The War Between Us

I meant to write a post on this ages ago but never got around to it because... well, because of reasons. But I saw this Facebook post from my friend and former flute instructor [Mickie] and felt that I should definitely get around to writing this:

Let me give the back story on this: last year, [Mickie] lost her job at the local middle school she'd been working at since I'd first met her (and long before that too). Despite tenure, despite her obvious skill and talent, she lost her job along with my high school band teacher and choir directors. Aside from hating to see such talented people unfairly lose their jobs and having some of the strongest bonds to my hometown cut through, it was another warning sign of what's happening to music programs in the US. One hidden blessing from my failed audition to the School of Music at my university is that I don't have to worry about the difficulties of finding a job in that field, which are scarce and far between, even for people with a lot of experience.

But fortunately for [Mickie], she was able to find another job at a middle school in a nearby town. Sadly, she also lost this job this year due to, what else, budget issues and staff cutbacks. Because the fine arts are "expensive" and reap less benefits to a school district than, say, football, fine arts programs are the first to go.

Also, articles like this don't help. As if "determined by science" could mean anything here.

I hate it when people play the "art vs. science" card. They've been designed to be opposites for ages, even though they got together like peanut butter and Nutella (this is the best thing on the planet. Trust me). Art can't function without science and science can't function without art. Need proof of this? Take a look at your common household plant. Aesthetically, they've very pleasing; artists have been painting still lifes of flowers and plants for many a century. But plants are also scientifically brilliant, with their photosynthesis and fertilization structure. And did you know they can get fevers? (I learned that from a Snapple cap). Point is, there is no reason for anyone to argue that art and science don't work together.

But somewhere, somehow, the philosophy behind these two fields found themselves apposed and now we're in a war between the two of them, staking claims between what can be known and what can't, what is real and what isn't, what can be created and what can't. Really, I think it's all a communication issue. Because I mean, look at this:

http://education.ezinemark.com/most-amazing-science-images-of-2010-77369ad98736.html

This is the gene map of a plant called Arabidopsis. Sweet, right?


Okay, okay, so it's easy to find art in science. But what about science in art? Harder, admittedly, because certain kinds of science have tried to firmly drawn the line between what is actual science and what is... well, not. This was something my research methods class really shoved down our throats, which I think is fascinating considering my favorite parts of psychology are admittedly very unscientific. But look at any painting and you can see how visual perception and geometry and balance play vital roles. Music of course is highly based on physics. And acting... God, acting is a science of itself, doing a case study to figure out how another human being lives and become them on stage or screen.

http://nerdnirvana.org

I could meander on about the importance of arts but there's already this brilliant post on it. So read that, because it's really really good. It's a shame that things like subjects listed on Newsweek's Tumblr are thought of as useless because they were never useless to me. What surprises me are things like philosophy and architecture and history, for God's sake, and political science being useless. Really? Are you kidding me? When we have a million nurses and but no one understands how to communicate with each other or understand where we're coming from, don't say I didn't warn you. We need nurses, yes, but we also need them to understand bedside manner and the way people think and why, sometimes, you just need to sit back and think, "Jesus, a century ago we couldn't remove limbs without being terrified that the patient was going to die of gangrene and now we can do heart transplants. DUDE."

In order to really appreciate science, you need art. In order to really appreciate art, you need science. They aren't art war; they're two sides of the same coin. So stop making them fight - they belong together more than I think we'll ever completely understand. Give our artists and writers and thespians and historians a chance - you never know if they'll win a Nobel prize for physics or find the cure for cancer. And you never know if your med student is going to win a Pulitzer or and Grammy.

http://www.business-strategy-innovation.com/uploaded_images/Art-Science-773522.jpg

Live Life Longer with Science, Part II

Found this opinion article in the Minnesota Daily today: Age is a disease.

As my professor Robin always says, "I love it when life hands me exactly what I'm looking for." Indeed this was the case today.

Oh, college newspapers... you always have such interesting articles. Especially ones that take concepts expressed in Hollywood films and connects them to real life. I feel torn between this article. I mean, obviously, the writer makes an interesting point. But I just can't align myself to his way of thinking. Age just a disease? Maybe I'm being too fatalistic here, but I don't think you can avoid death. I'm not so sure you should.

Don't get me wrong - I'm as terrified of dying as the next person. But something in the back of my head clamors about Doctor Frankenstein and playing God and that maybe science can go too far. But other species die. All animals die. Why are we the ones to change it? I'm not saying there couldn't be an answer to this... but it just seems difficult to overcome.

I guess what fascinates me most about this article is that it deals with senescence ("the accumulation of damage to a person's body over time," the writer describes). Which, in my novel attempt, that's exactly what the people who become immortal have lost - their bodies no longer age and they remain where they are, "a fixed point in time and space," I believe are the words Doctor Who would use. It's an interesting, double-edged sword, both wonderful and terrible. Living forever would be great - or would it? The novel Tuck Everlasting shows other wise and Doctor Who and Torchwood certainly shows the downsides. And the writer of this article engages a debate with the movie In Time's approach to dealing with over-population. But could the solution to curing diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's really be found through such a route as dealing with senescence? Is that really the best path to take?


