One of the most socially meaningful tunes ever

Folks,
If you know me, you'll already why I feel this way.  It's called Streets of London, but you can replace London with any major city anywhere (Paris, New York, Toronto, you name it), and the same applies.  It's a sad state of humanity that this continues to exist in the 21st Century.

We should recognize just how lucky we are.  

Streets of London video

This is what I got

Hope it grows well!

Does anyone know what kind of plant this is?

Which should I pick?

Plant Night.  Which should I pick up and plant?  Decisions, decisions.

Everyone there was a girl, except me and this other guy.  Left very quickly in case they called security about some creepy old guy hanging around.

Let's see if the plant will survive...

Out of the Mouth of Babes

Girl commented in class:  "I hate capitalism."

Fair enough.  I might not go so far as to say "hate," but those of you who know me know I'm not a huge fan of it either.  Capitalism, unbridled, certainly causes a lot of harm.

I'm all for free speech, but only if the speech in question is hypocritical and uninformed.  Take this woman who espouses hatred towards capitalism, for example.

She wears a $1,000 Canada Goose down jacket.  Before she spoke up, she was talking to her friend about some spa over on the other side of town, where one could get a day pass and enjoy all the luxuries of a "nordic" experience.

Just goes to show that a university education does not obviate nonsense.

Can I just stay home today?

OMG, it's -26 windchill today!  It's not even December yet :(


On a more positive note, I still can't workout with my right arm, so I have a perfect excuse to not workout AT ALL!  This tackling of a stone wall business was a really bad idea...

Hey, I just realize that I only need to get a C on the final in anthropology to have an A in that class.  No pressure.  Haha.

Check out this news story this morning from the CBC:

Not as nice outside though

Good place to chill in between classes

Plate #2

Chunski trying out the 24/7 dining hall

Infiltrating the law school library...

Good to see that at least two people still talk to other people

Can't wait for real winter to come!

It's warmed up! Perfect for a bike ride. Nuts.

Catching Up

It's been a few days since my last post.  Here's a quick update on my uneventful last few days.  Went to a political science conference in Montreal (yes, political science.  Just don't ask how that happened).  Had my little fight with a stone wall (which I lost in a KO).  Spent six hours observing all kinds of humanity (and lesser beings) in a hospital.  Oh, yeah, got an A on my Horror exam.  Wrote a second Anthro midterm.  Finished the first draft of a sociology paper.   Observed a very nice Remembrance Day service in Montreal.  So, yeah, and lots of painkillers (what ARE those colours!).

Now we are all caught up.

Man, it's getting colder now.  Right now it's -10 Celcius (for those of you Farenheit fans, that's 10 F).  I am so tempted to drive to campus this morning, but then I realize, hell, if I give in now, what will I do when it's actually cold, like -30?  So I guess I will be walking.  But my poor face with all the cuts and abrasions won't like it much.  Maybe I need a mask!  A ski mask?  They might think I'm a bank robber though.

I have 2 days to decide if I should the Horror class.  That A sure made things more difficult.  There are just three weeks left.  Hmmmmmmm.

In Sociology we are dealing with ethnicity right now.  My kind of thing.  I don't remember where I heard about this (I've never seen the movie itself), but here's a clip from The Karate Kid which speaks volumes:

 Enjoy!

History TA

Well, I had my really quick meeting with my TA.   All of five minutes.

First she was surprised I even met with her, since I "got a really good grade on the paper."

That's beside the point, though.  No?

Anyway, I can confirm now that she has never heard of received view.  Ha!

And then she said something about it's always hard to write essays when "You're in first year.  You will get used to it," she said.  "I remember when I was in first year...."

Ok you got the gist.

My reaction I will leave to your imagination.

When an educated mind becomes constipated

I've been noticing this phenomenon among the college crowd.  Of course, I am merely looking at this from my own perspective, and I might be missing a lot of the nuances that only the young can understand.  Anyway...

Cultural Appropriation.

Okay, I get it.  I, too, think it's not a laughing matter for someone to say, dress up as an Indian Chief at Halloween, especially when one is not an Indigenous person.  Or, for that matter, for a black person to dress up as oh, I don't know, Charlie Chan?

I get it that it's offensive if someone takes my culture and treats it as a joke.  Us Klingons are mighty sensitive when it comes to such things.

But now on college campuses, you hear people say things like, "what right does some middle-aged white woman have to go and "study the culture" of some African tribe?  That's just colonialism and arrogance."

Come again?

Are we saying that only someone who's say, Japanese, can study Japanese culture, or history, or whatever the fuck it is that's Japanese?

And someone has to be a Klingon to study Klingon customs?

Seriously?

Here are a couple of problems I have with such nonsense.

First, it requires the researcher to be of a certain culture to study that culture.  Why?  Because only a person of culture X can actually understand culture X.  What the FUCK!

I am Chinese by descent.  If you REALLY know me, do you think I have some kind of unique and privileged insight into Chinese culture?  Or Chinese history.

