Have you ever heard of golf-juggling? Clearly, I've been missing out!
Letterman's Bushisms are also enjoyed by my dad; an almost nightly routine.
Did you hear about the "classic" American inventor John Kanzius, who invented something he wasn't even looking for? This newsreel appears as fake as one can imagine and yet...could Saltwater into fire be possible? Meanwhile, he has applied for a patent for a cancer treatment.
I suppose stranger things are possible....
Keanu was online this morning; we have not had contact since an email query about how to characterize a lunch conversation we had during the first Dialogue under Occupation conference in Chicago last fall. Then, I was clarifying for the paper I'll present at the second DUO conference this fall, in Jerusalem. Today, I scoped out his plans. Those Hawaiians are up to exciting things!!!!
I missed the deadline to submit my own paper at the International Studies Association (political science). Darn. How close is my dissertation topic to the field of international relations? Wikipedia says it is "both an academic and public policy field, and can be either positive or normative." Given the choice of positivistic science or normative science, I definitely lean to the latter in the sense that I think whatever gets put into policy becomes normative (so we better be clear on what we want the norms to be!)
The ISA conference "Call for Papers" is broader, opening up the paradigmatic range to include "empirical and normative, conservative and liberal, systemic and individual, activist and academic, material and ideational, positivist and post-positivist." Sounds good, actually! I wonder which way the biases tend to lean, in terms of representation among these quite disparate views?) The goal of the 2008 conference is to "Bridge Multiple Divides...by creating dialogue and integrative research between scholars from different communities and viewpoints." Gee, if they really do it, that would be cool. To the extent they "fail" or "succeed," I may have another opportunity for interaction and reflection such as DUO provided?
I'll have to scope them out some more, perhaps after they begin to post papers. Did I also miss the poster deadline? They maintain an online archive (requires membership).
Preregistration ENDS November 30.
Something to think about!
"In Hawaiian," Keanu told me, "we say "a hui hou" which is 'until next time.'"
Community Emergency and Disaster Preparedness video from the Department of Homeland Security with general info, applicable to everybody. Features at least one person I know! :-)
(I used to be "prepared"; uh oh, gotta get my act together, even better than before!)
My introduction to Rainer Maria Rilke was through a quote from a calendar years (decades!) ago.
I picked up In Praise of Mortality at the campus bookstore a week or two ago. Over the past two days, since attending a funeral service, I've read the introduction by the two translators. They quote from some of his letters, which I find as interesting and inspiring as his poetry.
Rilke writes (to his ex-wife), during the First World War (when he was unable to write poetry for over a decade), of the "inner will for the great changes that would be needed to save the world" (2005:2-3), and of the need to "submit to [his "indescribable"] suffering [rather] than make any concession in the essential" (3).
The translators, Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy, discuss their labor of translating his Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus as "work [that] soon took us where we needed to go, offering ways to dignify our pain for the world and deepen our capacity for gratitude" (5-6). Is it a social metonymy that Rilke's work spoke to them? "Like Rilke during the First World War, we at the beginning of the twenty-first century have felt refuted and weighted with dread as our nation mounts preemptive war and arms itself for domination of the world" (3).
“Rilke invites us to experience what mortality makes possible” (22) by “liv[ing] death at the heart of each moment” (21).
Not a criticism (as if we never vibrate at the pulse of life), rather – Rilke refers to embracing “the onceness of our lives [which] calls us to be more fully present” (19). Practicing such intensive presence can heighten “intuitive awareness of our oneness with nature and the ecological roots of consciousness” (14), preparing us for “a reciprocal transformation. To a real extent, we become each other. It is a sort of resurrection, in which our intrinsic belonging to each other is conscious and complete” (14).
“In the First Elegy, Rilke suggests that our very capacity to let go of attachments has an effect upon the world, allowing more spaciousness for other creatures to enjoy (13-14):
Three parts of the services for a colleague’s husband affected me the most: the sixties protest music before and after the actual ceremony, the spontaneous testimonials, and the missing poem. The description of the poem intrigued me, both for its theme of family resemblance and the imagery invoked about the hand as tool. This sensibility came back to me as I read these lines (II, 25) from Rilke’s first famous work, The Book of Hours:
It seemed to me that the missing poem is evidence of the “courage born of the … acceptance of mortality” (23), which does not shy away from “naming what is doomed to disappear” (23).
