Friday, March 24, 2006

Meanwhile, Back in the Modern Era ...

Chris over at Mixing Memory, a modern man whom I adore, corrects the latest media reports on a study regarding "Motivated Reasoning" (a.k.a. resistance to ideas and even facts that conflict with our strongly-held beliefs) in a two-part series. These posts are a nice introduction to this one aspect of cognitive science, and it's never a bad idea for those of us who study and teach to be aware of how and why our own prejudices -- and those of our students -- work. Someday I'll tell you all about some crazy and embarrassing stuff I thought to make facts fit with my beliefs. We've all done it, and now thanks to better living through the blogosphere, we can know why. He's also done a little work on the Do Whiny Kids Become Conservatives? study. Good stuff there, kids, and even pretty colored brain pictures in the first two posts.

Aeonsomnia at Evil Li-Brul Overlord has published the contact information for people to donate to Help Out The Oglala Sioux Tribe, whose president has announced that she will open a Planned Parenthood clinic on tribal lands,i.e., lands not subject to South Dakota's new compulsory pregnancy laws.

Via Dr. Virago at Quod She, the Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog blog is now selling T-shirts. They're too funny and I want one!

And now for something completely different: Ill-advised Giant-blog baiting.
After months and months of jumping up and down in the comments section of Michael Berube's blog like the big geek on the side, I finally got the blogger himself to respond to one of my comments. Now, I think this is because I told Dr. V on him, and he got a-skeered she would go all medieval on his butt -- like she might be compelled to spank him with a Riverside Chaucer or something.* Dr. V disagrees, averring that Berube isn't a-skeered of anybody, and says it was my persistence and the fact that I said something funny. (Finally. After multiple efforts. *sigh*) Since I'm really not that funny, I'm sticking with the a-skeered story. Whatever the cause, I've stopped being a side-order of easily-ignored geek for a minute, and that's always good. Of course now I can't comment over there until this post is off the main page. Ah, well, nobody ever said the mix of cowardice and brazenness would make life easy.



*Image of medievalist going medieval through text spankery shamelessly appropriated from Chris, again of Mixing Memory fame.

6 comments:

Dr. Virago said...

he got a-skeered she would go all medieval on his butt -- like she might be compelled to spank him with a Riverside Chaucer or something.

OK, someday I will have to tell you how many ways of funny and weird that image and particular set of references are to me.

Meanwhile, just in case MB does Technorati his URL and/or name and come by, I have to say: *Heo* hit cwaeth, ne me. Ond heo habbeth anne warped imagination!

Te-hee!

Heo said...

Hey, Dr. V.
I did try to make it clear that this image was the product of my diseased imagination, and nothing to do with you. Also, I'm fairly certain that Technorati doesn't know I exist. Mwahahahaha! It's the perfect crime!

Dr. Virago said...

Oh, I know, HeoCwaeth. I just wanted an excuse to write in elementary OE and say in a elementary school tone: "She said it!" I thought it suited the tone of being told on and all that. :) No worries.

Btw, Technorati does know you exist. Just now, in fact, you were on the list of blogs linking to me. (Yes I Technorati'd myself. Yes I'm a loser.)

Heo said...

Hey again, Dr V.
Yes, I learned that Technorati knew of my existence when I checked my site-meter referrals just a few hours after posting this. I discovered that an unknown person in Durham had located my blog through a Technorati search for www.michaelberube.com. Curses! Foiled again!

Heo said...

Anyway, I sort of want theory folks to be a-skeered of medievalists. Frankly, if one more person uses "always-already" in conversation with me, s/he will be at severe risk of a Riverside Chaucer spanking.

Anonymous said...

Mercy, (fans self) what a picture! I've never seen a full-length pic of Prof Berube-plus-accents, but I bet he has a cute butt.

With or without pants? Um, trews?