326. A Graduate Student's Log-Log Design of Reality: A Provincialist View Embedded Within an Illusory Matrix of Globalism and Scientific Universality

A Graduate Student's Log-Log Design of Reality: A Provincialist View Embedded Within an Illusory Matrix of Globalism and Scientific Universality
[subset of an essay]

The other day I asked my evolutionary biology professor, “If I wore a pair of sunglasses that took the logarithm of reality, how would the world look like?” He stared at me quizzically and I shamefully mumbled to him that I was interested in the concept for science fiction purposes. He then proceeded to respond, in which I have come to interpret that wearing a log-log pair of shades would allow me to perceive everything in my surroundings as closer and smaller even though these elements still existed physically at the same distance. Contrastingly, all unknown elements of my surroundings would be perceived as farther away and “larger/grandiose” even though they existed at a fixed distance….

Who would have known that this absurd log-log question actually had come to be more practical and real-world than I thought?

Isn’t this how humans perceive themselves and reality after all? In a warped, log-log scale Truman show bubble? Don’t we all hold a direct, intimate Provincialist View embedded within a mass-education-and-technology-constructed, indirect, detached Matrix Illusion of Globalism and Scientific Universality?

It is as if our minds evolved to construct this navel-gazing bubble of Humanity—a conglomerate ingroup of subjects (places, resources, technologies, people) that have been assigned emotional and intellectual value—that has no particular set of physical borders, especially within a global pinball, pseudo-autistic system of chronic moving-and-shaking objects that remain backdrop homogeneous fuzzy blur to our senses.

It seems that our minds’ perception of our surroundings translate into a gradient of a few elements of highly-resolved, qualitative PCA-analyses of multi-dimensional meaning, which then upon spatial-temporal expansion from ourselves drowns within several elements of low resolution, which remain to us as mere elements—err, mental ghosts, so to speak—we pass by on a daily basis without any form of mental registration. We pass by hundreds, if not thousands of humans every single day, knowing they have beautiful, colorful, highly detailed stories, yet do we have mental capacity to register them?

The tragedy of this modern mental landscape is that it provides this illusion of infinite choice (especially in the university) while simultaneously holding unstable, fickle, ephemeral properties—a state of chronic, rapid change. These volatile environmental conditions of near infinite options and combinations forces us to chronically question and think about our own volatile mental conditions: what we think about, what we are doing, why we think and do what we do, what should we value… hold on to, grasp onto… despite this hostile world of ephemerality.
It forces me to ask the deep questions. Why me here now? What is my purpose? What’s the point? What is the point of my existence? My relative existence? What is the combination of people, resources, places to help me with the process of doing what I need to do? To help me design a Reality of Meaning? What is my bower, my warped log-log bubble of Reality? What to include in my bower of purpose? What do I tune out, dumped into the world of global human chaos of process? Why does my bower take such a shape? Was it intentional, purposeful design? Or was it an accident? Or was it chance opportunity meeting a prepared mind? The synergism of probability and seeming determinism? Ready for a collaboration? A co-evolution of progress and flow of elements?

Hence, a Eusocial Ecological Niche Space—so I call it—is slowly, generated by our minds.

In the massive pool of intellectual flesh within the university, my streamline flow of thoughts have been desperately going through a very intense sorting and filtering process, just as the human body and mind intrinsically filters the intake of resources and stimuli. What to include in my intellectual territory of maintenance and innovation? What to toss aside and disregard?

And with this the horrible notion of a seemingly ritualistic exercise of an attempt to achieve my own mental sanity, it seems like as soon as I find emotional value in some individual or endeavor, the deep bonds seem to break as quickly as they formed. The only way how I have come to survive in this world of unstable molecular human-environmental interactions of chronic fragmentation is through the constructionist actions of my own writing and art.

My mother chronically reminds me that the only vessel I will truly come to know—and am essentially stuck with for the rest of my life—is is my very own Self. I might as well get chummy with it. “Hello, me! How are you doing?”

So, to continue the formulation of a sense of purpose and existence, I need to chronically tune in to this inner world and tend to this internal, evolutionary and proximally-evolved bower that ultimately constructs this externally-warped bubble of supposedly meaningful Reality.

I am thoroughly convinced that our minds did not evolve to exist within a 6-billion ingroup human leaf cutter ant colony. This global system: is it a success, a triumph? Technologically, perhaps. Psychologically? More so a psychological turmoil and failure. The greatest war that seems to exist today is within our minds, attempting to design external meaning. Success or failure of Globalism, it doesn’t matter. I am too pre-occupied in creating my own provincial log-log world of Reality. Otherwise I will breach my mental carrying capacity.

I suppose ignorance can be bliss. Or our minds constrain us ignorance. In all honesty, an illusory, emotionally-detached global view—a.k.a. provincially warped global ignorance—is all that I can mentally sustain.

325. "The World is Going to Hxll / Might as Well Mess People's Mind's About It"

Poem / Song "The World is Going to Hxll / Might as Well Mess with People's Minds About It" PDF file version available here: http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/theworldisgoingtohxll.pdf.

Was inspired to write this after an evening at the Scott Chatenever's household http://villagepotter.com. Had an opportunity to chat with Scott, Brian (Ph.D. student in Susan Mazer's lab, a new Brennie--mind is blanking out right now, and Mark, who went to a public meeting about Gaviota public lands yesterday, spoke in front of a crowd of hundreds).

324. Scale/Zen of Photography: A Case Study with Patricia, a Santa Barbara Local (Initial Discussion Evolution of Art / Scientific Perception) Part 1

Patricia Close Up. Prototype image for a Hollywood Character in Desperate Housewives and Sex in the City.
Patricia Half-body Shot. Very lively, animated, friendly, motherly personality. Very photogenic.
Patricia 3/4 Body Shot. Camera Tilt for Aesthetics.
This was an accidental photograph, but I love it! Very strange aesthetic and distribution of elements across the image. Patricia's smile enhances everything!
Full body shot, in context of outcrops! Rocks, rocks, rocks! I love rocks! Any fossils? I wonder if the dudes seeing this image are even thinking about the outcrops behind Patricia.... Optimally aesthetic woman in front of beautiful rocks and beautiful ocean! Context! Context! Context! Could be an adbuster idea in the [near] future. Sell Nature to Society with Evolutionary Salespitching!

Patricia Full Body, Sitting Down. Silhouette effect against the sun.

Subject: Patricia, friend of Kent Schiff, rock crab distributor!
Location: Arroyo Burro Beach, Santa Barbara, California

Time: Sunset Golden Hour, September 2007.

