silva rerum

About suffering they were never wrong

I sup­pose, now, that I was being slightly over-​optimistic in think­ing that I would be updat­ing this blog as fre­quently as I had hoped. Still, that this blog is still alive and kick­ing months after I star­ted is some indic­a­tion of a tri­umph! Having already star­ted blogs and quit them less than a month later, I was resigned to believe that I had com­mit­ment issues. Hurrah, then, to see how I con­tinue to write!

Work’s stead­ily increas­ing and BIOL 334 is encroach­ing upon my idyllic vaca­tion. People are return­ing from their vaca­tions now and it really feels like summer’s end­ing! What a shame, because it’s only just begun.

Lately, I’ve been read­ing some inter­est­ing art­icles and thought I should share them here:

“The Origin of Stories: Horton Hears a Who” by Brian Boyd
In this well-​written, thought­ful art­icle, Boyd pro­poses “an evol­u­tion­ary explan­a­tion first for art, then for nar­rat­ive, then for fic­tion.” Drawing upon dif­fer­ent bod­ies of know­ledge (includ­ing psy­cho­logy and lit­er­ary the­ory), Boyd stresses that Cultural Critique of lit­er­at­ure is not enough, that under­stand­ing works as con­trib­ut­ors to evol­u­tion (yes, evol­u­tion – a bio­lo­gical term) may offer much more insight than pre­vi­ously could be garnered.

“Time as an Illusion” by Paul S. Wesson
Now, I hardly have any formal train­ing as a space­time phys­i­cist (though the name con­jures up vis­ions of Star Trek now), but I thought this was a really great (if lengthy) art­icle about time, space and space­time. Wesson argues that, “all moments in time exist sim­ul­tan­eously, but­they are ordered to cre­ate the illu­sion of an unfold­ing exper­i­ence by some phys­ical mech­an­ism,” from the abstract and con­tin­ues in some gory detail by explor­ing the­or­ies of relativity.

Climbing the Hierarchy of Masculinity: Asian American Men’s Cross-​Racial Competition for Intimacy with White Women by Kumiko Nemoto
This art­icle is about Asian-​Americans but I’m sure the find­ings can be extra­pol­ated to Asian-​Canadians as well. It’s really inter­est­ing, Nemoto argues that “Asian American men’s rela­tion­ships with white women serve as a vehicle for either the men’s chal­lenge of or ascen­sion within the internal dimen­sion of hege­monic mas­culin­ity.” Through the art­icle, Nemoto doc­u­ments inter­views and finds that “Asian American men’s cross-​racial com­pet­i­tion util­izes four dis­tinct pro­cesses: detest­ing white mas­culin­it­ies; approx­im­at­ing to white mas­culin­it­ies; eschew­ing white mas­culin­it­ies; and fail­ing in the attempt to man­euver white mas­culin­it­ies.” Very interesting!

Less aca­dem­ic­ally, I’ve really been hooked on Agatha Christie no Meitantei Poirot to Marple, an animé adapt­a­tion of some of Christie’s most treas­ured stor­ies. The sum­mary is as follows:

Young Mabel West is the daugh­ter of mys­tery writer Raymond West, who wants her to lead a nor­mal life. Rebelling against this, Mabel wants to be a great detect­ive, and sets out for London to become assist­ant to none other than Hercule Poirot, the great Belgian detect­ive who resides there. She finally wins the reluct­ant approval of her father, and embarks on an excit­ing life of mys­tery and sus­pense — his only demand being that she occa­sion­ally spend some time with her great-​aunt, Jane Marple, in the small vil­lage of St. Mary Mead.

All in all, highly enjoy­able, and a good foil for while I’m read­ing Three Act Tragedy.