Thoughts

in the more widespread second wave feminism, we have worked so hard to argue the social construction of gender, and much of this is valid. We have argued that "hysteria" (a greek term for the wandering womb when a woman is not having enough sex or giving birth enough that suffocates a woman and makes her go crazy) is a cultural term used to keep women down, and it is. We have argued that  emotionality, nurturing, and submissiveness are traits pushed onto us by society, that enchains our body to reproduce. It is society which demanded us to be domestic, to have sex with husbands which at the time would lead to the inevitable role of our biology--reproduction. And this was a vicious cycle, both our bodies, and our society were telling us to stay home, and not go into the world made for men. Then birth control came out, and women's ability to control their reproduction allowed them to step out, for the first time, of the vicious cycle. To gain autonomy of their bodies so t

It started with a cabalistic garden. A garden in which the first (presumably white) couple lived in paradise: the Garden of Eden. And it was here, secluded from the outside world, that the first tokens of God’s affection lived, in all the blessings of that cabalistic garden. These were God’s humans--gods blessed ones.  They lived in ignorant contentedness until the serpent told Eve that if she ate the apple of the tree, “your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil”. Eve ate the apple. We still live in a garden, half brain child of human creation, and half wild stepchild. This garden is nature. This nature is deemed a garden purposely so. Because, there is no place on earth where humans, like god, have not changed something about it. Suited it to their own liking; created it for themselves. There are places on earth where in our Eurocentric egoism, we may pretend are pristine, forgetting the ancient indigenous cities, the ancient field burnings to inc

I, a white female, went to my first Black Environmental Thought conference this weekend. The conference was wonderful, and the people extraordinary; I honestly cannot thank them enough for the opportunity, but also for their acceptance and embracement of me that they were in no way were obligated to do (for once). I want to back up a little bit, to before the wonderful people here made me feel so comfortable. I am a student with the Nelson Institute of Environmental scholars program. Some jargon that basically says I am in an environmental program that gives us some awesome real world opportunities. I received an email inviting me to write a short paper on what "community engagement" meant to me in order to get the opportunity to go to an expenses paid environmental conference with one of our new (excellent) professors. I thought, fabulous, I couldn't be more excited. I saw the conference and it was the "Black Environmental Thought Conference II", I balked a

As a highly cognitive creature we have the ability to ask why, and this is dangerous. We have the ability to ask why, to analyze, to investigate mentally. For the first time, a species, humans, are not content merely to live, but to know why they live, what meaning it contains. But the problem is that the more times we compute “why”, the more anomalies we find with our previous answers, so we must ask again, “why”, and after countless computations, we are destined to reach the answer, null. It’s not that atheists don’t want to believe the world has meaning and order, they do; but unfortunately they have asked why too many times to believe in the previous responses anymore.  So now, in order to pretend our life is not null or void, we have to come up with a more shallow ways to distract ourselves, distraction itself. Some of us are content with meaninglessness, some of us humor ourselves with the beauty of humanitarism, and others simply try not to think about it. ------ Or, m

Just sent 134 emails to legislatures about global climate change and what they are doing about it. I'm going to keep this post updated on their responses. The emails include all of the Wisconsin State Senate, all of the Wisconsin House of Representatives, the Mayor, The President, and The Governor.

Perhaps the poetry we find most beautiful are the ones that are purposefully left most vague, because it allows us to weave our own stories between the letters. and for some reason, seeing our story, interwoven on a string of vague beautiful words, makes our lives seem more aesthetic and meaningful. As if the very credence that those words exist, the words that hold one’s story, solidifies the credence of one’s life itself. It is as if the vagueness and mysticism of the page reinforces the mysticism of the world. Away from scientific explanations into everything mathematical, and into the mysticism that our lives, and our existence. Matters. And you know what is really interesting, is that, their lives do become more aesthetic and meaningful. As the experience of life is inevitably subjective; the credence of those words, the mysticism they entail, and the beauty they create for someone. is real. And so through the power of the human imagination, an imaginary interweaving of

“At such a time true lovers of humanity can only hold higher the pure ideals of science, and continue to insist that if we would solve a problem we must study it, and that there is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know” (Du Bois, “The Study of Negro Problems.” P. 27 1898) The Souls of Black Folk W.E.B. Du Bois Introduction “Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.” P. 3 “Leaving, then, the world of the white man, I have stepped within the Veil, raising it that you may view faintly its deeper recesses, -- the meaning of its religion, the passion of its human sorrow, and the struggle of its greater souls. All this I have ended with a tale twice told but seldom written.” P.3 “I who speak here am

I found it interesting. I did a google image search "interracial photography" because I need an image for a poster project i'm doing of a interracial couple. However almost all of the image results were sexualized images of black males and white women. Many were tastefully done, but I still find the pairing interesting. For one, I think the fact that all the couples are sexualized show a sort of fetishism about it. This not only brings up the idea of black males as animalistic and therefore erotic, but also shows (I think) that the issue of interracial relations is not taken seriously. It is seen as a sexual fetishism and commodity rather than a portrayal of love and compassion. I think sexualizing things reduces vulnerability to classes in power.  We do it with females, and I think we are doing it with interracial couples too.

