No Country for Old Men

I saw a movie called No Country for Old Men last night, it was a Coen Brothers film so I was sort of expecting to be swept off of my feet like I was with The Big Lebowski. I wasnt.

The movie was very well shot and all of the characters were very “textured” as Joe aptly referred to them as. But it was relentlessly grim and ended with no closure. I can appreciate it as a film that was very well executed, but I dont enjoy violence and blood, its something I try to avoid in life and in art too.

As I was watching it I was thinking this: Life is just people hanging around living while other people die and dying while others are still going on living. How immensely bleak is that?

Now I want to rent A Spongebob film, or something very very light. Any suggestions?

Averse to Adversity

I will spare you the excuses about not blogging. I have just been busy, you understand.

I was speaking to my brother yesterday about my percieved graduate school troubles and he reminded me that everyone faces adversity of some kind and that you just cant let it stop you from what you want to do. Clearly put.

So I found some of these quotes to keep us all trucking along, whatever kind of a day you are having, who wouldnt benefit from a few of these gems:

“Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.”-Proverb

“There is no education like adversity”-Benjamin Disraeli

“If you watch how nature deals with adversity, continually renewing itself, you can't help but learn."-Bernie Siegel

“Adversity precedes growth.”-Rosemarie Rossetti

“Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.”-Horace

and this one, about fear, which I have posted before:

"I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life-and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do."
-Georgia O'Keeffe

An Anthropologist’s Tendencies

So the week is over. The lack of posting is due to the fact that I have been running around, taking in bits of information, reading, complaining, walking, talking, not talking and drinking coffee all over town. Its wonderfully awful but not awfully wonderful.

I will end the week on this note. Because Anthropology is a social science, statements about groups come out of it, for example-this population descended from this group of people at this time, people with this gene are more prone to this disease, primates in this region tend to eat this fruit. This is different than medicine for instance, where statements about individuals are paramount.

I realized that I have problems with groups, but not individuals. When I think about group generalizations of any kind I can usually deconstruct it to the point where I say “well it depends on the individual”.

Also, as a coincidence- but maybe not, I have total social anxiety with groups but not with individuals. I was thinking I need to conduct a study where I am talking to one person and someone else joins the group and then another person and then another and how many people present does it take to shut me up because of my anxiety? I would say about 4, but it depends on the particular people, sometimes one person who I am especially intimidated by can shut me up and shut me down if we are the only two people in the hallway.

As I progress in this science game I realize that most things are grey and just someone's opinion and there are no facts only tendencies. Its kind of upsetting, I feel like I jumped up to grab the trapeeze bar and I didnt catch it because it does not exist and in its place is a cloud of cotton candy that makes me cough and does not hold me up and I am falling to the ground as a result of it.

Computer Boys

I am taking a computer course. In the classroom there are rows and rows of computers. We each sit behind a computer and beside us there is someone else sitting behind a computer. We have in-class projects that we have to figure out and there is a certain communal mood to the course. People are always leaning over and asking their neighbor if they got theirs to work correctly. Talking and typing are done with equal bursts of fierceness.

But, I have noticed another trend in this course. I wont drag this out-the conclusion is that most sexism is this large swash of subtle grey oppression and not the overt “you are stupid because you are a girl” that we could all sink our claws into.

I was working on my project and I tried one thing and it did not work. This man next to me leaned over and looked at my screen. I must also say that I dont know this person at all. Next thing I knew he was grabbing my keyboard and typing away and then I was pathetically and meekly leaning back and thanking him for helping me.

BUT I didnt ask for help in the first place and had I had 3 more seconds to focus on what I was doing, I know I would have solved my problem without his intervention. Sadly, I thought about this after class for a few hours and came to the absolute conclusion that this keyboard grabbing and immediate assistance just would not have happened if I were a man and I would never ever do that to someone else.

Ignorance is the Answer

I was at a friend’s family event the other day. I sat across from a very eccentric cousin who is/was a physicist. He began talking very abruptly and loudly about things that no one wanted to hear about, religion, science, politics, genetics, etc. He was going around the table and putting people on the spot. Everyone around just wanted to enjoy the warm food and familiar faces; it was the lunch after a funeral.

I knew the inevitable was coming, that he was going to ask me what I did. And he did. Then he immediately began spouting off loudly and excitedly about what I do. When I told him that I went to art school first, he reminded me that it was one of Einstein’s assertions that it is of the utmost importance to bring imagination to science. This was very nice to hear again, I had not bargained for this conversation when I envisioned the day.

But it led me to a place. It led me to think about discovery again. I know that this is science at its most ideal form and there is so much that I have to do in the trenches before I ever get to this point. But, if we don’t think about these things, then what keeps us going really?

I thought about how every discovery started with someone asking a question that no one knew the answer to. I had a flash that there is a humble similarity between that activity and the questions we must ask along the way when we are learning. I know this link may seem trite, but I just have such a hard time asking questions and admitting ignorance, but I realized that this is the very same place we go to when walking to the door of discovery. Admitting you don’t know is actually one of the most productive things you can do, either for your own edification or perhaps for the rest of the worlds too.

And I love this quote:

{No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.}—Helen Keller (1880 - 1968)

Love before Aptitude

I am trying to investigate the relationship between being interested in something, enough to pursue it, and being good at it.

It is kind of like the same principle as liking a dress because you know this particular style will look good on you.

Are we ever so fiercely interested in something we are terrible at? Does being good at something make you like it more? Does liking something make you good at it?

True, you dont always know whether or not you are good at something unless you try it, but lets say you have tried it and you are terrible at it. Will you still love it for bigger reasons than yourself?

I say that these two things are inextricably tied to one another. But what of the poor fool who does something they are terrible at relative to other people in the field but still holds on to some idealisic love?

There is No Outside of this Box

I think there is too much emphasis in our society on thinking outside of the box. I know what you are thinking, I have finally stepped out of my artistic clothing into the dry world of science forever. You would be wrong.

I am not shunning creativity, its just the opposite actually. But, I think that sometimes you have to think within some kind of known framework and then figure out ways to be creative within that.

This is truly the hard part I believe. You have to know the boundaries of the box and then figure out how to stretch in ways that reach new parts of the box.

Oftentimes, if you want to solve an existing problem, there is a box that you have to consider, lets just be real.

But maybe thinking something is outside of the box is really the fallacy, maybe there is no outside of the box.