School Work and Urban Planning

I'm essentially done with a six page lit review on urban stream daylighting. As much as I've said that I'm not interested in being an urban planner, I actually found the literature engaging. Though I also very much appreciated Sharon Moran's more unusual critical humanities perspective on stream restoration and the White privilege and environmental racism embodied in spatial inequalities in funding.

I ended up reading a couple of assessments of the Arcadia Creek project in Kalamazoo. My thanks to my älskling lisagems for originally pointing it out to me!

What do I have left to do this weekend? I need to do one more interview and write up a paper on perceptions of public space in Kenosha. I need to finish up my paper on the Tunguska Event, which I need to relax about 'cause it's just a 100-level gen-ed class, dammit. I need to start putting together a poster to present for my GIS project. And I need to make more progress on a grad school personal statement.

This weekend's sacrifice on the altar of education has been going out to photograph protests at the local Wal-Marts. But I do feel like things are under control and progressing. And soon I get to see danaeris, who'll be up for the weekend! It's a lot more fun to do academic work when I'm sitting next to somebody I can make snarky comments to. *smiles*

Anti-intellectualism is not ok

This is a great story:

ESPN Denies Suspending Baseball Writer From Twitter for His Views on Evolution ( http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/11/22/espn_denies_suspending_keith_law_for_twitter_evolution_debate_with_curt.html )

I've arrived at the position where I really don't feel like it's ok to let anti-science, anti-intellectual commentary stand without comment. I know that science is not perfect. I have good-natured discussions with Danaeris Annwfn about post-mdoern thoughts on epistemology and the limitations of scientific inquirty. But you can't argue with the basic efficacy of the scientific method. Well, maybe you can, but if you do, you're wrong. You're just wrong. This is not an ideological position. This is realism.

Anti-intellectualism results in poor public policy. Poor public policy results in life getting worse for everybody. This is not ok.