It's very hard to write on ye olde Ballade when there's a constant pressure to be writing elsewhere. So if I go under for a week here or there, trust that that's why.
The writing project of late that has eaten my time like an event horizon has been a paper for the HSD core seminar. I'm writing on rhetoric in public science communication during the Sociobiology controversy of the mid-seventies. The reason today was a good day1 is that after dragging my feet/knuckles for a solid couple of weeks - I was reading and doing a ton of background work in that time, but still, I just couldn't get myself to start writing - I finished the first draft of the paper. Huzzah!
Considering this is pretty much all I've been doing (aside from a slew of other research projects and the usual class reading and such) for the past LONG WHILE, it feels pretty good to have it done. It's not in shareable form yet; I need to do some editing and rewriting and the like, but I'll post it when I get it to the readable stage. 28 double spaced pages of some pretty annoying quotey detailed analysis, so i suppose we all have that to look forward to.
Speaking of 28... sigh:
(Photo nabbed from Boing Boing; Yoko sent it specially to them to commemorate his passing. Other than typing DAMMIT four thousand times, I have little to add here. I was two at the time).
So the week 14 account is somewhat boring, mainly because of the previously mentioned paper-write-a-thon. We suffered through our last shared lab on Monday - actually scratch that, the lab itself was pretty cool; Dr. Hall talked about some of his work on Evolutionary Development (aka Evo Devo). But we suffered the death rattle of the lab in that form; seems the desire to divorce HPS/BPL from HSD has become overwhelming, so next semester we are back on our own. This has all kinds of icky politics behind it so I will forego that here; suffice it that sunnier days are ahead (theoretically) from both camps' perspectives.
Also sat through my last law class, so that requirement is dead and gone.
Tuesday - Thursday was sorta a mess because Beck was sick and coughing all night. So I did research for my paper from home and did my reading for Friday. Friday's class was another eagerly received death knell of a class; we were treated to a trio of presentations on the Philosophy of Technology, the height of which were the claim that computer software is immaterial and that the tale of Icarus is an anti-technology fable. People couldn't get out of there fast enough; this class was also drenched in political ill and represents a divorcing of departments for next semester. So yay for that. We did cap Friday with a party at Jane and Richard's house - the whole department etended showed up, and a good ol' time was had by all.
When I look at this semester's classes... YECK. Not a great first semester class-wise, though things should turn better this spring. And I suppose the fact that I didn't go running crazy from the premises in response to the circumstances is a solid sign that I like what I'm doing despite the objective badness of the classes I found myself in this semester. So, that's... good?
(Musical insert: Axl just asked me, over a sonicscape of thunderstorm and raindrops, "What's so civil about war anyways?" What indeed, W. Axl.)
Anyways, back to the good day - tossed the frisbee with Johnny, melissa, Mark, matt and Genevieve and then got a burrito at lunch today. That was fun in a stupid tossing on the quad kinda way, followed by the usual awesome lunch hijinks. At some point today / yesterday we also watched this video, which is funny as hell but decidedly unsafe for work. Get that song running through your head for a (short but) good time.
And yeah, I stomped that paper! Seriously, after not getting anywhere near as much done this weekend as I wanted, I ran through and got a ton of pages written by hunkering down in the lab the past two days. Go team Nyet. Er, me.
So anyways, that's the tale of week 14 and part of week 15. The plan is to finish editing / rewriting on both papers tomorrow and get those suckas turned in so I can get on to the next thing. Fun times.
Hopefully this means I'll get some more updates in soon. Still gotta do GPGDS and the Rochester Turkey week. And discussing Men's League and the uberfun Royal WEfnuk dinner (as well as the DOPE t-shirts that Alexxx has designed) would be a good idea, too. Until then...
Would you PLEASE give it on up to Homeslessville?
1 Knowest ye thy Ice Cube?
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