scales in the same poem. Panarchy meta. Hysteresis. But without the big words. At least mostly.
More important note to self: do not write it yet. Do your damn reading.
So earlier tonight, I changed my sheets, and collapsed in a pile of "mrr comfy bed" thereafter. At some point, Ting came into the room and asked me if I still wanted to go to Murray-Dodge tonight. I remember this, but for some reason, I responded very incoherently, with my response equal parts related to her inquiry and related to the 2007 IPCC report. She has been making fun of me for it all night.
"I'm trying to relate this to global warming . . ."
. . . . . entries for 21.2.09 . . . . .
Whimper.
(From the 2007 IPCC Policymaker Synthesis.)
I think . . . I really need to revive those parts of myself that currently are not so well fed as, say, my environmentalism, or my interest in people broadly construed. I don't feel complete or interesting. I am the type of college student who joins a million publications but never stands on stage.
So which bits are these? . . . my writing bit, certainly - the creative writing bit, not the analytical writing bit. The latter gets enough attention. And the artistic bit needs work too. But I wish there were something else, something louder, some kind of guilt-free, beautiful frivolity people could see and hear.
I guess I have never been that person, not in an organized way. And the disorganized version pervades everything: the walk, talk, and sight of me in high school were so ridiculous and confident. But I think it went with knowing everyone, with feeling different but not inferior. Princeton is such a big pond for a small fish.
. . . . . entries for 20.2.09 . . . . .
This looks pretty awesome. Folks from one of the member organizations will be at the nonprofit career fair next week. I might go to that one, even though I gather it's mostly for seniors looking for work for reals. I am currently *not* at the summer internship fair, which is kinda full of I-banking firms. Yuck.
. . . . . entries for 19.2.09 . . . . .
If there were a market equilibrium graph for Erin time, it would have a ludicrous price ceiling on it imposed by various bits of Education at a Hoity Toity Institution. And there would be a great shortage, and a great clamor when, finally, some Erin appeared on the market.
I say this only because when I actually go on AIM, I get several IMs within a minute.
You don't understand. I am really done for.
I DON'T EVEN UNDERSTAND HOW I GOT IT.
. . . . . entries for 18.2.09 . . . . .
On a mostly unrelated note: dear God never talk to friends about GPAs. Ever. What a horrible, horrible decision that was.
But I wonder: if my MO were a high GPA, and if I played to my strengths, if I majored in, I don't know, English maybe - how different would that number be? (To say nothing of how different I would be.) And am I really steering away from my strengths in pursuing policy? I'm not sure I am. I know it's where I want to be now, at the very least. It may be the simple truth that I am not as good at the grade game as others, that I do not try as hard for them. It is, of course, just a game. Grades do not a learned, thinking student make.
I wish I didn't care.
- but - regarding my last post - I am sleeping on these things. Not literally, as it were. Who knows if sleep will enter into anything tonight. But it still bears more thought.
A certain acquaintance of mine seems to be very adamant about the importance of being out - of, in her case, making plain and public one's sexuality, gender identity, and so forth. I wonder: is it important to be out when it comes to other largely invisible differences?
If so, I think I may be on my way there. It seems increasingly ridiculous to stay in.
. . . . . entries for 17.2.09 . . . . .
I wonder if history always seemed so long ago.
WWS app = submitted. Fingers crossed.
Oh goodness tired. And so much to do.
. . . . . entries for 16.2.09 . . . . .
Early morning Q&A:
Q. Where do the thoughts go when I do not blog them?
A. This is where they go - these hours, every once in a while, when I can afford them the least.
Q. To whom do the thoughts go, if not to you?
A. To others, occasionally, but mostly they are churned back into myself.
Q. What price do I pay for the thoughts unblogged?
A. I could not calculate it. I have been paying for years.
Q. Why must I blog to get out the geist?
A. I am very inclined to blame Shakespeare and his Hamlet, on reflection. I just haven't been properly sane since. (For more on this, see early litblog posts.)
. . . . . entries for 15.2.09 . . . . .
"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." -H. G. Wells
Behold the awesomeness that is the Science in Society blog!
Har har. Okay. Seeing as how I need to seriously focus tomorrow (today), I'd better go to bed.
One last thought/note on life lately: my computer has wireless issues now, it seems. Very inconsistent connection. I hope this does not get so bad as to necessitate my taking it to OIT.