And thus the debate continues...

Live Life Longer with Science

Holy Crap... this blows my mind... Signs of Aging Halted in the Lab.

This is at the Mayo Clinic, not that far away from me. They've developed something that slows down aging in mice, which is pretty remarkable, to say the least. It's weird, and crazy and... wow. I didn't think anything like this would be... well, created in my life time. Yes, it's just in the lab... but still.

It's just... complicated. After immersing myself in ideas of life, death, immortality and all that jazz while writing my story about time travel, something like this could be the best thing and the most awful thing in the world. Something to keep an eye on, that's for sure.

The Next Step in Home Security?

I'd love to get one of these for the apartment, but I'm pretty sure it would blow the building up. Check out this new bot that can pack quite a punch: Homemade Robot Can Shoot 1000 Rounds.

Yeah... thinking that if that ever went rouge our entire campus would be screwed.

In Defense of Science

[Львица] told be about this story the other day and I was totally amazed by the photo that accompanies it: Major benefits for spinal befida surgery in the womb.

Isn't that just wild? Something about the baby in the womb grabbing onto the surgeon's finger is just - miraculous, spine-tingling, utterly powerful.

I need to see this, especially after the doubt-trip I just went to trying to get my fever/cough/help-I'm-trapped-in-a-shit-hole-can't-someone-get-me-out diagnosed. I'd had a cough since Wednesday or Thursday and then on Saturday night at the Ren Fest I started getting super cold. When everyone else was totally fine. Not good.

By Sunday I had a full-blown fever which I hoped would just go away, as fevers usually do for me. No such luck. All throughout watching Torchwood with [Львица], I was shifting between cold spells and hot flashes (the hot flashes seemed to be somewhat triggered by Jack Harkness appearing on screen... please don't use that against me :P).

Anyway, I was sick. Really sick. I woke up Monday with a fever around 101 degrees F. Bad news bears. But I had to go to class - I had to take an Italian test and attendance is mandatory for all of my classes unless you have a doctor's note (university policy, they're hardcore). So somehow I took the test (yes, I took a test with a fucking 101 degree fever - BE IMPRESSED) and dragged myself to my social psych lecture (of which I remember nothing), came home and took a nap, woke up with the fever as worse as ever and decided I should call my mother and have her take me to the doctor.

Generally, I go to Fairview, which is a local hospital/clinic that does really good work. But they close at five in the evening and I couldn't get back to the suburbs until after that. So I had no choice but to go to urgent care at a place called Quello clinic.

Quello and I have a long, terrible history. One of their doctors indelicately called me unhealthy and fat when I was eleven (it might have been true, but still). Another chewed me out for wearing crappy shoes when I had a sprained ankle, saying that the shoes were my problem (um, bitch, I wore those shoes because MY ANKLE WAS SWOLLEN TWICE ITS USUAL SIZE). This time, I was berated for not inspecting my mucus when I coughed and basically told my college is stupid for requiring a doctor's note policy because it violates HIPPA. Oh, and he couldn't find anything wrong with me because he couldn't discern anything from my lungs. I could have a cold, I could have the beginning of pnemonia. So he told me to take 3 ADVIL every six hours along with 2 TYLENOL  to cut down the fever. 3 ADVIL?  I don't even take that when I've got a headache that feels like a rapture in my brain or cramps strong enough to kill a moose. SERIOUSLY, DUDE?!

Needless to say, I did not take his prescribed remedy and I did not believe his lack of diagnosis. So I went to my REAL clinic, Fairview, where they were also mystified at my pretty intense symptoms accompanied by real lack of breathing problems. But they did a much thorough questioning of symptoms AND A STREP TEST which is like the first thing you try in Minnesota when anyone comes into a doctor's office with my symptoms. (It's like everyone gets strep here - which I've actually never had. Actually, I'd never had the test done before either - not as bad as I was expecting. Everyone talks about feeling like they're going to gag, but I didn't get that.)  So the doc decided I probably had just the common flu coupled with dehydration. So no antibiotics, which is probably for the best. Just Tylenol and lots and lots and LOTS of water.

And it's working. I feel two hundred times better. I mean, I'm blogging again. I can actually think straight. That's something. My fever broke earlier today and I feel like I love the world again. I'm still drinking water like a fish, but for the most part, I think I'm totally on the mend.

This is doctors at their best, like the doctor I saw at Fairview. She wasn't rude, she wasn't harsh, she was kind, sympathetic, and legitimately worried for my welfare. Not being pushy, telling me I'm stupid and trying to get me out of there quickly.

But it's so easy to see stuff like Quello instead of stuff like Fairview. It's so easy to loose faith with science, especially in a position like mine. I'm in a psych department that doesn't care about undergrads unless they're doing research and the profs I have are so focused on their own little category of information that sometimes you can't see the big category of PSYCHOLOGY where everything fits together.