Can't believe it took me so long to write a blog about this! Please see Blog number 324 for the full multi-layered journal/analysis of the experience. Systematic creativity is only fun in human context!

OKAY PEOPLE! SO, NOW I AM LEGITIMATE! HIRE ME FOR SOME PHOTOGRAPHIC WORK! ha ha ha! Am I serious? Or am I not?

Here are the links to the full album:

http://s202.photobucket.com/albums/aa109/stokastika/PatriciaArroyoBurro090707/?albumview=slideshow

http://s202.photobucket.com/albums/aa109/stokastika/PatriciaArroyoBurro090707/?start=all

323. Logo of UCSB's Bren School of Environmental Science and Management: "Elephant and the Oak Tree" Googlification

Hybrid: Bren School Logo and Two Creatures Exploring an Elephant or an Oak Tree? Version 1.
Hybrid: Bren School Logo and Two Creatures Exploring an Elephant or an Oak Tree? Version 2.
Hybrid: Bren School Logo and Two Creatures Exploring an Elephant or an Oak Tree? Version 3.

Hybrid: Bren School Logo and Two Creatures Exploring an Elephant or an Oak Tree? Version 4.
Hybrid: Bren School Logo and Two Creatures Exploring an Elephant or an Oak Tree? Original Logo Derived from the Internet.
Hybrid: Bren School Logo and Two Creatures Exploring an Elephant or an Oak Tree? Modification of Logo Using Adobe Photoshop.
Hybrid: Bren School Logo and Two Creatures Exploring an Elephant or an Oak Tree? Terra the confused creature who doesn't know if she is a termite or a leaf cutter ant, or whether she's on an elephant or an oak tree.
Hybrid: Bren School Logo and Two Creatures Exploring an Elephant or an Oak Tree? Buz the confused creature who doesn't know if she is a termite or a leaf cutter ant, or whether she's on an elephant or an oak tree. Both buddy up to re-formulate themselves and the big picture.

Right when I started graduate school, around September 15, 2008 (the beginning of orientation), I started to think about designing a logo or cartoon that described the essence of my relationship to the Bren School of Environmental Science, the College of Creative Studies, and UC Santa Barbara. It seems like every single time I annex something new... like a new group of people, a new organization... that embodies my ideals yet allows me to exist as a unique individual (though I am part of a group), I have a tendency to design a logo or an image to represent my gratitude and incorporation and embodiment and annexation of the new system.

So, first of all, I derived the Bren logo off of their website and decided to Googlify it in relation to a story I was writing entitled The Elephant and the Oak Tree (heck! if Google can Googlify it's logo, why can't i Googlify the Bren logo?). I am very pissed off that I was interrupted in the writing process by the quarter system. Shxt hits the fan too frequently. I am half-way done. But I have come to realize, with the quarter system, life doesn't happen in the order that you want it to come. So, you kind of have to go with the flow and ride the wave of information overflow, make the quarter system ride least turbulent as possible.

I find it quite ironic that the Bren logo fitted optimally with my elephant-oak-tree story. The bottom of the logo has an abstract formulation and design of an elephant (though I bet it was supposed to embody the ocean and a wave) and the top of the logo clearly takes shape of an oak leaf. Perfecto! Funny, eh?

So, I finally made some versions of the logo right before the Santa Barbara Harbor Research Cruise with the Young lab. I had an opportunity to show the logo to my friends Julie, Jaime, and Maria, and they all responded very well to it! They all thought it was very funny and very cute. Someone wondered how I had time to do that with school and all, but I exclaimed that environmental media students are supposed to produce environmental media, right? :-).

Though it seems like I pitched the story a few hundred times, I had an opportunity to pitch The Elephant and the Oak Tree to Julie Robinson, also an environmental media Ph.D. student who has had lots of experience in the nature/film industry (works with the Cousteau society). Julie said that the storyline was a great idea and that really boosted up my confidence! I told her that I planned to do a local community-based campaign revolved around the book. It really meant a lot to me for Julie to respond well to the idea. My tiny little ego inflated--just a little bit--and in a good way!

Another minor note. I looked at my old sketch drawings and found that I tried to make a Terra and Buz bobble head out of the Bren logo, mostof them being largely failures. Nice to see my sketch drawing of the logo manifested as a final product, FINALLY!

322. The Drawing and Continued Invention of Gozzie: Inspired from Conversations with Evolutionary Psychologists

The New Buz. Err. Gozzie. Err. Pev. Err. Pevo. Whatever. T-shirt says "gonzo" now. He still has his geobum t-shirt.


Now, since I, Victoria, am changing rapidly, almost on a momentary and daily basis, I have come to realize that my old model of “Buz” needs a huge overhaul and reconstruction. And that this quarter is a giant investigation of the structure of Buz. Essentially, Terra and Buz (from Question Reality) have had a long break from each other, and they have returned to encounter each other and rapidly indulge in each other’s mind. Terra and Buz had become increasingly layered in complexity as well has become increasingly interdisciplinary. Terra still wears a biogeek shirt, but as you can observe, there are some structural and functional changes of Buz. Buz now has a few nicknames, to which I am not sure which ones I am akin to: Gozzie, Pev (for Evolutionary Psychology), and Pevo (phonetically pronounced Peevo. But his core name is Buz and now he just has a lot of petnames. The two other major structural differences is that his hair is part wavy, part curly (adapted partially from the curly fro of Dr. Steven Pinker. I admitted to Julian last night that I have an academic crush on Dr. Pinker, goodness forbid, who wouldn’t?), and that his t-shirt states GONZO instead of GEOBUM. Buz, as a geologist, had branched out into the arts and social sciences to some degree. He considers himself to be a gonzo scientist (just like Terra). He, the scientist is not separate, but part of the experiement of study. He, himself is the guinea pig of the scientific experiment, but at the same time, he has to analyze his guinea pig state. Welcome to being inside the Matrix! Therefore, Buz acknowledges that his “scientist” hat is subjective—largely intersubjective, and refuses to longer subscribe to the notion that science is “objective” and “universal.” Buz assumes that (1) science is done by humans, so we must account for the quirks of human beings (as quirky biological machines and (2) the “environment” is a construct of the human mind. So we must understand how the mind generates and perceives and interacts with the “environment” (like some form of internal neurological video game cognitive map box).

So, given these features and characteristics, Terra and Buz, err, Gozzie, err, Pev, get along very well. They are both eager to understand the core essence of existence of human consciousness in concern of human relationships to the environment. They both practice the “buddy system” because an adventure into the thick and dangerous university jungle of collective human consciousness should not be explored alone. One must have at least a buddy. And even, a band of buddies. Besides, this adventure through the university jungle is an adventure of a lifetime!

