Jamie SPEEEAAKS!

I just thought I'd check in with the ole bloggerooski since I'm taking a break from working tonight.

I'm starting to find myself a bit more within the field I'm in. I'm writing a paper about that actually. I want to connect the dots between science studies, postmodern feminist critique, and Marxism. And from THERE I want to criticize all the dumbass things people use "scientific" rhetoric to achieve. "Men are hunters so blahblahblah" etc. Yuk.

Seriously. People are indeed limited by the material resources they have, including biology, but don't make political opinions based the implications of half understood social science research. And don't pretend like politics are not intrensic to science. (Intrinsic politics are inevitable and subject to critique. Extrinsic politics are a blasphemy against everything principled people should stand for. See the Bush administration on Global Warming. See the "creation science" movement. This stuff is bullshit. Everything does not have two sides. Science is what it is and it is not what it is not. I'm for gay marriage not because "science proves that homosexuality is blahblahblah," but because gay marriage is a social reality that deserves legal protection. Having it would be better for society and it would be more fair. I live in Iowa, where we DO have it, and I've yet to feel like my own marriage has changed at all. I'm not saying that science should not enter political debate but that we should not talk about social arrangements in a "scientifically" deterministic way. I am a straight married white guy because of the web of interactions between history, popular culture, education, family, and yes, biology where I live. Some of these things are choices, some aren't.

Rorty says we should talk about affiliations, not essentialist connections. Hitchens (wrong as he is about some things) says we need to understand morality as being rooted in "human solidarity." Some of this is evolution ans some of this is socio-political work. Not of it should be discussed as being biological. Ever.

Rantrantrantrantrantrant. Drinking beer while writing makes me think like this. (Hey, if you click the spell checker over "Rantrantrantrantrant," it offers "transubstantiation" as an alternative. There's a joke in there somewhere. I'm not sure at whose expense it is.)

Ayn Rand sucks by the way. Take that Greenspan.

In other news, I want to see Michelle Bachmann on T.V. as much as possible, if only because it makes me feel better about the South. It's not just us, apparently.



We've got the Joss Wheadon musical at home on DVD. I'm gonna take a break and hang out with lil' Davis and watch that in a little while. I've kinda managed not to get sucked into the Wheadon fan club until recently, but I've gotten sucked waaay in lately. Spagetti, whiskey, and Wheadon make for a good evening. I'm really looking forward to it.

If you took my view of the world and combined it with my particular cultural sensibilities and made a T.V. show starring hot girls, it would be "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." I've long been aware of it, but me and Davis just recently caught up to it. Parts of season 5 is as good as "the Wire" or "Deadwood." One episode in particular ("The Body") ranks with the best T.V./film/drama I've ever seen. Any of my homies reading this who haven't caught up with Buffy need to get with the program.

That's more than enough.