Professor Kjar's lecture.

On Friday, March 26th, I attended "Evolution: Order and Chaos," a lecture given by Professor Kjar. It was a new, and pretty comical, spin on Evolution that I had not really learned before. For instance, when he asked, "why are there consistant characters?" and answered himself by saying, "because that's the kind of mood God was in." It was a real belief, but I had never heard anyone say it in a way that made me laugh.
I had already gone into the lecture with the basic knowledge of evolution, not really expecting to gain much from it. I was mistaken, and even a little embarassed, when Professor Kjar started to discuss with us the many misconceptions that people have about evolution. Apparently, there is no progressive evolution, and genetic drift is only moderately random. Whoops!
I think the most interesting part was that Professor Kjar could relate all of his studies to ants. When people say that they are studying something, I do not think anyone is prepared for them to say that the subjects are ants. I know that he was serious and passionate about them, but I also think it added to the comicalness of the program.
Professor Kjar's lecture helped to expand on what we are learning in class a little, because he helped to explain why the church did not accept evolution, something I had always wondered. Apparently, God made everything to be perfect, and if animals were perfect then they would not have the need to evolve. I can see how this might have confused people.

(Scott Thompson. 9 July, 2009. Online image. Yahoo Creative Commons. 29 March, 2010)

- Tia Lambert '13

Blade Runner.

Question: Blade Runner is best known for its cyberpunk mise en scene (design aspects of the film): the incredibly dense texture of its shots. Watch very carefully and describe the 2020 culture the movie suggests visually.

Answer: From what I can see so far in the movie the world makes incredible advances in science in the next few years, however, its environment takes a sharp downward turn. In 2020, animals have become virtually extinct. It had become so bad that people were paying less money for robotic animals than they were for real animals. Apart from this, everything was dark and gloomy looking. Buildings were either falling apart or leaking from every crack in the cieling, but even in this state people seemed to somehow be living comfortably (or at least without care of their situation). I believe that the state of the world is due in part to the replicants. Humans believed that by advancing science they would create more order, because they would have something that could do the work for them. In their disillusioned state they appeared to miss the chaos ensuing around them as the state of their environment decayed due to the sheer lack of care and trying.

Question: A moral message of the movie is that it was wrong to enslave the replicants and use them as forced labor since they were so human-like in both appearance and thought process. What would need to be different about replicants in order for us to feel that it was OK to use them for labor?

Answer: We use things just like replicants every day in large factories. The difference? Our machines don't resemble humans. In fact, I'm not quite sure how people from the future believed that creating human-like slaves would be ethically okay. All that they were really creating were excuses so as to not have to do work for themselves. These replicants looked exactly like humans, they had emotions like humans, and they bled like humans. So why is it right to enslave them just because they were manufactured and not born? I don't really have the answer to that, and I'm not sure I'll ever be able to understand it. Personally, I would be against the very idea of their creation.

("FOND D'ECRAN BLADE RUNNER." Online image. Yahoo Creative Commons. 15 March, 2010.)

- Tia Lambert '13

Dr. Kapasula's lecture.

(Claire. "Single Ladies." 17 June, 2009. Online image. Yahoo Creative Commons. 9 March, 2010.)

On Monday, March 8th, I attended Dr. Kapasula's lecture "Feminist Agency in the Age of Beyonce's 'Single Lades': Faces of International Feminism in Transnational Popular Songs." From just the title of the lecture I assumed that it was going to be a good lecture worth going to, and I was proved correct. Dr. Kapasula was a very fun lecturer. She was funny, and passionate about her beliefs.
In her lecture I learned that the song 'Single Ladies,' by Beyonce, could be analyzed to a point where she was singing about women's oppression, without even really realizing it. What surprised me the most was when Dr. Kapasula went as far as to suggest that the 'ring' in Beyonce's song stood against homosexual relationships. The most interesting part was probably when she told us about 'divorce' in one of the African nations. For this to happen, a woman merely needed to send the man on his way, and light a torch of grass that she pulled from the ground. This was made possible, because it was a matriarchal society where the men took the women's names and move to where they were from.
To me, this helped me to clarify the meanings of order and chaos in a feminist sense. Women all over the world are fighting for freedom, yet you have other women like Beyonce who are creating hits that they don't realize have the opposite effect as intended.
This can be related to The Burial at Thebes, because in the book Antigone (a woman) is being ruled over by Creon (a man). Creon makes all the decisions for her, until she decides to stand up for herself and defy him. This could represent the oppression that women face, followed by the rise up and take over of power. I think that it is fair to say that while Creon is still King in the end of the story, Antigone's defiance has left him powerless.

- Tia Lambert '13

Professor Lemak's lecture.

On Friday, March 5, I had the pleasure of sitting in on Professor Lemak's lecture of patriotism. In this lecture I learned a great deal about ancient Greece and politics. What struck me as the most interesting, was that people used to be chosen by chance to lead their city-state. This was done by a lottery. To me, this makes no sense at all. This would mean that anybody could run the country.
From this lecture I formulated my own opinions on justice and authority. For instance, one question posed to us was how do we balance social justice with moral authority? This line is hard to draw. As seen in The Burial at Thebes Antigone faces this question when she chooses to bury her brother's body, even though she has strictly been forbidden from doing it by the King, Creon. Antigone was acting out in justice for her brother, and Creon was the authority. Though some people would call his morals questionable, it is obvious that he had good intentions. He just went about them the wrong way. In my personal opinion, Antigone was in the right. Authority always dominates, but that does not mean that a little rebellion is not necessary sometimes (also demonstrated by Professor Lemak's rock and roll presentation). The same can be said about "just" and "unjust" laws.
Social responsibility and justice are almost two sides of the same coin. It is one's social responsibility to help others, and in some way this can be seen as a social justice, however, nobody is expected Joe Shmoe to jump into an armed bank robbery. What is expected of normal every day people is that they help others and perform their duties to the best of their abilities, without putting themselves in immediate danger. People in power, on the other hand, are given much more responsibility, and so it is often times that something they do for the greater good can be looked down on if it does not suite everybody's needs. In this way, their devotion to the people they are trying to lead leaves them with very little freedom.
Leadership is constituted by a powerful position, in most cases. However, it is possible to be a leader by merely setting a good example to others around you (like an older sibling per say). Leaders are confronted with many issues, and sometimes they can be extremely hard to solve on your own. In The Burial at Thebes King Creon thought that he was making a morally sound choice by not burying the body of Polynices, because he was, after all, a traitor to his kingdom. Was this the right choice? In my opinion, no, however, that is why making moral decisions like this is so hard. No matter what, somebody is going to be unhappy. That is why it is necessary for the leader to make a decision based on the greater good of everybody.

"The Burial at Thebes - how not to lead." - Professor Lemak.

(Franco Perrelli. "Antigone." 18 November, 2007. Online image. Yahoo Creative Commons. 6, March 2010)

- Tia Lambert '13