Due to my existentialist experiences with Julian (and Nick) last night (both are grad students in the evolutionary psychology lab under Drs. Tooby and Cosmides), I felt like it was much easier to create the Gozzie character, to which I will continue to explore. Earlier this week, I felt like a spread out amoeboid blob, but last night and today—after talking with Julian and Dr. Sam Sweet—I feel like I am associating with humans who centralize and embody the core of my existence. It’s a very zen enlightenment sort of thing. Don’t worry. I’m not on acid or anything. It’s called non-acid trance. These people place my mind on non-acid trances. Non-pot trances. Natural highs. Sublime, though.

Last night, when talking with Julian, I felt like I was truly inside myself and that I could be very open and expressive. I could tell Julian (even Nick) about the subliminal questions and longings within the lair of my brain (and my journal writing) and they would understand with a knowing smile. And they would even comment on it and provide additional feedback. To talk with an ev psych grad student—to talk with Julian—it was like I was having a discussion with the ultimate Shrink of all Shrinks. Well, besides my EEMB teachers.

I told Julian (and Nick) some really deep, subliminal stuff in my head that I hardly tell anyone. For example, I explained how in college I started writing obsessively. Mostly streamline journal writing. And then I started wondering, “What am I writing? What is the order of which I am writing? And why am I thinking and writing about what I think and write? How come I don’t think and write about other things? Why am I conscious of certain elements of my surroundings and why does my mind tune out other element? Where do these ideas come from?” And then I told Julian how I came to realize that inside my brain there were multiple distinct, yet intertwined processing layers—rational, emotional, primal—that were generating thoughts, that were all deeply intertwined with this feedback of my internal perception with my mind’s construction and perception and interaction with my environment. Outer environment. A dialogue between the interior and exterior self. And through this feedback, I started establishing a chronic mental flow experience.

I even mentioned a strange phenomenon in which last year I had dinner with a guy named Jay (and a bunch of CCS alumni) and I owed him $10. For the last year, I hardly even saw Jay, and when I did, I didn’t have any cash at hand. But inside me, I was always disturbed and pissed off. I simply would not forget that I owed him $10. And then finally, I had an opportunity to pay Jay back. Both Nick and Julian chimed in. The brain has an internal conscious checks and balance system in terms of how I interact with humans. This internal checks and balance system can be in the form of cash, or can be in the form of resource-communication exchange. So, my check and balance system will not be cleared (to do list scratched off) and my memory won’t go away until I paid Jay the $10 back. Now I owe a girl named Wendy about $8. Shxt. Not again. I am sure I will pay her back soon. And then with the case of Tariel, I suppose it was largely a one-way street in the end, and then I was essentially abusing myself for attempting to give, and now all strings are cut off. Mutualism never really existed anyhow, though the illusion of mutualism seemed present for a while, in the form of excessive control and presence. So much for communication. Same with the roommates. I even told Nick how I cannot forget how people in the past stole my money. I cannot forget, and that it keeps bugging me to this day—which is better because it forces me to be more cautious and change my behavior. For example, I still ave $150 from LAP records to be used. This guy named Correy in Riverside still has $300 in video games of my money. He supposedly will take pictures of me. Hah. What else bugs the shxt out of me? Now it involves the police. I lost $1450 to a Craigslist spam involving a macbookpro computer. Shxt. I still need to follow up. The worst part is that I found out that the police and detectives of Santa Barbara won’t keep track of Craigslist and simply don’t care. Even though I told them that all you need to do is send a cop to The Bank of America of Calle Real in Goleta and speak with this Assistant Manager. He has all the information about the transaction. Same with an ipod. My $127 ipod shuffle was stolen at a 24-7 Kinkos by an African-American man in a suit and tie. The store even caught it on tape 10:41 am. An employee had a full description of the African-American man and the manager of the Kinkos did whatever he could to retrieve records. Despite all this effort, no police man went to Kinkos (though it was literally less than a mile away from the police station). Some police officer filled out a report, and after paying $16 two months later to retrieve a copy of this report, I found out they marked the entire well-documented situation as “petty theft” and the police office was transferred to another district without even informing me of the situation. FXCK! I deserve to cuss! This is dire an frustrating! I can’t even believe or trust police officers anymore. My blinding Hollywood over-glorified perception of police officers swiftly dissolved (as the veil of reality was lifted) as I came to realize that in the SCALING EFFECTS OF MASS INSTITUTIONAL OPERATIONS, “INSTITUTIONS DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU. ONLY PEOPLE DO,” If illegal occurrences are inflicted upon me, I will ultimately have to take the matters of law within my own hands. The police have other priorities and fundamentally operate the pace of a slug. They don’t care about me. Fxck whatever. When I croak, I bet there might only be five people in the whole world (though I supposedly encountered a few thousand, million or so) who might even wink and notice that I croaked. That is humanity for you.

Well, essentially Nick stated that my brain (the human brain) most likely evolved through selection pressures to keep some form of “altruistic” checks and balance system in terms of resource and communication exchange among group members, because essentially you have to identify those you can stay on par with and those who are then defined as “cheaters” “liars” and “thieves.” There is some form of evolutionary process in the generation of consciousness and distinguishing between truth and lies, and the entire skew of gradients in between.

I only lie in the world given that it protects my own privacy and benefit. I make sure that if I lie, it will essentially not hurt other people, it will fundamentally protect myself. For example, time shifts. Canceling appointments. Am I really sick? Or do I pretend to be sick? Well, the issue is, it’s not really a lie. I am not physically sick—like a cold or a bacteria—but I tend to be MENTALLY SICK and need time to myself to write and do art just to heal my brain, eh? Ya.

HOW AND WHAT WE DEFINE AS GOOD OR BAD IS LARGELY DEPENDENT ON SCALE OF THE SYSTEM. What may be good or bad at small scale societies may not be GOOD OR BAD at large scale societies. Overall, the larger the system, things start to slip and interactions among humans start to become careless and loose, simply because you don’t have the mental capacity to keep track of all transactions. I feel like anorexia embodies a mass accumulation effect of self-environment interactions, involving the loss of meaning and excessive attempt to keep track of all transactions.

Checks and balances are hard to keep track in mass-scale societies. Things start to slip very quickly. For example our own global economics and the collapse of the stock market. My roommate Kyle was stating that economics and money value can be so magnified in the mind—like it’s the value of the dollar is on Disney’s cloud. It can spiral upward like a staircase without any functional and structural support beneath it, and then suddenly it spirals downward and collapse to real value after such a lengthy time of artificial definitions of value.

