Evolution

I found the evolution articles to be very interesting because although I've always believed in evolution as the way humans were created, I'd never really known much about it. I enjoyed reading about the adaptations of the different hominids. I hadn't known before that there had been other species that had come from primates but hadn't survived. I had always thought before that it was only the line that humans had evolved from although it definitely makes sense that there would have been others. I thought that it was strange that they could trace the ancestry back to one woman and it's weird to think that she could have caused so many people to be created and that her great great great great great great great...[you get where I'm going with this] grandchildren have become so different from her. I enjoyed thinking about and hearing other people's thoughts on how we might possibly evolve in the future. It seems like everything has become so easy for us that there's not really any reason to evolve since there aren't many predators to have to outrun or prey to hunt down. It really left me wondering what other ways we can possibly change to better our chances of survival.
-Jenny S.

Can you or Kai please send me the web address for Kai's portfolio? I'd like to finish it before Weds. There is a hold on my account and I'd like to get something other than an "Incomplete" or a failing grade if I can register in case $3300.00 should somehow fall from the sky before the due date of 12-13. Thanks, Bill and enjoy your break.
billythomp@hotmail.com or
wmt@pdx.edu

The Lives of Others

I thought this was a brilliant movie. I usually don’t like foreign movies with English subtitles and I wasn’t too open minded when watching this film. Afterwards I felt it really stood out to me. The movie gave me a better vision of what East Germany was really like before the Berlin Wall was torn down. Saying the movie did not put into exaggeration the amount of surveillance and repression the Stasi had made. It showed what German citizens that had certain gifts like acting or poetry had to go through being under the total surveillance. Some, like the main characters in the movie, did not even know the actions they were doing were putting their freedoms at risk. But we’ll never know how bad this repression was because most filed records were by the Stasi. Who knows how much they could of not put into record. But overall I thought it was a great movie. I recommend using it for other future classes.

-Garret Kelly

Lives of Others

When watching a foreign film I was at first confused, then later throughout the movie it all came together. I was unsure about the motives of the characters but as the movie continued the more and more I understood the general concept the director was trying to portray. The first day the class began watching the movie I was not that interested to be truthful until the second day the movie was continued. It seemed insane to me on how someone could live that long and never know their whole life was being recorded by complete strangers who were suspicious of the actions.
In the movie Lives of Others it was extremely interesting seeing how the roles of the characters changed over time. At first I believed Christa Maria was going to leave Dreyman for the other man. Seeing how much her life was devoted to her boyfriend after all these negative influences attacking their life shows that everyone can make it, as long as you put in all potential effort. The subtitles made me pay more attention to the different scenes and caused me to be intrigued in the movie. Overall I believe the movie was very powerful and should be showed to other classes.

Noelle Melberg

Lives of Others

When viewing a foreign film it's really hard to keep track of the story line and follow what is going on, plus with having to read the subtitles and viewing the movie makes things more difficult. I will admit I really didn't get into the movie until the second day. The thing that I noticed the most was the change of Wiesler. Throughout the second half of the movie you could tell he was changing for the better. By his facial expressions and body language. It's something you don't see much in movies, so to see it in a foreign film was surprising. Overall I enjoyed the movie but I want to watch it again with a little more focus.

Lives of Others

So I'm not going to lie Alan, when you first told us about this movie, I thought it would be lame. But surprisingly enough, I really really loved the movie. It was so intersesting. It showed some actually realistic history and also had an appealing plot to it. Obviously not based on a true story, it had true element, which I love. I hate those movies that you can tell are totally made up and fake. Even though most of the stuff that was reflected realistically to the separation of Berlin I already knew, I was rather intrigued. Most people don't realize how it was such a hardship. People really were blacklisted to never ever work again with no reason behind it, such as the director Jerska. His most memorable line in the movie being so honest, "If a director cannot direct, what is he?" The truth is that this movie only showed a small effect that this movement had on all of Germany, let alone Eastern Berlin at the time. I didn't really understand why the Stasi were watching Dreyman in the first place. It kind of was not really fair how they began surveillance for no reason and then could use something that they weren't for in the first place, against Dreyman. Overall, I feel like everybody got what they deserved except for, Jerska and that nasty Minister Hempf. I feel like Dreyman deserved to put out the ideas he believed and still be able to use his talent of directing. However, it was so wrong that Wiesler, the Stasi captain, although never proved guilty, was still blacklisted for supposedly being an accomplice. In the end he was recognized for his good, not just punished for his "wrong."

