Final

1. Book groups:
One thing that was really amazing about the book group is the ability for us to get able to make our own requirements and activities for how we were going to structure our work. I think that is was really the only aspect of class in which we actually got to know other people and had that physical-space interaction with people. On plurk especially we are, as a class, able to get together in an alternate space than that in the physical sense and have a continued discussion twenty four hours a day and seven days a week. But as I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts I think that plurk does take a level of personal touch out of the classroom and the book discussion groups definitely made up for that. It was strange not actually knowing anyone’s name in the group when we’d first started, even after over a month of class. I still currently have NO IDEA what the name is of one of the kids in our book group, but it’s strange that because of the way that this class was structured that that doesn’t really seem to matter. I almost feel like the aspects of the different parts of class (class discussion, plurk and blogs) almost stripped off the social need of calling people by their given name. Even though I do not know that kid’s name in our class we’ve still been able to go about our small group discussions about the book Dust.
With our group specifically it was nice to be able to meet outside of the classroom (especially when we’d meet at Avellino and were able to sit and drink some great coffee in a very comfortable atmosphere). Even meeting after class outside in the sun was great and definitely allowed a way to sit down and interact with each other and have in-depth talks about the book. I think that the book Dust that in itself gave us a very different feeling when reading it than the other texts we had in class. The fiction story (so not like Radical Alterity, Life Extreme and The Filth) was one story from start to finish (making it different from Ribofunk) and actually seemed to make sense to us (unlike The Ticket that Exploded and Postsingular) so the book was must more enjoyable to read. It was easy to get really caught up in the story, where I actually want to pick it up and continue reading it.
One thing that our discussion group allowed us to do was talk without the presence of a professor which I lets us to be more comfortable with ourselves and not have that feeling of being graded based on the quality of our thoughts over our head. That level of comfortability that you get from having a discussion with a group of college kids is much different than talking in a class, and I think that in many ways it allowed us to broaden our ideas and say things that maybe we normally wouldn’t say in class. (Or in my case, seeing as I’m completely uncomfortable talking in class at all, it gave me a part of class where I felt that I could talk). On a personal level I swear a lot when I talk and when I speak up in class I tend to end up cussing up a storm on accident (in this class it doesn’t matter but it still makes me weary of talking up in class) and working with a bunch of other students relieves that stress and allows me to use whatever vulgar words I want when I speak. On the other hand not being in a class with a professor running the discussion it is very easy to get off topic and start talking about things that in no way relate to the book.
The only aspect of the book group that wasn’t quite structured well is simply the fact that we are a bunch of college students who have busy as hell lives and it makes it really difficult for us to actually challenge each other. I think that we did well enough at getting a decent amount of work done out of this project but we definitely could have done a lot more. Because the book groups are set up in a way in which we are supposed to be creating, discussing, and evaluating each other, the stress that comes with being graded by a professor (the stress that usually is the driving force and motivation of getting us to do work) isn’t there and therefore making sure we are actually doing what we’re supposed to was kind of hard. There were a couple times where we kind of blanked that we were even in a book group and we had to kind of regroup and come together after class to update ourselves on what we’re supposed to be doing. Overall our group worked pretty satisfactory but there was definitely room for us to have challenged ourselves a little bit more.
2. Blogs:
For this part of my final I chose to read the blog entries done by Kathryn, or as I know her, kc mea. I think that the main thing that is different in our blogs is that she actually touches on the books in her posts, which I really do not. I am not a fan of analyzing books and I am also not very good at it, so I always go out of my way to find something else that would be better to talk about. I’m actually pretty sure that I never even once mentioned anything about the books in any of my blog posts. (Not that I’m saying that kc mea goes in depth analyzing any of the books, because she definitely doesn’t. But she does actually mention reading them, or struggling to read them.) One thing that I find really interesting is that some of her blogs are writing about topics that I don’t ever remember discussing in class or on plurk but she is obviously referencing something that at some point had been discussed some time in relation to the class. This just goes to show that with the various aspects of the class, people focus on different things and catch different topics of discussion. One main difference in these blog posts could be because I never once spoke up in class and kc mea did, so maybe she paid a lot more attention when it came to keeping up with the conversations being had. I found that in my blogs I tended to focus on things like how the formation of the class itself has affected me (like my various blogs: Class, Plurk, Like Many People… A Plurk about Fridays Class). The majority of my blogs were focused on Plurk because that was by far the most fascinating part of class to me and allowed me to try and relate technology to our class. It’s interesting to think that both me and kc mea probably got the same amount of impact from this class yet, if using the blog as evidence, found it in completely different ways based on the different parts of class.
One thing that I did find interesting is kc mea’s most recent post about sex was when she mentioned that she was one of the only people that raised her hand when Prichard asked if anyone had never seen porn before. I definitely think that because many of the texts were so sexualized that I wonder if we both got the same amount out of them that I did seeing as I love porn and am a lot more comfortable with it. After we had a class discussion about porn I went over to my friend’s apartment that happened to have just gotten a huge pile of free porno magazines from a moving neighbor. So me and James spent about six hours hanging out and looking at Penthouse and Playboy, and amusingly enough just spent the time comparing pictures and comics and talking about the lingerie the women were (and weren’t) wearing.
3. Doubles/Doppelganger:
My absolute favorite topic of discussion in class was doppelgangers because I have always thought that it is one of the most interesting ideas to think about. When I began reading the Invention of Morel I had no idea that the people on the island were all doubles but as the repetition continued I slowly began to notice the difference. These doubles do not actually react to the world around them, they are simply a three dimensional photographic image that continues to repeat the events that happened before. I don’t quite consider these to be actually doppelgangers because they aren’t actual living beings in the sense that they can make their own decisions. When I think of doppelgangers I think of two identical people who are separate entities but are technically the same. The idea of doppelgangers from the Invention of Morel is extremely different then the idea of doppelgangers from the Filth, in which the doppelgangers are actually genetically created to take the place of the original. Greg Feely’s double isn’t just identical to Greg, he is actually a huge asshole who doesn’t give a damn about anything that has to do with the real Greg. This is shown by the fact that the real Greg loves his cat Tony and Greg’s doppelganger goes out of his way to try and kill the cat.
Even the idea of identical twins is something that I’ve also loved, especially the common childhood hope of having an identical twin that was separated from you at birth (total Parent Trap style). On the other hand, there is also the idea of having a doppelganger through time travel, like having you older self travel back in time to talk to you, or impart wisdom to you. I think that one of the most amusing things was when someone plurked the comment wondering if having sex with your doppelganger is considered incest, masturbation, gay or any of the mix. (I’ve actually had long conversations about this with Jamie’s boyfriend, trying to figure out where exactly sex with a doppelganger fits).
All of these different aspects of the definition of doppelgangers are completely unique from each other but yet in a way are all very similar. I think that the more technology that is able to produce it then the more advanced the doppelganger is. Like in the Invention of Morel, the machine that created the doubles only took a ‘photograph’ of the people, causing a 3D video of the people. Whereas the doubles in the Filth are much more advanced and are actual biological created human doppelgangers. And then even on a more technological level the idea of time travel makes a doppelganger that is actually the same person. So the steps seem to go that from the steps of least technology to most technology the doppelganger advances from photograph, to biological double to actual identical double.