Listening to the testimonials, I was reminded of Sam. Combining that with the work of one’s own hands – literally and figuratively: the evidence of one’s use to others, to the Earth, to life. I was also reminded of Alec. And the music. Of all choices! How like “Orpheus, the singing god, who confronted and redeemed the realm of death” (20) through “his refusal to allow it to destroy the basic intention of his life” (8):
is much more intriguing than a quantitative girl. At least that's what we decided on the way to The Shy Glassy-Eyed Indian's b'day party the other day. The highlight of the evening was the song competition, which was an outgrowth of the Bengali, Maharashtra, and Tamil intraIndian debate and cucumber war (mine was stolen). I (by the way), scored big points with "Y". Lest it be forgotten (gasp!), there was also an Oriya guy, who actually did quite well at this game.
The piece de resistance was the H(square) vanilla cake (frosted by She-Who-Will-Remain-Nameless) and quite tasty, actually. The dosa was yummy yummy yummy with and without the potato stuffing, and despite the experiment played on a certain naive american. There was no coconut curry (much to someone's chagrin?) however there was coconut rice, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
The Rock Star had nothing left to share with me, "Steph! Sorry! You arrived late!" Yeah, right. (Like that would have made a difference. Ha!) One of the girls broke the corkscrew and one of the boys came to the rescue. Some people had recently been partying way too much, and more than half the group paid attention to one part or another of my lesson in string theory. Time to feed your mind!
Most of the conversations I've had with physicists involve cosmology: "Was there a String Bang before the Big Bang, or did the Universe simply unwind?" We started out with gravity this night, because that's the Rock Star's area of study (supergravity?) I was trying to get a grip on what is the part of gravity that hasn't been figured out yet. Newton's version works for anything we know how to observe, but gets tricky at the quantum level: is it because of that whole indeterminacy thang? (I forget.) I should mention, btw, that at about this time Ambu temporarily abandoned his chef duties in order to post a large yellow traffic sign (symbolizing warning), saying:
Now, my memory is sketchy, but I know gravity is actually a two-way force....yes, it pulls us down to the center of gravity but there is also another draw that orients to and/or positions us from the opposite direction. For whatever (crucial) reason that I cannot now reconstruct, the answer to my question about what is still unknown about gravity led to a minor tutorial on string theory, which is wicked elegant because it combines three other theories: Newton's (law of gravity? laws of motion?), Planck's h (a certain constant), and the speed of light into one dimension. Wow! Beautiful! Congruence! (One possible definition includes "agreement between trees." Go figure.)
Hmm. Does that elusive comprehension return? Is the unanswered question concerning gravity about the strong and weak nuclear forces? Yes....? (Maybe not, see four fundamental forces). Obviously, I am in need of follow-up instruction. I do recall (hopefully accurately), that string theory has a stronger restriction (allowing 11 dimensions in our universe) whereas supersymmetry has a weaker restriction (enabling an entire 26 dimensions). Something clicked a few neurons in my brain to imagine a parallel between symmetry (of any kind) and synchronicity. At this point, I was directed to geodesics.
{I cannot explain the next jotting in my notes: "coloring of cows." Must have been contextual.}
Stupersymmetry.
by email. Posting delayed.
I almost fell out of my seat when Ruth called and said her hubby, the Sears Catalog Man (a.k.a. "Frederick") wondered if I was close enough to come join them for a few days of their vacation in Maine. Well, yeah!
They were staying in the "Harry Potter House" in Bayside, replete with plants in the gutters and quite a view:
(although not quite as stunning as Frederick's plunge into the fifty-degree drink).
