The Deception of the Thrush

Yay for the quick-and-easy presto-change-o template changer! What a wonderful new way to squander my life away on the Internet. What do we all think of the Thrush's new clothes?

So, some random thoughts today, as I procrastinate this Saturday morning. The OBL tape. Oh, God. I admit, it did make me shiver. But I went to bed and woke up this morning and nothing has exploded and there are still happy children out on my street. So, we'll see. What frustrated me was the typical Bush & Kerry rhetoric. Bush: We will not be intimidated by the enemy. Kerry: We will hunt and kill the terrorists. Bang bang.

I, for one, am completely unfamiliar with this reference to the Israeli bombing of the towers in Lebanon. But BushKerry will not talk about any complex geopolitical issues, no no, all they know are the same knee-jerk statements from their campaign cache. Though I should sympathize--the communication faculties of a human being were not evolved to deal with such a global audience, and with such profound stakes. It must be an awesome weight for both the candidates to know that their words are being listened to by so many people with such capacity for violence. Under similar pressures, I would probably just issue a reflex-like statement as well.

The deal is, I think a public discussion of the kinds of topics bin Laden brought up--such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict--would appear as "yielding to the terrorists demands." As in, look, the terrorists wanted us to think about this, and we did. Therefore they will threaten us more to do other things. But if we continue to shut out the issues that we know are pertinent to our potential attackers, then how will progress ever be made? Note that I'm not talking about any specific change in Mideast policy, of taking sides with Israel or Palestine. It's just *talking* about this, instead of making up different reasons why the Arab world might be angry. Even liberals make up their own reasons--it is American wealth and greed and capitalism and our libertine lifestyle. And those factors probably exacerbate things, but we're really ignoring some of the core issues.

OK, that's a very unstructured, poorly thought-out rant and a good illustration of why I don't usually bring up politics. Plus I just rolled out of bed and the coffee is nowhere near kicking-in.

I have a friend back in Minneapolis who is an avid fan of the late Mr. Rogers. Mr. Rogers' wife, as well as the guy who played Mr. McFeely, will be at the Pitt Book Center today. I may get their autographs for her. Better than studying.

Ok, yes, back to doing real things with my life. Have a good weekend.

Posted by Karin Cox at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So, here's the happy crew of cognitive psychology graduate students at Pitt. Fortunately I'm buried in there such that you can hardly see me. We're on top floor of the building in which I work--it has a balcony that overlooks much of campus, including the famous and somewhat ridiculous Cathedral of Learning--that's the "gothic skyscraper" you see on the right.

Posted by Karin Cox at 08:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

To be honest, I've only read the first paragraph of this, but judging from what I've seen so far, it should be pretty good:

Schopenhauer passage "On Noise"

Posted by Karin Cox at 09:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So, I obviously have nothing to say, which is why I'm just posting links. Oh well. We all need to read the Myth of Sisyphus, don't we? Sure we do.
It'll be just like Oprah's book club, if Oprah turned cynical and existentialist.

Albert Camus--The Myth of Sisyphus

Posted by Karin Cox at 09:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

from East Coker:

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Posted by Karin Cox at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Jacques Derrida died this week; I did not know that. I picked up an old NYT from 10/12 at lunch today and found an editorial on him. It may be interesting for those of you who spent some time in PoMo-saturated Macalester. Or in any other environment that heavily partakes of his ideas.

I'm never sure if the Times links that I put in will work. It may be somewhat linked to my particular login for their site. So if the link doesn't work, just go to NYT and do a search for stuff published about Derrida in the past week, and you'll find the editorial, by Mark Taylor.

Mark Taylor Editorial

Posted by Karin Cox at 03:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Here's a request for advice.

There's a research assistant in my department who's very nice, about my age, and hails from the Midwest. And she's stuck with an over-politeness problem. Why do I say that? Well, there's this guy, maybe in his 30s or 40s, who works a few floors down, a sort of mailroom/supplyroom/errand-running guy, and he just talks her ear off, practically every day. You know she doesn't want him to be talking to her, but you know she's far far too polite to blow him off. Her office is a few doors down from mine. It's almost painful to hear the familiar ritual in the afternoon, with Supply Room Guy babbling about god-knows-what, and Quiet Midwestern Research Assistant reluctantly replying in some kind of minimal way. One time I intentionally made up some "important question" that I had for her just to get Supply Room Guy out of her face. But that's only going to work so many times. What can be done in these situations?

