How does gaming fit into the future of education? Will Wright and E.O. Wilson
Yesterday, I awoke, as usual, to NPR’s “Morning Edition” on my clock radio. Sometimes, I manage to snooze through the stories, but my curiosity was piqued by the interview on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2009, with Will Wright, creator of “The Sims” and “Spore,” and E.O. Wilson, Harvard biologist and Pulitzer-prize winning author of “On Human Nature” and “The Ants” (with Bert Hölldobler).
Wilson’s interest in bringing together the sciences and the humanities, his development of sociobiology as a new subdiscipline in biology, and his ability to make his research accessible to laypersons should certainly interest University Scholars. Indeed, a discussion of his work would have fit in quite well for our symposium on “Two Cultures: 50 Years Later” in 2009. Which brings me to Will Wright, whose “SimCity” was an installation project at our USP symposium on “Cities in Evolution: Imagination and Reinvention” in 2006.
What really piqued my interest in the Wright-Wilson interview was their conversation on the role of games in education, which made me think about our discussion at the USP retreat on “Educating the University” as a symposium topic this year. Here’s an excerpt from the NPR story:
“So the first question he asked Wilson was if he saw a role for games in the educational process.
“I’ll go to an even more radical position,” Wilson said. “I think games are the future in education. We’re going through a rapid transition now. We’re about to leave print and textbooks behind.”
To listen to the whole interview, go to http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112203095
We have a lot of folks at Duke considering this very proposition, including some of our grad school Unis like Allen Riddell, Whitney Trettien, and faculty like Cathy Davidson, Kate Hayles, and Tim Lenoir, among others. Cathy Davidson is co-founder and director of HASTAC (incidentally, this is Whitney’s 2nd year as a HASTAC scholar) and co-author of “The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age.” She was also crucial in the creation of the University Scholars Program back when she was Vice-Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke. Kate Hayles is a professor in the Literature Program and ISIS and is interested in electronic literature. Here’s a link to a Duke News article on her work. Tim Lenoir is the Kimberly J. Jenkins Chair New Technologies in Society and works on history of science. Certainly, they’d provide a rich source of insight for continued discussion on the role of new media in higher education.
~Tori L.
dolphins up close
Hi Unis! I hope you’re all having a fantastic summer. My summer has been filled with beach, ocean, and plenty of dolphins – just the way I like it! I started my summer doing field work in Sarasota, FL. An amazing group of researchers based out of Mote Marine Lab there carries out an annual health assessment of their local bottlenose dolphin population, and because my PhD research involves studying the genetic susceptibility of these animals to toxic red tides, I got to help out this year. A dolphin health assessment is no easy task. Our goal is to capture live dolphins, bring them up on a boat, run full vet exams on them and collect as many biological samples as we can, and then successfully release them again. While this may seem nearly impossible if you know anything about how big and fast these animals are, the team at Mote has been conducting this project for many years and has the process perfected so that its safe for all dolphins and humans involved.
This task involves 8 boats and over 40 people out on the water everyday for a week. One boat is responsible for driving a net around the dolphins; several fast motor boats filled with big strong guys are responsible for getting to the net as quickly as possible and getting their people in the water to get the dolphin under control; one boat is set up for the veterinary exams; and lastly, my boat was the sample processing boat which contained all the kits and equipment needed to collect the various biological samples (including vials with Duke-Cammen labels! Small skin samples were taken for my genetics analysis). Lucky for me, our boat tied directly up the vet boat so I got to see the dolphins up close and watch the vets do their work. A couple times I even got to jump over to the vet boat and help hold the dolphins as they did their exams. The dolphins are surprisingly calm throughout the entire procedure.
My week in Florida was unforgettable. I met many new people in the marine mammal field and made great connections with researchers I hope to work with in the future. I also came home with a set of dolphin tissue samples and got in the lab as soon as I could to work on those. Being part of a dolphin health assessment is an amazing experience, and I couldn’t have asked for any better way to start my PhD research. I wish I could show you pictures of all of this, but unfortunately we’re asked not to post our pictures online because of research permit limits. Instead, I’ve attached a picture of a bottlenose dolphin that a student took on a trip out from the Duke Marine Lab with the Marine Mammals class that I’m TA-ing this summer. Enjoy!
