Smarts and Me

The other day, I was at a BBQ. This was the most racially diverse get-together I'd been to in years. It made me happy. There was a large contingent of Asain folk there, specifically Korean, as that was the race of the host. While hanging out near the bbq, I began conversating with a couple of Korean guys around my age or younger. The bf was also there. After discussing a variety of historical topics including the South Korean/North Korean whatnot, the Japanese/Korean conflicts, and Korean culture in general, one of the guys asked "Are you like, a professor? Or a history major?" I brushed it off with "I read a lot of Wikipedia" and we moved on, but secretly inside I was SO EXCITED! My real answer would have gone like this: "OH MY GOD! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU SAID THAT! DO I REALLY COME OFF AS PROFESSOR-ISH? THAT IS SO AWESOME! THANK YOU FOR SAYING THAT! CAN I HUG YOU? AND THEN TEACH YOU SOME MORE?!"

Here are some other things happening in my brain recently:

I'm finding that as I get older words have less meaning for me. Two examples of this are: Evil and Slut. I don't think either of them means anything.

After the Summer of '07, or what I call my "annus horribilis" I slowly came upon the realization that there is no evil in this world (IMO). All my logic of evil had been crafted by Disney. Humans are the only creatures who are 'evil' and everything we do that is 'evil' is all explainable by lack of social skills, extenuating circumstances, and brain chemistry gone "wrong" (for more on this last one, I recommend the book I'm currently reading Incognito by David Eagleman, or this amazing example).

Also, a quick note. Isn't it interesting that we are slowly but surely explaining our bad guys, our incarnations of evil? Observe -

1900: The Wizard of Oz is published.
1995: Wicked is published, explaining that it was all a big misunderstanding, and the Wicked Witch is totally cool.

1977: Star Wars comes to life.
1999: Episode One arrives, explaining how Anakin Skywalker is just a scared child was removed from his mother and was a pawn of the force.

1997: Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone is published.
2005: Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince is published, explaining how Tom Riddle grew up and slowly turned into Lord Voldemort, mainly because no one loved him.

Why do you think as a society we are doing this?

As for 'Slut', it's a negative word for a woman who enjoys having sex, or has multiple partners. God forbid.

Umm ... I guess that's all I've got for the moment. Oh! Wait!

Okay, so I'm also reading this book called Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity. I'm not very far, but there's a really cool part about how primates grooming one another led to human language. Essentially, in a small group of primates, there's time for everybody to groom everyone. But once you get past a certain number, there's just not enough time in the day. So there's this thing called "vocal grooming" that primates do, where you call out to one another, staying 'in touch' with sounds instead of touch. This goes much quicker. And then the author points out that if we think about all the places gossip happens the most: bathhouses, barber shops, and spas, this connection is even more obvious. I just think that's really neat.

Also, at the BBQ, I said I wanted to just have books be edible, so I could just eat them page by page and it would go much quicker and I could retain the information. And a friend of mine, who's breastfeeding, said "Oh, good, I'd get to eat 500 more pages a day than everyone else." :-)