Teddy Roosevelt follows me EVEN INTO ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE: 

"In 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt culminated seven years of federal reservation by proclaiming the one million-acre area as the Superior National Forest."

OH TR. 

Me and Piper?  Same person.  Believe me, I often imagine myself wielding an ax and wearing way too much leather.  And we all know me and motorcycles.  I told my mother I wanted to ride a motorcycle before I die and she was like, "Grrr."  I think that's actually the sound she made.  I'm pretty sure that she has been on one, but my mother's one of those "do as I say, not as I do" type of parents - that's what you get for having been a hippie, mom. 

Piper:  Leave it to me to fall for a dead guy.
Phoebe:  At least he wasn't a warlock.

Of course she does end up marrying a whitelighter. 

Also, thank God for an A in Topics in Economic History.  I don't want to never be able to think about Malthusian pressure again, since I use it to argue everything these days.  And thank God for my disaster shows, because I can't watch SportsCenter fawn over Texas.

The dilemma is that the policymakers cannot kill two birds with one stone, or more precisely they cannot achieve two policy targets with one policy instrument, or in what is perhaps a better metaphor, it is difficult to pick off a target if it is standing next to another one that one wants to leave untouched and the weapon is a shotgun rather than a rifle.

- Kindleberger and Aliber's Manias, Panics, and Crashes, p. 103

I hate econ.

Professor: They're saying the unemployment rate next year is going to be in the double digits.

Columbia Student (sarcastically):  Oh, how great for us.

Professor:  Actually, you're going to be at the top of the feeding chain.  You're coming out with a degree from a good school.  I don't think any of you need to worry.  It's the people who are living at the margins of unemployment that this is going to affect. 

Columbia Student: ...

I hate how self-obsessed this school is.

I have some happy news to report...

* I won the Political Science Quarterly prize!  This is what I'm most proud of.  That essay meant a lot to me, as it was marginally about my father, the student protester. 

* I was elected (?) into Phi Beta Kappa.  Ha ha ha, kap-pas.  I can't say that word without a Japanese accent now.  If that is indeed what it is - it might just be my Japanese Monsters professor's bizarre intonation.  I don't really know what this means because it's so OMG SECRET.  I hope it's like Skull and Bones.  I hope the initiation requires blood rites on the quad lawn.  I really, really hope so.  

* Nossa Morte took my story, "And When She Was Bad."  Named after my favorite nursery rhyme.  It was inspired by a paper I had to do for my Japanese Monsters class, so that's one good thing that damn class has done for me, I guess.  I think it'll be out Feb. 2009.

On the down side, House is dissecting a dead cat.  :(  Poor kitty.

Prior to the start of Japanese Monsters class today the topic was adult swim, its deterioration, etc.  Elizabeth and John were reminiscing about the good old days of adult swim, listing off the shows on it.  John said, "Cowboy Bebop, Home Movies..." and Elizabeth said, "Dragonball Z."  Instantly, giggles from others - not mean giggles, but you know.  And so Elizabeth said, "Hey.  I used to love those shows.  Dragonball Z, Gundam Wing... my brother and I would spend so much time watching Digimon..."  And people sort of nodded meekly to themselves.  

I spent the rest of class thinking, "You should have said 'me too!' You should have said, 'Why, I own every single episode!'  Why didn't you say something?  Why?!!  Damn your cowardice!"  I tried to make up for it by saying I had seen Gozu when Elizabeth brought that up, but ah, damn.  

That was probably my one chance, too.  In my entire college career. 

I can't of course because I can't just shrug it off like most people.  I mean, I'll freely admit to having been a fan of Power Rangers, for example.  Or Xena.  Because if it no longer matters, then who the hell cares?  

You Are a Cat (Well, Duh I Am)

You are very independent and reclusive. No one really understands you, and you like it that way! You are quite clever and ingenious. You can get yourself out of any sticky situation. You are confident and cool tempered. You know you have many advantages and resources to draw from. No matter what life throws at you, things always seem to work out your way.

