Guatemala!

So, after a very tumultuous year my employers finally decided that the PhD students would be happiest if given the freedom to choose their own fieldwork sites. Imagine that! (after all, we're not in the military. Or are we?)

Anyway, thankfully the shitshow that was the fieldwork issue has subsided. My choice, you ask? Guatemala, August 25th ETA. I am thrilled and can't wait to get there.

La Antigua (where I'll be August through December)



The volcano "El Fuego" towering over Antigua. Scary/cool!



Pyramid in Tikal, Yucatan




Start planning your visits!

Anna's gone and Edinburgh

After a lovely dinner of mussels, white wine, and chips with mayo, I just unfortunately had to say good-bye to one of the most wonderful people I've ever met. I was lucky enough to have had Anna from Belgium (originally from Kazakhstan) as my across-the-hall neighbor since January. She lavished upon me Belgian chocolate nearly every other weekend and is kind enough to be hosting me in Brussels in July, where I plan to eat more chocolate and drink LOTS of beer, and from where I plan to bring back a case of the prized Westvleteren back to Seattle for my bro, Alejandro, Kevin, Rodney, Tim, and Jimmy to celebrate the purchase of Big Al's brewery.

As if going out to dinner wasn't enough of a risk, I also realize it's an extremely unwise decision to be taking a trip to Edinburgh tomorrow but hell I'm doing it anyway. I'm flying over to Scotland (a short 25-minute jump across the Irish Sea) with my friend Jamie to my old home town for Erin's 32nd birthday! We'll be celebrating at the Elephant House, one of the best coffee houses in the world, where J.K. Rowling first began to scribble the Harry Potter novels on a napkin. Then we're off to the pubs, maybe good old Sandy Bells, the non-touristy refuge and home of traditional Scottish folk music jam sessions. The ladies (friends from seminary days) are actually there on business solving the world's problems with the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. I on the other hand will be revisiting some of my old haunts- the Divinity School to pop in and say hi to my old Barthian buddy John McDowell, Edinburgh Castle, the Castle gardens, and Royal Mile Whiskeys, of course.

See you on Thursday!

False Alarm

I am still getting used to the fact that in scientific research you are either right or wrong. In the humanities and even social sciences you can pretty much say whatever you want as long as your argument is persuasive. Never with science.

In my limited scientific background I have never been wrong. I feared being wrong, especially in Mr. Nichols' 11th grade chemistry class during quals, wherein we had 4 chances to determine 3 given chemicals correctly for our entire grade. The process lasted weeks, and though one of my favorite teachers, his goal here was to mess with our vials to make them as hard to determine as possible. Needless to say I got them all right in the first 3 trials. Maybe I worry too much.

But last night I experienced the horror of what I thought was being wrong in science. It was probably one of the worst feelings I have ever had. It must have been what the other juniors felt whom Nichols mercilessly failed, but exponentially worse. I felt my doctoral hypothesis slowly crumbling around me, and there was nothing I could do. After convincing myself not to have a nervous breakdown, I slowly moved the mouse over to the left-hand side of the computer screen to a folder called, "Alternative Research Ideas".

Thankfully there were at least two ideas here that I could work with. But you know what? I didn't need them after all because about 2 hours later, I realized that my hypothesis would work. I wasn't actually wrong; I was fake wrong. I made what some call a Type I error. At least it wasn't 2 years from now, right? Like this guy:



I think I'm going out for a drink to celebrate not being wrong. Oh, wait, it's only 3pm. Oh, wait, I live in Ireland.

cheers.
Hillary

"Hunger" premieres at Cannes

Reposted from the Times Online 15/5/08:

The controversial history of Northern Ireland's troubles was brought to vivid light in Cannes today with the screening of Hunger, directed by Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen.

Dramatising life inside the notorious Maze prison and the highly emotive events surrounding the 1981 IRA hunger strike, the film opened the Un Certain Regard section of the festival, which encourages innovative works and young talent.

The film stars Irish actor Michael Fassbender, 31, who starved himself for two months to play the IRA hunger-striker Bobby Sands

McQueen said he wanted to capture what it was like to hear, see, smell and touch the blocks where IRA prisoners were incarcertated in 1981 and convey something which could not be found in books or archives.

The London-born director said: "When I was a child growing up in 1981, aged about 11 or 12, there were three things that influenced me: the Brixton riots, Tottenham winning the FA Cup - which was fantastic - and Bobby Sands.

"His image appeared on the TV screen virtually every night with a number underneath it and it stayed with me. That passion and that level of confrontation to die on hunger strike.

"This memory and this opportunity drew me to find out more about him and I thought it could be a powerful film."

McQueen, who had never written a script before, described the research process of speaking with ex-prisoners, prison officers and priests who had visited the Maze as "probably the heaviest experience of my life emotionally".

He said he initially contemplated having no dialogue at all.

"But then I started to think about there being, after a period of no dialogue, an avalanche of dialogue."

The film is almost without dialogue for it's first hour, before an unbroken 22 minute take of Sands discussing his proposed hunger strike with his priest.

McQueen said of filming in Northern Ireland: "What became apparent was how so many people had been touched by this story and it was quite remarkable how everyone knew where they were when Bobby Sands died during the hunger strike, everyone had some kind of relationship to the events of that time."

Bobby Sands Mural, The Falls Road, West Belfast

Erin and I after signing the Peace Wall, which separates The Falls Road and Shankhill neighborhoods.

