From The Morgue

Well, turns out students aren’t naturally loquacious in a tutorial-discussion environment. Who knew?
It’s an interesting line, anyway. This second-year paper is basing its lab programme around a set of linked assignments, which ask students to undertake a small group action with an environmental focus and pay attention to their experience. We’re looking at how easy or hard it is to get changes in behaviour, the kinds of barriers that are really problematic vs. those that are just nuisances, the relationships between degree of motivation and degree of success, and so on and so forth. Lots of nice meaty social psychology stuff. Still, the opening two assignments and the first two labs are heavy environmental-studies crash courses – getting to grips with climate change via Inconvenient Truth, the Stern report, the IPCC report…
So the discussions today were about the Inconvenient Truth doco, and how people responded to it, and what people got out of it or questioned about it. There was a lot of interesting stuff that came out. As we’d hoped, people seemed to have a pretty sophisticated understanding of the general issues – the cultural prevalence of climate change concern hasn’t passed these guys by. There was a lot of cynicism about Gore, his political angle and the emotive way his message was portrayed, but there was also overwhelming agreement with the message he was delivering. Of course, people also acknowledged that Gore’s political angle gave him the connections and status needed to make this film a cultural phenomenon, and that the emotive stuff was needed to keep an audience engaged, so… the complexities of this kind of message-making were definitely appreciated. That was quite cool.
There were also a few nice moments where lots of people would talk enthusiastically about, say, how hard it is to craft a message that gets people to actually change their behaviour; or how you need to change attitudes before anything else but even that doesn’t always help; or how it is really hard to act alone when it seems the people around you aren’t also on board… And then with their next breath, ask me how all of this environmental stuff relates to social psychology. Heh.
Anyway, it was a solid and encouraging stepping stone towards the actual action stuff, which is what kicks in next. All quite exciting really.
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The rise and rise of Facebook continues. Whatever started that explosion a couple months back, it shows no sign of slowing – every time I let Facebook check through my email address book, another ten people have signed up. It ain’t perfect – the place is swimming in weird little applications that just don’t scratch my itch – but I’m feeling a lot more confident than I was at the start of June about predicting that Facebook will survive when other social networking systems will collapse. Latest development is a signup from Public Address’ Damian Christie, who writes about hearts being broken over here.

It was a rare weekend of sport for me. Saturday night watched the rugby and the netball, a double-header of NZ vs. arch-rivals Australia in our two top sports. And we won both of them, which was very nice indeed. Although the rugby was a classic example of the thing that frustrates me most about the game – lots of intense football is played, but the points are all scored when someone makes a mistake and allows a penalty kick. And the netball’s edge-of-seat finish was a confusing mess, due entirely to the way netball does its scorekeeping and timekeeping.
And today went in to watch the NZ vs Venezuala basketball international. Some good stuff there as well, and I was very glad I went along.
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The situation with Cal’s family and her dad is ongoing, with some significant ups and downs. It’s all very confusing and not a bit stressful. Your support has been very welcome thus far, so thank you for that from Cal (and me).
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Tomorrow I lead discussions for eight hours. Gah.

It must be the single most anticipated work of popular literature since Dickens. Seriously, she must be sitting around in Scotland absolutely petrified of what the public reaction is going to be. But, heck, JKR pulls it off and then some. There is a substantial slow patch, and lots and lots of exposition near the end, but it starts off tremendously well, never gets boring, and the final third hit every right note for me.
On top of that, it is very clear that she knew precisely what she was doing.
If you’ve liked the last Potter books, you’ll like this one. I did.
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Absolutely no spoilers provided. And by all means tread very carefully on the net until you’ve read it if you care about such things.

(Reaction to Harry Potter book seven, page 501.)
(Yeah, looks like the LJ friend mentioned in the previous post was right.)

Anything that involves thinking just isn’t on the agenda just now. But I can still do the linky.

c/o Span: Maia writes a great piece about why the lockout of hospital cleaners by their contractor matters. Sample: “Theoretically businesses, and government organisations, contract out services. They contract a company to clean, or to perform a certain task. But in reality they’re contracting out employment…”
Logo is by Binary Heart.
Salon has a piece on the Harry Potter phenomenon you weren’t aware of: Wizard Rock, a burgeoning underground scene of Harry-Potter themed bands. They are all on MySpace with their songs “I’m A Voldemort Fangirl” and “Which witch is which?” and so forth. (Also: one of my LJ friends has become convinced that the 7th Potter book has been leaked, and has apparently given up the internet entirely in order to preserve her reading experience.)
The AV Club reviews computer game ‘Peacemaker’ in which the player tries to find a solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict. Apparently the game is winnable.
And from Svend, some crazy Japanese crazy stuff.

