Week 12 Reflection (11/8-11/12)

The week began with Tuesday's class being rescheduled in favor of a lecture by a noted feminist scholar of international relations, J Ann Tickner. The lecture itself provided some useful points and made a good point about the imperative to study alternate histories and perspectives. And on a personal note, I will admit myself to being militantly in favor of woman's rights and equal treatment. My mother is a gainfully employed professional and a very, very strong woman and my favorite teacher in the universe was a former marine corps colonel who had 2 daughters (1 marine, 1 army officer) who are also gainfully employed professionals so I've had a great deal of pro-woman influence growing up.

That said, I found several aspects of Ms. Tickner's lecture to be cringe worthy. The biggest was her aside that she's "gotten into arguments with physicists". Wait, what? I understand that in the soft sciences there is a lot of room for this type of stuff but I cannot fathom how she can argue for "alternate perspectives" in things like Physics. The Law of Partial Pressure is just that, a law. It's not up for debate. Now, I agree that on a certain level even the hard sciences go soft and are up for debate and interpretation. But I, as I would counsel Ms Tickner, would leave that to the PhDs.

The lab on Wednesday was also a bit disappointing (this really wasn't my week). The lady who presented did a well enough job (even if she did take an enormous amount of time) but the subject matter was not terribly interesting. International aid and development is very important, but so is the rule against perpetuities and nobody is clamoring to learn about that if they don't have to.

Thursday's class posed a very interesting questions about human rights and what they should entail and where they come from. I am very interested in this question but do not feel I could do it justice at the moment. Look forward to me published an essay on it down the road, though.