By the way, artifacts can substantiate (through carbon dating) 4,000 years of Chinese culture.  I know, they keep saying 5,000, but the first 1,000 has no artifacts to back up. But that's another story.  Anyway, so how is anyone supposed to study any history prior to the 20th Century?

No one around today was born before 1900.  No?  Who gives a person born after 1900 the right to study and report and analysis what happened before 1900?  Is that not appropriation?

Anyone still around who was there when the Declaration of Independence was signed?  No?  That I guess we can't actually study that.

Fucking bullshit.

Second, are we implicitly suggesting then that all persons of culture X (However one defines that, by the way) are the same?  I mean, do all Klingons share the same insight and cultural appreciation of all other Klingons?  Because if they don't, then one Klingon's interpretation of some Klingon cultural nuance is no more valid that Snoopy's interpretation of it.

And if these fools who talk so loudly about it needing a Mohawk to study things Mohawk really analyzes what they are saying, they are actually saying that all Mohawks are the same.  And you know, I think that's infinitely worse, misinformed, ridiculous, CONSTIPATED, than cultural appropriation.

I just wish people would stop and think about what they are saying before they fucking say it.  MORONS!

A Nice Surprise and other things

You might recall I said I bombed my history midterm because I confused two different Acts?  

Well, we got our midterms back yesterday, and true enough, I lost that question completely.  But apparently I got 100% on everything else.  HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.   So, it didn't turn out so bad after all :)


On a different note, my sociology prof keeps trying to convince me to become a sociology major.  OR add a double major.  Or somehow do more sociology.

I looked into it.  Heck, even doing a MINOR in it requires 10 courses.  TEN!  I can't afford to give up that many opportunities to take other interesting things.  It's too bad, because I wouldn't mind doing at least a minor.  But ten courses?  Nah.  I still want to take classes like Witchcraft, Drugs, Shakespeare, etc etc.

Hmm, French quiz tonight.  I think I will make some French Toast for breakfast...

Decisions, decisions

Dear Reader,
If you're reading this, I'd like to get your input to help me with a decision.

As you may know, I am in this Horror Fiction course.  Well, it's really more a literature course (as in high brow convoluted literary stuff) that deals with stuff that don't horrify anyone.  Anyhow, I don't even mind that.  I can go with the flow and learn something different.  Not a problem there.

Now, this is a second year literature class.  In my humble opinion, it should involve literary analysis, thereby taking us into the interpretive paradigm.  The way the prof goes about it, though, is her way or the highway.  Her interpretation, apparently, is the only valid one.  So much for thought process.

That, to me, is the real horror of the course.

Take for example the recent mid term exam.  You'd think a literature class would have essay exams, in which you interpret, support, analysis, and so on.  No?  Instead, we had T/F, MC, and one word answer questions.  I mean, really?  You don't even get that in high school!

Let me give you an example.  One of the questions was:

The monster in XYZ story is a bird.  T/F

Hell, there WAS a bird.  But to me, the bird was no more than the manifestation of the person's psychological state.  So was the monster the bird?  Or was it something else?  How can this be a T/F question?

Another example:

In the story ABC, all the aristocrats are portrayed as heartless people who only cared about fashion.  T/F

What?  Unless the story explicitly say "these people are all heartless and only care about fashion," wouldn't whatever conclusion one draws be merely one's interpretation?  What, pray, is HEARTLESS?  How do you define it?

Do you understand my frustration?

I don't know how I did on the midterm.  Probably an A-, I hope.  Who knows.  But that's beside the point.  Do I really want to sit through the rest of this BS?  

I have even written the term paper already.  So if I withdraw now, it's all going to waste.

And grade-wise, I am doing fine, I think.

So there are pros and cons.  I don't need this credit for anything.  Dropping it now won't change anything, but will save me the anguish of sitting through this class, or preparing for the final.

Keeping the class will force me to endure a few more weeks of this intellectual hibernation, but I will likely get a semi-respectable grade out of it, and I can continue to say I never back down from a challenge.

Give me your thoughts?

Thanks!

Chunski

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn

When Chunski comes in contact with kinship stuff, Chunski needs lots of mushrooms to get through the day.
I simply have a bullet-proof mental block when it comes to kinship and crap like that.

For Once, I agree with Adam Smith...

"...to neglect persons of poor and mean condition...is...the greatest and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments."  (Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments)

Take that, Doug Ford.  If even Adam Smith, the fucking Invisible Hand guy, considers you an asshole, you've gotta be one.

If you have no idea who Doug Ford is, that's ok.  You probably had nothing to do with him becoming the new premier of Ontario, so you are perhaps not totally nuts.

Folks, in the upcoming holiday season, do heed Smith's words.  Be kind to your fellows.  Lend them a helping hand.  If we all give a shit, the world would be such a happier place. 

In other words, send Chunski some money.