Corperate influence NY times Cronon Investigation http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/28/opinion/28krugman.html His research on ALEC etc. http://scholarcitizen.williamcronon.net/2011/03/15/alec/ statements between the two for emails http://scholarcitizen.williamcronon.net/ SOPA Overview http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act governments and corperations combine to put social media on the market Companies that support SOPA http://gizmodo.com/5870241/presented-without-comment-every-single-company-supporting-sopa-the-awful-internet-censorship-law Supporters of SOPA, those that did and dropped out (didn't want bad public image) and those that oppose it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organizations_with_official_stances_on_the_SOPA_and_PIPA Why Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook CEO) opposes SOPA http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/18/mark-zuckerberg-sopa_n_1214090.html Mark Zuckerberg's twitter feed http://twitter.com/#!/finkd 60 minutes on Mark Zuckerber

Put the better stuff on here from my old blog keari.tumblr.com

When asked how to solve racism, the answer I hear from a lot of white people is “don’t see color”. For one I want to point out that this is a great step from blatant racism. Being “color-blind” is much better than being color prejudice. However, thinking you are “color-blind” doesn’t necessarily correlate to lack of racist behavior such as micro-aggressions. This can be something like being especially self-conscious or cautious when a Black man enters a bus and sits next to you rather than a white one. Sure, you could argue that as humans we naturally schematize things accordingly. You might say, well gee, the reason I flinch when the Black guy sits next to me is because they are most likely to commit crimes. I want to just side note the amount of subliminal racism and micro-aggression that occur in racial profiling as well as media portrayals, but with that aside, why do Black people, and Black men in particular commit more crimes? Socioeconomic status.  So now we can see this

It seems the world was awash with a flood of empathy arising from the Kony 2012 video released earlier last week. Sadly, that motivation for change, that inkling against bureaucratic apathy, that we, the american citizen had a voice and could change the world was eroded away with criticism. Yet it no-one criticized the criticism.  American citizens and the world alike have slouched back into political apathy, but this time feeling justified.  It is clear to me that the criticisms need to be resolved directly. I want to stress that this isn’t an attempt to say that invisible children is THE perfect charity out there, indeed it is probably not (although its efficacy is unprecedented) but rather that we shouldn’t waste all of the effort and sweat that thousands of empathetic americans like yourself to create such a beautifully successful campaign go to waste. I would even argue that the charity, although not perfect, is very good. For a simple answer, here is a response from the Inv

Talked to my Astronomy TA after class. She noted in discussion about how Venus’s atmosphere can be taken as a sort of warning to what Earth could (and is on the path to) become. Basically Venus has such an abundance of greenhouse gases in its atmosphere that nothing can escape, and thus it is inhabitable and crazy hot. When I talked to her after class I asked her if she thought we had reached our tipping point or not (for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, tipping point essentially refers to the point of no return. Basically the Earth functions as a feedback loop so once a certain level of destruction happens, for instance if the the Earth warms to a certain degree, glaciers start melting and ocean temperatures increase which expels even more CO2 into the air then it will continue into a continuous feedback loop on its own, even without our intervention. So the essential question, is can we make it so Earth will not be destroyed or is it too late) She talked about a couple

Hey you guys, I know you guys are busy and hectic with all the midterm grading, but I just wanted to present an original hypothesis/theoretical framework of mine regarding affinity spaces and participatory culture. I’ll give you the long and the short of it so that you can read as little or much as you choose. I definitely value your feedback and am just curious what you think of this. If you think it is valid, it may very well change the way we understand affinity spaces, participatory culture and education. So  the short of   it is this. My theory/hypothesis is that our short term and long term learning interests/motivations/passions are usually linked to using learning as a tool to gain social status in a group. In this context we can understand affinity spaces and participatory culture in a new way. The reason these spaces might be better learning environments is because learning in these environment directly relates to social status in the group. This can be easily exemplified