Paul Curreri

Seldom do I come across music that is literally soul-saving. There is plenty of music by gifted singer-songwriters that resonates way deep down, and while it is absolutely beautiful it can often be paralyzingly depressing (Elliot Smith, Damien Rice, Mindy Smith, Rosie Thomas, Jeff Buckley). There is also the rare, frighteningly innovative and brilliant repertoire, like Radiohead: again, gorgeous but it always seems to leave me a little more anxious or melancholy than I wanted to be. Zeppelin rocks my face off, but conjures up memories of an evil ex-boyfriend. So what am I supposed to do if I want to feel sympathized with and transcendent, but don't want to end up punching someone, crying, or killing myself?

I have found 3 artists so far who solve this problem. Rachmaninoff (namely his 2nd piano concerto) got me through most of high school and college, Ray Lamontagne saved me during the first year out of college and continues to do so, and I don't know what I would have done this year without Paul Curreri. These are men who bellow cries of mercy from the gutters of despair yet refuse to whine about death; instead they give it the finger and sing (or play) into it's face.

To be sure, it's a sad world most of the time but let's be realistic: it's more complicated than that. If you are a normal human being you'll understand that this world if anything is paradoxical: spells of utter shittiness mixed with bursts of great joy, often happening concurrently in the same day, or even same 10 minutes. And sometimes you don't want to analyze or feel things- you just want to shoot the breeze on a nice day over a bourbon with your best buddy and forget about everything. No bullshit.

These guys understand this very human concept. Sergei and Ray have more of an excuse to be a bit on the heavier side- they lived in Russia and in a chicken coup, respectively. But Paul, I believe, validates the spectrum of the human experience while not letting you get away with feeling too sorry for yourself. He is blues-based, often moving quickly and gracefully between styles, navigating with poetic lyrics and taking surprising turns. Enjoy.


"Tight Pack Me Sugar" (skip ahead to 2:10)



"California"



More excellent videos here

Concerned? I'd wager not as much as this hippo...

Nothing makes my eyes roll and triggers my gag reflexes more than Range-Rover driving yuppies who book extreme adventure vacations to countries in the Amazon or Congo where local citizens make 10 cents a day so they can return home to their Range-Rover driving friends and tell them over a $600 bottle of brandy how they barely escaped the clutches of a maniacal hippopotamus. "It was horrible, Julian. I was half way inside the beast when Gwyneth's 7-carat engagement ring must have blinded the bastard. Same diamond mined no less up the road by some very dear looking little boys. The irony!"

But no matter how much this bothers me, there's little I can do to control this phenomenon as there will always be rich people who will spend thousands paying other rich people to guide them through poor countries with endangered ecoregions so they can do ridiculous things. Thankfully there’s a charity that’s capitalizing on this trend, and turning it to good use. And the target market would be BoBos.

Today I happened across a brochure for the Concern Challenge 2008. Concern Worldwide is a UK Charity that I was previously unfamiliar with, but apparently they are well established in organizing “treks” to exotic places in the world like Ethiopia, Nepal and even Transylvania (vampires not included). They can also set you up to mush with sled dogs or jump out of planes (although, who hasn't been skydiving these days? geez). After you sign up for one of their adventures, you begin fund raising a minimum of 5,000 euro (that's $7,700) that goes towards world hunger relief and health care.

Though these trips come off as little obnoxious, I'll definitely give CW credit for being innovative enough to make them all about donating money for very worthwhile causes. I'm not sure exactly how much of the money actually goes to the impoverished, but I'll assume it's most of it. And who knows? Someday I may get tired of academic travel or even organizing my own excursions. So next year I may be asking you to sponsor me, or inviting you over so I can tell you about my near-miss with the last wild snow leopard after a record-setting ascent up K2. Just be sure to BYO brandy.

"Endlessly complicated and interesting"

This blog began and still emanates from an unsavory desire to create a diversion from real work, and though it is much more fun than working, I am starting to feel guilty for it. So I made a compromise with myself today that sometimes I would write about work-related things (no gossip, though...sorry!).

Daniel Kahneman is one of my heroes in the field of cognitive psychology and currently works at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School (why did I leave New Jersey again?). He is best known for his work in behavioral economics, namely Prospect theory which basically describes how people make decisions based on their evaluations of potential losses and gains. (Similar ideas have been applied in the area of religion, like the "Supernatural Punishment Hypothesis" of my former professor Dominic Johnson and current adviser Jesse Bering, a theory which in my opinion doesn't suffice for explaining economics of religion, so I spent the whole day writing about why not...) But anyway, I thought of this quote by Kahneman today- one that has always stuck out in my mind as partly his reason for entering the field of psychology. He recalls being a small boy in Nazi-occupied France:

It must have been late 1941 or early 1942. Jews were required to wear the Star of David and to obey a 6 p.m. curfew. I had gone to play with a Christian friend and had stayed too late. I turned my brown sweater inside out to walk the few blocks home. As I was walking down an empty street, I saw a German soldier approaching. He was wearing the black uniform that I had been told to fear more than others – the one worn by specially recruited SS soldiers. As I came closer to him, trying to walk fast, I noticed that he was looking at me intently. Then he beckoned me over, picked me up, and hugged me. I was terrified that he would notice the star inside my sweater. He was speaking to me with great emotion, in German. When he put me down, he opened his wallet, showed me a picture of a boy, and gave me some money. I went home more certain than ever that my mother was right: people were endlessly complicated and interesting (Kahneman, 2003, p. 417).

So very true. And even still, the field of behavioral economics continues to explain human behavior especially as we analyze it through an evolutionary lens. But enough work for today. Next time, I'll tell you about monkeys and morality....to be continued!