(no subject)

[shadowkat]

1. Picked up Practical Paleo at Whole Foods. Has to be the most useful cookbook, nutritional guide that I've seen.

Having read and reviewed various nutritional guides and sites - the one constant is:

* avoid all glutens like the plague, and grains.
* avoid refined sugars
* avoid legumes if you have digestive issues

Everything else seems to be rather controversial. Does make breakfast tough though. But I've discovered my tummy can handle poached eggs in the morning.
And a combo of chia, buckwheat, and hemp seed sprouted in almond milk.

Trying to figure out how to heal my digestive track, so I can do stuff without discomfort or pain. Learned that I am doing more or less the right things, just have to tweak a few things. Exercise wise - yoga, stretching, and walks is best. Strenuous activity would stress my system and make things worse. 30-60 minutes of jogging or biking is not recommended. Meditative activities, calm or gentle yoga, and quiet walks outside is however recommended. Goal is reduce stress. And heal.


2. Dallas Buyers Club was a better movie than expected. Had read mixed reviews. It does wander a bit, and is jagged in places, lots of filler moments with the characters doing drugs or wandering aimlessly. But overall is a rather good if not great film. I actually liked The Sessions better - it was tighter and better written. Dallas however, had two powerhouse performances, which deservedly won awards. Mathew McConaughy as Ron Woodruff was excellent. Particularly if you watched the film How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days before it. He's almost unrecognizable. And the film is at the end of the day, a character sketch. It focuses on his character, who is a bit of an anti-hero. Jared Leto, plays Raymond/Rayna, which is another powerhouse performance worthy of multiple awards. Leto is unrecognizable in the part. Both are rail thin and look like they have AIDS.

This completes my McConaughy film fest. My favorite of the films was the Lincoln Lawyer. And the best written may have been True Detective. But this was his best performance.

He plays a heterosexual rodeo rider and electrician, who contracts HIV through unprotected sex with a woman, who was a needle user. Told that he has 30 days to live, he goes all out to find a way to survive. Going to Mexico and other countries to find cures. And puts together The Dallas Buyers Club - to distribute what he's found to others with the ailment, while making money off of it. People pay 400 dollar monthly membership and get all the medication.

The film is not complimentary of either the FDA nor the pharmaceutical companies, with their drug trials, and toxic meds. But it's not preachy or sanctimonious about it. And a lot of the things it says are sort of true. The irony is Woodruff, who is making a buck, is more honest and compassionate than the FDA, hospital administrators or the pharmaceutical companies portrayed in the film.
Jennifer Garner portrays the nice doc that Woodruff flirts with.

3. This is just ...words fail me:

Student Requests For Trigger Warnings For Literary Works

Should students about to read “The Great Gatsby” be forewarned about “a variety of scenes that reference gory, abusive and misogynistic violence,” as one Rutgers student proposed? Would any book that addresses racism — like “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” or “Things Fall Apart” — have to be preceded by a note of caution? Do sexual images from Greek mythology need to come with a viewer-beware label?

Colleges across the country this spring have been wrestling with student requests for what are known as “trigger warnings,” explicit alerts that the material they are about to read or see in a classroom might upset them or, as some students assert, cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims of rape or in war veterans.

Suddenly, I'm highly relieved that I did not pursue a career in academia or as an English Lit Prof.

Comments

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

I don't know, the NYT article seems to be the usual pearl-clutching 'kids these days' type article. It tries to frame the issue as students being fragile, but the example of a complaint from the classroom - a film with a graphic rape shown in class - seems reasonable to the point of obvious. Maybe it's the fannish trigger warning term that's the problem, if it was about professors providing context and expectations to students starting texts that are not only difficult but may be hostile towards them it wouldn't sound so bad, it would just sound like teaching.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I admittedly didn't read the whole article, just the first part of it.

If the complaint was about a graphic rape scene show in a film - vs. say reading one in a novel, that's quite different, particularly if the course is English Lit 101. If however, the course is say, Cinema Studies: Violence in Cinema or Sociological Issues in Cinema - the trigger warning is sort of implied in the course title.

Sounds like it depends on the context?

Am on the fence about trigger warnings - because they tend to be spoilers. Also, a lot of it is based on perception. While I get the need for a trigger warning in the case of a film like say Irreversible, which is set up around a graphic 15 minute gang-rape or a film like Leaving Las Vegas - also contains a graphic rape scene. It can in other instances be considered a spoiler, also the scene may not be obviously triggery.

