436. An Additional Disclaimer Will Eventually Need to be Added to "The Curious Case of Lobster Trap Escape Ports"

Disclaimer Slide #1.

Social Networking Disclaimer Slide #2.

After several discussions with quite a few academics and media professionals, I was encouraged to further elaborate the film in terms of the California Department of Fish and Games' response and potentially fishermen discourse with the DFG. These two slides ultimately "bound the system" of the film and will prevent any runaway Lonelygirl15 soap opera happening with a "Bump in the Wire."

263. Formatting the Question Reality Manuscript via Lulu: Initial Disclaimers and Open Peer Review System

Pdf File of Introductory Disclaimer can be found here:
http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/2.disclaimeropenpeerreviewFINAL.pdf
The official certificate of Attempting to Achieve Commonsenseology: individuals finding a consistent way of thinking and living in this modern world. Included in the QR manuscript. On the promotion of preserving individual uniqueness and Individual Intellectual Identity (III) in a society of mass production and homogenization and standardization. A concept that is emphasized at the College of Creative Studies (CCS) at UC Santa Barbara and perhaps even overlaps with the philosophies of the Montessori schools. It seems like the philosophy of the Montessori school is essentially my basic philosophy of film-making: "Teaching people to teach themselves."
Terra's mind (Victoria's extroverted fictional self) is Institutionally Unincorporated. In a megascale society with bureaucracies riddled with corruption, being IU might be a good thing.

Buz the "geobum" has got an Fud in Commonsenseology, a pun on the Ph.D. Essentially a mockery in what does a "Ph.D" actually mean anymore nowadays: knowing more and more and less and less of nothing?

A Question Reality rough draft banner requesting help as "open peer review." Placed on the IQR website, but might soon be taken down.
A Question Reality rough draft banner requesting help as "open peer review." Placed on the IQR website, but might soon be taken down.
A Question Reality rough draft title page requesting help as "open peer review." Placed on the IQR website, but might soon be taken down.
A Question Reality rough draft title page requesting help as "open peer review." Placed on the IQR website, but might soon be taken down.

It's ironic to think that these three written pages represent three years of pre-meditation. Scary, huh?! And finally, with the help of my friend, I had enough clarity of thought to extract the pure, orderly thoughts from the chaos that has accumulated in my brain.

I had to write this Introductory Disclaimer because several factors were concerning me:

(1) I was overcoming the whole "perfect book" editing and formatting. I started to think about the works of other great philosophers--Plato, Descartes, even Darwin--and I bet even THEIR manuscripts weren't even perfect in publication. I found a typo sentence in the manuscript earlier this morning! Ooops. Anyway, author Robin Kilgore additionally encouraged me to "publish with imperfection." The most important concern is to communicate with others and get your ideas out.

(2). I have been struggling with the lack of intellectual promiscuity across industries, which may be in part due to the "immense size" of systems and individual humans reach "saturation points" in terms of the number of other humans they can network with. For example, the old story goes that the university remains within the "ivory towers" without meddling much with society. Additionally, the New York publishing houses have their own community networks and it is very difficult to get into their ingroups. To think that I was being peer-reviewed by New York publishing affiliates and a small group of university professors frightened me. I thought the audience I was trying to convince, or moreso "please" was too small and their perception of Reality may not be that accurate (let alone them projecting their perceptions upon my own work just to get a stamp of approval on my forehead)!

I feel that my intellectually creative output (writing, multi-media art) should be accessible to a wider, "alternative audience" that spans across narrow, specialized industries and professions. It will help "objectify" the peer-review process. As a professor epically stated in response to the publishing of a faulty biomarker article in the journal Science, "Who peer-reviewed this paper? A monkey?!!" At one point in a dinner with Dr. Oran Young's lab, in attempt to describe or identify myself, I labeled myself, "environmental media, environmental philosophy. No, using environmental media as an excuse to do environmental philosophy. No. Okay. Environmental psychology." My roommate, Julie, finally approved. "Yes! You are using environmental media as a way to do environmental philosophy." I am essentially covering my xss with an "alternative audience" since my research is going to be more holistic in its properties--which is a head-butting problem when the university is largely riddled with specialists.

