I missed last week and am close to do the same with this week! No! Parts of my college life missing! Alright, guys, let me get this down for you:
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
We finally met Kate Schatz, our Kresge core course professor, who we discovered is a pretty cool twenty-something woman who is 100% cool, man. She’s pretty awesome. Gave us this essay assignment: we are deconstructing a political media piece, SNL skits, debates, advertisements, anything. That’s pretty cool. I’ll go into that later. In my Gender and Technology class, we watched Born in Flames, this faux documentary about the idea "What if the feminist movement became violent, like most male-led organizations?" It was actually pretty neat, its set 10 years after the ‘Second American Revolution’ that sees the rise of the ‘Social-Democratic Party’ that is supposed to be the ultimate progressive revolutionary force that fails to seize appropriate rights for women. It was pretty cool seeing women arm themselves and "fighting back", even I was into the revolutionary spirit, but in the end they blow up the World Trade Center… so… The movie was cool, though.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Another astrobiology class: all mathematics. We’re figuring out the parameters for getting a spacecraft to math, using Hohmann Transfers and what-not… very difficult. The rest of the day I really just hung out. I can’t quite remember what I did… is that the day I just watched tons of episodes of Seinfeld? Hmm.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Kresge Core Course again. We were talking about perception. I brought up such information as Quantum mind theory and Quantum immortality and generally blew people’s minds about the idea that your mind can transfer information back in time in order to quicken our reaction time. (Can’t find a source on that one.) Someone else mentioned the fact that Eskimos, because they live in a world of constant white both on the ground and up in the sky, don’t have a sense of ‘up or down’. Indeed, an explorer that interacted with a certain Eskimo village brought photographs that they just posted up on the wall at any certain angle. That’s kinda cool.
Can’t remember what happened in Gender and Technology… but I do know that my professor is pretty cool. We talked about Born in Flames… and then… shoot, I have notes somewhere. Whatever.
Connor and I went to the library to get some quarters for the laundromat. I picked up White Armies of Russia and The Russian Revolution by Richard Pipes. I want to become a complete expert in the Russian revolutionary period, its just fascinating to me. As we waited for the laundry machines to do their thing, we talked about this new cooperative project for an epic video game we’ll finish by the end of this school year… The Project, we call it at this point. We’re throwing around a lot of interesting ideas… But otherwise we really just talked about Lost, Myst, and Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island, all very excellent subjects of discussion.
Lost is so enjoyable because it surrounds itself with only one constant idea, one concept, one truth when everything else is in confusion: destiny exists. That’s what makes it so awesome! Our video game will definitely be about destiny, in whatever form.
Lost, if you don’t know, shares qualities with Myst, a supernatural island in the game series of the same name, which was created in reference to The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. Islands are a powerful setting for any novel, movie or song… how many times are they featured in creative works? It has a romantic quality about it… an island represents an environment where the individual has more power than usual. You are always isolated to some degree on an island by the ocean surrounding it, even in todays world with the necessity of ferries and airplanes. With this isolation, you become a vastly more important character, because your decisions will only affect an isolated environment and a much smaller population, not the entire world. You can ‘get away’ on an island. This is why islands have romantic qualities.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Astrobiology again, early in the morning. More complicated math. My prof remembered my name! As soon as I got back I cleaned up my room for a visit from my parents. I then departed into the Ordinary World, and I had a wonderful time seeing my family and watching Eagle Eye and the General Conference of the LDS Church. My fam is awesome… we watched a documentary about giant squids and I finally got to eat some food I’m used to.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Astrobiology in the morning, finally moved out of math a little bit. Spent the whole day either surfing the web, eating, procrastinating, watching Seinfeld, and trying to make headway on my essay (based on a Bob Barr advertisement). Stayed up until 5 in the morning finishing it.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Long day: in our Core Course we workshopped our rough draft essays with each other. There was a fire alarm that wasted a lot of time. Then off to Gender and Technology where we watched segments of Food, Demon Seed, and Videodrome. Professor Benson-Allott’s favorite director is George A. Romero, which is my favorite! She loved Cloverfield and Diary of the Dead which I did as well. Cool. Scarfed some pita and hummus, broccoli and chicken in the cafeteria, then off to a lecture where instead of learning stuff we just watched Crash. Lots of media today… a lot of media.
There. Done. Hope it wasn’t as painful reading as writing! Thanks! Goodnight!
