A New Blog I've Added and My New Career Interest

by B.J. on 10/19/2008 10:41:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

http://losangelespublicspace.blogspot.com/

I started a new blog about Los Angeles and open spaces in it. The inspiration for the name comes from an organization that organizes public lectures in LA, Zocalo. Their tag line is "to provide a welcoming, inclusive space in a city with too few welcoming spaces." Mish mash that with the existence of Skid Row just a few blocks from a revivalist downtown and Mike Davis' city of Quartz and voila, Los Angeles Public Space at http://losangelespublicspace.blogspot.com.

I've been talking about the walkability of things, free events, and Watts. I talk about everything possible in the public realm but only from a perspective I'm comfortable with. I know some of what's going on, but I won't pretend to be an expert with years of experience. For now, I'm just the man on the sidewalk.

That said, the introduction of the blog, and the ease with which I write on, kinda helped me realize my professional and career interests.


This will be my professional shpiel, and I am now practicing it.

I've decided mentally officially that I want to be a Cognitive Anthropologist with a focus on urban settings. It's my way of bridging my interest in urban planning and psychological anthropology and the possible subfield of "neuroanthropology."

Specifically, I am interested in memory as expressed in the public and social realm. I'm curious about what people remember about events, and how they use that recall to formulate...something I developed from years of Chicago Bulls basketball message board reading.

I have had the luxury of having a well-developed and active message board community.
Sure there are fans from other teams, but this is a community of namely Bulls fans, and virtually all of the fighting and conflict stems from within the Bulls fan commmunity.

The conflict stems from certain decisions made by management. There are factions that support management decisions, others that don't. There are factions of fans that support players over others, there are factions that dislike certain players ON THE TEAM.

There may not always be news regarding the team, but there is definitely a community that stays active even when there is no action. It can be seen in the number of Off-topic (OT) threads that are started, specifically during the offseason.

I think these factions represent a community and the individuals/actors within them reflect real world politics and beliefs. Those beliefs are all but embedded in the language they use. Sometimes they reflect hidden racist attitudes, or liberalist viewpoints. Having spent years on these message boards with the same characters, I could sort of anticipate whose going to comment on what, and how they're going to respond to a certain situation.

One thing I've been struck by on these message boards in relation to memory is that fans don't usually remember a lot of facts or details when they argue about the value of players. No one can recall the details to every game ever played, not even self-professed fanatics. Recalling those details turns out not to be important in that most people never seem to reference them again. The reality of the message board is not so much to make published, lasting statements, but for fluid human-like conversation. Most people operate on a type of working memory that does not lead them to progress in their understanding of the different players and team.

Instead, the fans who rely on that working memory and fluid-conversation seem to be stuck and glued to their modes of thought. As the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis postulates, language creates thought. I think those who use working memory more often are likely not to take in and fully register the new language/discourse expressed upon understanding players. Without taking in that language, they aren't likely to make new distinctions or give meaning to new distinctions and nuances. They aren't likely to be detailed, but not taking in the discourse allows them to reproduce their statements and in turn inflate more meaning into their repeated discourse.

I think this kind of interest has implications for understanding the political mind, how people make decisions, and other such fields as marketing, psychology, etc.

On a more personal note, I don't want to do this just because it's my interest, but also because I want to show that Filipinos, minorities, people of color can be influential and do other things, specifically in academia and where the knowledges are created. I want to show that my race and ethnicity, the hip-hop I rock, the language we use is not stupid, we won't be fooled, and we can make things happen.

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Intro to Psychogeography by Howard F. Stein

by B.J. on 7/03/2008 07:48:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

Holy crap, I think I've found a way to bridge my interest in neuroanthropology/psycho anthropology and urban planning.

It's called...psychogegoraphy! At least, it's name sounds like the thing I should be interested in.

And apparently it's old enough to be talking about the Soviet Union as if it were a current entity.


http://www.psych-culture.com/docs/stein_psychogeography.html

The Bullet-Point Introduction:

What is Psychogeography? "Psychogeography consists of the representation of developmental time and the playing out of its vicissitudes on the stage of space. Space is often used as metaphor—sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally—for time. Time becomes space's drama; space becomes time's stage."

"The study of psychogeography begins with the still radical Kantian assumption that reality is not neutral, not simply “there” for the seeing. Psychogeography is a study of how and why we mediate reality with the contents of our psyches. Culture is not automatically adaptive to or even accurately perceptive of the real social and physical world. Spatial “otherness” is largely projective (La Barre, 1972; Devereux, 1980; DeMause, 1982)"

"Fantasies about the body and the family are transmuted into descriptions of one's own group, other groups, into shapes and features of the world."