There is something afoot this Valentine's night: it made it so that Kelsey could not focus, so she tidied up the room. And it gave her the idea of sweeping under the couch. And it brought me back my necklace.
Thanks, Something Afoot. <3
. . . . . entries for 14.2.09 . . . . .
ps. how strange this is - on and around Valentine's Day, to spend hours on the phone with someone entirely not my boyfriend. But I feel like I didn't do my job of distracting him from the date very well. We are both too thoughtful in silences.
If I were to take God out of my facebook interests, I would stop getting annoying ads targeted at Christians. But I would also be lying.
My little corner-desk-by-the-window area smells of fresh flowers.
Delirious and delicious are just one letter apart.
IS THIS POST META
WELL I DON'T KNOW
IS IT!?
Hello, Valentine's Day #3. Here's to plenty more. (: <3
. . . . . entries for 13.2.09 . . . . .
So I just took a shiny new Jungian typology test and got INTP, but - interestingly - was very borderline on F and T, with all the other traits being fairly firmly rooted to one side or the other. I'll put the "badge" up in a bit.
A bunch of the questions had me thinking "it's a false distinction! You need both!" - particularly when they were about a choice between facts related to tasks at hand and relationships with the people involved. The people ARE the task. The relationships ARE the facts.
I also think I came out T because I have increasingly little tolerance for the phrase "that's just my opinion" when, in fact, the "opinion" is empirically wrong. "Opinion" is not an excuse to shore up whatever view you happen to espouse. People should feel themselves obligated to know the facts, to understand the situation, and not just flippantly form opinions based on very limited or flawed information. Other people, I find, hardly ever answer "I'd need to know more" when presented with a choice in ideology or action. I feel like that's my answer at least a third of the time, if not much more.
I guess this makes me like college you, Cassie. :P The originally idealist-ish person becoming critical and rational in a highly intellectual environment.
. . . . . entries for 12.2.09 . . . . .
I'm done for.
I am perplexed by global warming skeptics, now more than ever. Here is an excerpt from my reading on ozone depletion and the Montreal Protocol:
"The long life of CFCs ensured that the damage would continue long after the stoppage of use of the chemicals, and the adverse effects would be severe long before the ozone layer recovered. The world community accepted that actions had to be taken as a precautionary measure, as mentioned in the preamble to the Protocol. In 1992, this was incorporated in the declaration of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as Principle 15 that, in cases where serious harm is threatened, positive action to protect the environment should not be delayed until irrefutable scientific proof of harm is available."
It's like . . .
HEY GUYS
WE DID THIS ALREADY
REMEMBER!?
to say nothing of the fact that there is hardly any doubt, these days, in the anthropogenic nature of global warming.
Here is a fun bit, pulled from a World Bank document, after what I quoted above.
"Although scientific evidence that human activities was causing stratospheric ozone depletion was quite robust in the late 1980's, there were a number of sceptics who said 'wait for perfect knowledge; there is uncertainty in the ozone model.' Unfortunately the sceptics were absolutely right. The models were inaccurate. They underestimated [emphasis not mine] the impact of human activities on stratospheric ozone."
And so on.
Oh man. I have to do WWS stuff this weekend. Har har. Har. Har? o.o
Our co-enrollment in two courses - People, Things and Animals and Politics of the Developing Countries - has resulted in Kelsey and I having some pretty heated discussions over animal rights and vegetarianism in these past few days. They take on all sorts of forms and have reduced Kelsey to enraged shaking at times, because I don't place the same special value on human life that she does. When placed in the artificial situation "you have to kill either an elephant or a human baby," I don't automatically choose the baby. I think about it. What I know about elephants lends me to believe that they're incredibly intelligent and emotionally complex. That they aren't a member of my species, or that they can't communicate with me, doesn't matter that much.
. . . which results in a kind of slippery slope, which is problematic, and has me eating more vegetarian all the time.
But that is not directly related to the most recent exchange. After a long and winding lunch discussion, involving various reasons to eat vegetarian, the diet's social and ecological viability, and the decision's consequences for humanity, I concluded something like:
"Can you blame people in general for being irrational animals - for eating meat, for other excesses? No. Can you blame yourself if you know better? Yes."