The cottages (to which I made my own interior decorating contribution) are just outside of Belfast (where there is no oating, wimming, or ishing). I arrived just as Jamie was preparing to trounce his dad in chess (third game out of four, 75% is a pretty durn good average). There were many memorable events, as there always are, including being toasted as an "old friend." Seventeen years we figger. I was shown one major prize of beach-combing: the (supposed?) half-inch hold-down to the center hatch of the Edmund Fitzgerald which was unlatched and ~ thus ~ the cause of its terrible demise. (in Lake Michigan? Not the Atlantic? Really? Minor detail.)
Another prize involves seaglass. I regret to report that I did not lay eyes on the (apparently whole) bottle in question, although I did witness negotiations for a trade involving a (full) bottle of port.
The closed bid negotiations occurred on the same evening as the announcement of the Lynch Theory of Boats, in which all boats on anchor face the same direction. (duh?)
Earlier that day, Frederick the Sears Man had overcome all gender stereotypes and convinced his wife to buy him some finger armor. (He does get points for being a seamstress.)
Dinner the first night was a bit charred (although still edible). The next night, we went out on the Good Return all the way to Castine, where we devoured a seafood medley of haddock, shrimp, and scallops in lobster cream sauce. We had a bit of anxiety prior to the return (!), as a thunderstorm swept by, just skirting us but leaving "a confused sea" with a lot of chop. It was just cold enough, with a fair amount of seaspray, that Captain Melissa invited us into the pilot's cabin (we were the only passengers). That was pretty awesome cool. :-) Sometime after we passed by Turtle Head (in Penobscot Bay) the waters started to calm; by the time we made dock the water was as smooth as glass. Mellow as heaven.
We drove down Route 1 this morning, taking in various shops and sights. There was one place that was simply too good to pass by. We also almost had a debate about the quantum indeterminacy of engineering (as compared with the potential fixity of communication) but the timing wasn't right. I did hear an NPR science story by David Kestenbaum as I finally headed home on the "Atomic Tune-Up: How the Body Rejuvenates Itself. Here we go, what new knowledge do I want to help create? How people can use the fact of "the atomic makeover" to recreate their being-in-the-world (through communication, of course). :-)
Meanwhile . . . there is something about being on the seashore. Perhaps it is the only place where the sun can be hot on your skin and the breeze cool enough to raise goosebumps. Besides, we had fun!
No, not me. I'm skeptical of all those therapists whose main function is to build self-esteem and guarantee affirmation for whatever whacked out rationales people have for the crazy things they do in their lives.
Meanwhile, I had a great time at the d-vite. Dhara knows cool people. There was the guy with the unique hairstyle who seemed insistent on separating a countertop from the wall (and tried to warn me off being too critical of therapists. "You know everyone here is going to be a therapist?" Don't they know everything is social co-construction?!! Aw shucks, I still like 'em. :-) Jake (not a psychologist) even told me it was ok to get myself in trouble. I definitely like that (since skirting the edge of "being-in-trouble" - tends to be my usual mode of operation). ;-)
Besides the usual grad school kvetching, I learned that Romanian is closer to Latin than Italian (due to declension), that packs of dogs used to roam the streets of Bucharest (taking folk out, periodically), people in Communication "do literary analysis on people,' some people in the social sciences really can get internships, and not everyone thinks blogging is intuitive. Really? I get the criticism - what is it about the mundane details of my small life that is really all that interesting to anyone else? (Good question.) ;-)
The most entertaining part of the evening were the confessions about how we all knew each other. "Parties." And not just any parties, by the way. "Lava's Parties." Where is that sexy hunk of a guy, anyway? Ah, traveling. Out of town. Not available. Isn't that the way it goes?
Amanda made awesome food. Chocolate, chocolate-covered strawberries, chocolate, chocolate-covered pretzels, chocolate, raspberry "pie", chocolate, blueberry "pie," chocolate. There were several cheeses and crackers too. (The coolest people were invited early, btw, and the rest of us - ahem - later, for the leftovers?!??!!!) Surveillance cameras tracked who chose chocolate-covered strawberries over chocolate-and-peanut-butter-covered pretzels. (Data collection for a future dissertation?) Watch for those follow-up surveys . . .