-Kristina
Julie Klein, “A Platform for a Shared Discourse of Interdisciplinary Education”
Julie Klein has been working on “interdisciplinarity” for almost 20 years and is author of numerous books. Here’s her latest work from the Journal of Social Science Education, “A Platform for a Shared Discourse of Interdisciplinary Education.”
-Tori L.
Wader woes
Waders can be a wonderful thing. To some, they’re key to a good day of hunting and fishing. For others, they complete an award-winning costume (meet your director, new Unis!). And for those of us who insist on centering our Ph.D.s around marsh-breeding species, waders are one of the best inventions ever. Field sites would be impenetrable without a pair of waterproof hip waders to get us through the day. Only while wearing them can we brave the mud, the floating vegetation mats, and those horrible muskrat-made potholes to collect our precious data.
But sometimes, even the pluckiest of waders is defeated by the elements. When the first sound you hear after exiting your car is not the sweet song of sparrows or the burry croak of blackbirds, but rather the steady WHOOSH of water exhaled by drainpipes, you know it will not be a good day for waders. Your waders know this, too. You buckle them on and imagine them peering up at you, asking uncertainly, “Do I matter anymore?”
Turns out, sometimes the answer is a big fat NOPE. Three days of rain and you might as well be wearing pajamas in the field.
Now you hear your waders yelling, “It’s a marsh! It has no drainage! It’s duckweed soup!” But you have nests to check and birds to catch, and so you lumber in anyway, and despite your best efforts to hike up your outrageously high-waisted pants, you soon feel the shock of cold water running down your legs and pooling around your feet and the weight of it all pulling your waders lower and lower until equilibrium is reached and marsh muck gleefully sloshes around both sides of the fabric and your lower half becomes one with the marsh. You’ve officially topped your waders. It’s 7 in the morning.
Elephantiasis? Triple-jointedness? Simultaneous bow-legs and knock-knees?
Nah, just several pounds of water and all the interesting things floating inside it. Which we have been lugging around with us for the entire day.
One little-known benefit of wading in high water is that your clothes receive a dye job! Check out that hipster fringe on this mass-marketed shirt. It’s gone from plain white to dull gray AND taupe. Who says a three-dollar tee has to be boring?
To be fair, flooded waders are not so bad when the weather is nice. By afternoon, the water has usually warmed up enough that heading back to the road is no big deal. Your pants have been soaked for hours, right? (This is a poor way to get yourself out of a dry, toasty car at dawn.)
Note: You can see a few more photos here of what I’m actually doing in the marsh. Hope everyone’s summers have been going well!
—Irene L.
Stanley Fish, “The Last Professor,” asks “Will the Humanities Save Us?”
Stanley Fish, a former professor of English and Law at Duke, now Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and a professor of law at Florida International University, in Miami, and frequent contributor to the editorial pages of the New York Times, has written several columns about the current state of the humanities in today’s American university system. Three articles highlighted below segue well into this year’s symposium theme, “Two Cultures: 50 Years Later,” especially the challenges posed to the humanities in particular in today’s corporate-styled university. The articles review recent publications addressing the crisis in the humanities, with Fish’s special spin on the topic.
In January 6, 2008 article, “Will the Humanities Save Us?”, Fish reviewed Anthony Kronman’s book, “Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life.” Fish rejects Kronman’s premise that the humanities ennoble the human spirit and that this is the ultimate purpose of the humanities. Fish counters by saying that the humanities are their own good and that there is no reason to justify their existence because justification diminishes this purpose.
In a subsequent follow-up article, “The Uses of the Humanities, Part Two,” Fish expands on this argument, in response to readers’ comments on his previous blog post. He explains his own reasons for pursuing humanistic study, namely his delight in solving the puzzles of language and his admiration of the linguistic prowess demonstrated in literary texts. Significantly, he distinguishes the “humanities” from works of “literature, philosophy, and history,” something that C.P. Snow failed to do in his “Two Cultures” lecture. Snow pitted scientific inquiry against literary production, not against the study of humanistic texts. It is the merits of the latter that Fish undertakes to articulate, merits difficult to pinpoint unless, as commenters pointed out, one highlights the importance of the humanities in cultivating critical thinking skills, which make people “more interesting and informed.” The French hostesses of the salons of the 17th and 18th centuries would be delighted to have such skilled and intriguing interlocutors amongst their attendees. Are we today?