I told Julian and Nick that I was testing the Scaling Law of the Mass Institutions by parking my car “illegally” around the UCSB campus. I am not worried about the act of getting a ticket. I was more so curious about testing the PROBABILITY of getting a parking ticket. In the name of the masses, the null hypothesis is that the system doesn’t care about me. And when I actually DO get a parking ticket, it is an epic symbol that someone bothered to care about the existence of myself through my car. And for $40 of mindless rituatlistic humanity of receiving a parking ticket, though I am pissed off, I am slightly touched that someone bothered to notice the presence of my car. What divine beauty of humanity!

Also to mention, I just paid off my last set of parking tickets. I bought a parking pass for the year, which was $324. Which means I don’t have to purchase a poorly ergonomic bike for which I have to sell all over again, like the last two times. I have had bad luck with bikes as of late. It was a tremendous relief not to worry about my probabilistic, stochastic models of the likelihood of getting parking tickets at UCSB given my obscure, strategic parking tendencies!
Those days are over. Now I can think about other things.

I was so open-ended with Julian that I even told him about me and my friend’s systematic experiments with Craigslist. How you could do text-mining and analysis of words, comparing men for men, men for women, women for men, and women for women. And then how my other friend designed five different ads for craigslist with very specific systematic needs, from visceral to needs of higher consciousness. He would see how people would respond and how many people would respond to each ad. The other problem is that (1) Where is the location? What city? (2) Do the ads represent the same person overall, or multiple different people? The same person with new layers of information? (3) What time of the week do people respond? Have to know about the audience of Craigslist and the activity of Craigslisters. And then, I told Julian, wait a second. You should not be a test subject. You should be a real human! Let me get you out of the experiment. Here is my real email! So, I told him all these things that I had never told really anyone before. Julian told me about how one guy met his wife because she was a test subject for his experiment. Ha, ha! Funny. Academic demands versus evolutionary, evolutionary demands. Funny thing. Cute. Whatever.

I find people who have the capacity to organize my thoughts as very, very beautiful. Divine. I have a feeling I am going to be in total intellectual nirvana hanging around evolutionary psychologists. Wowee. It’s gonna be fun. I will be attending a lab section next Tuesday around 130pm.

I also kept blahing to Julian about the tremendous implications of evolutionary psychology, scale, and storytelling design in literature and multi-media. The implications are just huge, tremendous! I think evolutionary psychology has more powerful reasoning tools than the Communications or Film and Media Studies Department! Julian said that Drs. Tooby and Cosmides tend to have sympathetic ears for scientists who have felt like outcasts and then come stumbling into their direction. I guess I am another one of those. That is good to hear.

I also bugged Julian how evolutionary psychology should have a blog. Julian said it would take a lot of time to maintain, BUT, the second situation is that there are problems in concern of discussion of ideas that have not been published yet. Oh ya. Ouch. Then I explained to Julian that I blog because I don’t care if I get scooped. I am a risk taker and have nothing to lose. I am a nobody graduate student who no one cares about. I am a nobody intellect who no one take any form of seriousness for inventing a new word—ecopistemology? So, I have to blog. I have to vent. Otherwise, I will live for twenty years with my mind being bureaucratically constipated, waiting for people to accept my ideas. I don’t have 20 years. Sorry, I am just throwing it out to the public for anyone to see and have access to. Survival, in the end, individual and collective, has no economic value. It is free. I must do whatever it takes to survive.

Heck, I have been meditating for such a long time to write a series of essays entitled EV PSYCH IN MY DAILY LIFE, which are philosophical meditations about what I do and think about, and exploring deep down into the rabbithole of proximate and ultimate meanings of my thoughts, behaviors, and perceptions of reality.

So now, I to show a proof of ownership of the word, I will have to purchase a series of domain names:
http://www.stokastika.org
http://www.ecopistemology.org.
http://www.biologicallyincorrect.org
http://www.questionrealitymedia.org
http://evpsychinmydailylife.org
http://alternativeaddictions.org
and point them all to my main blog: http://www.biologicallyincorrect.blogspot.com.
Gratitude. Morality.

321. Santa Barbara Harbor Research and Education Cruise Aboard the Double Dolphin: Picasaweb Slideshow Included!

This past Monday (October 6, 2008) was the first "lab meeting" or "lab gathering," which was quite a very multi-sensory, experiential event: I would have never expected a "research trip" aboard the Double Dolphin (followed by a big dinner at the Bay Street Cafe)! Not to mention it was Oran and Gail's 29th anniversary! I am so used to being inside buildings all day that this boat trip was quite refreshing!

I think it's important to reflect upon this event because (1) the academic environment on campus can become extremely formal and stressful, (2) it's wonderful to be exposed to your labmates and partners in such a casual, relaxing environment! and (3) since we're all quarantined on a boat, we are force to talk to each other rather than be distracted by the million of other stimuli on campus! I think I will need this stretch of memory to help me get through the rest of the quarter. Plus, I feel like it was some form of ritualistic annexation of the "Young Lab" in my mind. I had the opportunity to meet and greet several characters, but I felt very fortunate to have had more extensive conversations with Gail Osherenko and Julie Robinson. I already somewhat know Sarah, Priya, Jaime, and Wesley. Alexios wasn't there. In Greece? Gail informed me of a few of her film projects, one involving loons. I also learned a little more about Oran's background, and perhaps come to understand why he, as a social scientist, took me in the lab, though I come from an ecology/evolution/earth science background. I found out that Oran's brother is a botanist! How cool!

Julie gave me a lot of advice and confidence in concern of my projects in environmental media. I am really grateful for the pep talk. She also discussed factors in concern of role-play in filming. I have a complex about "bossing other people around" which is derived from my mother's philosophy: "The only person you can change and control is yourself. You can't change other people and you can't expect other people to change you." But apparently there is a very serious take on roleplay in film production, whether you are the "director" or the "production assistant." People obey the role and the system. Most times films operate like dictatorships, but depending on the situation can be more democratic and open-ended in terms of top-down and bottom-up interactions.

I didn't spot any unusual creatures on the boat trip. The usual seals and sea birds that I had been trained to identify about 5 or so years ago. The esoteric sunset. But honestly, it was very nice to watch a sunset for once! Julie's husband was a superb boat captain! Being on a boat was quite cathartic. At the Bay Street Cafe, a largely fish-dominated menu, I ordered a chicken-pasta meal, which was very good.

I slept well on Monday night. I am so grateful to be a part of the Young lab! This is such an amazing environment that promotes and fosters creativity and communication! Contrary to my experiences in other universities the last few years. Thank you everyone for the great time!

