I need a life

I just wanted to share with the rest of the class that don't live in Hughes Hall what I've been up to.
It is cutoff in this picture, but under the RD tag it says "Burninator: TROGDOR!!" After a week, we changed it to say "Resident Dragon: TROGDOR!!"

This is what my boss asked for, and he fell in love with the fireball, as well as the rest of the building.




I did this for the preview days with Clawed. Then someone erased Mario, so I drew 4 Yoshis.

And yes, I know I need a life and I'm a Geek. But this is my release since I'm on the all female floor.

4/22 Reflective

Just as Rinske mentioned in class, I feel that Sofia is responsible for the Runa uprising. Although, maybe it isn't really Sofia to blame, but humanity. Take your pick from the previous social science books we have read throughout the semester, and possibly dig up some Hobbs and Locke. One thing that humanity can't stand is "injustice." Sofia struggles with the Runa when she is
trying to explain why they should rise up by mentioning what they have on their side, but there isn't a word for "justice" in the Runa language. I think it would have eventually occurred, with the intervention of humans, and Sofia was just there at the right time, with a strong sense of justice.

Right now it mainly looks like this course, and readings, have posed the same question time and again, who are we to judge?

And remember, there may be a day in the future when the chickens rise up.

Substinative

I wonder how history might have been different if after a few years with Columbus missing some other explorer sets out to the west and finds him alone as a prostitute? I also wonder if he would have had similar difficulties overcoming the only conclusion that he could possibly have reached which is GOD wanted him to be raped? I propose that, instead, Columbus would easily have seen that it and little to do with God and much more to do with Godless barbarians.
I say this, hoping to turn it around as well, what would Sandoz have done in Columbus' situation. Would he have presumed the perfect equality of everyone he came in contact with, and assumed that he could quickly understand not only their language, but their society and culture as well? Would he have found himself prey to some hungry cannibal tribe?
Both The Sparrow and Todorov seemed to express to opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to dealing with the other. In Children of God, Russel makes a distinct effort to convey and ideal of something in the middle. Not the same, but not unequal. Equal but different. Somehow both Columbus and Sandoz are closedminded explorers. Where both expeditions went wrong where they could have improved their crew lists would have been to be willing to accept something not expected, or to have brought someone along with the capacity to beleive that not all societies not all peoples are exactly the same.
I wonder if, given a sense of post modernism, Columbus would have been able to handle his interactions with aboriginal americans in a positive manner.

Children of God

First off, while I agree with several of the other posts that this seemed to resolve everything a bit too neatly, I enjoyed the fact that Russel allowed the readers to be as misguided as her characters. She intentionally didn't reveal all of the information, and really demonstrated exactly how easy it is to be completely wrong about a person or their motivations when working with incomplete information and poor communication. While it wasn't completely unexpected after PTJ's preview, it still was well done by Russel.

That said, I did feel like she stretched things a bit thin in this book. There were so many characters that I felt like a lot of them were left half-developed, which was disappointing, because most of them were people who seemed worth description. Also, while I still appreciated the literary device of jumping around in time, it felt much more haphazard in this book. I suppose that has something to do with the decreased role of determinism in this book as opposed to the last one, but the jumps felt a bit more awkward in this book. At first it does make sense when moving in relative time and actual space between Sandoz and Sophia, but the few jumps she makes to the time after Sandoz left felt forced, as though she had to fit in more exposition and foreshadowing, and this was the fastest way to do it.

I agree with the others who were left a bit disoriented by this book, but over all it was enjoyable. I felt as though its ending did detract a bit from the last book, but the bulk of the two were very complementary. I'm looking forward to our discussion, and to hearing other people's opinions.

Children of God Substantive

I had hoped there would be a big shocker like Professor Jackson had alluded to in class. I actually wasn't all that impressed, and felt the book had a more uplifting ending than the first. Granted, Sandoz had good things in life and then is sent back to Rakhat. But I kind of had the idea that would happen from the beginning.

I enjoyed how the book skipped back and forth between the three sides. Call me scatter-brained but by the time I was bored with one chapter about Sandoz the next normally had nothing to do with him.

Maybe this has to do with just my twisted logic or something, but I actually started to feel bad for Supaari.

I guess in the end I'm like Jen and Tim in that I don't really know what to say about the book.

Reflection

Sorry for taking so long to get these up folks, I don't know what my problem is.

There was a point in class before the break where we had established a lack of individual culpability for actions of this nature. There instead seemed to be an agreed upon satisfaction with the idea that what we and todorov could do was analyze and blame the conditions and mentality created by society. And while I essentially propose that society may be the cause for many Macro events in my post the Jeans of Society , I do not beleive that this can eliminate the ultimate culpability of the individual. I find myself in a bad episode of Voyager about temporal loops because of the various deterministic paradoxes. I believe, however, that if we take Columbus, for example, that we have no evidence to suggest he acted in the way he did because society set him up to act that way, instead, his actions and comments are entirely his own, for this reason his actions can be evaluated on their own merit without assuming a societal determinism. We could make the argument that it would have happened eventually, but it was entirely on Columbus' shoulders that it played out in that exact manner and involving him. Without this I think would could run the table to arguing that everything is societally pre-determined (although I am a physical or perhaps quantum determinism myself). I will contend, at the very least, that we have a sense of free will.

