Lately I feel like I’m kickin’ old school because I’ve been obsessed with Derrida. It’s not that bad, or outdated, or ridiculous…is it?
Over the past year I’ve become obsessed with NovaScience Now and Neil Degrasse Tyson as an [understandable] academic. That’s one of my most desirable qualities: to learn to talk and write just like NDT or Richard Dawkins–people who can put such complex, theoretical, scientific ideas into perfectly lucid conversation that I (who doesn’t have a science background) can understand with ease. Okay, okay I know that I don’t “get” astrophysics, and that’s okay with me; I do, however, get what they’re talking about in their shows or books–it’s clear and it gets me thinking. As I was walking through my neighborhood this afternoon listening to NDT talk at a science pub meeting (Nova Science’s special podcast), he responded to someone asking about what it means to be science literate, and also how does one teach science literacy. In so many words, NDT remarked that science literacy isn’t about answers, it about making the questions. If he didn’t have a nagging ignorance about what’s out there, he wouldn’t be in the business. He argues that so many people are in a rush to name everything, or to have answers for it all, that they don’t allow the time to ask questions about the unknown. (In one example, he pointed out how quickly people are to “name” random shining lights as UFOs, when in fact a UFO by nature is “unidentified”–you can’t identify a unidentifyable object without stripping it of its core essence.) Anyway, listening to this podcast made me feel more comfortable about my own research–that I need to remind myself that it’s a starting point, a place to ask the questions. If I answered everything, there wouldn’t be a conversation left to be had. It’s okay to ask and search and not know. (Hard work helps, too.) So, thanks NGT–my new (continued?) academic hero.
Who’s there?
Corrupted file.
Corrupted file who?
I’m the corrupted file disguised as your first chapter. I was saved in 5 different places, but ate up your work anyway. Mwa ha ha.
That’s right, it’s not funny. Not funny Corrupted File. Not funny.
Progressing to ABD is deceiving. It’s like, no biggie, all that’s left is the diss.
From McLuhan’s Gutenberg Galaxy (again):
Heidegger surf-boards along the electronic wave as triumphantly as Descartes rode the mechanical wave (248).
From McLuhan’s Gutenberg Galaxy:
That Eliade chooses to call the oral man “religious” is, of course, as fanciful and arbitrary as calling blondes bestial (70-1).
I consider my FF draft last night a success. Here’s what I snatched up:
QB
- Philip Rivers
- Eli Manning
- Jake Delhomme
RB
- Adrian Peterson
- Thomas Jones
- Cedric Benson
- Leon Washington
WR
- Reggie Wayne
- Vincent Jackson
- Derrick Mason
- Devery Henderson
TE
- Jason Witten
- Kevin Boss
- Zach Miller
K
- Jason Elam
DEF/ST
- Titans
From Ong’s Orality and Literacy
“Proverbs and riddles are not used simply to store knowledge but to engage others in verbal and intellectual combat: utterance of one proverb or riddle challenges hearers to top it with a more apposite or a contradictory one. [...] Growing up in a still dominantly oral culture, certain young black males in the United States, the Caribbean, and elsewhere, engage in what is known variously as the ‘dozens’ or ‘joining’ or ’sounding’ or by other names, in which one opponent tries to outdo the other in vilifying the other’s mother” (44).
Today is free popcorn Tuesday. Why, oh why, haven’t I taken advantage of this all summer? Oh, I know. It’s because that’s all I’d think about instead of writing. Like today. Damn I love popcorn so much, it’s pathetic.
From Frances Yates’ The Art of Memory:
What are these ‘Seals’? As a preliminary to attempting to answer that question I invite the reader to come with me for a page or two to Florence where we will practice the art of memory together (244).
Local memory is like eating and drinking. If we ate all our food at once we should have indigestion, so we divide it into separate meals. So we should do with local memory (245).