320. Annexation of College of Creative Studies Course with Dr. Caroline Allen: Telling Life Stories

Telling Life Stories Syllabus from Dr. Caroline Allen. College of Creative Studies, UC Santa Barbara.
Overview of the course. Vic's response to the course on the first day. PDF file of the above sheet: http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/3.responsetoclassonfirstday.pdf.
An Internal Turning Point in My Life. Page 1.
An Internal Turning Point in My Life. Page 2.
An Internal Turning Point in My Life. Page 3.

PDF file of the short story:

http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/7.internalturningpointlifesluggishbu.pdf.

It is essential in my life. Prompt journal writing is "me time." The premise of this course is fundamentally simple. You are in a class with 12-15 other brilliant writers (most of younger age than I am) and you have 12 minutes to write a prompt on a certain topic. You share what you wrote to the class and the class responds in terms of (1) what intrigued you about the story (2) what more do you want to here. The structure of the course is brilliant because with writing, and with many other projects, "the hardest part is always starting, but once you're going you keep on rolling." The starting part is most difficult, and it urges one and several people to finish stuff. Every single student in the class is such a wealth of ideas! The other amazing policy of the class is to be (1) hands off psychologists (2) keep the stories inside the class. People are telling VERY personal stories and it's very important not to impose your views on them in terms of what is right or wrong or what to do with your life. There are some very clever students in the course, for such a young age! And it makes complete sense why they are CCS literature majors.

For example, today, there is an African-American girl who wrote with an amazing voice--snarky, non-chalant. She cares, but she doesn't care. And it was all with an attitude. Saying things that you don't really expect one to say. There are some beautiful phrases and terms emerging from these students' mouthes. At first I was like, great, I am surrounded by a bunch of young people. What do they have to say for themselves? And my gosh. They have so much to say, and they have little jewels here and there I can most certainly learn from. This class gives me hope for he next generation of Millenials. Contrary to the media and research' portrayal of the opposite: a generation of deterioration and decay of society.

319. Placing Blinders on the Splattered Mental Amoeboid Blob: I Have Breached a Threshold of Mental Expansion and Need to Contract

Today has been mentally very difficult. Perhaps also because I am sleep deprived.... I have lost touched with reality, and the only way that will give me the possibility to ground myself is through writing.

I feel tremendously decentralized and I ultimately need to contract my mind and my ambitions.
I have been experiencing too much novelty. As my father would say, I am taking the mind of a geographer: trying to know a lot about nothing. But right now, I need to build more meaningful relationships given what I know. And I feel at this moment I know enough to function and find meaning in my life and function this quarter.

Just as organisms selectively input materials into their bodies, I must selectively input and process information within my own mind.

This is my strategy for the quarter: associated yourself with three/four primary spheres:
(1) The Bren School and All Environmental Media Affiliates (environmental media initiative meetings and such, occasions within the Bren School). Potentially on the social sciences side with environmental sociology.

(2) The EEMB / Earth Sciences Group (my mental roots, of all God and Glory, I love my roots. It's called intellectual homing behavior. I told two vertebrate paleo grad students that sometimes the Bren atmosphere can drive me nuts in terms of wheel-spinning reasoning on environmental problem-solving, so I need to seek refuge in the bio and earth sciences). There are field trips with Friends of the Pleistocene as well as GEO 2. These will be exceptionally meaningful. In addition, my friend Becca is in charge of BEERS, and that will give me an opportunity to meet with the EEMB folks.

(3) Exploration and venturing into the realm of evolutionary psychology. I will be meeting a grad student by the name of Julian, hopefully this Thursday.

(4) On the periphery, I have a writing prompt class through the College of Creative Studies. I have the Santa Barbara Writers Conference / Toastmasters Cult.

The amoeboid blob brain cannot be stretched any bit further. If it does, it will burst. The coelom will burst and all the guts will spill out, with no brain to manage it either.

I am sick and tired of sampling novelty. I have got to stick and build with what I have got. Okay. I think I have my blinders on. Good.

318. A Colorful Ecosystem of the Hillview Gradstudent Household: Mini Miss Einstein, Onyx Megafauna, Bentley the Ambassador Dog

I suppose I have been blogging for so long. I have been living at 2X7 Hillview Dr. in Goleta for so long. I have been co-existing and thriving along with my enviro-housemates for so long… over a year now… that I, in part, feel greatly ashamed not to consciously and officially acknowledge the thriving existence of the colorful ecosystem thriving within this household of Goleta, California. Not to mention our fair share of spiders and other miscellaneous biting and pinching insects who fail to pay their fair share of rent.

I have probably met 100 people within the last three weeks and I found myself talking about my roommates over 50 times and I also found myself enthusiastically describing this most peculiar resident of the household by the name of Mini Miss Einstein.

In a future blog, I will be eagerly and briefly describing the lively humanoid characters of Hillview, my most wonderful housemates—Kyle, Karl, Lisa, Michela, and Joe.

But as of this moment—in my delight of re-discovering a superb collage of images I took last year—I wanted to devote this blog to the most extraordinary organism of Funky Cuteness: and that would be the one-and-only Mini Miss Einstein.

This little fuzzy blob of 12 pounds, 1.25 feet in length, with pricked ears, is more formally classified as a “cairn terrier,” or a small, spindly-furry, active and fearless dog. But I would argue that this organism is of questionable taxonomy. I vividly remember meeting Mini in the backyard of our house—her owner, Lisa, was taking a dip in the Jacuzzi. Lisa was referring to the Funky Cuteness as “Mini,” which I also went along with. The name made sense, particularly because she was a very miniaturized version of Lisa’s other giant, black lab, Onyx—now also appropriately named Onyx Megafauna. After petting and playing with the once humble and quiet and shy Mini for quite a few minutes (she was just released from a pound and could have potentially had an abusive previous owner and had been abandoned), I noticed how her body was largely covered with spindly, partly curly black hair, but her face was optimally coated and splotched with this wiry white hair (the symmetry of facial splotching rendered “optimality”), and my mind couldn’t help to coordinate my mouth in blurting out the observation, “Gee, this dog kind of looks like Einstein.” And Lisa was quite receiving of this notion. Within a few moments of this comment, I called her Mini Miss Einstein, and to this day, the name has stuck… to some degree. Her other frequently used affectionate name is MiniPin.