Posted by Karin Cox at 07:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been neglecting you all, so the least I can do is lure you back with a tantalizing title.

So, I was at a 'retreat' this weekend for the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition. A 'retreat' means we take a breather from our normal lives of obsessing about cognitive neuroscience in order to listen to other people's obsession with cognitive neuroscience.

Anyways, I stayed at the resort for one evening, in a single. And right before I went to bed, lo and behold, there on my bathroom wall, was a bug the likes of which I have never seen in my life. Creepy, crawly bug. Even if it wasn't necessarily creeping or crawling at the time. I'm telling you, I have never seen a bug like this is my life. I don't think it was a spider. It had several legs--probably many more than eight. The legs seemed to radiate from the bug's small body in such a way as to create sort of an oval. They were real thin legs, like they were whiskers. And the bug itself was sort of light brown-colored.

Hmmm. I don't like bugs. Especially buggies that are not of my previous acquaintance. So, I got all creeped out and shut my bathroom door and went to bed. And I kept on thinking of this bug, in my dreams, how can I get rid of this bug, I don't ever want to see it again.

I finally wake up at 5:30 in the morning, thinking, alright, let's see about this bug, I just need to get it between a kleenex and get it out of here. So, with all the bravery of a sheep, I go to the door, timidly start to open it and.....Oh.

It was jammed. Or locked. Though I still have no idea how I could have locked myself out. But it looks like that's what I did. So I get dressed, go out in the cold and dark, to the front desk, whine that I somehow locked myself out of my bathroom. Someone eventually came and took care of the door. I opened it, and the bug was gone.

Posted by Karin Cox at 07:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

so, I announced my mother's birthday, it would only be right for me to announce my father's birthday as well. He occasionally contributes to this blog as well so send him your congrats!

Posted by Karin Cox at 08:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Hey, so, yours and my favorite blog has been featured on the UThink homepage, for its dubious distinction of publishing "Nibbled to death by small geese". (Thanks Shane!)
I could certainly do a million encores of that blog entry, if people really enjoy hearing about the things that irritate me, but I'm concerned that if I milk that cow too much people will start to actually recognize my true psychopathology. So I try to proceed with caution.

I should note that the title of that entry came from a saying that my grandmother used to say, and that my mother still says. I would have never thought of that on my own.

The other day my advisor brought up one of her father's sayings--"It hasn't been a hinder day." Meaning, you haven't gotten a lot of things accomplished--you haven't gotten a lot of tasks beHIND you. Interesting.

So UThink was inspired by Harvard Law? What other universites have tried this out? Why aren't the slackers at Pitt implementing something like this?

So, I have been feeling strangely nostalgic for my warm and fuzzy undergraduate institution these days, so I went and visited the Macalester webpage, to see what was new. It seems that they've been spat upon by US News & World report who has knocked them down to the "26th" spot--out of the coveted "top 25" list. I'm sure there's much beating of breasts and gnashing of teeth in the admissions office. Erstwhile, the school is named one of the 50 Best Schools for Girls by COSMOgirl. Ouch.

Posted by Karin Cox at 11:06 AM | Permalink

Here's an observation: I have seen far too many graduate students, post-docs, and faculty who appear prematurely gray. My first theory, of course, is that something about the stress of their job has paled those tender locks of hair. My second theory is that, given that I don't really know these folks' age, but I'm just guessing from their facial characteristics and other clues, that they've actually aged slower than most (in terms of smoother skin, higher-pitched voices, etc), and their hair has been the only thing that honestly indicates their age. This would make sense to the extent that all those books have kept them indoors and away from the effects of the sun. The third theory is that all sorts of people in the world, and not just the academics who populate my daily existence, show these conflicting signs of aging, where one trait seems a lot more advanced than the others. Ideas?

Posted by Karin Cox at 09:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)