Cryptic Elliptic
time, time, time, see what's become of me ...
Since I'm effectively in finals week, I haven't a lot of time here, despite many things to say. Quickly:
The CPO doesn't hate me! They just wanted to point out that a pub crawl is a huge liability risk for me, my parents, and the University. Maybe I just know a lot of good drunks (and,
Kathleen the quintessential good drunk excepted, I don't know if I do) but I had no idea that drunk people were so into running in front of buses. The CPO people related many tales of saving people from death-by-Clark-bus, and many tales of having dozens of administrators holding up vomiting seniors. I don't think I want to deal with either the ick factor or the risk-management of running the pub crawl on a potentially large scale, so it's going small and private. Alas. We'll always have the Shedd trip (as well as the evening in Pilsen I'm in the process of planning).
Later, I may write something in defense of the one-night stand, which is a bit odd if you know me.
I'm having a bit of a cultural inferiority complex. Some people listen to classical stuff while they're trying to work, I listen to the Get Up Kids. Can I get some recommendations on things to listen to (including what recordings you prefer)? I know I like Britten, Palestrina, and La Rue and have little patience for Ives, but that's about as far as it goes. Please educate my dumb ass.
Back to the SSRIs/MAOIs talk. MAOIs are more interesting!
i got your paranoia riiiiiiight here ... :
So between my classes today, I postered for Alternative Senior Week. After class, I found the following message in my inbox ...
Dear Susan,
I am writing from the College Programming Office regarding Senior Week. We
saw your flyers for the Alternative Senior Week and would really like to
sit down with you and discuss our programming, including the rationale
behind the move from Wrigleyville to Weed Street. Tomorrow would be good
for us, as next week is going to be hectic here. If you can meet, please
let me know what time works well for you. [more meeting-time-related things]
Thanks,
[administrator]
Assistant Director
College Programming Office
So I'm a little worried. I'm trying to drag in one of my co-conspirators to come with me; wish me luck.
fun with fundamentalism:
Something over on
Crescat Sententia made me think back to the days when I entertained thoughts of picking up a Religious Studies concentration (I'd never dream of picking up a RS concentrator, though. ew.). The question, essentially, is how we define fundamentalism.
Here, someone's being criticized for using "fundamentalist" and "evangelical" interchangeably, which I'd agree is a valid criticism. The debate that raged in
Religious Studies 101 concerned the religious specificity of the term "fundamentalist", centering on whether the concept of fundamentalism could be appropriately applied to Islam. The professor (whose work focuses on social/intellectual/political interrelations among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in thirteenth-century Spain) believed that fundamentalism could be strictly interpreted as the literal interpretation of a religion's central text, and thus that "Islamic fundamentalism" was a misnomer.*
My second-favourite reference source ever, the OED, gives the first definition of fundamentalism as:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A religious movement, which orig. became active among various Protestant bodies in the United States after the war of 1914-1918, based on strict adherence to certain tenets (e.g. the literal inerrancy of Scripture) held to be fundamental to the Christian faith; the beliefs of this movement; opp.
liberalism and
modernism.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Later, it extends the definition to include "In other religions, esp. Islam, a similarly strict adherence to ancient or fundamental doctrines, with no concessions to modern developments in thought or customs". The earliest quotations given for any definition (all of which date from the early 1920s) refer to Christians (Baptists and William Jennings Bryan, specifically).
According to my professor's definition, fundamentalism opposes not only liberalism and modernism, but also other religious movements (I'm thinking of ultramontanism) that oppose liberalism and moderalism. One could hardly call Pope Pius IX a fundamentalist by her standards (two of the religious statements for which he's best known, the Bull Ineffabilis and the doctrine of papal infallibility, are famously lacking in Scriptural backup), but it's hard to view him as anything but an opponent of liberalism and modernism (as the other religious statement he's well known for is the Syllabus of Errors).