I've been listening to a lot of Alanis Morissette lately - when I'm alone, so as not to scare Lucia - and like, screaming along to it in my terrible soprano voice. Ha ha ha. But it feels really good. We discussed the legitimacy of "Oughta Know" and Hole as legitimizing female anger as an acceptable emotion. But singing along to Alanis Morissette really just calms me down - it's like singing in mantras - esp. "Jagged Little Pill." Although I've always also really liked "What Goes Around", too. I get the same thing from singing along to Audioslave, weirdly enough.

Doing peer reviews of other people's theses... is stressful. If anyone has any suggestions for getting through peer reviews, please let me know, because I feel like I've been trying to sum up this girl's thesis for the past 3 hours.

I know this guy's been dead for like a hundred fifty years but I still hate him and I can't read anything he says without wanting to vomit on my keyboard: Thomas Babington Macauley. He's an abolitionist who says things like this:

"I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed, both here and at home, with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the oriental learning at the valuation of the orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is indeed fully admitted by those members of the committee who support the oriental plan of education.

The question now before us is simply whether, when it is in our power to teach this language, we shall teach languages in which, by universal confession, there are no books on any subject which deserve to be compared to our own, whether, when we can teach European science, we shall teach systems which, by universal confession, wherever they differ from those of Europe differ for the worse, and whether, when we can patronize sound philosophy and true history, we shall countenance, at the public expense, medical doctrines which would disgrace an English farrier, astronomy which would move laughter in girls at an English boarding school, history abounding with kings thirty feet high and reigns thirty thousand years long, and geography made of seas of treacle and seas of butter."

Retch.  On a related topic, I hate historical trajectories and I hate the assumption that modernization is OMG SO CoOL.  Why do academics have such non-existent imagination and such utter confidence in themselves?  Do they know what happens to professors at Miskatonic University?  When the robot uprising comes, we will not be thanking Europe for the industrial revolution, people!  :( 

"A market economy was an improbable child to be fathered by men who held their position by the assertion of will backed when the need arose by personal victory in combat."

If you say so, E. L. Jones. IF YOU SAY SO.

Recommended read from my class - which is called, incidentally, Colonial Encounters. 

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph.  1997.  Good Day, Columbus.  In Silencing the Past: Power and Production in History, 108-140.  Boston: Beacon Press.

In the 1990s, quite a few observers, historians, and activists worldwide denounced the arrogance implied by this terminology during the quincentennial celebrations of Columbus's Bahaman landing.  Some spoke of a Columbian Holocaust.  Some proposed "conquest" instead of discovery; others preferred "encounter," which suddenly gained an immense popularity - one more testimony, if needed, of the capacity of liberal discourse to compromise between its premises and its practice.  "Encounter" sweetens the horror, polishes the rough edges that do not fit neatly either side of the controversy.  Everyone seems to gain. 

Not everyone was convinced.  Portuguese historian Vitorino Magalhaes Godinho, a former minister of education, reiterated that "discovery" was an appropriate term for the European ventures of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which he compares to Herschel's discovery of Uranus, and Sedillot's discovery of microbes.  The problem is, of course, that Uranus did not know that it existed before Herschel, and that Sedillot did not go after microbes with a sword and a gun. 

Yet more than blind arrogance is at issue here.  Terminologies demarcate a field, politically and epistemologically.  Names set up a field of power.  "Discovery" and analogous terms ensure that by just mentioning the event one enters a predetermined lexical field of cliches and predictable categories that foreclose a redefinition of the political and intellectual stakes.  Europe becomes the center of "what happened."  Whatever else may have happened to other peoples in that process is already reduced to a natural fact: they were discovered.  The similarity to planets and microbes precedes their explicit mention by future historians and cabinet ministers.

Yay, David Cook.  I should have had faith in America, but I was too scared after last night to actually watch the end of the finale, so I'm watching it now on YouTube.  Instead I watched Top Chef.  Bad decision, I guess.

Boo, Top Chef for cutting Dale.  Boo. 

But yay, David Cook!  And it wasn't even close.

Etc.