To which Kelsey replied something like:
"I guess. But that doesn't always work. It reminds me of a post-utopian society, where everyone has five small meals a day, with vegetables and lean, non-meat protein - and we'd all be such interesting people."
So. She has the last word for now, which I guess is fine - not that I agree with her or think that a lack of self-restraint, or a desire to be interesting in one's flaws, are legitimate reasons not to try and be better.
This latest string of intellectual back-and-forth is unique in this: it upsets me at times, but not nearly as much as it appears to upset Kelsey at times. She doesn't doubt her views, she assures me; she's just incredibly appalled at some of mine. But I'm honestly glad. I'm sick of being the one torn up because I consider new and different viewpoints when they're presented to me. I'm happy to be certain and unflappable about something - even if that certainty is, in itself, uncertain. Would I choose the elephant or the baby? I don't know. It's an artificial situation. If it were contextualized in a real world scenario, my answer would depend on the context. Does this make me immoral, or perhaps amoral? I don't know. It makes me me.
. . . . . entries for 11.2.09 . . . . .
I enjoy my SOC/ANT professor.
"For the record, the following policy on responses will be implemented with increasing severity (after a brief period of leniency to allow for some early-in-the-semester chaos and course-hopping): Those who submit their papers on time may expect brief individual comments (oral or written). Those who are late shall be made to feel moderately guilty for robbing classmates of access to their insights on the readings. Those who skip responses more than once might face a reduction of their grade for participation. Please also be reminded that you are encouraged to comment on other people’s responses online – especially those who are not in your precept."
Teehee.
I am sitting on the Frist south lawn, absorbing the sunlight and warmth that tease of spring but are not spring. I'm going to the Princeton art museum with my EEB/ENV professor in a few minutes. I may or may not go to the national teach-in on global warming tonight. On the one hand, it sounds cool; on the other hand, it sounds like a time suck (two and a half hours!); on a third hand, I won't do anything productive in that time anyway; and on a final hand, I wish I could cajole someone into going with me, but I think that is probably impossible.
Is it unreasonable to think I've done something wrong, to think I should have some big flock of friends with whom to lie in the grass on a day like this? I accumulated people to my circle by accident in high school, but accidental things like that don't really happen here, at least not to me.
An eating club would probably be kind of like that - like the cafeteria in middle or high school, just sitting with people, getting introduced, falling into friendships naturally, not even noticeably.
Well, anyway. That is not me, at least not this year - probably not next year either, or the year after that. Hopefully I will find some other something I can regress into a bit, before the real world comes along and is even more isolating, even more difficult.
If, when all is said and done, I have not done enough to make up for myself, I will wish I had stopped trying much, much earlier.
. . . . . entries for 10.2.09 . . . . .
There were times, I think, when writing could end without a deadline imposed by someone else. Now it doesn't. Whatever easy contentment once lay in the first words written is now entirely gone.
. . . . . entries for 9.2.09 . . . . .
If my advisor gives me the go ahead to P/D/F micro, I think I'll just not go to lecture. Precept is effectively lecture, the concepts are not enormously difficult, and my professor is woefully verbose. And I am hungry. Grr.
Alternatively, I could make a habit of going to breakfast on Mondays and Wednesdays to increase my attention span for the microeconomic rambling. That . . . is unrealistic.
. . . . . entries for 8.2.09 . . . . .
So: I wrote this today while under the spell of the weather (et al), and I may or may not do something further with it. It is in present tense, which may or may not bear changing; I like it and I don't. It is nothing like complete, and therefore unsuitable for the the litblog. Therefore, normablog: a page or so of fiction!
Mary Catherine Howland lives in a gray-shingled house on a street filled with gray-shingled houses. Fresh shoots of ivy creep up her white arbor and picket fence, and sweet-smelling, scrubby island rosebushes line the walk to her door. She picks rosehips for tea and jam, and embroiders Bible verses onto white cloth to hang in her daughter’s nursery. She invites her cousins and friends and mother’s friends to her house for charades and gossip. She does whatever she can.
It isn’t so long, the older wives assure her. And imagine - first mate at just twenty-two! Soon her James will return rich with whale oil. After a bath and a good meal, he’ll be that same handsome young Howland she married - but not until, not until! Waves of laughter break over the cards and scones.
