Isn't it weird how you can keep so busy, have great things happen to you, seize some amazing opportunities, and still feel this empty?

This song is beautiful...

I keep listening to it over and over in Butler:



and that's all.

Creation - 1/22/10!!

My adviser actually sent out an article on her bioanthro list how this film had a difficult time picking up a distributor here in the US because it was 'too controversial'.

This article could just be the Brits poking fun at us Americans, but still, that this can even be the basis of a joke (and to others, be a totally valid argument), is ridiculous.

Is the story of Darwin and "The Origin" really more controversial than particular scenes from "Passion of the Christ" which I remember one critic calling "child abuse to any parent who brings their child to see this film"? Or even Bruno or Borat? Does it really compare to the most horrifying or grotesque movie you've ever seen?

I have a difficult time understanding why the historical story of Darwin is so particularly sensitive here in the US. Is it really because of the evolution vs. religion debate? Fine--believe in one and not the other, or try to reconcile both, it doesn't really matter to me. Neither belief has been or will be eliminated by the other. But the fact that you refuse to screen some film because of it? Ridiccccccc.

The quote on my honest tea bottle cap...

'If you're going through hell, keep going.'

-Winston Churchill

Junior year...(& resurrection of the blog..)

is going well so far. I'm feeling good, generally.

I'm taking this seminar called "Race: The Tangled History of a Biological Concept." And um, I've never read such racist science before in my life.

Science's reflection of social values rather than the Truth just keeps popping up in all my classes now...that concerns me....

But anyway, the most frightening thing we learned is without a doubt the story of Sarah Baartman. She was a "hottentot", "bushwoman", what have you, but pretty much she was taken from her native village somewhere in sub-saharan Africa and paraded around London as a freak show exhibition. Scientists were absolutely obsessed with her body, specifically her large buttocks, massive lips, and outward-jutting jaw. They would come in and poke around at her, trying to get her to remove her clothes so they could examine her genitalia, although she was always "too modest to allow them."

Scientists finally waited until she died and then examined/measured/dissected her vagina. She was used as scientific evidence (there are published papers on her examination) of black inferiority, racial difference (races as different species), African animal-like sexuality, and Africans' as the closest biological relation to primates, etc. Her brain and genitalia were on display in museums (since the mid 1800's), as well as castings of her body until 1974.

In 1994, Nelson Mandela asked for her remains to be returned to Africa. France complied in 2002...yeah.

But there is one positive thing to be gleaned from all this. This was an example of science using its social power and influence for something awful--to perpetuate 'scientific' racial ideologies that today, we see has no validity at all. But it had that power, that power to influence society and its values, and it still does. Therefore, can't it also use that same power for positive social change instead? (hint hint gay gene research?)

Here's a picture of her cast--you guys can be the judge:

Is it weird that sometimes I feel like a 35 year old woman trapped in a 19 year old body?

It's official.

Non-happiness is significantly worse than unhappiness.