This is concurrent with my belief that if you have good luck you get bad luck immediately after, and vice versa, to balance everything out.  Karma, man.  Like, my colloquium professor nominated me for the Political Science Quarterly prize, and I immediately managed to overwrite that essay with a different essay (it involved the flash drive virus that has been haunting my electronics for the past week, and my stupidity as to naming all my papers "paper.doc"), so I as of now have no copy of the thing on my computer. 

Philpott, S.  (2006).  East Timor's double life: smells like Westphalian spirit.  Third World Quarterly, 27(1): 135-159.

See?  Political scientists are cool too.

the most overrated "crisis" ever.

"Students complain about lack of sleep, stomach pain and headaches, but doctors and educators also worry that stress tied to academic achievement can lead to depression, eating disorders and other mental health problems."  Good.  Who the fuck cares about, you know, arsenic in the freaking drinking water?  Here's the real health crisis of our times. 

Either go on medication (what I did) and/or suck it up, or don't apply to Harvard.  Having taken most of my classes at Columbia this semester I have become increasingly sure that there is pretty much no difference between the kid that gets into the Ivy League school and the kid that doesn't.

I have some hella dumb classmates, and I was rejected from their school.  Prestige is all B.S.  Even at Barnard, prestige is B.S.  I was at the Torchbearers reception sitting at a table with a filthy-rich alumna (and by filthy-rich I mean, filthy-rich off her husband and parents) who was talking about how great her sons' prep academy is - Dalton School, part of the Ivy Preparatory League, also known as the Children's University School, whose alumni include such "notable" people as Chevy Chase, Anderson Cooper, Claire Danes, Christian Slater, and Sean Lennon (shameful really.  Horace Mann's got Ira Levin and Elliot Spitzer, Trinity's got the McEnroes, and Fieldston's got Sofia Coppola, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Stephen Sondheim.  Dalton's the black sheep by comparison!).  Why, the teachers there are so wonderful, all the kids pool together money when they graduate (and by pool together money I mean, their parents drop off limo-loads at the front doors) and give a gift to the school, which is not by any stretch of the imagination lacking in funds.  But you know, said this Barnard alumna, quality should be rewarded with monies.

And as soon as she said the name of the school, Dalton, I immediately thought of this biographical story I read in a book called 33 Things Every Girl Should Know.  Cliched title for a book, sounds like it came from the American Girl Company, but those stories, told by adult women, seriously are 33 Things Every Girl Should Know.  I got that book when I was about 11 - it came from my uncle (!) - and I think it really influenced how I grew up and the beliefs I adopted.  That and People, by Peter Spier, which is hands down the best book I have ever read.

The story in question was called... well, I don't remember.  Follow Your Passion, I think.  It's not important.  But it was about this girl whose mother really wanted her to go to Dalton School, because it was such a good school, and they're at the interview, and the girl is thinking about the girls she's seen in the classes, the perfect pretty girls with jelly shoes, and when the interviewer asks her why she wants to go to Dalton she snaps her chewing gum and says, "Lady, I don't.  I wanna go to public school with my friends."  Her mother is horrified and clearly she doesn't get into Dalton.  Fast-forward twenty years and she's gotten herself to a prestigious college of some sort (Yale?  I think...) and is constantly having to tell the people she meets that she went to some prep school she made up so she isn't socially ostracized, when really all she wants to say is, "Lady!  I was a Dalton reject!"

Obviously things are different.  Things are, in a word, tense.  He has tenure and is losing professional inhibition in various senses of the term.  I'm preoccupied and don't know how to act, what my role even is, especially now that I feel like I have to start growing the fuck up.  We haven't seen each other in a year, really, but I'm in his senior seminar next year, me (Indonesianist) and all the Europeanists - I already know I'm going to hate probably 6 out of 7 of my thesis-mates.  Nell is weirded out.  And everyone is lying to the Office of Career Development. 

But hold.  Instead of actually writing about my recent interactions with AC (remember how I used to chronicle every meeting in gruesome detail last year?), I'm just going to post this hilarious video and song by Fiona Apple, which are pretty much indicative of everything. 


