Judgments

Teaching is always difficult You never really know how much students are taking in until you read their papers and get back exam scores. I saw an article in Science magazine (March 14, 2008) about archaeological studies on how people learn. Although they are looking at primitive cultures, I wonder what it means for more complex cultures and what it means for students and teachers in a formal (school) setting. Maybe we're going about it wrong. And with the focus on assessment and learning outcomes right now in the universities, we are very conscious of the fact that learning doesn't always happen, or at least how we expected it to. I just finished grading another batch of papers for my first-year writing course. What students don't always realize is how hard it is to grade and how it is the most unpleasant part of teaching. No one is happy about it so why do we do it? It's the same idea of what's going on with the assessment of courses, schools, etc.---everything has to be quantified for some reason or other. I suppose value judgements are all around us in so many ways; it seems to be part of our lives. Judge not that ye be not judged! Yes, try doing that as a teacher! The only thing we can do is to be as fair as we can be.

Next Blog

Once in a while, out of curiosity, I click on the link that says, Next Blog. I don't know how they categorize what Next means because the "next blog" to my Family Files blog has always been different. Anyway, today I clicked on the link and found this fashion blog. I was trying to find out what the language was and ended up typing in one of the words magazinok (magazine, I presume) and then got more links with the same strange language. I finally recognized the word, Magyar and so found out that this is a blog in Hungarian. The last entry was the most interesting with a model wearing knitted clothes that are pretty weird as far as clothing goes, but as far as art is concerned, very creative. Check it out at http://modellekesmindenmas.blogspot.com/

I also tried the next blog from this site and came up with an Italian photographer. At least I recognized the language this time! Look at the stunning photos of the carnival in Venice taken in November: http://angelobattaglia.blogspot.com/

Serendipity

Horace Walpole has called serendipitylooking for one thing and finding another.

I was looking for a quotation from Giambattista Vico when I came across a site, Think Exist that lists quotations from famous people. I discovered that my son, Gian was listed among the famous and infamous. I did a double take when I saw his name, thinking, "Wait, that can't be my son?" Sure enough it was my first-born with a quotation taken during his involvement with Provo city's ban on dancing and another about his now defunct band, Midwife Crisis. (http://thinkexist.com/quotes/gian_pierotti/)

Another bit of serendipity came across my desk the other day when I received a flyer from BYU Faculty Center about a discussion group on Alasdair MacIntyre's book, After Virtue. When I was researching for my thesis, I kept coming across various people who quoted MacIntyre. I thought I might read him someday but forgot about it until the flyer appeared. I feel as though I'm being nudged to read him so I signed up for the discussion group. It should be interesting to see what the BYU community makes of a Marxist Roman Catholic's point of view. But MacIntyre's book looks back at Platonic philosophical thought, especially that of communities. And that is what Vico concentrated on too. My thesis examined Vico's sensus communis and how a community could come together in a technological world through digital storytelling.

I recently found an article that also looks at Vico's views on community. (I hadn't come across it for my thesis, and anyway I had so much stuff I couldn't use all that I'd already found!) John Shotter of the University of New Hampshire looked at "Vico, Wittgenstein, and Bakhtin: 'Practical Trust' in Dialogical Communities" (http://www.massey.ac.nz/~alock/virtual/js.htm).

I was recently invited to join a Facebook group and with that venue for communication as well as blogs, what elements of Vichian theory are evident in these communities? There's food for thought, grist for research.

Pollution

While checking the weather for Orem for the week something I would normally not do in June because we usually have contually sunny weather, I came across a linked site called Forecast Earth. There was a good article with ideas on how to use kitchen appliances more effectively and lots of other good stories. When I travelled to Heathrow from Edinburgh, when buying the ticket there was an option of adding a pound or more to help with emissions costs. There was a debate there about air travel and the effects of emissions from airplanes. Heathrow is the busiest international airport in the world despite what the Forecast Earth says (Atlanta) and I saw a huge line of planes before and after my plane. It seemed as though the planes took off almost 2 minutes apart. Also in Edinburgh they are bringing back trams to cut down on pollution from buses, and I recently read how train lines and stations that were closed during the infamous Dr. Beeching's time (1960s) to help with costs, are now beginning to be opened to help with pollution from cars. Like the UDOT people in Utah they were surprised that people actually used the trains instead of taking cars. Hmm. Could the ordinary person be wiser than the bureaucrats? If you build it they will come or use it.