To Mary Catherine’s right sits Aunt Lizzie, a fine old lady with a straight nose. Her eyes are blue and crinkly behind her brass-rimmed spectacles. “That’s why we stay on the island, love,” she says, leaning close as though she were divulging a great secret. “You wouldn’t want to smell of whale, would you?”
Mary Catherine smiles with her eyes as she sips her tea, then rests her cup on its saucer. “Certainly not!”
Her guests laugh. Laura Smith, her mother, raises her saucer. “Another cup, dear.”
She obliges with a polite smile and nod, but her thoughts are elsewhere. No matter the company, it seems, her thoughts are elsewhere.
Mary Catherine remembers the odor of her father - God rest him - fresh from the docks, dark splotches on his breeches and sleeves. Even after the clothes were thrown away, after he washed and scrubbed, the salty, rotten smell remained in his beard and mustache for months. She can’t imagine her husband gathering that scent in his gold-and-copper hair, but she knows that his life must be like her father’s stories: toiling aboard the Morgan, some days trapped in doldrums, other days tormented by storms, and - on the worst days - in pursuit of enormous sea monsters for hours on end, stabbing their black flesh with harpoons until the spouts of their breath run red. “Fire in the chimney!” was the death knell of foolish whalers. The dying monster thrashed with ten times the power it possessed in life, its frenzy designed to drag its opponents with it into Hell.
“Dearest, it’s your go,” Aunt Lizzie tells Mary Catherine.
“Oh, goodness. I’m sorry.” She glances through her cards and plays, aware of the blush rising to her cheeks.
“It’s all right, love. We were all young once, hm?”
Whaling sounded like an adventure when Mary Catherine was a child. She begged her father to bring her along on his next voyage, but he just laughed, and her mother just shouted “stop those stories, John, you’ll give our daughter nightmares!”
Now, made nervous by the nightmares that her father’s bedtime stories never brought, Mary Catherine hopes that James is not a foolish whaler. He has been out to sea for one year today.
It would be so weird to be blogless. Less weird, now that facebook has entered my life. But still quite weird.
I fear that, no matter which class I end up dropping, I will get readings confused a lot this semester. Hopefully this fear will diminish as the courses get more into their particular subject matters and less introductory. For now, it feels weird to read Jeffrey Sachs for two different classes, especially when one of the pieces is 90 pages of expressive writing (in his 2005 book) and the other is a terse, page-long statement on something that seems to Sachs important, but outside his particular expertise (that important-yet-peripheral thing being sustainable development).
My thoughts on which class to drop are in constant flux. Hopefully everything will become clearer later in the week.
"No single agency was caught up in more scandals in the Bush administration than the Department of Interior. The deputy director was convicted of lying about his ties to the fallen lobbyist Jack Abramoff; another top official resigned after she was accused of running roughshod over agency scientists in endangered-species decisions; and a group of bureaucrats were found to have taken gifts from and engaged in sex and drug use with mining company officials they were supposed to be regulating."
Jesus H. Christ! (Full article, which is nowhere near as OMFG WHAT!? as that, can be found here.)
Maybe it is the gorgeous, winter-in-spring's-clothing weather that put this thought in my head. But I asked Kelsey and Ting today: if you could have any object smaller than a bread box, anything at all, what would it be? And there was a cat from Kelsey and a ring from Ting and I don't want just any old bread-box-or-smaller thing, I want something I lost. I miss it for wearing on days like this, a little close by reminder of a more important something (someone) far away.
It would be a good day to walk in the mud by the Mohawk.
. . . . . entries for 7.2.09 . . . . .
Ting is washing off chocolate syrup and ketchup and other assorted foodstuffs from her Colonial initiation. While I am glad I have a view into this madness, I'm not sure I'd want to be in it.
Kelsey and I have decided that the UN is a MSGO, which does not stand for monosodium glutamate organization, rather meta super government organization.
Kelsey is SO TICKLISH.
What a shame it is that I only have one life in which to become. All the things people from high school thought I'd do will probably be left undone. I rhymed, which is kind of cute, given that I'm thinking about how I used to write, how I think a lot of people suspected I would be a novelist or something. I miss that part of myself. She already seems quite distant in some ways. But she is so much better suited to my temperament than some of the people I now work towards becoming - have I erred in stepping away from her?
I think it is chance that brought me here, to where I stand and whence I go. Other encouragement and disappointment could have made me into something else entirely.