This past weekend, Fish posted a review of Frank Donoghue’s new book, “The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities.” In this article, “The Last Professor” , Fish agrees with Donaghue, his former student, about the pessimistic chances for the humanities in the future. Today’s corporate universities emphasize the importance of “usefulness,” of courses that deliver “the information and skills necessary to gain employment,” and pay mere lip-service to the ideals of the liberal arts education. The humanities, in this universe, are not pragmatic or purposeful, and are thus doomed. So, I guess the answer to this post’s titular question is, sadly, “No.” Say it ain’t so, Stan!
Tori L.
Lots of free-time symposium thoughts
From my understanding, C.P. Snow’s critique of the two cultures breaks down into two lines of thought: in an abstract sense, science and art have a great deal to offer one another, and in a practical sense, everyone must receive both scientific and artistic education in order to bridge the gap between rich and poor.
For the first line of thought, I’m hoping to apply my Program II, theoretical neuroscience, and my research in Dr. Adcock’s neuroscience laboratory to make a presentation at the symposium. My thoughts are still pretty sketchy though, so I’d appreciate some feedback.
Theoretical neuroscience is a new field of neuroscience that tries to understand the brain from a mathematical viewpoint as a dynamical system. This stems from research exploring the peculiar “emergent properties” of complex, interacting systems. The most culturally accessible part of this research is chaos theory, with the well-known proverb “a butterfly that flaps its wings in China can cause a hurricane in Cuba.” This saying captures the phenomenon that small perturbations in densely interconnected systems can have surprisingly vast effects. A useful mental picture for seeing how this applies to neuroscience is fractals:
Above is an example of a Julia set fractal which is in essence a graphic representation of the chaos inherent in the function f(x) = x^2 + c. One picks an arbitrary imaginary c value, in this case -.8 + .156i, and then iterates the function (plugging in the value of f(x) into x over and over) over all x values in the complex plane and coloring based on how fast f(x) goes to infinity. One can see the “butterfly effect” by noticing how small shifts in certain areas cause drastic changes while in others they do not. Most importantly for neuroscience, one sees incredible mathematical and aesthetic order and complexity from the simple function x^2 + c. The idea behind theoretical neuroscience is that, if you model different aspects of neural function with differential equations, you get equations considerably more complicated than x^2 + c, which is accompanied by more ornate emergent structure.
These theories apply to neurons quite well, and new research shows that it can explain aspects of memory retrieval, decision-making, and emotional organization. One can extrapolate (far beyond what is scientifically responsible, I admit) to suggest that all of human mental life, from memories to daydreams, can be viewed as the emergent structure that arises out of the chaotic, mathematically understandable interaction of billions of neurons. This is where, I feel, theoretical neuroscience and art can communicate most fruitfully.
The task facing theoretical neuroscientists is somewhat equivalent to a pre-algebra student being given the above fractal and then asked to figure out what equation it comes from. Unraveling the secrets of the brain will require innovative mathematics, but more importantly, it requires a deep understanding of the structure of the object we are trying to explain, in this case, the mind. Neuroscientists, especially theoretical neuroscientists need the research and guidance of the most brilliant analysts of human nature there are: artists. If you are skeptical, consider the example of economics. For over a hundred years microeconomics research rested on the assumption that people always maximize utility, which resulted in hopelessly flawed models. Only recently have economists considered phenomena such as altruistic punishment, which any reader of Hamlet would recognize as a universal human trait. Likewise, early 20th century psychologists were convinced autism was cased by “refrigerator mothers”(mothers with cold, distant parenting styles). Literature has explored the relationship between mother and child a great deal longer than psychiatry, and it seems that any poet could tell a psychiatrist that the “refrigerator mother” theory is misogynistic nonsense. Philosophers, theologians, writers, musicians, and artists have been exploring the questions that frame neuroscientific research for millennia. Without consultation between these fields, neuroscientific research may go the way of classical economics, operating based on an impoverished framework with outdated and oversimplified assumptions.
In the reverse direction, artistic thought can profit from the insights emerging from neuroscientific research. What does it mean for thought to arise from the mathematical interaction of neurons? Many people are disturbed by this idea, but I don’t think that it has to be disturbing. Just as campfires are no less captivating knowing that they are merely energy emissions from chemical reactions, free will is no less powerful knowing that it results from predictable neuronal interactions (borrowing from Irene’s post). It is not the aim of theoretical neuroscience to replace conscious life by equations and numbers, to do so would be drastically overestimating the scope of science. Rather, theoretical neuroscience aims to supplement our understanding of the mind with elegant and provocative mathematics. It is an exciting challenge for artists to incorporate scientific discoveries of mind into public consciousness without reducing free will, morality, love, or any other treasured human trait.