For those who know us: I’m back temporarily in Wellington from Hastings, where I’ve been with Cal (Strong Light) and family as they prepare for the death of her dad, Jim. The whole family has gathered and has had an opportunity to have many good conversations with Jim yesterday and today. It is a very sad time but there is also much love being shared.
We ask for your patience at the moment – lots of things are falling by the wayside. Supportive texts and emails to Cal have been gratefully received (if not replied to!) so thanks for those. Thank you everyone for your thoughts at this time.

Back on Monday, when I made my first appearance as a tutor/teaching assistant in front of the class of 200-level students, I had to say a few words of introduction. J, beside me, had just said something short and sweet and splendid, and I had a half-second to wonder what I would say.
As always, I just opened my mouth and talked without thinking it through. My brain tried to formulate a pithy comment revealing what exactly my role was, but it shifted direction when it realised I hadn’t the slightest idea. So instead it veered into a conversation I’d just had with J a few minutes before. I suspect this seemed like a good idea because it would build some common identity with the students – it would be a point of similarity. And so I said,
“…and this is kind of a homecoming for me, because I did this course myself in 1995…”
Only after I’d shut my mouth again did I realise that I hadn’t built common cause – I’d marked myself out as very much the other. Because, much as it surprises me to think it, 1995 is a very long time ago. Some of the students in the room with me would have been 6 years old when I had taken this course. I had declared myself, as a point of particular interest, Old.
As the class filled in a survey I applied the Nirvana subjective age transformation in order to see myself through their eyes. Nirvana, you see, is my music year zero; it hit in that glorious time when you’re 16-17 and your musical tastes take proper shape, if they don’t calcify entirely.
The Nirvana subjective age transformation allows me to understand how old I seem to them, but transforming Nirvana into a band similarly distant from me. To them, Nirvana seems roughly as hip as a band from the early 80s would have seemed to me.
My subjective equivalent: someone whose music year zero was Blondie.
(Not that I mind being older in the least – being 31 is pretty damn sweet, actually – its just helpful to remember how one comes across to the Yoof Of Today.)

Mamet’s book, Bambi vs. Godzilla, is compulsively readable and full of opinions, which is precisely what one wants from it.
It also discloses the ancient secret of the screenwriter, which I shamelessly reveal here:

To write a successful scene, one must stringently apply and stringently answer the following three questions:

1. Who wants what from whom?
2. What happens if they don’t get it?
3. Why now?

That’s it… These magic questions and their worth are not known to any script reader, executive or producer. They are known and used by few writers. They are, however, part of the unconscious and perpetual understanding of that group who will be judging you and by whose say-so your work will stand or fall: the audience.

Mamet’s title is, of course, from the infamous short “Bambi meets Godzilla”, a true classic that I saw on TV in the late 80s and haven’t seen since… until now. No-one should be surprised it’s on Youtube. Some of you may be surprised, however, that it has its own wikipedia page.

I’m just that cool.
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Movie buffs, and those who remember the Alternate Reality Game that was used to promote Spielberg’s A.I. (and which was, in many ways, better than the film it promoted) may wish to check out this site related to a new movie by J.J. Abrams (codenamed “Cloverfield”).
It ties in to a trailer that screened in the U.S. before Transformers, and which didn’t name a title, only a release date. No official version is on the web yet, but here’s a bootleg EDIT: link is dead.
Curiously, this promotional effort arrived on the scene around the same time as the mysterious web-puzzles surrounding Ethan Haas. No-one’s sure whether Haas is part of the Cloverfield promotion or just came online at the same time. Haas includes a bunch of references to Lovecraftian lore, however, and that combined with the panic-in-the-streets has some excited movie nerds interpreting the mysterious trailer as Statue of Liberty getting pwned by C’thulhu. See much discussion here, for starters. Me, I have no time to pursue this – someone tell me what it all means when the truth comes out, willya?
EDIT: I felt like watching the trailer again and the above link has been pulled, but the official trailer site is now up here. Much better sound and visuals. Key line of dialogue now audible: “I saw it, it’s alive, it’s huge!”
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There is now a copy of Pride & Prejudice on my bed. Also a copy of David Mamet’s book of Hollywood insider revelations + screenwriting advice. Also the novel and the autobiography I’m already reading. Also way too many books on action research and group dynamics from the Victoria University Library. It feels like coming home.

Well, today I’m back at university, yet again once more. First lecture for the second-year PSYC class for which I’m a teaching assistant. I find it hard to remember what a second-year class of students looks like, so that should be interesting. Labs start next week. I have office hours. Its all very unusual.
Had a good weekend, except for a complete systems crash Saturday pm that meant I missed some things I didn’t want to miss. All I can do is pray and beg for forgiveness.
Our apartment is amusingly poorly set-up for a dinner party. I rather like it.
I have “Youve got the touch!” playing in my head right now. It’s Monday morning, and this is what I have to cope with.