Still - she is worth keeping up, that person my high school teachers probably thought I'd become. I've at least worked her into my WWS app schedule.
After the Science and Society recruitment meeting last night, we (Buyers 17 - Mari + Yianni) went to the diner. OMG delicious. Also, less OMG-worthy, silly us-ish conversation and - much to my relief - a car that started easily in the cold.
Slept late, went to brunch, saw Hot Fuzz (time 3 for me, first for Ting and Kelsey), showered, and now report to you clad in that pink tomato thing I acquired for Christmas (kind of).
I need to clean in here. Seriously. And read, obviously, but then . . . don't I always?
. . . . . entries for 5.2.09 . . . . .
So here's a question: what do I tell WWS in my 300-word essay explaining why they should let me in? No joke - this is not an essay attuned to a creative response. Here's the prompt.
"Explain your interest in pursuing an undergraduate concentration in public or international affairs, as well as any other element of your background of experience that would contribute to the diversity of perspectives or the well-grounded consideration of public or international issues while you are a student at the Woodrow Wilson School."
So far my big ideas all relate to my concentration within the school, not why I'm a particularly good candidate. So, uh, yeah. Hm. Better think about that. :P
I hope that, between my several tons of reading and work this weekend, I will write some poetry.
Tonight, the top priority belongs to my funding app. O.O
SOC/ANT 319 was cool. It was not bad. It shows promise. This is kind of awful, because it means I do not want to drop it, which leaves me with six classes I want and/or need to take. As of now, I'm guessing that WWS/ENV 334 is going to be the one to go. I know it'll be offered in future years, and I need something to put on senior spring for my WWS plan anyway. The combination of POL 351 and SOC/ANT 319 will keep me sufficiently involved in sustainable development thinking this semester.
I also might drop cognitive psych, because I don't, strictly speaking, need it. On the other hand, it's not too intense of a class, if I end up majoring in PSY I won't regret it, and it might be really worthwhile to be enrolled in it and SOC/ANT 319 at the same time.
That being said, the precept situation with SOC/ANT 319 is really up in the air. I might not be able to take it at all.
The decision will be left until the end of next week; until then, I will be scrambling with six courses. OH BOY.
. . . . . entries for 4.2.09 . . . . .
On a completely different note, I think I'm getting used to this "having braces" business.
OMFG webmail is slow. o.O Agony.
I have to read the first 90ish pages of The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs for my POL class. In what I've read so far, I've been struck by the power of a certain analogy.
The Third World, Sachs recounts, chose a path adhering neither to the First World's free market capitalism nor the Second World's communism because, after having been colonized by the former, they did not trust either. Third World nations chose to be self-sufficient, to depend only upon their own resources, direction, and people, to close their borders to trade and influence. They thought it safer.
Like the hurt or mistrustful person withdraws into him- or herself and avoids the risk of dependence on others. As with impoverished nations, so with impoverished people.
It is a book worth reading, for many many many reasons aside from my silly parallel to Squallish personalities.
. . . . . entries for 3.2.09 . . . . .
Assorted details of the day:
-Snow. Lots of it.
-Breakfast, for once.
-Technical difficulties = early out in PSY 251.
-Planned most of the rest of my undergraduate academic life for WWS app. That was exciting, if a bit silly.
-Dinner with Alisapod.
-Should be distributing PPN. But it is really snowy. It will be less snowy tomorrow. So I shall stay in and read this night.
Weird nightmares last night involving an occult-ish apocalypse: storms, magically disturbed pathways of communication, evil wizard-y types messing with me, one good but distant wizard-y type trying to help me. And someone telling me, I think in a prior dream, "shut the door that is the window." Or something. Ominous.
And today I ache and am sleepy. Ho hum. At least I don't have fifty tons of class. I'm looking forward to POL and PSY stats probably won't be too bad.
. . . . . entries for 2.2.09 . . . . .
As of now, I am officially signed up for 5 classes and shall be officially in 6 pretty soonish, I believe. This means one needs to be dropped. This means I am actually course shopping for the first time ever. Weird!
I think cognitive psych will be good, but not knock-your-socks-off amazing. The professor seems nice and the preceptor seems like a trip. Micro, similar - probably not quite as fun. WWS/ENV . . . I am a bit dubious, partially because of its astounding length at the end of a long day and partially because of the first class itself, but I think I'd be dumb to drop it. My professor said the following Verbatim-worthy thing in context of population growth in developing countries: “In the long run, high death rates may not be helpful.” Oh boy. Oh BOY.