* (Please excuse my utter ignorance of Islam.) I believe her contention was that, while "Islamic fundamentalists" based their beliefs at least in part on some of the hadiths, these hadiths were both not the central religious text and not particularly reliable or representative of Islam as a whole. It's been more than a year since this lecture, though, so I'm a little fuzzy on the details.
hurrah for thesis rewards:
So far, I've given myself ...
- raspberries.
- a CD (Get Up Kids, On A Wire).
- a giant Lush order (Rock Star, Aura Suavis, Skinny Dip, Potion, Therapy, Coolaulin, Creamy Candy Bath). I heart Lush.
- virtually unlimited procrastination time.
- drinks, primarily margaritas.
The problem: I don't have any money, I don't really have a lot of time to procrastinate, and I don't have any margaritas with me in the computer lab. I should fix at least one of these sometime soon.
the alternative senior week website ....
will be going up shortly. Watch this space. Or take some age-old advice and watch your MOM, bitch.
P.S. Current ASW suggestions include: Shedd 'n' sushi, pub crawl plus karaoke, and an auto-da-fe. You got any more?
Update (5.28.03): it's
up!
A cranky and rather incoherent post about quizbowl (this will, one hopes, be a rare thing):
This doesn't read especially well, but I'm late and need to go. Maybe I'll edit it later.
Jason writes, "Tournaments are expected to run well, regardless of whatever wrenches are thrown into the works ... "
Yes, they are. Welcome to capitalism! By running a tournament, you're offering a product. If you're going to charge $100 (or, in some appalling instances,
considerably more), you need to provide a decent product. If a team's late packet submission is going to jeopardize your tournament, that team shouldn't get to play. It goes without saying, I think, that you should always get enough packets from in-house writers and from freelancers that cutting one team won't cause you too much trouble. If you run a tournament such that people feel ripped off, they will bitch, and they will most likely be right to do so.
Craig comments that people don't offer a lot of suggestions on how to run tournaments. It seems to me that any suggestions that people could make would be rather obvious: have readers who can actually read*, don't lose the stats, learn how to edit, make sure your buildings are open when you need them to be, and figure out your tiebreaker policies before the tournament. It seems awfully patronizing to tell people any of these things.
Oh, and all that crap about how the circuit prefers to recognize good players rather than good tournament hosts? Of course it does. Good players win games, and good programs win tournaments. People like to speculate about who will win things; therefore, people discuss good players. People recognize good tournament hosts by going to their tournaments. It's silly to expect lavish praise for running a competent tournament. You should instead expect money, which is far more useful than lavish praise.
* I find it absolutely shocking that so many schools can't find more than a few decent moderators per tournament. What the hell is wrong with you people? Apparently, at Mizzou's SCT, the Division II readers were averaging about 14 questions per game. That's a little better than half of what my room at my SCT averaged, and I wouldn't say that we (Amanda and I) were the best readers present. Should we start giving away Hooked on Phonics kits as tournament prizes?
Mmm, sporadic updates.
So the thesis is in; however, there has been no massive rejoicing yet, as I don't know yet if the guy I gave it to will give me suggestions for rewrites. I've had a bit of a weird thesis experience with him. For example, he never told me when it was due, so I had to hunt him down and beg a due date out of him.
me: Hey. Um, I'm writing a thesis.
prof: Oh! Right. Huh. Yes.
me: I was wondering if you could tell me when I should turn it in.
prof: Hmm. I don't know.
[long pause] Hmm. When do you want to turn it in?
me: Um ... when do you need to have it graded by?
prof: Hmm. I don't know. Ninth week, I think.
Right. So it was due last Friday (the end of eighth week). Given the professor's vagueness about the due date, I have to hope that he'll just read it, be like, "Whatever," and pass it along to ... wherever it goes (bio department?). Even if he does give me rewrites to do, I'll only have three days or so to do them, so they can't be that massive.
So
Kathleen wants to give y'all some tips. You should listen to her. I have many things to add to this list, so here's a few:
- If you're going to ignore Kathleen's dictum and take your shoes off during class, DO NOT put them up on the seat in front of you, especially if someone's sitting next to that seat.