So, as the majority of musings on this site seem to have some kind of scientific bent, I'm adding the Forecast Earth as a link on this site because we are "all involved in mankind" (to coin a phrase from John Donne) and we all play a part by the way we live and interact.

Pollution of the earth and the environment is one thing, but there are other pollutions such as pornography, war, and other social ills that affect not just the physical but emotional, mental and spiritual health of the human family. But that's another discussion.

Preventing Genocide

There is an interesting editorial in Science Magazine about how to prevent genocides. Editorial - May 30, 2008 Perhaps this idea can also prevent racial tensions. For example, when I was in the UK recently, I read an article in which a comment jumped out at me. People there (and in many Western countries) are facing immigration problems. The writer made the comment that decisions about how to bring in immigrants and how many are being made at the governmental level, but the people making the decisions are not actually living with the immigrants. The people who are touched directly by an influx of immigrants are the lower class people. They come face to face with people taking their jobs and making cultural changes around them. And they're not equipped to deal with this.

I think it's easy for me to be tolerant of differences in race because I don't always have to deal with them, or they're different enough that they are interesting. Actually, I find that it's not a matter so much of race for me but of values and life style. Or maybe it's not even that. I suppose I could converse and like someone who occasionally uses vulgar language, though I wince inwardly. I think the most important thing is that they are kindly and not violent or have a complete disregard for others. There are two families in my neighborhood who do not fit in with the rest of the neighborhood because they do not value a well-groomed garden and house, use bad language, and are loud and a little obnoxious. Ironically, they seem more "difficult" for me than the Hispanic family who lived here for a while and who didn't speak English and felt threatened by having to learn the language, but seemed to "fit in" a little better. Perhaps I'm more tolerant of a more different culture such as Hispanic than what would be considered from my background, "a lower class" of people. I suppose this is my British background coloring my prejudices---class (and usually education) is my touchstone. And, if the Hispanics had been perceived as not having similar values and life styles, I would have probably been just as judgmental.
And yet, I do have interaction with the neighbors who don't "fit in." I know that one family's children has benefitted from living here and it is the next generation who rises to a different level of community living. I have to examine my biases and prejudices, not just from demographics and stories of racism in the news, but with the people from all walks of life that I come in contact with. It is a matter of loving and respecting your neighbor even if you don't understand them or they have different values. But then, what does one value? There are standards for a good society to live up to; such societies need people of good will to make it work. And that leads to Greek philosophy concerning good will as expounded in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. (An interesting article about good will can be found at Good Will.) Of course, this discussion can be continued in accordance with an LDS perspective: don't we believe we are children of God and therefore have sparks of divinity in us and that divinity seeks to reach for the good. But we do not stay static, we need to be using our will for good. And that's the dilemma of earth life, torn between the natural man and the divine within--we are continually making choices, good or ill. And, we cannot really understand others unless we "walk in their moccasins" for a while. I have to remember C. S. Lewis's essay, The Weight of Glory, in which he asks us to look at and value our neighbors:

The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour's glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations--these are mortal, . . . But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit.[xxvi]

Humans and Neandertals

I'm still read Science magazine while taking lunch and the latest tidbits to come from my browsing the last few days are to do with human migrations and Neandertals.

According to 26 October 2007 magazine, Neandertals had red hair and fair complexions (p. 546). And then recently I read (I can't remember where) that in a few years red hair will be non-existent. But according to Wikipedia, that fact is not true. There are lots of interesting facts and lore about red heads on their site. I suppose my interest was drawn to this snippet because my grandmother had red hair and several cousins on both my Welsh and Scots sides.

I just went to a computerized family history conference and one session included information on finding family members through DNA testing. So when I saw an article in Science magazine on migrations to the Americas through DNA testing, I scanned the article. What was interesting to me was that the people in the Americas were what is termed "modern" homo sapiens, only from 16 ka (16,000 years ago). Hmm. What does it all mean?

