Twisters?
Here is an amazing story about identity that I read about in this morning's NYTs.
Here is an amazing story about identity that I read about in this morning's NYTs.
I’ve recently been doing searches for audio and video clips to use for my upcoming family identity course this June. Here are a couple of fun You Tube videos I found:
I also found this NPR audio clip with director, Adam Egyoyan, talking about themes of “loss and identity” in his recent film “Adoration.”
It occurred to me that I should have named the course, “Identity & The Family” instead of the incredibly embarrassing name I gave it. At the time, I thought it was so clever, but now…?
I did a guest lecture last Tuesday evening in an undergraduate Family Psychology course on “The Clinical Use of Genograms.” After a brief introduction to Bowenian family systems theory and the feminist Bowenians, I used a recent film directed by Jonathan Demme, “Rachel Getting Married,” to build Rachel and Kim’s family diagram together as a class.
Using selected clips from the film, we slowly learned more about Rachel and Kim’s family – adding to the family diagram with each progressive film clip. It was a great film to use to illustrate some of the salient themes in intergenerational family therapy using a feminist family therapy framework. Doing the lecture made me realize just how much I miss my clinical work. I really hope to get back to it at some point. At the end of the lecture, I asked the students to write down 1 to 3 famous families to use for my upcoming Family Identity summer course. I was glad I took this opportunity to learn from them because they came up with families I would have never thought to use: the Obamas, the Osbournes, the Jacksons, the Jolie-Pitts, and the Hiltons. A couple of students also suggested the Clintons; they were the only family on my list that I was planning on using. What a great way to get at family identity – through famous families in popular culture.
We recently went out to breakfast with some friends who were in town over the holidays when we realized that some members of our family (no names mentioned) will have the privilege of ordering off the seniors' menu by the year 2012. How can we calmly ring in 2009 when more exciting things are coming our way in a mere three years? Whoever said, "60 is the new 40" hasn't updated menus in the Twin Cities area -this particular menu counts seniors as 55 years and up.
Happy New Year!
Based on the definition from Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_matrix, an identity matrix can be defined as follows:
“In linear algebra, the identity matrix or unit matrix of size n is the n-by-n square matrix with ones on the main diagonal and zeros elsewhere. It is denoted by In, or simply by I if the size is immaterial or can be trivially determined by the context. (In some fields, such as quantum mechanics, the identity matrix is denoted by a boldface one, 1; otherwise it is identical to I.)
The identity matrix also has the property that, when it is the product of two square matrices, the matrices can be said to be the inverse of one another."
The names of other matrices in matrix algebra all make sense and are easily defined (e.g. square matrix, upper/lower triangular matrix, diagonal matrix, tridiagonal matrix, diagonally dominant matrix), yet the identity matrix seems to be embedded in a deeper symbolic and/or cultural meaning. What would Jung have said about this as an archetype?
Which mathematician named this particular kind of matrix an “ identity matrix" – and why don’t other matrices bear more interesting and culturally symbolic names?