"Psychogeography begins with the vicissitudes of selfhood in a human body within a family context, and proceeds outward to encompass the world."

Example: "We animate other peoples and places with aspects of ourselves. Often more literally than figurative, nations become mother- and fatherlands and fusions of the two. We speak of a “family” of nations or of mankind. Enemies become “cancers” which threaten to invade or corrupt the “body” politic. People experience the integrity of the body as coextensive with the integrity of group (e.g., national) boundaries."

"Psychogeography is a study of (a) the role of unconscious factors in the perception of natural and social reality, and (b) the consequences of that perception, i.e., how attributes of the psyche, once projected onto the world, become the basis for action in the world."

Fascinating Tidbits and Reflections:

1) This is a discipline bound up in borders, boundaries, lines, either-ors, rules, standards, insides, outsides, familiarities, and others. The sense of "Self" is defined partly based on who we think we are NOT.

"One's personal boundaries come to be felt as coextensive with and bound up with the fate of the geopolitical boundaries of one's group. Aggression is mobilized in defense of the self (Rochlin, 1973), in the service of keeping a sense of goodness and completeness and safety inside, repudiating in oneself disavowed parts and impulses, putting these disavowed aspects into the enemy, intensifying them in the enemy, engaging them through the enemy, combatting them in the enemy, and restoring what the enemy is seen to have taken away."

2) Despite borders and walls being constantly drawn, we seem to always believe that we can be infiltrated upon and imperiled by that enemy.

"The hallucination that governs the military realm is that the enemy is threateningly close to you, even if he is in reality thousands of miles away. His psychic proximity overrides all mere geographical facts. He attracts your attention and obsesses your unreasoning process just like the “loved one” who is wall-to-wall Breast."


3) There are shared bounaries and fantasies, which hold things for a group together.

"Myths and related phenomena are group-accepted images which serve as further screening devices in the defensive and adaptive functions of the ego. They reinforce the suppression and repression of individual fantasies and personal myths. A shared daydream is a step toward group formation and solidarity and leads to a sense of mutual identification on the basis of common needs."

Myths and these images essentially act as the social memory for a group. In popular discourse, TV sitcoms and movies act as the models and images, from which people negotiate boundaries and form fantasies.

4) The definition of the enemy makes things in our world much easier to define.

"The ability to focus one's anxiety also makes one feel safer; as a group solution to the free-floating anxiety of everyday life, the availability of a common enemy not only allows one to know where to look for danger but prescribes precisely where one should look."

In the same way that numbers are used to model the world, defining our enemies are used to model our world. And just the way numbers seem definite, they are in actuality achieved imperfectly, just as the way enemies seem definite, but they are defined imperfectly.

5) Essentially, we like to project the worse traits we see in ourselves onto our enemies. Apparently our enemies have a monopoly on those terrible traits, while we don't.

A Nazarene physician interviewed by the author said of the countryside in relation to the urban form.

'You're in God's Country here. Peaceful, quiet, decent. None of that crazy stuff you find Back East [a common phrase] or on the West Coast. God's Country is right here in the center; Back East and everything to the West is the Devil's Country. Broken families, drugs, hippies, wierdos of all kinds. Here you have some space to yourself, some privacy, not wall-to-wall people. I wouldn't want to go there. I wouldn't want my children to grow up there; it's not healthy.'

"In this psychogeographic depiction of the official division of labor between regions, respondents never utter a word about the high rates of alcoholism, teenage pregnancy, homicide, incest, and the like within the region; instead, the group myth of safety, freedom, and piety becomes a reality more compelling than reality itself, and what cannot be accepted about that reality magically becomes the distinguishing feature of the outgroups to the East and West."

The country's good traits are emphasized, and exaggerated while the urban side's good are de-emphasized and underplayed.

6) With us defining our enemies to be these people with all the bad traits, it seems that no matter what they do, barring a dramatic shift towards "our" ideology they will almost always remain the static, unchanging enemy.

"Much as we wish the Soviets to change, we depend upon them not to change. For the prospect of peace would eliminate their availability as the externalized focus and (symbolic) object or target of anxiety."

This ideology is this conservative cousin of the mushroom-dropping folks who like to explore the "exotic, unchanging other." The premise is still that we still have the good traits in abundance while they have all the bad ones.