Random

This is the blog that I wrote two weeks ago that I got too distracted to finish or post, so I thought that since I had it that I should just post it:
Amusingly enough, in response to Prichard’s comments about the angel and devil on the shoulder comment, the last time that I dressed up for Halloween (about two years ago) I had created my own costume where my left half was dressed as an angel and my right half was dressed as a devil. (This outfit went quite well with the Heaven and Hell themed rave I attended at some seedy club in Seattle). I have always loved dressing up for Halloween, loved the idea of being able to walk outside in a crazy outfit that on any other day would be considered out-of-the-norm. One thing that I despise (and yet still conformed to) was the shift from Halloween being a time for kids to dress up (like witches, Disney princesses, ninjas, etc) into a time when teenage girls get to dress like a slut without being labeled as it. I think I good example of this is in Mean Girls when the ‘Plastics’ went out and bought lingerie and then added bunny ears to it and said they were a bunny. I can remember dressing like an evil witch when I was little, with green hair, black teeth, and a huge wart on my nose and going trick or treating. And then years later, I remember dressing like a slutty French maid and then going to a huge party. And what’s sad is that I really just wanted to go trick or treating. Halloween this year was completely shitty, mainly because the last thing I wanted to do was dress up and go to a huge party. It’s strange that a holiday that is meant to be fun turned into something that wasn’t enjoyable and I felt awkward and out of place because I was not wearing a costume.
There is no doubt in my mind that every single time I step out of the door I am wearing a costume, I am starring in my own play where I get to write my own lines and I get to portray myself the way that I want to. Most often when I am feeling good I will dress up nice (and for me that means actually brushing my hair and maybe putting eyeliner on since I am extremely lazy) and when I’m feeling shlumpy (phrase coined by Princess Bala in the movie Antz) I will basically put on a sweatshirt and walk out the door. Yet when I’m feeling really bad I will still dress up nice and go through the day trying my best to act like I’m feeling fine and to anyone who doesn’t know me well they’d never be able to tell. I think I even posted a plurk in the past when I was feeling really down and mentioned how proud of myself I am at being able to fool people throughout the day and make them not even notice that I’m not feeling well.