In the future, I shall have to not stay up to all hours before a long day of class.
Campus is quite lovely on this warm winter day. It looks antiqued, the colors washed out and reflecting in puddles. I'm wearing contacts, to mitigate my braces-related dorkiness, and my sunglasses are hiding down in my car, so the sun seems . . . bright. :P Shocking.
It's WWS seminar break at the moment. And now, break is over. Notes time.
My cognitive psych professor is very soft-spoken, and appears to know French and Italian, based on the news sites he's been browsing before class. Class shall begin shortly, then microecon, then ninja-lunch, then WWS/ENV seminar I am not actually signed up for yet, then WWS app info session. Long day.
That I have blogged in ludicrous excess lately bodes well for my creativity and enthusiasm in the coming semester . . . I hope?
. . . . . entries for 1.2.09 . . . . .
Threadless is neat and overall too distracting. :P
It's warm out - 40ish - and that makes me feel like it's Spring, which cheers me up a little, makes the world seem fresher, and makes me miss A Someone.
Further on environmentally intelligent eating: PETA definitely has some misinformation or overblown statements on their website. While they rail against even organic and free range meat production, they provide no citations - even though they do cite data as they attack specific certification programs that actually have no relation to organic or free range farming. They also attack fish farming, which, generally speaking, I understand; but they make a blanket statement that all farmed fish must be fed five times its harvest weight in wild-caught fish, thus creating a fivefold negative impact on global fisheries. Not so, PETA: have you ever heard of tilapia? They, too, maintain vegetarian diets.
In any case. Awareness, awareness.
On a vaguely related note, I just watched this year's rejected PETA commercial, and the propaganda video that followed. PETA's focus on animal cruelty is a turn-off - it's too much, even if they're right - and they make too little of the problems meat production causes for the environment and for feeding people, which really interest and move me. But veganism is more or less out; it seems to me expensive, time-consuming, untasty, and/or unhealthy, and my resources are rather limited.
PETA certainly is an effective media whore, eh? :P It's made me feel guilty, but not guilty enough to devote my life to veganism. Edging towards vegetarianism? Perhaps. Perhaps.
Princeton, I am disappointed in you - I hesitate to say outraged. How many classes filled up in the first five minutes of registration for the spring semester - how many seminars on the almost purely academic, on the abstract, on the pet causes of this generation that appear on the New York Times and nightly news? When I faced such a closed course - global environmental policy - and when I had established a place on its waiting list, I looked to my semester-planning spreadsheet to figure out what else I could take. And after everyone had signed up, after all scores were more or less settled, there were still spaces in POL 351. I wondered why I hadn't signed up for it in the first place, given what I had learned in EEB/ENV this past semester. I guess it's just that I, like your average Princetonian, overlooked it because, at first gloss, it seemed so tangential, so peripheral to what matters.
Well God damn, Princeton. If this doesn't matter, what does?
I note there's still one free space left, two days before the class begins. What of that, my fellow future world leaders? Would I be too mean, too direct to say that only the most trivial and silly reasons keep you from filling the last spot?
"The defining principle of our culture and our country is future preference, that tomorrow can be better than today and that each of us has a personal and moral responsibility to make it so." -Carroll Quigley
^^something like that was almost my senior quote. It now applies, in a deflated and silly way, to my STUPID BRACES.
Future preference! Future preference!
come home?
.:people:.
{ting}
she looks like the real thing
{mari}
out and about
[kelsey]
THIS IS AMERICA
{yianni}
stop being depressed
{alisa}
other
[shannon]
close and far
{frank}
islands where no islands should go
[cassie]
eating knowledge
{colin}
my dm
[emily]
shoulder to the wheel
[brian]
nostalgic for fantasy
[nicole]
industry insider
{elle}
angry enviro
[matt]
never heard of miyazaki
[pirate dan]
are you reading this?
[olga]
distracted
[messiah dan]
messiah/believer
{max}
approach focus
[natalie]
wait a minute
[susan]
solitude
{greg}
manbeargreg
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.:skin:.
turtles! turtles! by araglas
(heavily modified by yours truly)