Tina's Reflections

The butterfly effect

2011-03-04T12:50:00.001-08:00

Wow what an article, and what a statement it made in class. I am again reminded that I should give in to my urge and watch the documentary King Corn. I have been thinking about doing this for a while but never got around to do so. In my eyes this science debate if you will reminds me of DDT and how Rachel Carson's Silent Spring opened up the eyes of millions proving what a detriment that the insecticide had on the ecosystem, but everything thing that eventually hurts the environment has had a positive effect too. For instance malaria rates were down when DDT killed the mosquitoes, but that never gets talked about because the bird deaths in the states were more alarming. (This is just a really rough sketch of what I remember when studding the topic)

The other thing that really caught my attention was the reaction Greenpeace had on the bt controversy. They sure do make themselves noticed that for sure whether they are clip boarding around campus or displaying a theatrical performance of the butterfly affect in Seattle. Call me undereducated and overestimated but something about this origination is a turn off to me.

Lastly I’d like to note that politics has been viciously showing up in every article and just about every aspect of my life now that I’m so in tune and consumed with it from class. It’s like being in the third grade again, and learning what tensile is and never really thinking about it up until you see it everywhere once you have been made aware what it is and that it exists. I feel like every time I open my refrigerator, cook, or sit down for a meal I have just invested in politics and stated my priorities because of how I make my decisions of what I choose to put in my mouth. It makes me sick to think about .

The common good for who?

2011-03-02T18:22:00.000-08:00

The word “corporate” to me is a nameless chain of command looking for ways to make their employees feel like they never do enough. “Corporate” sets almost impossible standards, and offers nothing less than phony negotiations. What they stand for is perceived through advertisement, but what you get is a voice recording and an unwillingness to understand the problem with sincerity. Taking my thoughts into consideration I can see how these scientists live in fear that their own ideas will be used against themselves, and having a potential risk that they can be penalized financially if they do not take certain legal precautions. Where is the science in that? What is it about the common good if the common wants to take the good you have contributed and use it against you? When something is good everyone wants the credit! What does this say about other science that we are not even seeing? What is being hidden from us that could help us, but there is a laboratory in fear that what they have worked on for so long will be stripped from them if don’t protect their work.

Scientists who work with corporations face impossible timelines to properly do their research, and face so many risks associated with patented work. How is this helping the public if they are doing sloppy research? It’s the mcdonaldization of research and health! What used to be acceptable is now the new sufficient (even though it isn’t). Maximizing our researchers’ productivity and data collection, but also shaving years off the study and saving money in the mean time! Similarity to the tragedy of the commons- it’s the tragedy of the corporations!

glitch

2011-02-28T16:46:00.000-08:00

Interestingly enough two phrases that seem to reappear in the readings are circulate and non human. Circulate and circulating reference I believe is the entire process or cycle something goes through or is connected with. Similar to the phrase what goes up must come down notion, but in Bennett’s work her circulating is in more modern terms. She describes circulate as “finance capital, CO2 emissions, refugees, viruses, pirated DVDs (Which by the way is my most favorite inference she makes), ozone, human rights, weapons of mass destruction money, the ozone layer. Going back to the diamond shape schematic everything has to be working/rotating in the right formula to allow the system to regulate. So if our “system” in society now consists of CO2 emissions, viruses, and pirated DVDs to name a few does this mean our circulating system is disregulated or could it mean that we are in a new formula? What happens if the formulas no longer work and the outside ovals stop rotating with its siblings? What would the world look like then?

On the other hand I find it interesting that the term non human keeps coming up as well. Does all scientific literature refer to everything as human or not? When does non human stop? Does it end with the living things that humans come into contact with or is it even so far as the whole environment? The term non human seems so segregated and classist. When Bennett refers to humans as “milking the grid” causing the black out the first thing that came into my head was of course we did! Humans take advantage of everything to have their needs and wants met whenever possible. The question is never should we leave the lights on. It only makes sense that earth is in the shape it is today because we use and abuse our resources, maybe not everyone but most of us do. When we find a solution for energy we demand more than it has to offer, what’s go to happen to this world if we don’t stop these behaviors?

Critiqued out!

2011-02-25T20:58:00.000-08:00

“As if critique should be reserved for the

elite and remain difficult and strenuous, like mountain climbing or yachting,

and is no longer worth the trouble if everyone can do it for a nickel?

What would be so bad with critique for the people? We have been complaining

so much about the gullible masses, swallowing naturalized facts, it

would be really unfair to now discredit the same masses for their, what

should I call it, gullible criticism?”

Referring that only certain people are eligible to offer critique and are allowed to challenge or argue an issue provides the thought that the art of critique is much like drafting a theory. The initial author lavishes over their idea in the laboratory before it becomes manipulated and abused by outsiders.

It seems like critique is over offered and that is why the article was published in the first place. Nobody believes anything anymore, people are getting less and less information, and politicians are getting more sophisticated with their responses. Every house hold feels that they could run the country better, and has become mutual dinner conversation- but secretly half of them don’t even vote.

