The Winsome Scholar

for tomorrow, here are a few to get you started:

Good idea? Ads on your car?

Global warming computer error?

Space gas may have us redefining “life.”

“When people gazed at an illusory image of themselves through the goggles and were prodded in just the right way with the stick, they felt as if they had left their bodies” (NYTimes).

Oh, this is good. “How Ads Affect Our Memory,” from TechnologyReview.com via NYTimes
If you want, we can talk about this tomorrow. Chan Yun Yoo calls the two types of memory implemented in passing visual recall “implicit” and “explicit,” but Eco has discussed a similar theory before.

From the same NYTimes article as above, American Environics has completed a demographically relevant survey of Americans and their stance on the environment. This pdf shows the results. Environmental issues are huge recently; do you think this is a fad, or has America found a lasting concern for Earth?

San Francisco is planning to zone the skies above for residential use. This article describes a city commissioner’s plan to build helium (not hydrogen) filled dirigibles for folk to call home.
My favorite line:

Leaving at any other time will require the use of a small gondola that descends on a cable. However, that ride could get a little hairy, especially during the brisk Santa Ana winds that blow through here during autumn and early winter.”

Great article!

What do you guys think? Did Davis overreact?

I love this:

“I think those high school kids shouldn’t have been on his property,” Lynch said. “But in this country, life is valued over property, and if someone is fleeing your property or on your property but not threatening you, you’re not allowed to just shoot them.”

We will talk about rhetorical fallacies later, but this is a big one. His argument is that while the “kids shouldn’t have been on his property”, he should not have shot them because “life is valued over property.” He is applying his argument to one side only. It is reported in the article that Davis (the shooter) said,

“In a situation like that, you assume the worst-case scenario if you’re going to protect your family from a possible home invasion and murder.”

The Judge who made the top statement has redirected the intent from “protecting . . . family” to protecting property. Certainly shooting teens is a bad thing (apparently shooting a “pretty blonde high school cheerleader” is especially heinous; note the pathetic introduction and epithet), but was he unstable and shooting at whatever moved, or protecting his family? Was the amount of violence warranted? What do you guys think?

This is an excellent overview (published in The Times Online) of Pierre Bayard’s essay “How to Discuss Books One Hasn’t Read.” He mentions the stigma attached to “skimming” or “speed-reading” in supposed “academic” circles:

For example, “it would be almost unthinkable for professors of literature to admit – what is after all true for most of them – that they have merely skimmed Proust’s work”.

I would like, in the interest of full disclosure, to admit that I skimmed Proust in college. Load off my chest. Anyway, if anyone can track down a translated copy of “Paradoxe” (or could translate the French; anyone speak French?) I would love to read the full text.

The final quotation in the overview is the reason I bring it to your attention:

“in order to . . . talk without shame about books we haven’t read, we should rid ourselves of the oppressive image of a flawless cultural grounding, transmitted and imposed [on us] by the family and by educational institutions, an image which we try all our lives in vain to match up to. For truth in the eyes of others matters less than being true to ourselves, and this truth is only accessible to those who liberate themselves from the constraining need to appear cultured, which both tyrannizes us and prevents us from being ourselves.”

This is important to remember. If you are forever forced to read things that you don’t want to read, discuss topics that you have no interest in, these pastimes can become a chore. I have littered the reading list for this class with words like “suggested” and “possible” because I want you to read things that are interesting to you. The discussions will be richer, and the class will be better if you bring in things you are currently reading. That being said, if I do say, “Hey guys, take a look at this,” keep an open mind. Maybe the reading will become a new interest. We never know.

This hilarious article from the Washington Post gives a possible explanation of our compulsion to exclaim “five second rule!” before eating any dropped food. Don’t look at me like that. You know you do it too.