Creative Endeavour

Well this is the final project that I did, taking one of my blogs (763 words) and fitting it on a notecard.

Class

One of the most fascinating things about this class to me is the difficulty that comes with explaining it to other people. In most classes any person would be able to come in on any given day, say a biology or music class, and be able to partake in the class without any problem. In this class however, in example when the girl that wasn’t in the class (I can’t remember what her name was) came to the class and upset people by not quite conforming to the methods that the class uses. What was even more difficult than trying to explain this class to other college students was trying to explain the class to adults. I had the best time trying to explain the class to my mother over Mother’s Day. How do I explain Plurk to someone that has only just begun figuring out how to text message? I even logged in to my Plurk page to try and show it to her and she just kind of stared at me with an empty look in her eyes. Despite my best efforts to encourage her to make her own plurk (she finally just got into Facebook, along with my father and my grandfather) she was simply too confused with the entire idea of it. How do I explain that a large part of my grade is writing blog posts that have no prompt and yet is still effective? (Actually a lot more effective in a think-out-of-the-box way or just think damn it). Or the fact that we are doing a book group in which one of the main objectives is to challenge and evaluate each other on a grading scale that we create?
The class in itself has so many layers that in many ways can be hard to actually find a connection between them. Half the time in class I’m wondering what the fuck is going on and how exactly the topic of discussion relates to anything and everything. I think that one of the strongest parts of this class is the way that despite having no idea what is going on, the content that is discussed continues to eat at you throughout the day. I may not know what exactly is it that is hovering at the edges of my brain, but that doesn’t change the fact that in many ways, even when I’m not actually paying attention to it, my brain is still trying to digest the class long after it’s ended for the day. Now how many of my other classes actually do that? Most often when I go to any other class I sit and zone out for a good fifty minutes and then I leave and completely throw every useless piece of information away. Yet almost every aspect of this class intrigues me, mainly because I don’t really get everything that is going on and the fact that I’m really not supposed to simply get everything.
One of the most amusing things about this class is how all-consuming it is. I love that friends of mine who aren’t in the class are conversing with people who are in the class. (Hell, some of these friends of mine, caitliners and rohansignh, I haven’t even seen in years and yet now, despite the fact that I’m friend’s with them on Facebook, I am actually talking to them again). I especially love how Alex (facecrook), who has been a close friend of mine since I was in junior high, not only orchestrates coffee dates with me through Plurk, but actually really helps me to develop my thoughts about things relating to class. I, being a science and math type mind, am extremely shitty at trying to analyze or put any of my thoughts into words, but simply sitting down and talking with Alex over coffee makes a big difference. As I mentioned on Plurk earlier last week, every time Alex and I get together we always spend a lot of the time talking about Prichard’s class. Despite the fact that Alex is not in the class, he reads many of the texts, participates on plurk, and has discussions with people in the class (such as me and Brian) and even sees/talks to Prichard sometimes. Alex is in many ways getting just as much out of the class as any of us are and yet he is not in the class and has never physically shown up to it. Now really, how many other classes can do that with its students?