Children of God

I was glad to return to Children of God after Todorov more so than the other science fiction books we read because there was a sense of familiarity with the characters. PTJ said we'd be shocked early on and I'll admit I was. So when Russell revealed that Sofia was still alive, my jaw dropped. I wouldn't say the miscommunication between Supaari and Sandoz on 51 was shocking as in "never saw that coming". In The Sparrow Supaari is seen as different from the other Jana'ata and part of me refused to believe that he would just sell Sandoz away to Hlavin Kitheri. The line that got me was Supaari leaving Galatna Palace "believing that he had done right by Sandoz" (52). That scene reveals that Sandoz unknowingly brought it upon himself. Related to that, on page 290, John wonders what would happen if it was Emilio's fault.

"Listen, John prayed, I'm not telling You what to do, but if Emilio brought the rapes on himself somehow, and then Askama died because of that, it's bettter if he never understands, okay? In my opinion. You know what people can take, but I think You're cutting it pretty close here. Or maybe--help him make it mean something. Help him."

At that point, "oh no, what is Russell going to do? She's going to break Emilio again". Fortunately, that wasn't the case and things turned out relatively okay for Emilio in the end, which I think he deserved.

The Emilio from the end of The Sparrow, the one who didn't know whether to hate God or believe that this was all bad luck, is still present at the end of Children of God. On page 414, Emilio and Sofia say "I was done with God" "But He wasn't done with you" "Evidently not, either that, or this has been a run of bad luck of historic proportions". He is still not sure which it is, but is more accepting of the choice.

I was reading this book of 6 word memoirs called Not Quite What I was Planning. Found one that I swear Emilio could have written over the course of these two books: "I lost god. I found myself".

Todorov Reflection

A few things with regards to our discussion of Todorov. First, I think we were absolutely right in our apparent consensus that understanding does not have to lead to sympathy and certainly not to empathy. If you fundamentally disagree with someone's actions and their reasoning for their actions, it stands to reason the more you understand about them the more there is to dislike. However, I'm not convinced that this completely covers the case of Cortez. In the course of the discussion there was an excellent point made that while Cortez understood the how of Aztec society he didn't understand the why. I'm not entirely convinced that this completely explains the actions of Cortez, however. While I agree that Cortez didn't necessarily understand the motivations behind the rituals and customs of the Aztecs, I'm also not convinced that it would have mattered if he did. I really don't think that he viewed the Aztecs as humans, but rather as some other species, who weren't really capable of reasoning. Had he had any interest in the whys of the Aztecs, I think he and the other Spaniards would have, like Columbus, recorded them as naturalists' observations, instead of ethnographic observations (a concept which didn't exist at the time), and that these would not have elicited any sense of sympathy from them.

Todorov reflection

Columbus or Cortes? Tricky question. Some chose Columbus for the ignorance is bliss angle. Doing what you felt was right as opposed to doing something you knew was wrong. But couldn't Cortes have felt he was right? I can't remember there being a point in the text where Cortes admits he knew he was wrong. How can someone cause the death of 24 million people (according to Todorov's estimate p133) and not know it was wrong? And for this reason, people chose to be Columbus because he'd be able to sleep better at night. I would choose to be Cortes a) so I wouldn't be crazy like Columbus and b) to understand the Aztecs better (though that didn't stop him from conquering them). All this talk of killing "a great many" reminds me of Eddie Izzard, a stand-up comedian who said:

"You killed a hundred thousand people? You must get up very early in the
morning! I can't even get down the gym. Your diary must look odd: 'Get
up in the morning, Death, Death, Death, Death, Death, Death, Lunch,
Death, Death, Death, Afternoon Tea, Death, Death, Death, Quick shower…'"

I'm sure if Cortes kept a diary it would look like this. Even here, death is seen as an ordinary task like lunch or a shower, not something causing many sleepless nights. My point: I don't think Cortes regretted what he did because he didn't see it as wrong. Setting up the memorial at the Aztec temple on 109 wasn't an act of regret for Cortes. As Todorov says he saw the Aztecs as curiosities.

In his post, Mike brings up why there is no such thing as a Cortes day, but we celebrate Columbus day (as a federal holiday). I looked Columbus day up quickly on Wikipedia and found that Latin America has similar holidays like Día de la Raza (Day of the Race), Día de las Culturas (Day of the Cultures), Discovery Day, Día de la Hispanidad, and Día de la Resistencia Indígena (Day of Indigenous Resistance). Also did you know that Hawaii doesn't celebrate Columbus day but Discoverers' Day (which commemmorates Columbus and Cook)? It's interesting how the United States celebrates the day in the name of Columbus while other countries mention race, culture, and the indigenous people.

Also in class, Mike's example of the mugger in NYC reminded me of the Jesuits on Rakhat inviting Suupari to dinner after he nearly killed Sandoz.

I leave with another Eddie Izzard quote:

We stole countries with the cunning use of flags. Just sail around the
world and stick a flag in. "I claim India for Britain!" And they're
going "You can't claim us, we live here! There's five hundred million of
us!" -"Do you have a flag?" -"We don't need a bloody flag, this is our
country, you bastard!" -"No flag, no country. You can't have one That's
the rule, that... I've just made up."

This is similar to Columbus naming the islands. Are there rules for taking over other civilizations? Todorov showed us how the Spaniards conquered using signs and language. They probably had a flag too.