To resume the data collection of unquestionable classification, if one places Mini out of context of scale, and also analyzes her various angles of aesthetics, one could easily mistaken her as a fuzzy rat, a weasel, a guinea pig, a marmot, a warthog, a dog (dxmn, she is a dog!), a tazmanian devil, a fox, a coyote, a wolf, and a bear. She has the classic morphology of Giant Rodent of the Anthropocene, but could be better depicted as a Terrestrial Sea Otter. Mini Miss Einstein is ultimately the epitome of Funky Cute and Fuzzy Creature (FCFC certified… by myself). No doubt, my professors would still be able to classify her as a terrestrial vertebrate—or so you would think. Mini’s undefineable gestalt properties—from phylum down to species (at least we have the Einstein name down pat)—potentially makes her an anomalously remarkable character for Hollywood (which reminds me I need to make a zed card for Mini Miss Einstein in the near future). Hollywood largely consists of Beautiful Freaks anyway, all for the world to enjoy J.

This Amorphous Organism is such a mysterious creature of charismatic, animated personality (though currently being managed for an increase of nuisance barking), yet of an unknown history, that she invokes profound dimensions of imagination: an overall delightful invitation to the processes of near-infinite intellectual and emotional combinations of barebone elements of reality. I have already pre-meditated in placing Mini Miss Einstein in my Ecology of Size chapter (how Terra and Buz are going to reconstruct life-on-earth, humans included, with some legoes). Essentially, Terra was taking a walk one day and she encountered this most eccentrically intelligent dog. They both propped themselves on a bench within a park, and their thoughts were drifting while watching this little ant colony build a mound near by the bench. Mini Miss Einstein—who happens to be one of the greatest modern theorists of human behavior—had this profound epiphany in front of Terra, who instantly observed and observed in immersed shock upon Mini’s utterance: “You know what? Aren’t humans like some form of giant leaf cutter ant colony?” And that ignited Terra’s thought processes *bam!* just like that! Just opened a whole bunch of doors and windows of visual interpretation and recombination. Terra, to this day, remains indefinitely grateful for Mini Miss Einstein’s Profound Inspiration. Small roles can play big parts in stories, you know.

Overall, Mini is a very polite and lovely creature to be around, but cairn terriers are known to be “big characters that require a firm hand.” As which Lisa and Kyle—Mini’s current parents—do provide superb discipline to keep Mini’s squacking little playful bark under control. Sometimes her yapping serves no purpose but just to aggravate the annoyance of us all. I am just grateful that Mini Miss Einstein over time has become more comfortable, extroverted, and willing to express herself—despite its occasional nuisance.

Within this picture set, I also have images of two other notable dogs. Onyx Megafauna (which I tag on the “Megafauna” name), is an elder black Labrador of Lisa. Onyx and I are not in the best of terms, but we do pay each other respect. He indeed is megafauna material, and due to the immensity of his size, I provide Onyx the space that he deserves. Onyx occasionally barks at me for no particular reason, and I occasionally pet him. But I do keep my distance.

And finally, we cannot disregard the stately Bentley the Ambassador Dog. He is of similar size and of similar bizarro of character as Mini—at least in terms of the degree of uniqueness of such an organism. Bentley’s white droopy-haired fuzzball properties and overall superfriendly appearance allows him not to be misdiagnosed as a any other organism, except for a dog. Bentley’s proud owner, Lisa’s mom (a very witty middle school teacher in San Diego), has informed me how Bentley’s Ambassadorial character has fundamentally altered the dynamics of the neighborhood for the better. Bentley’s unfiltered ability to greet and become friends with any creature of any shape or size has even been lauded in the local newspapers. I told Lisa that perhaps the Bren School should thoroughly study the personality and behavior of Bentley the Ambassador dog to help improve international politics on human-environmental management. “Let’s just all set aside our differences and get along, shan’t we?” The world would be a better place if we all knew and adopted the practices of the great Bentley the Ambassador.

The images of the slideshow took a while to process. I messed around with posterization and poster edge effects.

**additional notes and observations: Mini Miss Einstein had been mistaken for a "skunk" at night and also looks like Ewok from Starwars. Mini has adapted her barking and language system such as to amplify "pity pets" through her very complex (but very cute) moans, groans, whines, and wimpers, while laying flat and dragging her bottom on the carpet. She also apparently has acquired break dance moves. Mini Miss Einstein's gestalt is the epitome of human manipulation through overall cuteness. Should be under investigation at an Evolutionary Psychology Lab.

317. Three Introductory Images/Gifts I Provide to Summarize My Existence

Biomathematika Sunflower. Taken in Summer of 2002. My father's giant sunflower by the garage. My father was the PA or Photography Assistant, propping the flower more upright because it was collapsing upon its own weight. I took the picture with a measly Olympus Camedia camera. Usually the images are off-color... except for this one!
Out of the Box and Into the Bird. Part 2 in a three part series. Based on an image of an unhappy bird seemingly stuck in a cage when there are multiple ways to get out. The tiny squirrel is trying to get a giant bird out of the cage. The tiny squirrel modified its perceptions and definitions and language systems, which allowed it to perceive solutions to escape the cage. And now its trying to save the big big bird out of the cage. It is indeed a scaling problem. This little squirrel is definitely going to need some help! (That image is in Part 3 of the three-part series). Scaling is an interesting process in human communication systems. Because it seems like ideas spread more like an airborn virus or parasite wood. You have a single seed but it can spread like wildfire across many minds quite rapidly. Existing technology allows immense ease of transport, like some form of collective nervous system. Good stories are more like benevolent tumors, invited mutations, so to speak. The bad stories usually get weeded out--unless you have lots of money to keep perpetuating your bad stories throughout the system. :-0
This piece is called "Existence in Context." It's based off of Van Gogh's famous image of the naked man in a circle and a square. I told my advisor Oran that Van Gogh forgot that humans need a planet in order to exist, so the picture was incomplete. I started off with a vague outline of my own body (hence the long hair), then adding layers, like the planet Earth, behind, then adding the branching fractal network connections and feedback loops that represent my flowing connections with the environment--including the heart and the mind. Multiple layers of consciousness here, eh? Far beyond the consciousness of a tunicate. I mean, I was a bag of guts a long time ago. I mean, my ancestors. Long, long, long time ago. Maybe when I was an embryo, I was more so a bag of guts than a mental entity. And now my bag of guts is fine. My brain is hard to manage. I mave much more of a mental existence than I would like. Visceral existence would sometimes be wonderful as well. But my brain keeps consuming and processing information even though my guts are fine. Wish I could turn my brain off once in a while, eh?

Maybe it is a big deal that the body in the image is female, not male. Well, I'll be dxmmed. I am a female and I am going to give myself some credit. My friend George noted that many females and some males tend to think non-linearly and contextually, whereas many other people tend to focus on one system and think linearly. My friend Herschel said that females by default are very non-linear thinkers. Our corpus callosum is extremely interconnected and we can multi-task. Oh. Cool. How come some guys know me better than I know my own self? Strange thing. I'm catching up.