On a different note, it is very depressing to read C.P. Snow’s prediction that the gap between rich and poor will have been bridged by the year 2000, when in fact it has widened, not just between rich and poor countries, but between the rich and poor in developed countries. I don’t know enough history or economics to say exactly why this is, but I think it would be interesting to think about whether Snow’s complaint about education still applies. I do think, however, that a cultural hostility towards science has exacerbated the environmental crises we are now facing. It will take the combined efforts of art such as Silent Springs and good science and policy making, such as what I hope to see from John Holdren and Steven Chu, to make the changes necessary to save the environment. Hopefully the integration of science and art for environmental purposes will fare better than it did for economic inequality.
So I know that was pretty longwinded, but I’d love some feedback. It would be usefull for both my prospective symposium topic but my Program II proposal, which I’m currently working on.
Thanks all,
Ian
All this talk about choice makes me want to clobber certain blurb writers
Why Girls Sleep Around: The Evolutionary Case for Female Promiscuity
In a study of mouse-like marsupials, “survival of babies with promiscuous mothers was almost three times as high as those in the monogamous group.” Key reasons: 1) “The sperm of some males were far more successful than others.” 2) “Babies fathered by these males were twice as likely to survive.”
Takeaway for women: “Polyandry improves female lifetime fitness.” Takeaway for men: “Males with more competitive ejaculates sire more viable offspring.” Fine print: “Males usually died after a short and intense single mating season due to exhaustion and aggressive encounters with other males.
====================
Let’s think about the biological reasons why it’s inaccurate to imply this finding can be extrapolated across species (and thus suggest all females have somehow selected to be more promiscuous). Most of my rationale has to do with the idea there are…well, ridiculously huge differences in the life history traits and mating strategies employed by humans and small marsupials, to name just two animals. Polyandry, the mating with multiple males by females, improves female lifetime fitness for semelparous species—organisms with high adult mortality that blast the world with offspring shortly before they die, like cicadas, salmon and the antechinuses mentioned here. That’s the only chance at reproductive success they get, and more importantly there’s no parental care involved. In contrast, humans are iteroparous and invest much more energy in the survival of a few periodic offspring. So popping out 3 times as many kids at once would actually decrease lifetime fitness, because it’s likely to kill off or otherwise take an energetic toll on the mother on which the young depend. You have your zillion offspring, but they won’t survive. The relationship between increased mating and healthier babies doesn’t hold.
On the bright side, the fine print doesn’t apply to humans either, because sperm competition in iteroparous species is comparatively less fierce. In other words, guys don’t spend so much energy in their one mating session that they die right after it. (Because, we hope, they get more than a single try.) Not so the case for these marsupials: “Male antechinuses copulate for 5–14 consecutive hours with each female, and ejaculate around 3 h after mating starts. This extraordinary male reproductive biology could subject sperm to extreme physiological and epigenetic stress, resulting in the marked relationship between male sperm competitive ability and offspring viability” (Fisher et al. 2006, yes I actually went and found the article and am citing it in a USP blog post).
So HA, Slate! You and your sensationalist, insinuating headlines can take a backseat to breeding biology!
Although antechinuses are still really cute.
—Irene L.
Article on the International Criminal Court
Hey everybody,
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post for Alex de Waal’s blog on Darfur, and I thought I’d paste it in here in case anyone is interested. It’s about the International Criminal Court in the Central African Republic, where I do research. It’s a bit long and detailed, so probably best for those already interested in these topics…
Here’s the link: http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/darfur/2008/08/20/justice-for-whom-the-icc-in-the-central-african-republic/
And below is the text…
Louisa
Central African Republic, ICC, Making Sense of Darfur:
Justice for Whom? The ICC in the Central African Republic
posted by Louisa Lombard
Developments in international justice have filled the papers in recent weeks, with the capture of Serbia’s Radovan Karadžić and the charges leveled against Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir. Far from this spotlight, former DR Congolese rebel leader and vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo has moved from arrest to Belgian jail to the custody of the International Criminal Court (ICC), his case proceeding uncharacteristically quickly. Because it serves a number of political motives without ruffling too many feathers, his trial will likely come to set some of the precedents the fledgling Court needs to establish. The effects for the two countries on whose behalf the Court is acting – DRC and the Central African Republic (CAR) – are a bit more ambiguous.