I'm not sure you can make a general rule about this sort of thing. Also, shouldn't the students read/view the content first before they are told what to think about it or what it is? If you post a trigger warning, you told them ahead of time what it is. They are expecting it.
[I know, I'm reading a book right now that came with a trigger warning regarding non-consensual sex via the reviewers. And I'm looking for it, all prepared. Yet not all the reviewers saw it that way.]

I don't know - while I get the desire to provide the students with a informed choice, whether to view content that will upset them. At the same time, aren't they making that choice going to college or stepping outside their door? I mean in the working world - we have to deal with crap that will hurt us all the time. So where do you draw the line?

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

I don't think you're getting what I'm saying. Isn't it the teacher's job to provide context and set-up for the works they're studying? To use an example from my own schooling, we watched parts of Birth of a Nation in film class. The professor gave us some of the history of the film first, essentially saying, yes, it's really fucking racist but it's one of the first movies to use cross-cutting and other techniques so we're watching it for that instead of content.

It's not unreasonable to expect a teacher assigning Heart of Darkness to give some background on Dutch colonialism and the racial attitudes of the time. Authors were writing in their own eras, for very different audiences than today - what was accepted knowledge then can read as obscure or even offensive now. Helping students understand that lets them get more out of the work. Reading in an academic setting shouldn't be about shock value or spoilers, it's about getting past those things to look at a work critically, a good set-up should do that.

I think calling it a trigger warning is what everyone is getting hung up on, getting professors to think more about their students' perspectives and considering how to present works in better ways so they can engage with them, doesn't sound as unreasonable or clickable.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Eh, I get what you are saying, I'm just not certain that I agree.

I was taught differently. We read or viewed the content first, then discussed it in depth. Often writing essays, reports, analysis prior to or after the discussion.

Rarely, did the teacher set the stage or provide context prior. And I was taught that doing so was well a bit like coddling the student.

I wasn't really taught by the lecture method, which personally I think is a horrible way of teaching (another discussion for another time and probably not a good idea ;-). But by discussion and interaction. We were expected to read the novel, come to it raw, with little information, and provide our own views regarding it. Critiquing what worked and what did not, and why. [And well, there was law school - which had lecture and the socratic method, again no prelude or context before you read the case history.]

In high school, I would sit and do oral book reports with my teachers. We'd discuss the book I read, or plays. What themes, what the context and subtext was, and they'd provide their views - sometimes giving me a background.

I don't think that a teacher should tell a student what a book is about or provide the context. I think the teacher should be able to trust the student's ability to read the work and interpret it from their own perspective, then provide context after that by discussion.

Remember how we discussed Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Granted many people preferred to be spoiled first. But that was often a problem. Because they ended up watching the show tainted by the spoiler. Or by whomever provided it. For example - if the teacher tells the student that the content is misogynistic, then the student reads it with that in mind. They are robbed of the ability to see it fresh. Without the teacher's opinion.

I've read Heart of Darkness - without the whole background on Dutch Colonialism or racial attitudes, and I got a great deal out of it and interpreted it my own way. I don't agree that I required that background prior to reading it nor do I agree that it is necessary to provide it. I don't view "teaching" as providing information that can easily be googled on the internet or provided in a lecture. Teaching - from my perspective - is challenging the student to question, to analyze, to come up with their own take on a work of art and be able to defend it, and back up that opinion or perspective. To think.

That's just my view. Mileage varies. But what you describe above is outside my "educational/academic" experience and bewildering. ;-)
(My mother and friends will provide info on books and movies and tv shows before rec'ing them, but that's different, I think.)

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

But nothing exists in a vacuum, you're not coming to any book raw, as you say, you're coming with your own prior education, references and experiences, I think the interesting thing about this debate is that it's trying to remind teachers that they shouldn't make assumptions about their students' backgrounds. Maybe some students can see the artistic merit in a work that tells them that they are subhuman or without value, or maybe they'll be completely repelled. A good teacher can give them a framework to approach it.

Everyone in these articles about trigger warnings mentions Huckleberry Finn, but what are they assuming a first time reader is coming to the book with? How much knowledge of American history? How much awareness of Twain's reputation as a liberal thinker and social critic? Have they been raised to see characters using racial slurs as villains? What we think of as common knowledge changes, values change. Even the most unique piece of art exists as part of a larger story or history, helping a student to see that big picture has to help them understand the work better.