And cultural studies isn't always helpful either. It seems like my class this semester keeps saying how science just hates the humanities and how it's whole idea of data just isn't right and that it's totally overrated and over-specified. Okay, sometimes yes, BUT...

I direct you to a professor I had last semester, named Robin. He is INCREDIBLE. I took his science and culture class, after swearing to NEVER take another class about science ever again (because high school science scarred me. And they tended to think of science rather as the U thinks of psychology - one big entity with some distinct parts that fit together - BUT THEY NEVER SHOW YOU HOW. Yes, I know I am both a individualist and a holistic thinker. It's a problem. DEAL WITH IT).

I was utterly blown away by Robin's class. Science in all its different facets, religion, mass media, Glenn Beck, Michael Crichton, people who want to chop their own limbs off - all of this fit together, to show how great and terrible science is. It isn't perfect; it isn't even close. It doesn't give us all the answers. Maybe it gives a few maybe we shouldn't know. But it's working at it.

Just like psychology. Just like cultural studies. Just like everything else. It's working at it.

I have to admit this, for my sake and for the sanctity of this blog: I really, really like science (especially biology. I think, deep down, part of me wants to be Charles Darwin). As much as I criticize it. As much as I complain about how I loathed it in high school (that was because my teachers were terrible and the classes were boring, not because I didn't think the material was interesting). As much as I complain about doctors/researchers/psychologists/you-name-it not getting it, I TOTALLY RESPECT WHAT THEY ARE DOING.

Because when you come home at the end of the day, and you just read about how some guys says the entire world is going to pot because capitalism is destroying the world and that racism and sexism are never going to be solved and OH MY GOD WHITE PRIVILEGE... it's kind of nice to know that science is helping save people's lives. You know? It's nice to have solid answers - even if they are just things that we all agreed on to be true. Yes, they may be constructions. But I perceive them as REAL constructions. And though sometimes data can turn complicated things into cold, unfeeling numbers... sometimes, SOMETIMES those numbers can actually provide comfort instead of cold, unfeeling philosophies.



I don't want to become cynical. I don't want to be jaded and angry and pissed off at the world. This strange balance I find myself in between psych and cultural studies, science and religion, left and right politics, and all the various intersections between all of THOSE categories seems to be working out for me right now. Yes, nothing is clear cut - but then again, nothing in life is, now is it?

What am I doing with my life?

First things first: HOLY SHIT IT'S WINDY OUT. REALLY REALLY REALLY WINDY. I don't think I've gotten my hair so mussed up or dirt in my teeth since that crazy windy day in Glasgow.

Whoa, flashback.

Anyway, now to attend to other matters. Like this article I came across in the Minnesota Daily: Doctorate At Age 18?

Yeah...

AN ELEVEN YEAR OLD IS DOING PSEO. I'M NEARLY TWICE HIS AGE AND I'M NOT EVEN DONE WITH UNDERGRAD AND THEY SAY HE COULD HAVE A PhD BY 18???!!!

I'm sorry for the excess of caps. I mean, I admire the kid, that's incredible. But did he have an actual childhood? Does he go home and watch Spongebob at the end of the day like I did when I was eleven, or does he go home and think about physics and biology? What kind of social life does he have? What is he going to do if he graduates from college AT THE AGE OF FIFTEEN or something?

And because I'm a self-centered individual, I realize that THIS IS WHAT I'M COMPETING WITH. This is who is going to running Microsoft or Google or something while I'm going to be an unemployed hobo with social science/humanities degree because no one cares about that shit anymore.

Me in two years... actually, if this is me in two years, I'm cooler as a hobo

Point is, I feel a little threatened. Okay, I lot threatened. Especially because I'd really like to have a job after college, thanks. If only I'd become a doctor or a scientist or something. Who'd started reading at age 1. BUT NO. I have to be the weird hipster sort who wants to do something artistic but is probably just marginally more intelligent than your average Kardashian (c'mon, they figured how to be famous WITHOUT DOING ANYTHING. They aren't that stupid).

Anyone else getting this feeling that science and technology fields are taking over universities? (I want to point out that I'm NOT slamming science and technology. I just, as a humanities sort, feel like all the funding is going to research labs. And not education. Wow, this got strangely political. Sorry about that. Actually, no, I'm not sorry. This deserves more than a parenthetical statement, but that will have to come later). Anyone else sick of everyone assuming that they want to become a doctor or a lawyer or something? 'Cause I sure am.

You know what'd be awesome? If this kid pulled a complete 180 and became a brilliant poet or singer-songwriter. Or James Franco. That would make my life.

Thanks to linguistics, I learned about a new bug

[Львица] and I were doing classwork tonight when she stumbled across a mention of this little bugger in her linguistics book:

This guy's called a death watch beetle. He's less than an inch long. And he communicates by beating his head against things.  They apparently make quite a racket doing this and, according to Wikipedia, they have become associated with quiet, sleepless nights and with vigil kept over the dead or dying. And thus have become superstitiously known as an omen of impending death.

Did I mention that they're the size of my finger nail? Pretty awesome, right?