Secrets of the Mind

At the very end of the class discussion today the idea of kinship was brought up as well as the idea of being able to recognize the differences in one’s reality, in someone’s loved ones. In the Twilight Zone-esqe story that Prichard told, the idea of coming home and having a pet look, feel and act the same, and yet have this strong sense that the pet is not the same pet. Despite the fact that the pet would respond to the same cues (such as its name or the tricks that you’ve taught it), there would still be this overall feeling of difference, that something is simply not right. This idea and the comments that students had (such as the comment about having family move to a new location and then going home, knowing that it is still your family but having the overall feeling of difference, of change, of not recognizing parts of your world) reminds me of a video that I watched in class in Psychology 101 (Secrets of the Mind with Neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran). The video introduced a man, who after some form of head trauma, returned home from the hospital months later and felt that it was not his home. He recognized his parents, his house, his belongings, but he was completely convinced that his parents were not his parents and his house was not his house. He believed that his parents were actors or ‘imposters’ as he called them. He would speak to his ‘parents’ as if they were imposters about his ‘real parents’ (saying things like “my real father wouldn’t have said that”). Interestingly enough the young man would recognize his parents on the phone, so the ‘imposter’ could leave the room, call the son and the son would believe that he was now talking to his real parents. Ramachandran used this special case to delve into the human mind, trying to figure out what exactly it was that had changed in the patient’s brain due to the damage. Ramachandran concluded that the part of the brain that is responsible for recognizing faces, kin and companions, is separate from actually perceiving the face (which is the amygdala, the basic emotion house of your brain, which in this case processes the emotions of what you see). I was absolutely fascinated with this case study, listen to the young man try to key in and understand why exactly he thought his parents were imposters. It was interesting to see that the young man had all the same memories of his parents but still didn’t believe that the ‘imposters’ could really be his parents. (another talk about the same case http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html)

A second topic that was touched on in class as well as in the third part of the Technopolypse video was the idea of omnipresence. This, once again, immediately made me thing of the same video (I love when I actually feel like I am learning things from classes, when things come up again and I can relate it to another topic of discussion) but a different case study. Ramachandran did another similar case study that addressed the topic of spiritual feelings and a certain part of the brain. According to research on people with epilepsy or people who simply have seizures in the front left temporal lobe of the brain, tend to get out of body experiences, strong religious feelings, and in some cases the belief of being abducted by aliens. In the Secrets of the Mind video Ramachandran did a study on a man who had seizures in his temporal lobe that caused him to hallucinate and feel spiritual. After a seizure he could literally feel the grass, trees, flowers, every single thing around him. The man felt like God, that he was God, and as he stated in the video, “No one is going to call the police on God”. The man felt that everything was a part of him and that he was a part of everything. The left frontal lobe is the specific location where spiritual feelings come from, and people are researching devices that will specifically stimulate that part of a person’s brain, allowing them to have permanent access to these ‘God like feelings’. Is it possible that extremely religious people, those who believe that God speaks to them, are simply using more of their left frontal lobe and therefore getting more spiritual thoughts? Can an atheist be turned into a religious person by merely using electromagnetic pulses aimed at that part of their brain? Is the idea of God or the ability of being omnipresent completely and 100% something that remains in the human brain? In that case, what is God? http://www.everythingispointless.com/2007/02/ramachandran-temporal-lobes-god.html

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Because I feel like the swine flu has managed to affect our plurks, discussions and lives despite the fact that not a single person in this area has it, I thought this would be a perfect time to blog about my interest in viruses. Ever since I was young I’ve had a very strong and very strange obsession with viruses and diseases and basically anything that is deadly and relates to the medical field (hence my desire to work in medicine for years). I was the girl in high school who got excited after watching a video on the Ebola virus in class. The last time that the avian flu craze happened (I believe I was a sophomore in high school) I was fascinated with it, checking the news websites every single morning before school. I find that there is nothing more terrifying than diseases, and being a horror fanatic, my favorite movies are always the ones that have to do with quick spreading viruses (28 Days Later, Cabin Fever, Resident Evil, Quarantine, Doomsday etc). I can honestly say that my obsession with zombies is most likely a small piece of my overall love of viruses. Hell, I even love reading books that are about viruses, such as Infected and Contagious!