- Organic chemistry? Not a discussion class.
- I do not need to see your underwear in my 8:30 AM class. Please put some clothes on. It's fifty-five degrees out, for Chrissake.
- You might think it's amusing for someone giving a pharmacology lecture about amphetamines to appear to be really, really heavily sedated, but it's really just boring.
- If you are a fourth-year and a biology major, it is not appropriate to refer to pregnancy as "the time when the baby is still in its mommy's tummy".
More tips later? Maybe. I think I have to try to make an effort on my Viruses paper now. If you want to add your own tips, though, knock yourself out.
scariest inexplicable PubMed search result: "Post-coital coronary artery dissection" (1995) by Pierli et al, from the European Heart Journal.
(I was looking for stuff on HIV regulatory proteins.)
to the third-years, to make much of ... fourth year:
Okay, I'm irritated. First, the university tells us what we're giving for the senior gift. Now, the airheaded joiner types who run Senior Week have decided that this year's senior week won't include a pub crawl. A
Maroon article states that it'll include a Great America trip (how post-Prom 1999), a Sox game, and a trip to Kingston Mines (a blues club). I don't especially mind any of these, but they've replaced the pub crawl with a trip to the Weed Street district (read: lameass warehouse-type dance clubs. I don't dance, nor do I need to see my classmates in their pleathery finest).
In protest, I plan on organizing a rival Senior Week, which will include (at least) a trip to the Shedd Aquarium (followed by sushi consumption), a trip to Carol's Pub for drunken karaoke (on Emily's recommendation), and, of course, a pub crawl. Possibly several pub crawls.
Third years, don't let this happen to you. Infiltrate the Senior Gift committee or something. Give a penguin farm, a fund to buy etiquette books, a dancing bear conservatory, naughty pictures of Karl Weintraub - I don't much care what, but don't let the school tell you what to get. Also, go on pub crawls.
mood: crabby
working on: thesis
would rather be working on: evil plans
wondering: if "naughty pictures of Karl Weintraub" will give me any scary google hits
victory is mine: I have an apartment. And a rotation. 'Sright. Now all I have to do is have a thesis.
A little bit on abortion, "the line", and how to irritate a biologist ....
[Before I get into this, I want to lay out my position on the legality of abortion: I don't know if I'm glad it's legal, but I support its legality. I am shocked by its prevalence, I am depressed by the lack of options offered to young women who find themselves considering abortion (and by the lack of financial and emotional support for these women after they make their decisions, whatever they may be), and I am up-in-arms furious about abstinence-only sex education, to which I assign a great deal of blame for the abortion problem. It is completely ridiculous that I, as a Catholic student, received more complete and informative education about sexual health than did any of my friends who went to public schools, and that this lack of information caused said friends to end up in easily avoidable bad situations. That's about it.]
... where by "the line" I refer to the latest period in pregnancy at which one considers abortion to be morally permissible.
Kathleen draws it at the point at which the fetus could survive life outside of the womb (third trimester or 24th week). A friend draws it at about the same time, but for a different reason; she does not support abortion when the fetus can feel pain.*
Kathleen's reasoning is, I think, common sense. It's also in line with general practice (
ChoiceUSA claims that less than 0.02% of all abortions are performed after the second trimester). However, it's problematic in that, as neonatology progresses, the gestational age at which a fetus is viable is becoming younger. I mean, there's obviously going to be a point in gestation at which it will be extremely difficult to support the fetus ex utero (organogenesis will certainly be problematic).
As for me, I have a hard time with the line. I'm inclined to attribute this to my training in developmental biology; I once had an instructor start out a class by saying, "Look, you all need to leave your politics at the door, because for the purpose of this class, human life begins at conception." When every time you consider a fetus, you have to think about it as a pre-baby, it becomes difficult to pick a point at which one's feelings on abortion go from "horribly guilty" to "insupportably guilty".