"To take the point further: Americans prize “freedom,” a freedom which the Soviets are perceived as menacingly and unremittingly trying to take away. The U.S.S.R. serves as the image of what might be called The Great Depriver. Surely religiously devout Americans do not possess rebellious, irreverent impulses: it is those atheist Russian Communists (who are contending with resurgent Orthodoxy at home) who are bent upon taking away American religion. While Americans look longingly at the putative paternalism and maternalism of Japanese corporations, and reinstate religious fundamentalism and political authoritarianism at home, we keep our illusion of precious freedom by accusing the Soviets all the more of seeking to take it away."

This applies to today's popular discourse on China, North Korea, Cuba, etc.

7) "Scholars, not unlike political and military strategists, spend entirely too much time and effort divining the nature and characteristics of the adversary, and devote virtually no time or effort into exploring the relationship between adversaries, together with the investment of each (and all) participant in that relationship."

Reservations:

1) I'm not sure that I like the definition and implications of the "ethnic group." In fact, it's kind of a nuisance, especially done by a bunch of white guys, people who have never been considered "outsiders" to the degree that racial and ethnic "groups" experience.

"George DeVos (1975, p. 9) defines an ethnic group as “a self-perceived group of people who hold in common a set of traditions not shared by the others with whom they are in contact.”

"Max Weber introduced the concept of ethnic honor: “belief in a specific ‘honor’ of their members, not shared by outsiders, i.e., the sense of ethnic honor” (1961, p. 307)."

While there is some type of "pride" that some people do engage in, it's not some empty-ass "honor" to just be part of a racial or ethnic group. Being part of a group is not something people celebrate as an honor or achievement.

As a message boarder once put it in the context of relating Jewish performances of ethnic pride after the Holocaust to current performances of ethnic pride in the context of the United States, celebrating the ethnicity is like saying a fuck-you back to an imagined otherized but centralized dominant, oppressive people. It's saying that no matter what "you" did to my ancestors, we've survived, I'm here and fuck you again. It's mostly imaginary-broad enemy-driven rather than "self-driven".

Just as its definitions and gradual proliferations were for purposes of violence, there is still violence inherent in it, only in this age of globalizing interconnectedness, the power and violence has seemingly transferred from the enemy group to that ethnic and racial group.

Summing up...

There is definitely a lot more to the article.

However, the discourse seems to be bound up in bordership and boundaries. There are definitely implications for international and domestic studies and conflict resolution. I was hoping to find something about spatiality or space and psychology within the urban form, as I am interested in those ambiguous open spaces, garbage, and graff, and hopefully within this discipline I can eventually happen across it. I like the quip about the proximities of enemies because it never seems like they are too far away from you.

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Selected Anthropological Facts (Anthro 001, Intro Human to Evolution)

by B.J. on 10/19/2003 12:02:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

In preparation for the midterm (and since I'm the only one in the world who visits this site everyday) I'm going to post random Anthro shit:

[Fixity of Species Folk]

Lyell: (???)

1) Uniformitarianism: The geological processes of the past occur today.
2) "Deep Time"
3) Principles of Geology

Linnaeus:

1) Classification (Systema Naturae)
-Identifies by physical traits
2) Uses genus (morphology) and species (whether they can breed)

Cuvier:

1) Catastrophism: Landscape is the way it is because of violent outbursts
2) Zoology

[External Environment Influencing Species Folk]

Buffon:

1) External environment changing species, but no species giving rise to another
2) Broke down age of earth through cooling of Earth

Lamarck:

1) Acquired Characteristics: ex/ giraffes stretching their necks
2) 1st to explain how and why things change in environment and evolutionary process
3) Coins biology

[Mendel's Contributions: Establishing the rules of discrete inheritance]

1) Law of Segregation: Genes occur in pairs. During gamete production, members of each gene pair seperate, so that each gamete contains a member of each pair. During fertilization, the full number of chromosomes are restored, and the members of gene pairs are reunited.

2) Dominance and Recessiveness

3) Independent Assortment: Distribution of one pair of alleles into gametes doesn't influence the distribution of another pair. The genes controlling different traits are inherited independently.

[Steps of Protein Synthesis]

1) RNA forms
2) Transcription: mRNA copies DNA code
3) mRNA goes to Ribosome
4) Translation: tRNA molecules carry amino acid and match with codons.

DNA provides the template because is it is the sequence of DNA bases (a gene) that ultimately determines the order of amino acids in a protein molecule.



