Week two

Ok, so there's a lot to talk about from this weeks material, and I of course put it off until the night before. Stupid me. This might be a long one, so bear with me.

Because I just finished up the readings in Ghost of Berlin, I shall start there. Overall I thought it was a very interesting discussion of the development of Berlin and the different phases that the city went through as it was pulled apart by various external forces (war, Hitler, the separation of East & West.) It was really interesting to read about the scale of buildings that Hitler had intended to build and how that fit into his portrayal of a perfect German society. I think that Ladd really should have mentioned that Hitler wanted to rename the square in front of the Brandenburg gate (or one near it) to Adolf Hitler Platz. I think that would have really fit in with what Ladd was trying to say. I also wish that Ladd had talked about the building quality of the buildings that Hitler did build. Many were not properly designed, created with cheap materials, and simply fell apart. (I watched a history channel show it. Neat huh?)

As interesting as Ladd’s book is, I feel that his discussion of the Holocaust memorial was too simplified and missed many important points. I’ve looked through at the book of proposed memorials and I know that that well over 527 were submitted for the first competition, in fact thousands were submitted. I was also disappointed that he did not acknowledge the financial element connected to the winner of the first competition. It was suggested that Germans could sponsor names (of Jewish victims) to be written on the massive structure. Many people saw this as a way to escape dealing with the past by simply paying for redemption, which ultimately played a role in the demise of the design. I also disliked Ladd’s write off of the “Bus Stop” proposal as something anti-establishment or counter productive. I like the idea that memorials/monuments alleviate society of its responsibility to remember. I think that this idea is certainly true to some extent. We’ve essentially assigned memory a physical place, which encourages us to remember only when we’re at that specific spot. However, this was not a problem in the proposed Bus Stop! memorial. The fact that the memorial was attempting to have a basis in a genuine historical sight, wasn’t its main goal.

Well, I think that’s all that I’ve got about the book. (At least for now..)

I know that we’re supposed to talk about Seattle’s monuments and memorials, but to be honest with everyone; I don’t really know Seattle all that well. I’ll start off with a little differentiation. The word memorials is more directed towards that object that is being remember than the actual project that is being constructed. Memorials can take many shapes: days, books, festivals, etc. Monuments, as I understand them, are the physical things that are being use to memorialize a person or event. There are tons around the university. In fact, our big flag pole is a memorial to soldiers of World War I or maybe II, I’m not sure. Anyway, most people think about memorials as being sad, while monuments recall victories or heroic individuals.

I’m terrible at thinking of monuments in Seattle. They just seem to be so much more subtle to me. I would like to talk about Underground Seattle. This is the original construction of the city that eventually burnt down and was built over. In general, this part of Seattle’s history has literally been swept under everything else. There is a small museum like structure that gives tours that are over priced and not too excited, so the tradition lives on, but barely. I think this is an important part of Seattle’s history that should get more recognition, even though it was poorly planned and rat infested. I guess Seattle doesn’t want to admit exactly had terrible that early planning was.

One other thing that comes to mind about Seattle is our constant reference to the Native Americans who use to live here. Seattle has a lot of totem poles and seems to care about its native population, but I feel these obvious symbols help the people to ignore the deals of the past. (This doesn’t apply to Seattle alone.) Like it or not, the people of the United States did terrible things to Native Americans and have never really been forced to atone for it. I see the inclusion of Native American art and names in Seattle as a way of acknowledging their presence and their contributions to society without forcing the people of Seattle to see our own cruel treatment of them.

Rethinking thinking

At first, I was really excited by this article, but the more I read, the more I felt the need to question its methodology. I agree that we are not really born with specific analytical thinking skills and that we need to develop them. (That’s why I’m in college ;-). )The purpose of this article seems to be, to investigate the best way of furthering thinking skills and then to convey that to everyone. This follows from the idea that everyone has to develop these skills, because they are not inherent. Although I believe that intuition and “gut feelings” are important, this does not fit with this methodology. If we’re all supposed to be capable of learning how to think or improving our thinking skills, this seems nearly impossible. Gut feelings cannot be learned or taught. You can teach someone of their essential value and encourage them to follow those feelings, after all they might lead somewhere great, but if someone doesn’t have their own intuitions, there’s not much you can do about it. As for the idea that scientist don’t think in math or equations, I think I would generally agree. If anything, the human body is most capable of act based on perception. All of our senses allow us to communicate with the world, with or without math. Before the development of math, humanity had already achieved some of its more important things. Having a background in linguistics, the idea that language is not vital to the thought process is a little far fetched for me. You can have an idea that you can’t express in words, but the words eventually come or are created. Language is what we know of humanity and without being a non-communicative deaf blind person, or someone starved of language from birth, it’s impossible to know if man is capable of thought without language. Everything we perceive in the world, we ultimately define through language. But I still think that gut feelings are important.

Research 101

I haven’t had a chance to look through this as well as I would have liked. My computer is being kind of stupid (as usual). I shall go to the library and give it a good look over tomorrow, as I have to work in the morning. I had been to the library presentation called research 101 and it seems very similar, so I don't know how helpful it will be. We had to go to it for SIS 201 and wrote a research paper following these guidelines, and it help quite a bit.

After looking at research 101, I think my original assessment was right on. I think this is a great resource for people who don't really understand how to tackle a research paper or where to start, but I'm a little more advanced than it.