Enhanced Food and other anomalies

I received an email from a friend telling me about the problems of aspartame which set me to musing about the problem of enhanced food. In order to get some facts, I checked on this message on one of my hoaxbusters and urban legends website. (http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blasp.htm) Although it is partially true, it’s quite exaggerated. Its language alerted me to look this up. The email has been around since 1995. I’m not a fan of soft drinks anyway and rarely drink them but the information is a little over the top. Anyway, there’s a website on aspartame http://www.aspartame.org/ that gives more details about this product. (I actually don’t ever use sugar-free anything. I don’t trust man-made foods.) I also looked at Monsanto, the company that makes aspartame. Apparently they began in 1901 and their first product: saccharine! Hmm. And they also introduced Bst for milk products. They also seemed to be heavily involved in creating plants with built-in herbicides. I would consider this more subtle “poisoning.” I’ve developed an allergy to corn and perhaps it’s the “new and improved” corn that is the problem. (I also can no longer eat American beef because in this country cattle are corn-fed.)

I actually have had discussions with two of my bosses at work, one a chemist (associate dean for GE), the other a botanist and geneticist (dean of undergraduate education). Their work and research is involved in “improving” nature. I had one conversation with my boss (the chemist) who wondered why people were reluctant to use irradiated food. The purpose of this is to stop spoilage, give food more shelf life. He gave an example that you could have a bag of strawberries that would not spoil after a month or so. I had an image of a package of such “food” looking more like plastic rather real fruit. When I asked if there would be loss of nutrients, he said that it would lose a little. To me it was a weird conversation but he seemed perfectly OK with it. To me this research seems to help businesses rather than protecting the wholesomeness of food. I think freeze drying, canning, and dehydrating is great so I’m not completely opposed to food preservation. We live in a very complicated world. I know we can’t have completely organic food but I think there should be a better balance because I believe additives and “restructured” food is becoming the norm now and that, in my view, is a problem.

I’m not opposed to science and the good it can do, I guess I just don’t always see a balance in real life, especially when it filters down to corporations. I just skimmed an article in one of the science magazines in the office, “Science and Technology for Sustainable Well-Being” (Science, 25 Jan 2008), in which the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) President reports on what science is doing to help with such things as global mortality; land, water and terrestrial biota; world’s water; world’s energy supply, etc. If you want to read it it’s online at http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol319/issue5862/index.dtl then scroll down to Association Affairs and click on link to text of Presidential Address.

I think I need to have a permanent link to this magazine. The Dean gets it delivered and a copy is always available in the conference room which is more like a lounge. I will sit in this room with its views of Timpanogos and campus from the windows and a Minerva Tichert picture hanging on one of the walls. As I eat my lunch, I read a few articles from this magazine. Most of it is way above my head but some articles pique my interest, like the one above. They set me to musing.

Musing on Musing

I decided I needed a blog in which to share thoughts and arguments and quirky, inconsequential bits of information. I had a hard time coming up with a name but I kept coming back to "musings." It seems so cliché until I read the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of musings. So here is the etymology of musings according to the OED:

[<>muser (12th cent.) prob. <>*mus face (see MUZZLE n.¹). Cf. Old Occitan muzar to gape (12th cent.; Occitan musar), Catalan musar to dream away the time, Italian (arch.) musare to idle, loaf around (13th cent.), to gape, wonder (c1300), (of an animal) to hold the snout up, sniff about (15th cent.), post-classical Latin musare to stare, waste time (1311 in a British source).
The widely divergent sense development in Old French app. has its origin in the description of different facial expressions: the sense ‘to ponder, reflect’ (c1170; cf. senses 1, 2) is perh. orig. descriptive of the contemplative look of a person deep in thought; the sense ‘to waste time, idle, loaf around’ (c1170, but prob. earlier: cf. musart absent-minded, foolish (1086)) is perh. orig. descriptive of a gaping, staring look; likewise the Anglo-Norman sense ‘to gape, stare, wonder, marvel’ (c1180; cf. sense 3); and the spec. sense ‘to play the bagpipe’ (c1120; cf. MUSE n.²) is perh. orig. descriptive of the puffed-up cheeks of the bagpiper.
With sense 4a cf. French regional (chiefly Walloon) muser to murmur, hum, howl. With sense 6 cf. Old Occitan muzar to wait in vain (12th cent.).

So this will be a place to gape and wonder, idle or loaf around, perhaps even sniff about testing the air of discussion or even hot air and it's certainly a place to stare and waste time!