In this reading I feel Latour’s tone more than I understand his comments. Though this is probably the first article that has kept me entertained. The way he condoms critique is similar to the way I feel about describing the universe and ones purpose in life. If I go on long enough I go in circles and never accomplish an answer. Some with Latour, I feel his energy but I did not find an answer provided, which is saddening because his though process is difficult to follow and when it is over there was no sense of accomplishment, like in my earlier post there is no answer key so to say with him.

what science is up against

2011-02-25T20:06:00.001-08:00

Two people with different goals look to science for the answer. One perpetuates the other in circulating reference, where Dautry wants to ensure France’s military strength and the self-sufficiency of its energy production where Joliot wants to be the first in the world to produce controlled artificial nuclear fission in the laboratory. Here politics using one another to boost their reasons for supporting and empowering each other’s goal still persisting with their own needs. When finding a desire and when one can see a shared answer to the goal it allowed for science to survive. Now from the story of the boss making his appearances and assuring the public of the good his laboratory can do he can get the funding for his researchers. In the line “the pure scientists are like helpless nestlings while the adults are busy building the nest and feeding them” reminds me of penguins where the parents do so much as chews the food for their young. The boss is doing exactly that. He is the filter that has to be gone to allow for the raw science to exist. He is protecting the laboratory scientists as they are in isolation. “If you get inside a laboratory, you see no public relations, no politics, no ethical problems, no class struggle, no lawyers; you see science isolated from society from”. The text also reference that science is like the heart of the body- without this vital muscle, the complexity of the veins, and all the systems which depend on each other you have no purpose, you have death. An example of this system of science is the schematic where allies, colleagues, instruments, and public representation all come together to represent five links and knots that if just one of the “wheels” so to say is working insufficient the shape of the sequence becomes dysfunctional. Similarly to the body if one system is off the whole body suffers. The schematic looks very similar to the shape of a diamond. A stone that is precious and well respected. To a jeweler there is nothing worse than a flawed diamond. The beauty is in it perfection and the energy it provides with its symmetrical flow. As the boss makes his connections with his exhausting schedule he works to prefect the flow needed so the laboratory can produce hard science.

Kosso's reading

2011-02-25T15:37:00.000-08:00

“Reading’s/theory’s ability (alone) to explain a phenomenon is not necessarily indicative of its truth”

I see theorists as trying to demonstrate a theory so intently that they put it into a human made formula so they can begin to untangle and start to explain the phenomena they call a theory. Now to answer the question above pulled from the article- perhaps the equation that the human comes up with is not the accurate formula, but it fits the criteria. Should a theory have one solid answer? The text specifically states that we are never given an answer key. It seems that schematics and explanations are a structured format to provide tangible evidence for those of us who need this translation of idea into fact. The process of identifying and explaining a theory is what justifies the claim that it is built upon, as the text proves this remark it also suggests that this is a process worthy of appreciation and beauty. There is this consistency that after trial and error in trying to justify a theory we search for a mutual acquaintance in the theories relationship to that which it is trying to explain. If it is still simply unexplainable we always have observation, which leads us back to redefining the schematic.

Should theories be simplified or does complexity add a dimension that allows for exquisite interpretation. Are theories delicate and then become complex because we have a human need for truth or are theories oversimplified?

Kosso has been more enjoyable for me to read, I especially like his list of ways in defining theories. I love that theories are a result from an observation and once repetition has proven itself in the lab the theory has survived its infancy and is brought into the world for critique.

My reaction in the form of response

2011-02-02T22:48:00.001-08:00

In Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern he starts off suggesting the most comprehensible of topics like strokes of words brushing the paper keeping me inclined and comfortable. I can relate. He is talking about the world, our world, the one we share and are faced with the same problems. He then quickly looses me in his rampage of other topics in this unimaginable newspaper where just about every modern idea of man is addressed. I can’t even think of a newspaper where so much is achieved in the pages. Again talking about something we hold in common the same world, but such a radically different view and way of explanation. This is the theme that I am consistently picking up from his work; this consistency to challenge me beyond all challenges, and force me to keep up with his way of thinking. If I misunderstand the next sentence, and then the next paragraph pretty soon my un-relentlessness to crave an understanding is long gone.

His writing reminds me of the way I write. I feel like I get a point across with the way I choose to explain something that makes it ever so clear to my audience, but when I get my corrections I have failed. I see that not only are my original thoughts judged as wrong, but my efforts of trying are no longer reinforced.

I want to understand where Latour is coming from. I just have been thinking this way for 22 years and have learned subtle ways to change my view finder, but never so much as to suggest that everything I know about science is not what science really is.

Why does Latour admit that the work of him and his colleagues remains incomprehensible? Who is his audience? How is it that he can title his piece We Have Never Been Modern, and then at the end write that we are modern?!!

Then he continues on about global warming just as he started out doing so. My thought is that if he was trying to talk about global warming the entire time he added many unnecessary thoughts. I think he is looking at global warming in a different way, but to say we have never been modern makes no sense because we have had to be modern to get the world in the condition that it is currently in.