diversity

An interesting conversation has broken out, at several different places on Serendip and beyond, among (so far) two scientists, three humanists, and several college students of whom at least one has yet to declare an identity. Among the things that make it interesting, to me at least, is that it isn't actually about the two cultures per se (see also Two Cultures or One?), but rather about experiences teaching and learning in different contexts - with the intriguing suggestion that humanists might have something to learn in this regard from scientists and vice versa.

When I was shelving some journals today (yesterday, now), I stumbled across a special issue of English Language Notes (v. 45 no. 2, Fall/Winter 2007) entitled Queer Space (and there's a special issue of Social Text that I want to look at, too, called What's Queer About Queer Studies Now?). Richard Hornsey's piece "After the Bathhouse; or, In Praise of Awkwardness" raises some interesting questions for me. As I start writing, I've read about 7 of 12 pages. I will put summarizations of Hornsey's points in regular text and my own comments and reactions in italics.

Recently, a new genre has been receiving the attention of internet users: the weblog. Using blogs, we can filter out the facts of our offline world and develop a new online external identity. This paper will discuss the nature, use-value, and appeal of this online external identity, discuss the importance of the consistency of the external self-both online and offline, review the relevance of the unverified information in blogs, and talk about how anonymity affects the way we perceive our own identity. Additionally, I hope to shed some light on the blog as an emerging genre and talk about what the blog's worldwide success reveals about human nature and psychology (and vice versa).

 

The Blog

Memory Distortion and its Connection to Reality

"Memory is the scaffolding upon which all mental life is constructed."

–Gerald Fischbach

 

Whenever someone tries to compare or analyze the underlyingbases for the culture and customs of different races or groups of people, theperson making the comparison or analysis almost always runs the risk of beingcriticized for what appears to be “generalizations” as to why certain groupsbehave, act and think the way they do. It is, therefore, very important for aresearcher doing a study on human behavior, such as a people’s way of thinking,to define at the outset the scope of the study being made and the methodologyto be used.

Autism: A New Look at Consciousness