Zimmer Chp 5 & 6

When reading chapters 5 and 6 of Zimmer's Origin of the Mind, it gave me an insight how many types of human classifications lead up to the homo-sapiens that we know today. Classification lead from the way the thumb was positioned on the hand to how straight the hominid walked during his time. Zimmer also showed pictures in how long and different skeletal bones were during those times. That lead Zimmer to talk about how mother nurtured there youngs and how chimpanzees seemed similar in nurturing there offspring. The tools that were used in that time were found all over continents making it show that these hominids were able to travel in groups to capture the food resources that they needed to survive. Also over time their bodies show that they changed to accommodate the harsh climate changes.

Paleoanthropologists also today rely on "reconstruction" to continue the study of these hominids. They collect unburied skulls and use tools take continue building whats missing from the facial features on the skull. The mentor session, I think, that taught this group led discussion did great in teaching what needed to be learned from these articles; made everything come together.

The Lives of Others

I really liked the movie, The Lives of Others. I missed the first class but I think I still understood what happened and the transformation that Wiesler went through (the recap at the beginning of the class helped). I think that it was really interesting to see a world in which people seem to have the everyday problems that we have, but they also have so much more to worry about on top of that. What I first saw of the movie was the part where the apartment was being bugged and Wiesler threatened Dreyman's neighbor about her daughter's education. I think that the transformation that Wiesler went through shows a lot about human nature and how it can change due to circumstance and the environment around you. When I was watching to movie I wondered if the transformation still would have happened if he had had a different, less corrupt and cruel boss showing him first hand how messed up and in the wrong the governnment was. I think that Christa-Maria's situation was relevant to our human nature course because although she loved Dreyman enough to stop seeing Hempf, in the end she still turned him in to save herself which shows the dog eat dog mentality of the world. I think that it was a good movie to show and I've already been able to relate it to other courses that I'm taking and ones that I've taken previously.

Jenny S.

Lives of Others

I enjoyed the movie very much. The movie allowed the viewer to see how absolutely crazy that system was. What I find interesting is that they didn't accept failure when trying to catch someone for whatever they found to be a crime. The reward for catching someone for being unloyal, especially if that person were a high ranking person, was a great one. The society lost a very essential thing in life, trust. They could no longer believe in the good will of human beings because everyone, men, women, and children, could not be trusted. The environment is a good example of how peoples lives can be shaped by what is around them. A lot of people really enjoyed reporting people because the society viewed it as a good thing if you caught someone, guilty or not. Once the Berlin wall fell, I am sure a lot of people snapped back to their normal selves and could hardly believe what they had done. This ties in well with the subject of nature or nurture. Some people were subject to their surrounding, and some people were subject to their nature. I believe it's a possibility that both nature and nurture help develope people. It's not absolutely one or the other, but a combination.

Andrew VanHorn

Lives of Others redux

Hey, I know you guys are focused on turkey, the Saints and that looming Chem final.... but one entry on the movie from two classes? I don't see a lot of movies in the future in this class unless I see some evidence of cognitive engagement

Conundrums of Culture

"It was he who most forcibly planted the idea that culture is what sets people free from their nature."

I found this article very interesting because it controdicted my research I had done for my research paper. In multiple books by Jane Goodall it was stated that chimpanzees, depending on where they are living, actually have differeing cultural customs. For instance one group of chimpanzees may make sitting cushions out of large leaves, but another cultural group have not been observed doing the same. This may show us that culture is just not a human behavior, but may have been around far longer than humans existed.

Courtney Timms

Language

The language readings were all very interesting. The video in class tried to explain the similarities in languages. It showed that most languages had words or spellings in common,eventhough the countries are not close together.
One of the readings explained the way we classify words. In english, a chair is associated with a piece of furnature. In African languages it would go with power, such as a throne.Animals are classified by their funtion and in english they are classified by age.Language is classified in the way we look at things.

The Lives of Others

Entry from "WMT" copied to Blog

Hello, My blog "expired". I enjoyed the film very much. As I told Kai it ties in nicely with human/nature course. The spy, whose name eludes me, could well have been nurtured to be an a**hole, but when he fell in love with the girl who was in love with the playwright, who was viewed as the enemy, had a change of heart, He became his true self. In other words; his true nature was to be the person he was after the change of heart. The film was a beautiful work of art. I enjoy foreign films, however I find them sometimes hard to follow as I am always listening as force of habit. I try to see how many words I can recognize and I always enjoy set design, such as clothing, cityscapes (I did notice all the graffiti on the walls of mid 18th. century period buildings, it looked fresh and I wonder if it was staged or real.) I took personal note of the flats. One was very posh but homey and the other was very rudimentary and ugly. These things are easy to pay attention to in English films but more difficult in other languages so perhaps I missed a few things.

The Lives of Others

I'd like to encourage commentary and discussion of the film "The Lives of Others." I have thoughts and opinions of course, but I'll keep them to myself for the moment so as not to take up too much of the oxygen. If you weren't able to see it or missed parts or want to share, it should be in the video rental stores, the public library as well as PSU's.
A reminder of the names of the characters for you to refer to.