(3). The last issue is the concept of "interactivity" in media. Is communication a one-way or two-way street when reading books? When getting a book fresh from a printing press, it seems like the writing is static and authoritative and set-in-stone. Having websites to compliment the book makes the work more interactive. In addition, I am advocating an "open peer review process" and asked the reader to be a part of the collaborative process--also to be an editor and criqituer (I did this additionally because I "Victoria the poor graduate student" didn't have enough money to hire an editor).

Don't get me wrong. The Commonsenseology Certificate is not about promoting people to "think like Victoria" (people can absorb my work, and take it or leave it) but is emphasizing the concept of being skeptical and thinking for oneself.

In a world of globalization, homogenization, standardization, and mega-bureaucracy, it is increasingly difficult to pursue individual, independent endeavors uninfluenced by political and bureaucratic forces! The pursuit of science is corrupted to some degree merely because the individual scientist is inescapably embedded within a university political matrix. I know I am repeating myself, but I wrote Question Reality on LEAVE OF ABSENCE, aka "GRADUATE STUDENT SEBATTICAL." I had the opportunity to pursue whatever I wanted to for an entire year without the expectations of the university in my head. The true pursuit of science independent of mega-bureaucratic influence is close to impossible now.

So, in conclusion, these are the above thoughts and concerns that drove me to write the initial disclaimers and suggest and open peer review system early on in my Question Reality manuscript.

257. Formatting the Question Reality Manuscript via Lulu: Sample Freedom-of-Speech-Disclaimer-Page

Pdf of above. http://stokastika2.googlepages.com/3.disclaimerpage2.pdf

Revised version of Disclaimer included in the pdf above.
Older version of disclaimer I made during the school year 2005-2006.
Older version of disclaimer I made during the school year 2005-2006. Inverted colors. I showed this image to Ann Aasen, a social worker / psychology counselor at the UC Riverside Student Health Center. Ann helped me make it through the year. I joked, telling many friends and family members that Ms. Aasen was like my Ph.D. advisor for the year. We talked about the problems of universities being overspecialized nowadays and not providing interdisciplinary avenues for students whose brains don't fit nicely in one departmental box (at least for UC Riverside). Back in the day, Ann had a more generalist education within the university. In the end, Ann recommended that as a graduate student, I shouldn't harm my own health and psychological health by fighting bureaucracy of the university. Maybe in the end, I should just transfer back to UC Santa Barbara, which I did.

Ann Aasen was a single light of hope, but takes my mind back to very dark places of my past that need a bit of reflection. Just a little. I won't elaborate too much. In fall of 2005, my first quarter at UC Riverside, I recorded on my Olympus digital voice recorder a panic attack in the car. My primal brain was going out of whack and I was rationally aware of it. By winter quarter of 2006, I started seeing Ann routinely, for necessary psychological reasons. My advisor at the time was juggling 500 balls in a circus act of being department chair, and I was one in 500 balls just kind of thrown in the corner and picked up every once in a while. It's not my advisor's fault at all. It's the position of being chairman. I saw my dad go through it. Even Dr. Pete Sadler, a very inspirational professor. But I was neglected psychologically and became pushed more and more and more into a corner at multiple fronts until my mind froze and I could not physically move. At one front, going to grad school in your home town is not a brilliant idea. It's like trying to continue to biologically grow on an overgrown, sick, bleaching coral reef. Too many strings attached in one place. Secondly, exploring the scope of the field of geology freed me to some degree, but I also felt chained up once I knew "the geological box." I was outdoors but in a prison. "I don't want to stare at JUST rocks all my life! I need to account for ALL environmental data! And the human perception of it! From a holistic point of view!"