Bemba finds himself in the dock for the crimes allegedly committed by members of his Mouvement pour la libération du Congo (MLC) in the CAR in November 2002 – March 2003. Former CAR President Ange-Félix Patassé had called in these strong-armed neighbors in a last-ditch, and ultimately failed, attempt to stave off the insurgent (now President) Jean-François Bozizé. The formal charges comprise three counts of crimes against humanity and five counts of war crimes, with emphasis on the legion rapes his men relentlessly perpetrated. Locals refer to Bemba’s men as the “Banyamulenge,” an inaccurate appropriation of the moniker that describes Congolese Tutsis. The name is rarely uttered without an accompanying shudder of fear, or head-shake of disgust.
Like the northern Uganda case, this one was referred by a head of state. In December 2004, President Bozizé asked the ICC to investigate the crimes committed in CAR during the period of upheaval that led to his “rebels’” transformation into “liberators.” Many armed groups beset the country at the time, all committing abuses. The utter disregard for CAR citizens evinced by the MLC stands out as particularly brutal, though, as organizations like the Fédération Internationale des Droits de l’Homme (FIDH), working with a couple of local organizations it was training, has documented.
ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo announced the Court’s decision to open investigations in the CAR on May 22, 2007. During this period, Bemba’s uneasy European exile from the DRC was being negotiated. He had lost the presidential elections of the previous year, officially taking some 42% of the vote to Joseph Kabila’s 58%. Tension between the two opponents mounted, and when Kabila’s presidential guard attacked Bemba as he got a ride out of the country courtesy a UN MONUC peacekeeping force helicopter. From Europe, Bemba expressed an eagerness to return and participate peacefully in the political process. But he stayed abroad, saying he feared for his safety.
The ICC opened an office in Bangui, capital of the CAR, in October 2007 (it had been conducting some research for a few months prior to that). Just seven months later – breathtaking speed compared with, for instance, the operations of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda – the Court had Bemba arrested. It appears Bemba and his family had planned a United States vacation, and the Court feared losing him to exile in a country that is not party to the Rome Treaty.
We will likely never know whether Bemba’s conversion to peaceful politics was sincere. Heinous as his methods of rebel leadership were, the uncomfortable fact remains that for nearly half of the Congolese population he was a support-worthy head of state. His arrest foreclosed the prospect of a credible national-level opposition in the DRC in the foreseeable future. (Many of his old allies have since joined the Kabila camp.) His trial will entrench Kabila, who hardly has an angelic past himself.
And what about the impacts of this case on the CAR, home to the victims whose experiences form the basis of the whole prosecution? One hopes they would feel relief and satisfaction that their tormentor is being held to account. The country wears the legacy of Bemba’s men’s brief stay in the CAR like a suit of nails. MLC encamped at PK12 and Bégoua, at the outskirts of Bangui and site of the last big market before the road continues into the sparsely-populated hinterlands. Murder, rape, torture, pillaging – all manner of cruelty happened here, by MLC, by Central Africans they forced to carry out this dirty work. There has been no substantive reconciliation process, whatever that might entail in this context.
The MLC also continued northward toward Bozoum. While in that town last year I met a group of women who had all been taken to live as the “wives” of these “Banyamulenge.” I was asking them about their participation in a Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) program, an opportunity afforded them as a result of this servitude. “One of the good things about the [DDR program],” one vibrant merchant said, “Was that we got an AIDS test. We had been so stressed with worry about that,” and they had faced discrimination owing to fear of their infection. “It was such a relief.” A young woman beside her, as thin as a Giacometti sculpture, explained that though the news for her had been bad, she was nevertheless glad to know. She hadn’t had any treatment for the disease (in the theoretical framework of the DDR program, she should have received it). That evening, the vibrant woman came to me with a gift of peanuts and eggs and confided that she, too, had been infected.