These three images tend to be the "routine" gifts I provide to people who I really care about and also give them a window to the world that I know and have come to build for myself and care about. This is the intellectual bower that I tend: integrating my biological and geological knowledge and its applications to re-interpretations of human-environmental problem solving. I gave these images to one of my advisors, Oran, about a week ago.

I am soon going to hit the road toward the Santa Barbara Harbour, in which our lab will be going on an "educational field trip" hosted by Julie Robinson's husband! Woohoo! I am super-excited to meet everyone and get to know everyone better. Our lab is so diverse in interests and topics, it's amazing! But mostly on the intersection of science and society, institutions and governance. Whether it's science-policy, science-media, whatever. I wish I could see my lab-mates more frequently. I will pose the question as to whether once a week we could all meet up casually just to talk about stuff that's been going on in their heads and ideas to throw out onto the table. Almost like a writer's group! I would LOVE that! We'll see!

316. Poem / Song Called "Cut it off / Caving in / Idee fixe / Spread too thin" Principles of Mental Management Amidst the Quarter System!

Cut it off / Caving in / Idee Fixe / Spread too thin. Page 1.
Cut it off / Caving in / Idee Fixe / Spread too thin. Page 2.

PDF to the poem found here: http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/cutitoffcavinginideefixespreadtoothi.pdf.

Well, I have been blasted with information this weekend. My mind drifted into a poem that I wrote back in early 2005, or so I think... during my first year leave of absence.... The poem discusses several themes: (1) information flow (volume) and information management (2) mental management, mental processing (3) mental metabolism and the digestion/processing of ideas (4) the university as an unhealthy information overload atmosphere (5) mental carrying capacity in terms of information input and processing, then brain shuts off or engages in selective conscious input (6) control of mental health through psychological labeling and pill popping, or change of behavior and change of environment (which is what I will be posing and advertising as a Disabilities Student with "anxiety disorder"). It was so ironic that the representative at the Disabilities Office recommended that I not be enrolled in the program because--despite the program's effort to keep information confidential, there is a tendency for this kind of information to be distributed around the gossip mill of departments. I told Mary (I think that was her name) all the better if people gossip, because this is actually a good part of my Ph.D--this whole notion of unhealthy human-environmental constructs. And I am just another victim of it. Like right now, I have to lock myself in my room for a while and write all the shxt out of my head before I can calm down! So, I get free advertisement. I seriously don't have high anxiety disorder 100% of the time. I only have anxiety disorder given that I am placed in a certain environment (like a university campus) for extended periods of time. Then I get fried. Same like ADHD. It's selective. Primarily after eating too many brownies and not jogging enough. Same with obsessive-compulsive disorder. When I am too isolated and regimented in my thoughts. It's all about phasing in and phasing out with mental thought patterns.

This adjustment of my own mind from one thought pattern to another also mirrors the diverse thought patterns of stakeholders of a system with common environmental resources. Are people fixated and tunneled onto one or two ideas or visions or values? Or are people prismatic and multi-factorial in their thinking? To what degree are they an obsessive-compulsive, narrow hedgehog? To what degree are they controlled-ADHD, curious foxes?

It's also related to time demands and information management as well. People who have crazy time deadlines tend to think more linear. People with more free time to think are more so non-linear in their reasoning (but hopefully not information saturated!). That is the problem with being an open-minded person. One can become supersaturated with information quite swiftly.

No wonder why I have electronocommunicatiphobia (ECP)!

315. Opinions Article Written Last December of 2007, Never Published, Thank Goodness! "Christmas Woes: Novel Victim of Internet Fraud"

Christmas Woes: Novel Victim of Internet Fraud. Page 1.
Christmas Woes: Novel Victim of Internet Fraud. Page 2.

PDF file of article found here: http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/xmaswoesnovelvictiminternetfraud.pdf.

I suppose people are wondering why I am posting this old article here and now. What happened is I tried to submit another article on my being the "Living Human Guinea Pig of University Bureaucracy." I found the email of Matt Kettman of the Santa Barbara Independent buried within my email account--with this newspaper article attached! Oh ya. I forgot. Well, anyhoo. I am glad it wasn't published or looked at. Apparently the review I wrote for the company was deemed as "excessively dramatic" for epinions.com. Whatever. It was the first time this ever happened to me! I have the RIGHT to be a drama girl!

314. Poem "On the Whateverness of Hearts Stopping"

This poem was inspired from conversations with my friend, Tariel. The poem illustrates two paradoxes: one paradox is that in order to deal with and manage death and loss, you must take it "lightly" and "ephemerally." But my ultimate pursuit of life is to live beyond my own life. I want to become a fossil that will be preserved for a million gazillion years. Tariel has the ability to find meaning and let go of things quite swiftly, so I have come to learn. Which to me, can be... in part self demeaning, because I find life and death and loss and rebirth to be quite a sacred process.

The second paradox is more so the concept of the human tendency to (1) live in the present and "make it through the day" but paradoxically and environmentally (2) to live in the present, accounting for the past, envisioning a future. Existence in context. Visceral existence. Mental existence. Fundamentally and viscerally, we human organisms are very good at living just to make it through the day. As mental entities in the university, we have to compromise our visceral needs with our mind's tendency to create grand worlds far beyond the near present, near-past, and near-future.

313. Opinions Piece: The Living Human Guinea Pig of University Bureaucracy

Living Human Guinea Pig of University Bureaucracy. Page 1.
Living Human Guinea Pig of University Bureaucracy. Page 2.
Living Human Guinea Pig of University Bureaucracy. Page 3.

PDF File for the Article: http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/livinghumanguineapigunivbureaucracy.pdf.

I don't exactly know how this piece came out, but essentially, I had a wonderful conversation with Becca, a new grad student of Drs. Steve Gaines and Bob Warner, and afterwards, I was finally inspired to write this comical adventure of my transferring graduate schools and my vow to stay and finish at UC Santa Barbara. That night, I also had the opportunity that night to share the piece with Hector Javkin, who advised me to further elaborate the guinea pig analogy :-).

I am now starting to get into a habit of sending articles to (1) local newspapers and magazines (2) as well as a small group of family and friends.

312. Outline for "Scale in Biological and Human-Environmental Systems"

Page 1. Scale in Biological and Human Environmental Systems Outline. Page 2. Scale in Biological and Human Environmental Systems Outline.
Cartoonized Photograph of My Wall in My Room: The Ultimate Outline on Scale. It's verification that I am working very hard right now :-). All my roommates can also eyewitness my borderline insanity outline. I am sure that I will be piling layers of information on this wall over the quarter.
Cartoonized Photograph of My Wall in My Room: The Ultimate Outline on Scale. Inversed colors. Wish my room could glow in the dark at night!