"Not About Love" : Fiona Apple

Conversation once colored by esteem
Became dialogue as a diagram of a play for blood
Took a vacation, my palate got clean
Now I could taste your agenda
While you spit in your cud

And it doesn't make sense
I should fall for the kingcraft of a meritless crown
No, it doesn't seem right
To take information given at close range
For the gag and the bind and the ammunition round

What is this posture I have to stare at
That's what he said when I'm sittin' up straight
Change the name of the game 'cause he lost
And he knew he was wrong but he knew it too late
But I'm not being fair,
'cause I chose to listen to that filthy mouth
But I'd like to choose right
Take all the things that I've said that he stole
Put 'em in a sack, swing 'em over my shoulder
Turn on my heel, step out of his sight
Try to live in a lovelier light

This is not about love
'Cause I am not in love
In fact I cant stop falling out
I miss that stupid ache

I voted in the student government elections today.  I mostly voted against people, either by voting for the other candidate or by not voting at all, if evil-bitch-candidate was unopposed.  I know the most high-profile candidates and I hate them, but at least one of them dropped out of political science (France, from Spring 2006's colloquium - otherwise known as our Class President for Life).  She's an econ major now.  Good riddance.  I wish she'd just go back to Hawaii.  I mean, how pretentious would I be if I walked around school wearing a corncob hat, or if I opened my stump speech with "Apa kabar"?  Unfortunately, going-to-be SGA President is still a poli sci major.  Good thing I never see her around - she's an Americanist, which I found out when she wanted to write an essay on the United States in a Comparative Politics intro class.

Student government reminds me of the song "Put It Out for Good", by Amy Ray:

the stadium lights were breaking through the bleachers
I spent all day pushing tissue roses through the chicken wire
hey, SGA! --
I'm an overachiever of the wrong persuasion

I still can't believe I got that song as part of an iTunes giveaway for college students.

Extremely awkward situation in WMD class when my professor announced she would not be assigning more homework, asked jokingly if anyone wanted more homework, black guy raised his hand jokingly, and prof said, "oh, that guy's going to get lynched."  Five seconds later she is completely red in the face and saying, "I'm just kidding!  Just kidding!" 

Oh man.

so apparently my real theoretical fight is with the realists, not the rationalists, and they are not the same thing (yes, starting with the same letter and having similar connotations is not enough).  because you apparently cannot fight with rational choice.  it is the unbeatable ID, it is 42, it is God with a capital G.  give rationalists any situation, perhaps even situations that involve prehistoric plants, and they will tell you that it fits their theory.  they are magic.  they are the sacred cow, the undying worm. 

whatever.  realism it is.

*rolls eyes*

Instead of listening to JS talk about Hungarian-Transylvanians living in Romania and how Hungary did not encourage them to pursue ethnic conflict in order to make its transition into the EU smooth, I started thinking about ReBoot.  Not really thinking about it, just remembering it, quotes from it ("Does that kid remind you of anyone?" "Not really").  It occurs to me now that I may fail the midterm because I have not been paying very good attention to all his Yugoslavia stories, that is if the midterm is example-driven rather than theory-driven.  Oh well.  I already know what I think causes ethnic conflict and this class has not changed my mind.  Further I think I agree with JS. 

One thing I will say for realists, though.  They are very good at giving names to their ideas.  Nothing clunky like "constructivism" (although I give Smith some credit for making up pretentious, exotic-sounding words: ethnie, mythomoteur): they have Stag Hunts and Zero-Sum and Prisoner's Dilemma and Realpolitik and Tragedy of the (Freaking) Anticommons.  I mean, for being cold computers who believe people "can be reduced to basic mechanical parts" (Grendel: "New Flesh"), they are damn cool.  It's almost like they were made to be Magneto-esque villains, the kind that the audience secretly roots for because the good guys, the constructivists (or worse, the liberalists!  now they are truly dorks in spandex) are such losers who don't even have cool names for their attacks.

I don't want to study for anything.  I'd rather just wing everything and listen to Grendel: 1 2 3 4.  All day.