I describe what these women have endured at such length in the vain hope of sketching the contours of what remains unspeakable violence and cruelty. The victims’ right to justice is clear. However, they are more likely to express their need for material assistance – money, food, medicines – than any desire to see a courtroom procedure play out. Even the leaders of the victims’ organization trained by FIDH with whom I spoke used my questions about the trial primarily as an entrée to graphic descriptions of victims’ experiences and their resultant right to assistance, diatribes so impassioned as to be nearly impossible to interrupt.
The Court has carried out little “outreach” (public education and dialogue; in the French used in CAR, sensibilisation, an awful term evoking more a forced-inoculation campaign than the kind of stakeholder discussion it is meant to connote) about the case. Some of the mimeographed Bangui newspapers reproduced the ICC’s press releases; there were a few radio discussions, especially on the NDI-funded Radio Ndéké Luka.
But in general, the ICC has kept a low profile in Bangui. The office is unmarked, tucked beside the river, in a beautifully renovated compound across from the notorious Ngaragba prison. Only a logistical support office, its investigators and other staff commute from the Hague, and its halls and swimming pool are usually empty. A fleet of unmarked, sparkling white, be-snorkeled Land Cruisers stand at the ready. Hardly anyone knows where the office is. The ICC’s presence here thus exemplifies its real function, which is less about incarnating justice and fairness for victims than installing public order from afar.
In calling in the ICC, Bozizé had hoped to restrict the inquiry into the crimes of his opponents. He had reason to wish to avoid judicial spotlight. Particularly in the two years after his 2005 election, his Presidential Guard soldiers ran roughshod over their fellow citizens. When Bemba was arrested, some wondered whether Bozizé could be next. But though the Court’s official position upon taking the case states that it will investigate all crimes under its jurisdiction, regardless of who has committed them, the international community’s decision to back Bozizé and related logistical/political issues mean that Bozizé’s gamble was likely a safe one.
Some observers have speculated about whether former President Patassé will come under the Court’s scrutiny. This seems unlikely. Doing so would return attention to the fact that he was violently shoved from power by Bozizé in a feat of regional coordination that involved the support of several governments. And it would disrupt the fitful peace process between Bozizé and the several armed groups that emerged after the 2005 presidential election, partly as a result of Patassé’s exclusion from the ballot.
This current peace process has derailed because leaders of the three armed groups felt the terms of the proposed amnesty weren’t generous enough, compared to the all-encompassing carte blanche accorded to government forces, arguably the worst abusers of civilians during the conflicts under discussion. The pedagogical motives of the Court (the idea that fear of prosecution will lead to fewer breaches of the international law it presides over) have thus already been compromised. On the surface, at least, impunity reigns unopposed.
Nevertheless, when discussing the Court with CAR leaders, whether government or rebel, it is clear that the actions of the ICC have injected a degree of uncertainty about the future. However unlikely additional prosecutions may appear to outside observers, the chance that there might be has become an additional factor in CAR leaders’ calculations, whether in terms of reassessing their violent pasts or maneuvering based on speculation about who might be arrested next. Here, the ICC still represents a credible threat. This must count as a success toward the underlying premise of the Court, namely, to shape a public order out of judicial proceedings – a necessarily selective task, rhetoric of omniscient fairness notwithstanding.
As has happened throughout its history, the CAR is serving as a staging ground for far-flung motives. The anonymously-named country is a kind of mirror in which outsiders tend to look only long enough to find what they need, a tendency people in the country use to draw in resources, artists of what Jean-François Bayart has called “extraversion.” (For instance, over a period in 2006 – 2007 the international community saw in CAR violence the “spillover of the Darfur conflict.” Though analytically inaccurate, this proved a useful line for reeling in global resources.) The Court needs a trial, conviction and precedents to justify its continued existence. And the victims deserve justice. But even many of them seem to suspect they are the actors for a play that has less to do with their rights than the politics of an often clumsy Court.