[Hardy-Weinberg Formula]

Predicts the distribution of genes in populations assuming:

1) Mating is random
2) Infinitely large population with no sampling error
3) No evolution

[Modern Synthesis]

A comprehensive explanation of organic evolution incorporating Natural Selection and Mutation, defining it from a modern perspective in two stages:

1) Production and redistribution of "variation"
2) Natural Selection on this "variation."

4 Forces of Evolution:
1) Mutation - A change in DNA

2) Natural Selection - The genetic change or changes in a population due to differential reproductive success

3) Genetic Drift - Evolutionary changes; changes in allele frequences, produced by random factors as a result of small population size.

4) Genetic Flow - Exchange of genes between populations

Phyletic Gradualism - Evolution is a slow process with gradual transformation of one population into another which: a) involves most or all of the ancestral population and b) occurs over most of a species' geographic range.

Punctuated Equilibrium - Speciation occurs quickly with little change for long periods of time. The jumps occur when a beneficial combo reaches a certain threshold percentage.

[Reproductive Isolation]

All genetic mechanisms that prevent or limit gene flow between populations. Stuffs interbreeding. There are 2 kinds of these mechanisms: prezygotic and postzygotic.

Prezygotic: prevents fertilization and development of a zygote.
1) Temporal isolation - The mates may reproduce at different rates
2) Behavioral isolation - Different courtship patterns
3) Mechanical isolation - Intercourse cannot happen

Postzygotic: causes bad stuff to happen after birth
1) Zygotic mortality - Fetus dies
2) Hybrid inviability - Causes defects in offspring or does not live
3) Hybrid Sterility - Causes the offspring to be sterile

[Molecular Evolution vs. Morphology]

Molecular Evolution:
1) Uses direct information
2) Allows quantifiable, replicable studies
3) Appears regularly through time
4) Uninfluenced by significance convergence in form

Morphological Evolution:
1) Indirect information on genotypes
2) Depends on analysis of observed traits
3) Variable in pace of change
4) Subjective in choice of traits

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by B.J. on 10/11/2003 10:45:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

Zion I = The Music of Anthropologists (at least for one anthro major)

Zion I takes you on a trip not only with their experimental, "ethereal beats", but also with their abstract lyrics. There's always something to figure out with them. Zion I's lyrics kick ass. And you won't find the ones that are not linked, except here on my website.

When you're in a Critical situation and you're Trippin', this crew will take you to Elevation like you're some kind of Silly Puddy. How Many. Boom Bip.

This song "One More Thing" is the one I listen to most cause it has guitars, slow, distorted, mellow rap, all making me feel like I'm in Egypt.



Zion I - "One More Thing"

[Zion I]

Systems
Of
Pressure,
Blessing
My
Freshest,
Light-hearted, breathe
Deep inside we weave
Mental styles to see,
Tryin' to listen believe
Into my heart,
My heart,
A spark. . .

Black markers written on walls
I�m standing so tall
We ball
Sometimes we fall
Gotta get up don�t trip up high
So Paul
Speakin� my gospel do it like this
But life it feels hostile ,
I
Search the skies I�m doing it everything
This is how I shall rise

[Susie Suh]

We all know
We all know

Yeah

We all know

But I got
one more thing
And I don�t
know what to say
And I don�t
know what to say

[Zion I]

Brain cells react
Every time that I put in on impact
Car attack
Method explode
Let me explain what my raps
Written in blood, livin� in water
Do everything like the daughter of earth
Work, place, church
Sometimes it seems I�m not
Worth anything that I would be
I sing my song so I can be free
Just watch me
Clock me
Liberation is all that I know
My flow

[Susie Suh]

You
know
Oooooohhh
Baby I don�t know
Baby I don�t know (you that good)
I got one more thing to say
But I don�t how
I don�t know how

One time
For your mind
Susie Suh Zion I
One time
We can just shine
Just let it come out
And goin� the round up the place da la la la la la la la la la

The Drill's just a deep water slangy headbopper.