A low point of my university experience was in June of 2006. I was bawling my eyes out to one of the Associate Deans of the Graduate Division and she flatly told me, "I don't change the rules. I am not in the position of change the rules. Maybe you should just transfer back to UC Santa Barbara." So much for being Dean of Anything. I thought Deans are supposed to spearhead rule changes. Contrastingly, Dr. Oran Young (my new advisor) supports the concept of greasing and bending rules, especially since pre-existing rules are not working in terms of environmental management. One of the Assistant Deans of the Graduate Division and frankly told me in fall of 2006, "I am sorry but UC Riverside is a more compartmentalized university. Everyone fits in a departmental box. It just is." I was stunned, just as one of my CCS advisors was stunned when I told him this about UC Riverside. It seemed like no one was willing to change or budge. I was in a psychological wreck. I felt trapped in my mind and trapped in my environment. Ann Aasen helped me get through some of these dire moments of entrapment, but in other occassions, educating myself in multi-media art was the only way out to being trapped in my mind.

I am not ashamed to return to UC Santa Barbara, the birthing grounds of my own intellectual freedom and independence, which spurred the writing of Question Reality in the first place. UCSB provided me the holistic environment and intellectual community that spurred and built me to who I was today, so it seemed like coming back, UCSB was taking responsibility for their anomalous undergrad creation who ended up becoming obsessed with creative science writing and multi-media art.

In my mind, I envision myself psychologically and physically abused and beat up by the world for four years. I came knocking on the door to UC Santa Barbara on my hands and knees, completely humbl-ified by the constraints and compartmentalization of society, and I needed a return to marrying intellectual freedom and the CCS environment. I have experimented and failed enough, four years straight, and now I am ready to succeed. I was ready to finally do something right. I came crawling back to my CCS advisors and undergrad mentors, my eyes so torn and in pain by what I have seen and experienced, it ws almost as if I visited hxll and came back. It was good that I outsourced, because now I have something to contribute to UC Santa Barbara, just as UCSB had shaped me up as an undergrad!

I am sad the thoughts of Ann Aasen had taken me to gloomy memories of my near-recent past, but at least she was a light of hope amidst the chaos.

I found this on the internet. My eyes sparkled with glee. This was a MiltonLoveism. I need one of these, and I need to stamp it on my forehead.

The reason why I state the above disclaimer is a MiltonLoveism is because when Milton gives his rigs-to-reefs presentations, he presents these hilarious slides reminding people of the First Amendment of the Constitution, and that he has the freedom to state whatever he wants, even if the Truth hurts. Hence, the creation of my own freedom-of-speech disclaimers. The crux of some of Milton Love's jokes is the mixing of fish biology, science, and politics all at once. It works beautifully and parsimoniously. Milton is one of those rare scientists who acknowledge that science and politics inevitably MIX and you can't separate the two... unfortunately. Then you can't even divorce politics with psychology, like the whole cognitive dissonance effect. Oh, dude, Milton Love and I talked a lot about that. I even discussed this phenomenon with Dr. Young.

No, Milton Love is definitely not one of those denial scientists: "I am an ecologist but I am a scientist, so I don't want to get involved in politics." He's an active player, as much as he can be. The best part is that he makes dxm good jokes out of the situation.

As I have mentioned in previous blogs, the greatest theorists on human behavior I have ever encountered ended up being my biology professors--who end up making social commentaries as their "aside comments" in their lectures.

"Every professors' joke has become my research." Milton Love, blurts out "uh-oh" as he admits he is smelling some trouble. "Good trouble," my new advisor calls it.

I have been shunned as interdisciplinary at UC Riverside. UC Santa Barbara embraces it and welcomes it to some degree. In short, UCSB is like temporary placement in "heaven on earth" after the last few years of "hxll" I've been through.

Wow! I didn't know my Disclaimers had so much emotional and memory baggage behind them!

Mentally Catching Up with Dr. Milton Love!