Nine Movie Viruses Scarier than the Swine Flu:
http://www.horror-movies.ca/horror_15047.html

One of the things that fascinates me most about the swine flu (and the avian flu, SARS, etc) is the mass panic and hysteria that began and how it gets more and more out of hand. Within hours of reading the news about the swine flu on MSNBC I heard people talking about it everywhere. In classes, on plurk, on my way to work, on every single news website, etc. I love how easy it is to get up to date news online, but it would seem that technology has found its way into feeding us the panic. Even the Center of Disease Control has a damn Twitter! I’m just surprised they don’t have a Facebook and a Myspace too (I haven’t actually checked but in order to keep some respect for this technology insanity I’m not going to check). Not only did Twitter help to spread the panic of the swine flu pandemic, but I found it quite amusing that people managed to create a hoax by twittering a news story on what was flagged as actually a real BBC article. The news story was as follows:

“EU Quarantines London in Flu Panic”
There has been a small outbreak of “zombism” in London due to mutation of the H1N1 virus into new strain: H1Z1. Similar to a scare originally found in Cambodia back in 2005, victims of a new strain of the swine flu virus H1N1 have been reported in London. After death, this virus is able to restart the heart of it’s victim for up to two hours after the initial demise of the person where the individual behaves in extremely violent ways from what is believe to be a combination of brain damage and a chemical released into blood during “resurrection.” (http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/05/01/london-is-not-quarantined-by-zombie-swine-flu-yet-tweetmeme-lets-hoax-bbc-story-go-unchecked/)

Actual website for the fake BBC site: http://bouncewith.me.uk/europe/8027043.htm
This website even leads you to ANOTHER fake news article referring to the past disease ‘found in Cambodia back in 2005’
http://web.archive.org/web/20050428004220/http:/65.127.124.62/south_asia/4483241.stm.htm

How is this not completely amazing? And the fact that the said ‘tweet’ was spread thousands of times in the past couple days. And I will admit myself that when I saw the news article about it the first thing that went through my mind was “Hell yes!” before I actually had time to realize its obvious hoaxness. I have been having a lot of fun (yes I did use the word fun) tracking the swine flu on FluTracker (http://flutracker.rhizalabs.com/ though I am curious how this says there are confirmed cases in Washington when I’m pretty sure there are only 45 suspected cases).

What exactly is it about viruses, blood, death and mass hysteria that for some reason fascinate me? I have absolutely no idea but I have done a lot of field research to try and figure it out. I have stood in protective clothing and a face mask, watching as someone with the Flesh Eating Virus got their necrotic skin cut off. I have held a human brain in my hands after watching a doctor saw through a lady’s skull. I have seen a woman die from internal bleeding and a man freshly pulled from a fire with over half of his body melted off. I have sorted and arranged by date hundreds of containers full of body parts and hardly even noticed the cracked jars that leaked formaldehyde on my hands.

I’ve been eagerly waiting for years for an actually interesting virus to actually spread necessary panic and unfortunately I’m pretty sure that swine flu is not it. The amount of freaking out that has happened worldwide is far more drawn out by technology then needed (kind of like SARS if I remember correctly) and is consuming our lives more than is necessary.

Plurk

I find it amusing that although the entire point of the beginning of Friday’s class was to put a real name to everyone’s face, it seemed to have worked completely opposite for me and simply enforced plurk names. Now, not only do I still not know anyone’s name in class, but everyone’s plurk names have finally been matched to a face. Not only did I completely forget all of the real names people introduced themselves as, but I found that I wasn’t really listening for them to say their real names. What I was waiting for was for them to say their plurk names. I wasn’t thinking, “Oh, williamnot’s real name is Billy, and GAtticus’ real name is Greg!” I was thinking “Oh, that’s what williamnot looks like!” It would seem that everyone in the nanotext class will forever be defined by their plurk names to me (which will make it harder when anyone decides to change their plurk name). Even Prichard has changed from Prichard to nanotext is my conversations sometimes.
Alex (facecrook) even mentioned to me today over coffee that Brian (el8_br), even though he has known me for over a year (or thereabouts) referred to me as coffeeondemand in a conversation earlier. Now how is it possible that in the span of four weeks a plurk name can actually replace someone’s real name? How much has plurk been able to infiltrate our lives in such a small period of time? I find myself getting distracted by plurk ALL THE TIME. It takes me twice as long to do anything now on the computer because I always have plurk up in another window. Just yesterday it took me over two hours to watch a 40 minute episode of house online. Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter have never consumed my life nearly as much as Plurk has managed to. Is it because plurking is twenty percent of my grade in our English class? Or is there some other reason that Plurk has managed to weasel its way into my life in such a dominating way?