Zion I - "The Drill"

Stranded on asylum
My self need it silent
Ground let the mash
Bump the flame like a pilot
See me on the sign and little z
Betta holler
Always pop my collar
Roll like a rotweiler
Diesel when we flex this
Slide on my nexis
Amp live always represent texas
Ima get it hotter than a dance floor chatter (chatter)

Flex like this war sex that your fizzo
Why you getting jelled
Baby backing on your fizzo
I keep it solar
Melt down your polar
Your just a little baby cub on my sonar
I been doin� it and doin� it well
But you probably couldn�t tell
Cause I�m short on my mail
Make or break six double eight
Makin� a sell
What That they told me at the label
But I rebelled
I�m like Nat Turner
Carryin� two black burners
My rap stacks attack like axe murders
And push further to the point of no return
Zion I burn like a thick stick of sure

[Refrain]

Is you with this?
You know the drill
Its Zion I massive on the real
Did you like that
We gotta be
We end on a
Then we rock for you

X 2

Is you with this ?
Come on little mama

X 4

I�m like the cat working� corporate
who never got a raise
Who slaved in hell a thousand days underpaid
Went to school to be a scholar now miseducated
But Fuck what you know if you still can�t make it
Seen a sister shake it break it to pay the monthly bills
Tuition, rent, survival skills its fo real
But I�m stick in this limbo
I speak to my kimfo
Relate to the style
Cause you understand
You been broke
Seen a lotta sufferin�
Seen a lotta woes
But where I finally go
Only might Ja knows
So I spit my lines
Makin� minds hypnotized
I hope the gates of heaven open wide
When I die
While you clamorin� glamour
I�ll be stammerin� gramma
You like arm�n hammer
I�m the funk Alabama
To bounce with the clout
Bringin� large amounts
Trust me keep it dust till you turn shit out

[Refrain]

Some say I�m too deep

"Finger-paint" is the song that every girl likes. But nonetheless still tight.

Zion I - "Finger-Paint"

Feel my finger paint
Color to stimulate cha
Rise relate cha
Pass in love and nature
Rhymes to break ya, take ya
Up to the maker
Away from the pain
We feelin� safer
The liberate to rectify the soul
Written in red, green, black
Trim it with gold
We been in war
Hey man we seen it all before
Got you feeling the fundamentals of flow toe-to-toe

How we battle
You can light the shadow
Walking with
You bring a barrage of marshmellow
Yellow
Words and word curse
Lip style mellow
Zion the lion-hearted fellow
Bellow

Finger paint you can hold the weight
When the mind is great, then the soul create
I reperate like water when I change my state
Mindscape to the next levitate

[Susie Suh, Refrain]

Breakin� all the shit that I don�t want to hold
Makin� all the slumbers inside me flow
So in all the seasons can make me grow
And I�m breathin�
I�m breathing� slow

x 2

[Dust]

Feel my finger-paint as the world spins
Let my finger-paint cleanse your sins
My finger-paint�s paintin� all colors on your skin
See my reflection in my brother, my twin
I�m spark in a light to your soul deep within
You can hear the echo when I drop my pen
The children hold hands under the rainbow
Everywhere we go we bring the same flow
Feel my finger-paint on my para-bola
Supernovas, nebulas, satellites
My finger�s paintin� all over the mic
My finger�s paintin� lightning when it strikes
Bring down the rain, release the pain
Master the craft, die ya rocks ya game
My fingers paint across all terrain
My finger paint penetrates your brain

[Refrain]

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by B.J. on 9/27/2003 09:50:00 AM 0 comments Print this post

Re: Scientific Facts, June 26, 2003

I get high off the endorphins my brain produces. And the endorphins I produce come from running or trudging through the trenches of Anthro. And I was really happy reading anthro yesterday because I had just Scottie Pippened everyone on the court and pretty much just kicked glass.

So happy.

I have even conceded that my thinking methodology of searching for absolute truths used in my June 26th post on scientific facts might be wrong. The facts I produced were correct, but maybe not used correctly.

From my anthro book: "The goal [of science and anthropology] is not to establish "truth" in any absolute sense, but rather to generate ever more accurate and consistent depictions and explanations of phenomena in our universe. At its very heart, scientific methodolgy is an exercise in rational thought and critical thinking."

I had been looking for "truths" in science since that particular post to the effect of generalizing and speaking out against truths against the whole medical field, when I was only talking about the medical field's truths in fighting microorganisms.

But now I realize that accuracy is what scientists are aiming for. However, if accuracy is what scientists are aiming for, why can they not have the autonomy to think outside of the scientific "laws" that restrict them ? Even AIDS activists have become more sensitive to these "laws" but only because they have learned these scientific laws.

In the larger context, these scientific "laws" to defeat viruses and bacteria could just be concoctions of a particular era. So the professionals should just keep trying to use any means. As human and environmental conditions gradually change with each second, the laws of fighting these microorganisms gradually change as well as they too develop immunities to antibiotics.

So after much soul-searching the main point of my post still remains: scientists and doctors combating microorganisms still take strictly to their laws of science and act like the stuff they know is "truth". . .when it isn't.

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