(It's fun having longer discussions than twitter though! Thanks for providing a forum.)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

[Hee, you're welcome. I'm admittedly bewildered by the appeal of Twitter. It appears to be sort of like IM Chat Rooms - except with sound-bites and lots of abbreviations, accronymes, and internet slang. I find it headache inducing. ;-)]

I think our disagreement regarding the whole "trigger warning bit" isn't so much regarding the need to provide context, but when to provide it and whether it should be provided in "all" instances. Which I think was the issue the NY Times and the educators had with the rule. When do we need to provide this information and to what degree?

I think there's something to be said about the importance of coming to a work of art - raw, or blind. Not knowing anything about it. And discovering it for yourself. Example? Fault in Our Stars. Or even,
Pride and Prejudice. Or various mystery novels, suspense thrillers, and
fantasy epics.

Granted, that's sort of impossible for some of the books we mentioned above. Since our media has referenced them to death. If you don't know anything about Huckleberry Finn or Lord of The Rings - I'd wonder if you were born under a rock. Also, there is something to be said about providing context for a book like Huck Finn - since it is filled to the brim with dialect. Not sure you need to provide much context for Lord of the Rings - what the reader reads into that novel, the reader brought with him/her. It's highly metaphorical.

And admittedly, when I read Ulysses by Joyce, I had a professor who provided us with some context or idea of what to expect. And I knew going into it - that the novel had been banned in the US for sexual content and that it was about a man's life in the space of one day.
Also, I'd read or at least was familiar with the Odyssey, upon which the narrative was loosely structured. This undoubtedly aided me in my interpretation of the text.

But I don't think the rule regarding context or background should be applied in all instances. Sometimes, I think, human beings are extremists or view the world in "black" or "white", this or that. Not realizing that both is possible or it should be on a case by case basis. You can't apply rules to every instance. It's impossible. Doesn't matter what the law or rule is. Sooner or later you will run across an instance that falls outside the box, and trying to apply that rule is a bit like forcing a square peg into a round hole - it won't fit.

I remember in creative writing class - being ordered not to say anything will people read and commented on my work. I was not permitted to provide the context or what my intent was. The work had to stand on its own. And for a few of my stories - that was actually necessary - because I wanted the reader to interact with the story.
Sometimes - the intent of the work is to repel, to offend. Art is after all a reflection of society. We attack the work or writer, as opposed to what it is reflecting - in ourselves or our society. Mainly because that is so much easier and safer. Coming to the work raw - provides the ability to have that reaction, lose that innocence, which in some cases is necessary. I say this, knowing full well that I have a tendency to read spoilery reviews and like to be spoiled on most books that I read, but it depends on the book.

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

Again though I think you're confusing the idea of trigger warnings with spoilers. Did you really start reading The Fault In Our Stars without hearing it was a tragic love story? Back in the day just calling something a tragedy or a comedy let the audience know from the start whether things were going end in death or marriage. And would you give Stars to a friend suffering from cancer without any cautions? It might be something they could really connect to but I can't imagine you not saying that it deals with illness and death. We prepare ourselves all the time with reviews and recommendations, book covers and movie ratings; we have expectations of what we're getting into but it doesn't mean we've been spoiled.

In an academic setting we aren't reading for pleasure, we aren't self-selecting beyond choosing the classes, it's important to know why certain works are being studied, who chose them and why - that's part of critical thinking, and that's a big part of what I mean when I talk about providing context.

When you say that someone who doesn't know about Huckleberry Finn or LoTR must be living under a rock, you're making a huge assumption about that person's background - that they say grew up in an English-speaking country with similar pop culture references to you. For a lot of university students that's not the case. And things that read one way to you may strike them as very different. Giving them some preparation and background, and even warning that the author's viewpoint may be very different from their own, can help them understand what they're studying and why.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Well to be fair - the article combines trigger warnings and spoilers. And yes, I did actually read The Fault in Our Stars without knowing anything. [ETA: Just realized that I came to that book completely blind - it had just been published, I'd never heard of it. The friend who rec'd told me two things - it reminded her of Buffy and I should read it, now! I didn't know it was about cancer patients until I read the first few chapters.] The death did shock me.
I read it prior to the hype. ;-) And I'm glad I wasn't warned - the warnings from my perspective would have been spoilers. And yes, I've lost loved ones to cancer.

And in some cases, the item that they want to be "warned" about is in fact a "spoiler". Example? Seeing Red, BTVS S6. To this day, I wish I had not been "warned" about that episode prior to watching it.

So, I think we are both erring on the side of generalization and assumption here?