Gerd Wiesler- the Stasi man in grey who listens and watches
Anton Grubitz: Wiesler's boss
Georg Dreyman: the writer
Christina Maria Sieland: the actress
Minister Bruno Hempf: the sleazeball
Albert Jerska: blacklisted director, committed suicide
Paul Hauser: the journalist friend of Dreyman who berated him for being "in bed with the bosses."

How to Talk about the World

Reading response

While reading How to Talk about the World, by Peter Farb, I though that it was interesting that our brain automatically categorizes things. Because we have a limited space for obtaining knowledge it makes me wonder how large our capacity to learn is. And if their was no limit on the information we could retain how would that affect humans and our environment. Cultures generalize information differently all over the world, making exact translations from one language to another pretty much impossible. If we had a more standardized knowledge of basic information communication from one culture to the next could be much smoother. Because their is such a wide range of cultural groups around the world that is pretty much impossible. 

Muriel Smith 

Aitchison- Language

The article about language and how there are many biological clues on how we are pre-programmed to learn and deal with language and how such traits have evolved to get to our current point, was something that I found very interesting. The author went on to discuss many of our biological human aspects and how they may relate and have an influence on our ability to learn, sustain and advance something as complicated and important as language. The part that talked about how it isn't surprising if we only could speak in a few word bursts, but the fact that we can plan and change what we are about to say while we are already saying something is an aspect to our language capabilities that puzzles many researchers in the field but is undoubtedly one of the defining characteristics when it comes to our use of language as a tool of verbal communication.

-Chris L.

Farb and Lakoff

I thought it was interesting how Lakoff’s article was discussing how we all use metaphors in everyday life and they affect more than just language after I had just read about the Yokutz language that didn’t use any metaphors and all meanings are literal. After reading Lakoff stress the importance of metaphor, I wondered how the speakers of Yokutz got along with their simple, literal language. It made it hard to take Lakoff seriously since Yokutz pretty much proved his main point obsolete. Although, I think it would be hard to communicate without metaphors, because I doubt that an absolutely literal vocabulary would allow us to express all of our abstract thought. Metaphors allow us to interpret others’ thoughts internally and compare them with our experiences so that we understand their thoughts that they wouldn’t be able to express through literal vocabulary. The articles also made me wonder how someone would think without any language. I wondered if it would even be possible, or if maybe it would make it simpler since you didn’t have to worry about finding the right vocabulary for your thoughts.

Language

I was really excited to start the language unit, I thought all of the material sounded really interesting, I even ended up writing my research paper on it. I think one of the most interesting pieces of material for this section would have to be the movie we watched on languages and how they think there might be one language that all the others branch off from. That seems really interesting to me, and makes a lot of sense. People are always saying how a lot of languages steam from Latin, but I never thought about there being one central language that everything else branches off from.
It links really well with the ideas of evolution. If all humans and their language originated in one general area the language they had would have been standard throughout groups of people, until they separated and scattered throughout the world creating the other languages and dialects we hear and speak today. The movie started an interesting discussion about when a new language or dialect is formed, how much must change before it is considered a new language. It was interesting to see how the changes can start from a simple accent or a slight carelessness in the pronunciation of a word or phrase. Slang terms can also affect language a lot as well, in different areas that speak the same language they can have different meanings for the same words. Like the pants example that Professor MacCormack brought up. Overall I think the general topic of language is interesting and studying its origins and the effects on the people that speak it seems like a good way to spend a few weeks.

Demonic Males

This reading by Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson struck my attention because it made me think about the power of genders. As it said, throughout history most societies would ban women from having anything to do with participating in war. The men wanted to feel as if they had the strength the women did not. This made me think that maybe it was the men who were weak and insecure with themselves. If they truly were as strong as they claimed why would they be threatened fighting amongst women? The women referred to endure being discriminated against, beaten, raped, and many other horrific things. It makes me wonder, if gender roles were switched would men be able to endure such things?

-Molly Hilken

Reading Response: Nature Via Nurture

This article covered a topic that I am very familiar with, the idea of nature vs. nurture, but the title alone made me think of a new way of thinking: not vs. but via. Many anthropologists have toyed with the idea that perhaps our cultures are not separate from our true nature, that when we go against our culture we are actually going against our nature instead of with it. This idea appeals to me because we have too many social constructs that prevent the idea of us being bestial without cultures to shape us, as even animals have culture. The famous addage "raised by wolves" no longer means that they have no culture, simply a different one if we adopt the idea that human nature requires cultural nurture. Our moral structures and systems of belief aren't necssarily unique to humans, just different from an animal culture. Wolves, for example, have a distinct and elaborate social order where there are those who are in positions of higher command, but all among the group nare important to the pack's survival. As for their beliefs, we cannot speak to them to answer that question, so it will have to remain unanswered.