Here is the PDF FILE of the outline above: http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/scaleinbiologicalandhumanenvironment.pdf.

Just came out of Sam Sweet's course. My brain is buzzing with ideas. I can't move on to his lectures until I get rid of some old ideas and place the first set of notes on the internet.

In life, you have you choose your battles very... very wisely. Hence, all my transferring and hopping around between three grad schools. I look at this outline, and my conversings with Dr. Sam Sweet, and I know I have chosen the battle I need to pursue. For very personal, and universal reasons.

311. An Evolution of Student Identification Cards

Vic's new UCSB Student ID card. Best one yet. The smiling represents that I have constructed an "extroverted" people-interface character even though I am intrinsically introverted and am shy of cameras. I like to be the one who takes the pictures! Also did the "stretched-turtle-neck effect" and the "Disney angle" face--how Disney draws all their female characters with a slight angle to the side, not directly forward. I guess it's living it up to Environmental Media!
Vic's ID card from UC Riverside. Just finished writing Question Reality. Tired. Puffed up cheeks. Puffy undereyes. The night before I just had only three hours of sleep. Had a gnarly argumetn with my mother in concern of the arrangement of my room (silly thing now). In bad shape at that time. In horrid shape for the entire year. Looked directly into the camera rather than a side view.
Vic's UCLA Student ID card in 2003. I had a nice, relaxing summer by that point, so my skin didn't break out with anything. But I looked into the camera directly, but almost as if I had a gloss in my eyes and wasn't fully centralized internally. I also look back: what in the hxll was a 23-year old doing in grad school? I was the youngest of the class. Compared to 2008, I stared directly into the camera, almost as if I had "knowing eyes" and have a much better sense of self and what in the hxll I am doing with my life (or perhaps, this could be an illusion of a false sense of confidence, something that all university academics supposely need to formulate: a false sense of confidence and certainty)! Ahhh! No, I have a theme for my Ph.D. and I am elated with its all-encompassing properties. Nothing to complain about.

I suppose transferring schools several times is an inefficient process, and can be viewed quite negatively, especially by the administration who was not able to provide the right academic environment for me to function and thrive. But now that I am back at UCSB, I have close to nothing to complain about. And ironically, there are two forefront benefits of transferring schools: (1) you have come to learn directly about bureaucracy and rule systems for managing education and students and resources (which is one of my advisor's research, the investigation of institutions, rights and rule systems). Essentially, I was a guinea pig of an experiment of university institutions. Maybe, that is why my advisor took me in. Transferring schools several times is perceived negatively by most people (even academics), but there were quite a few "knowing professors" at UCSB who came to understand, and potentially see these experiences as advantages. and (2) I have come to rack up quite a few student ID cards, which all still reside in my self-designed army-like purse-wallet thing (actually, it's a passport wallet converted into a purse-wallet I can hang around my neck). Student ID cards are great for getting discounts--most particularly movies.

I think these three student ID cards represent drastic transformations of myself and my perception of reality over the years. You can even see these transformations through the images themselves. The way how I look. My facial expressions. Even how I pose myself. From a timid, shy, goodie-two-shoes follow the rules clueless, underaged grad student at UCLA to a more mature, picture-posing outside-the-box environmenal media student at UCSB. I even managed to smile! I have finally reached a threshold of satisfaction with myself in terms of my brain (not that I am satisfied with myself, I have so much more to do and accomplish!)--and how the university defines me and places me--as an environmental media student. The smile and the posing and the turtle neck stretch represents my self training in photography. Which has finally paid off into a nice student ID card. Don't get me wrong in terms of self-scrutiny, I have such high self standards in aesthetics that if I don't look like Natalie Portman, I am not aesthetically optimal (from a photographic point of view). I have come to learn about and accept my own form--like my body is this strange vessel I live in but don't truly know it (yet attempting to know it)--and have come to learn my form's angles of optimized aesthetics, which is not a high region, but there are ways how to make me look tolerable to look at :-). At some angles, I look like a little girl and at other angles I look like a cartoon character. I don't know. Natalie Portman has optimized aesthetics such that if you took a picture of her at any angle, at any distance--she would still look "beautiful" from a mathematical golden-rule point of view.

Such is the pickiness of a self-critical artist as myself!

310. One Week of Encounters with Influential Art

Since the last week-and-a-half-or-so has been the most overwhelming in terms of learning the operations of human brains, and hunting down like-minds, I would like to take a moment and rejoice in discovering some inspirational art, and some very inspirational people.
Spring Sky. Created by Michael Krzyzaniak. Absolutely beautiful artwork. Some of the most beautiful artwork I have seen in such a long time. Talk about optimal distribution of pigeonholes!
Michael Krzyzaniak is involved in a band called "The Right Hand," in addition to having his own superb myspace at http://www.myspace.com/michaelkrzyzaniak.
Photography of Lydia Leclair, fellow Brennie and Environmental Media Buff. This is an epic image from her website http://eyelydphoto.com.
Simple cover of a new cross-UC campus literary magazine called Matchbox Magazine. Comes from simple construction-paper-cuts. Very elegant, despite its simplicity. The content of the magazine was "okay" but I am a scientist and think about the environment, so maybe I am just not the right audience, eh? I think it would be condusive to have an environmental literary magazine. I do admit the interior FORMATTING of the magazine was consistent and superb, just not necessarily captivating content!

I know this is kind of a sad thing to say, but it is almost like last week or so in the first week of school was some kind of scientific experiment of interacting with the masses. You have so many trials-and-errors of meeting people, and then your mind goes through this sorting process of who to latch onto and who to discard. And why. So weird. People. There's more than enough of a sample size. They're all over... and they tend to be easily accessible!

309. What is My Purpose? Scale and Evolutionary Vertebrate Morphology (Size in Biology) with Dr. Sam Sweet

Syllabus Sheet for Evolutionary Vertebrate Morphology.
Lecture Schedule for Evolutionary Vertebrate Morphology.
Lab Schedule for Evolutionary Vertebrate Morphology.
Vic's Introductory Non-linear, Historical Blah that Allows Her to Focus on this Course!

PDF file is accessible here: http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/5.sizesamsweetscaleasreasoningtool.pdf.

Since writing this, I have met a few students in class, and had the opportunity to know better Jen and Dan, two very cool vertebrate paleontologists.

308. Poem Conversations with a Reptile

Conversations with a Reptile PDF is found here: http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/conversationswithareptile.pdf.