Important information on authorship guidelines for research
The Duke Academic Council recently approved a set of guidelines for determining authorship of scientific papers and resolving disputes over authorship:
http://www.provost.duke.edu/pdfs/Authorship_guidelines.pdf
The guidelines are pretty short (2 pages), and whether you’ve been working in a lab for a few years or you’re just starting to do research this year, it’s probably a good idea to take a look at them now before determining authorship for your work becomes an issue.
on the eve of my-summer-is-over
hi all,
i’ve never had much experience with blogs. when i first set up a myspace account i was so excited i posted two entries – and that’s all i’ve got, for blogs. it’s funny, but just in briefly scrolling through the entries on here, the latest ones came after tori’s (latest) prompt. i’m writing now, because i’m in a strange state of mind, sitting here, in my almost-empty room.
tomorrow morning i will stuff my shy little-big dog into the backseat of my worn, dirty toyota and drive off, east on i-10, through flatonia, houston, sulphur, back home to lafayette, in louisiana. the apartment now is a mess. trash lies everywhere. i don’t know what my next move is, because i can’t vacuum without packing, and i can’t pack without vacuuming, and i can’t vacuum without knowing what my next move is. one of my two roommates is out at wal-mart; she’s been gone a few hours now. the other came through briefly today, to clean up her room (puppy-torn carpet and all), since she moved to her new place last weekend. what am i to do, alone now in the twilight, really, finally, wrapping up the last summer i’ve got before i join the proverbial…real world.
so what did i do this summer? well, the first, and clearest, thing that comes to mind is this: this summer i drove around all of freakin texas.
after that, around that, in and out of that, is a haze of things. the sometimes-unbearable heat, the heaps of fast food wrappers and diet dr. pepper bottles in my car, talking to people in a half-daze, sitting in meetings flushed and feeling out of place. curled up in my bed with the phone pressed to my ear, hunched over my laptop at my desk, over my journal at some coffeeshop, one cup of coffee after another, coffees, lattes, con pannas (yay for new terms). i’ve been to all the whole foods around here: austin, san antonio, houston – all except dallas, and that only because, well, i’ve never been overnight in dallas, so there’s never been enough time. i’ve felt excited, dejected, hopeless, happy, curious, angry, wondering, touched…but mostly hot and frustrated. it’s been one hot and frustrating summer, driving around all of freakin texas.
i used my summer funding to pursue something perhaps more personal than academic, when you look at the roots of it. i studied conspiracy theorists. i talked to people who believe that 9/11 was an inside job, that there is a new world government in the works, that nothing is what it seems. “the government is out to get you.” we’ve all heard that. well, it’s true. well – i’m still working on that.
“this project is for my graduation thesis for my degree in cultural anthropology.” i gave the same schpiel every time, staring into different pairs of eyes. what did i see in them? what did i learn? did i have the foundations of my reality shaken? was i jolted into an awareness that brought me a new set of eyes? did i become a new person – or, in the very least, become armed with new knowledge and understanding?
not really. academics aside, anthropological theory aside, conspiracy theories (an oxymoron, by the way) aside, i’ve learned this summer that i am who i am. three-and-a-half years of college later, all the stuff at school, at home, in china and over the summers, after all the hours spent on texas roads, i am still the same person, with the same thoughts, the same resistances, the same laziness, the same ridiculous worries. now, at the end, sitting for one last night at this stupid little desk in my stupid little room, the same questions are swimming around in my head. i’m still blinking furiously to see through my too-dry contacts. i’m still wondering what the heck my thesis will be about.
i took a fieldwork methods class last spring, and i worked with an activist group called north carolina stop torture now. what amazed me then was how people were dedicated to something larger than themselves, something called humanity. well, i thought, for my thesis i am NOT going to write about something so cheesy like that. but everything aside – i think, now, sitting here, and maybe thinking about this for the first time, humanity is what sticks out, from all the hours of conversations i’ve heard and was a part of. i chose “conspiracies” as my topic because of a faintly glowing belief in a magical and fantastic world. and when i think about it, now, i think…i think there were points this summer when i saw that world again, almost as clear as when i saw it as a child.
imagine someone who devotes his life to a website on freedom and sovereignty that few people visit. imagine someone living in a government home, seeing visions of the future and his role in saving it. imagine someone else writing legal articles alone in his huge house on the lakefront, a shadow in the system, unknown and without identification. imagine someone telling you, in the wicker chair of her backyard, that there are two worlds, one on land and one on glass, and you are not who you are, living on that glass. my head swam after every interview. the faces and voices blend together, the smells one giant, thick whorl of fog.
conspiracy IS about trust. the people i met trusted themselves, trusted that what they were doing was right, and trusted that humanity is a species worth saving. can i say that much for myself? who or what do i trust? who or what do i believe in? do i pay attention to the world around me? do i do anything to effect even the smallest of ripples in the fabric of this reality, these realities, these truths, this world, to deserve my place in it?
