Now that I've posted "Sex in Flatland", I feel the need to elaborate on some of my own opinions that wormed their way into what I meant to be a lighthearted satire-- good fun for all, you know?-- but never would have found a place in their entirety. Specifically, I'd like to address the second-to-last paragraph, in which The Good Doctor dismisses the idea of Gay Pride.

I fully realize my position on the issue might warrant me my share of hisses and thrown tomatoes by many, but I must make it known: I agree with Dr. Pentagon.

By popular request, I've uploaded to Serendip the good doctor Pentagon's article on the mating habits of his fellow Flatlanders. Enjoy!

I wrote the attatched essay as a response to Abbott's Flatland, a novella that's risen to cult status among math geeks everywhere. Flatland is at once an exploration into the geometry of higher dimensions, a commentary on classism, and a dark caricature of Victorian prudishness and misogyny. But the one thing that Abbott never mentioned was sex. How would geometrical figures reproduce? Would they enjoy it? And what about sexuality itself-- is it as variable in two dimensions as it is in our three?

 

This post has been brewing in my head for a week or so. I'm not sure why I was so hesitant to verbalize what I'm thinking, but here goes. It seems that there is a movement on the forum and in the class towards honest personal expression. And I think I should respond in kind. Many students have been voicing frustrations with the course. I have been feeling frustrated with the course as well, but in different terms. I've shared these thoughts with Anne, but feel like I should disclose them to everyone else as well.

Soldiers in the Evolutionary War

“...and all the people that you made in your image

see them fighting in the street

'cause they can't make opinions meet

about God...”

~ Dear God, XTC

The Unconscious: A Neurobiologist's View

Paul Grobstein
30 October 2007
for Story Telling as Inquiry

Life, as we have been studying it, starts off with small single celled organisms and gradually includes more and more multicellular ones. The introduction of these larger organisms has not by any means replaced the single celled one on this planet. This impels one to consider whether there is any difference in the actual cells found in either group that could account for this. If all things are made up of the same building blocks, and we are all composed of cells, does that mean that they are all the same cells?

Project Proposal

            In my research project for the rest of the semester I am interested in exploring female and feminist art. I began this project by asking myself a series of questions that I wanted to explore both in my research and in my own artistic work. What makes a work of art feminist rather than female? Can a feminist work of art be produced by a man? Why are there not more women in the traditional cannon? If a work is done by a woman, does it make the work innately feminine in some way?