And finally, I just want to say that the parasite argument (i.e. that a fetus can be likened to a parasite within the mother) is so biologically naive that it really makes me angry. Perhaps I'll post about the MHC paradoxes** sometime to lend that statement some support, but for right now, I'm pretty lazy.
Okay, that wasn't final. Another thing or two:
How to piss off a biologist, part II: A smarmy guy from the American Cultist
writes, "A human zygote, if left to grow, has a good chance of gradually becoming an adult human." Do your research, bucko. It's estimated that anywhere from 50% (says the NIH) to 90% (says my Human Developmental professor) of zygotes result in spontaneous abortion. I wouldn't bet on those odds.
This story (Chicago Tribune - registration required), though it doesn't concern abortion, ties in fairly well to my disclaimer. It's a lovely, positive article on Mentor MOMS, a volunteer service that educates young single mothers on a variety of topics (baby care, household management, etc.). In the article, it's mentioned that one of the young mothers comes from an area in Chicago where infant mortality rates have reached 20%.
Twenty percent. Am I the only person who finds this shocking? Why isn't this considered some sort of public health emergency? Why haven't I heard about this before?
* At about 26 weeks post-conception, nerve connections are established between the cortex and the thalamus, thereby permitting nociception. Despite what the
Montana Family Coalition thinks, the fetus cannot sense pain at 16 weeks.
** Yes, I'm Catholic; it's really easy to get me interested in anything by labeling it as a mystery or a paradox.
Kathleen was kind enough to show me where the ScavHunt
list was. Therefore, I give you #97.
In honor of the Freedom of Information Act!
Home phone numbers for:
John Poindexter: (301) 424-6613
John Ashcroft: (816) 471-7141
(Vacation) (573) 334-7044
Tom Ridge: (610) 274-3276
Compliments of Team Verna.
Please disseminate this information.
As I was walking from Kent to Crerar, I passed a three-way rickshaw traffic jam. I love ScavHunt. Can anyone tell me if the list is up yet?
In honor of things going well, I give you a poem, generated by the best.
Site. Ever.
Cryptic Elliptic Wednesday, May 04, 2003 10:
20 AM
Susan Some sort
of the University of this is
functional, the Maroon ... Anyway, a Good
Thing. for course credit, and I might
be that
I have substantive content Hey,
should I have just
in similitudinem hominum factus et donavit
illi nomen super
fun. thing
I have an interesting problem.
set, working
out whether I suppose anyone
knows any
traditional northern
Italian recipes for
ACF? I actually have
discussed running off for
apartments, in that sounded
alarmingly like crack, I
went
to: make crack but
it looks
like crack, I forgot
shortly after; the obvious I think
that it would not so found my seeds for
some sort of you
might
be math wranglers or something.
I'm all about those traditional northern Italian recipes for ACF, which I suspect involve pounding ACF until it's really flat, sauteeing it, and serving it with polenta.
My favorite line: Iesus Christus in the desert sighs in sugar.
A quick update: the thesis is functional, the exam is over, and I have an appointment for my first-choice apartment. All is well.
Hmmm. Due to limited greenhouse space, it looks like I won't be able to screen my seeds for suppressors for some time. This means that I won't have substantive results for my thesis (due at the end of eighth week; it's the beginning of sixth week now). This poses an interesting problem.
Anyway, I have much to do (studying for a Viruses exam, finishing a problem set, working out my summer rotation, and looking for apartments, in descending order of importance), so I've not much to say right now.
Possible future topics:
- tournament etiquette
- Chicago things I'm going to make myself (and probably you) do before grad school
- my really belated two cents on the abortion argument (property of Kathleen and Crescat Sententia).
- complaining about the senior gift? perhaps that's better suited to the Maroon ...
Anyway, a quote from the editing marathon:
Selene: I'm hungry.
me [horrified]: What? You're angry? Are you angry at
me??
Selene: I'm ... hungry at you?
