"Don't be fooled by me. Don't be fooled by the face I wear. For I wear a thousand masks,
masks that I am afraid to take off and none of them are me." —Unknown

02 July, 2004 - 12:05 p.m. - March of the mynah bird
When i was very young, i spent a lot of time watching cartoons--especially Bugs Bunny. Oddly enough, old Warner Brothers cartoons were part of what sparked my interest in classical music. I spent just as much (if not more) of my time with these cartoons listening to their soundtracks as i did actually watching them. I don't think i would know who Franz Liszt was if i hadn't seen Bugs Bunny play his Hungarian Rhapsody no. 12 in "Rhapsody Rabbit." It's embarrassing but true.

I went on to play a classical instrument in grade school (which went on through high school) and was able to supplement what i'd learned from Bugs and company with some non-cartoony pieces. Today, my collection of classical CDs is modest but, hopefully, tasteful. I'm no expert, but i figure i'm reasonably well educated on the subject. Despite this attempt to become more knowledgeable about the subject, there are still a few classical pieces in cartoons whose composer i haven't been able to discover.

Much to my delight, i learned one of them this morning. Remember that old Warner Brothers number called "The Little Lion Hunter"? Remember where all the action stops and this large black bird (a mynah) walks across the screen and everyone starts following it? Remember the music from that scene, the sweet, melancholy string part? It's Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture, op.26! I was lucky enough to hear it on a random classical music station online this morning.

What's great about all of this is that i've never really known much about Mendelssohn or his music--i heard his Octet on the radio about two nights ago and decided that i should own it, and that's about it for my exposure to his music. So strange how these things coincide.

01 July, 2004 - 12:22 p.m. - Qualitative research
Not too long ago, B's father and i were talking about quantitative versus qualitative research. I was telling him how i'm eager to get back into anthropology, where i can focus more on qualitative and narrative research. He wanted to know why i preferred it to quantitative research, and i started to explain, but the conversation kind of drifted away before i could. I've been thinking about this issue ever since.

Many social scientists like numbers. It gives us a sense of validity in the face of the clinical precision for which the hard sciences are known. Doing statistical research in the social sciences allows us to sidestep the inferiority complex we've developed as a result of years of head-scratching and scorn by both other scientists and the general populace. It's the same kind of inferiority complex that leads many of us to use obscure terminology and horrible grammar in technical journals.

All social scientists are aware of this to a greater or lesser degree, but you'll be hard-pressed to find many of us who will admit to it.

But the thing is, we don't need to feel this kind of pressure. This sense of inferiority, when you take a good look at it, is something we've brought upon ourselves in a search for validation as scientists: we're brought up to believe that science is the thing that provides us with hard, definitive answers--and human behavior, the core subject of all social sciences, is a phenomenon that defies the kind of binary pigeonholing that statistical research requires.

The hard sciences deal with some pretty abstract concepts, many of which are difficult to understand (theoretical physics is probably the most difficult discipline, by this reckoning). But when it comes down to it, all physical behavior is explicable at some level. There are extremely complex systems at work in astronomy, cosmology, geology, biology, and chemistry. But ultimately all of these things are quantifiable, and once we understand these systems and the factors that play into them, we can accurately predict their behavior.

Not so with human behavior. Despite our more predictable animal nature, we're amazingly flexible, whimsical, and varied creatures.* While our behavior does fall into clear patterns, there is enough variation that it's neither fair nor accurate to make hard and fast predictions about how a person will turn out. Think of it this way: we know how hydrogen bonds with oxygen to create water, and under which conditions this will happen, and we can predict this behavior with near 100-percent accuracy. But ask under which conditions a human child will turn out to be a bank robber, and the success of our predictions drops substantially. If we can predict human behavior even 30% of the time, it's a success from the perspective of social science.

Let's face it: when social scientists attempt to be like hard scientists, we fail miserably. It's no wonder people turn their noses up at the social sciences when our success rate--based on our self-imposed need to quantify behavior--is so dismal.

Statistics in the social sciences have their place, there's no question. We wouldn't be able to assess things like the success of new policies or rehabilitation programs without quantifiable data. But when it comes to understanding the causes of, understanding the effects of, and successfully predicting human behavior, our strengths lie in methods other than statistical analysis.

Qualia abound in human behavior. We've built our existence around them, and even though they're not truly expressible, we've spent centuries creating great works of art, literature, and music to express them. We've built wonderful organic systems around the perception, communication, and understanding of abstract notions--systems that, when quantified, lose much of their meaning. And this is where the social sciences excel.

For example, one of the best things about psychology isn't its ability to predict mental illness; it's its ability to treat it--not through quantifiable methods (though these methods should be assessed via quantifiable data in order to measure their success), but through a sort of gnostic interaction built on understanding, knowledge, and the subtle interplays of a therapeutic relationship.

As humans, we instinctively understand things on a qualitative level. We see colors, hear sounds, feel emotions, think thoughts, experience sensations, and have ideas--all of which are based on qualia. We can quantify them, as we would a suicide statistic, but in doing so, we lose a crucial piece of information: in quantifying these things, we understand how they are, but we do not capture why they are.**

Finally, there are those who would argue that all we need to know about human behavior lies within the bell curve: social sciences are probabilistic, not deterministic, and it's good enough to know what the "average person" would do. To that stance, i can only reply thus: if we, as both social scientists and humans, do not believe that we have anything to learn from qualitative research--if, in fact, we believe that the only cases that matter are those that lie along the mean, then we are dooming ourselves to academic failure. Human behavior is based as much on individual experience as it is on genetics, and because of this we will never have the level of precision in prediction as the hard sciences. In eschewing qualitative research, we deny what it is that drives us as a species, and we deny the power of insight. And once we deny the power of insight, we've lost what it means to be scientists in the first place.

*I'm sure this applies also to other animals, in varying degrees as well; we're not so special. My guess is that self-awareness and self-will have something to do with this.

**Mathematics is its own abstract realm, and this piece is not intendted as an attack on the beauty or strangeness or qualia inherent to mathematics; the author appreciates mathematics and its qualities.

30 June, 2004 - 10:30 a.m. - The balanced writer
It seems like readers fall into a couple of distinct camps with regard to what they want from a story. There are readers who are interested in ideas, readers who are interested in characters, and readers who are interested in style. There are probably more than this (and obviously, there are combinations), but these are the ones that come immediately come to mind when i think about people who read.

The readers who are interested in ideas are the ones who venerate writers like Asimov above all others. (My dad falls squarely into this camp, as do a few of my friends.) When they read, they're looking at the general overall ideas that the story uses, be they technological, legal, social, or situational in nature. To this kind of reader, the important aspect of a story is some kind of structural element: a new technology influences a law, which influences how people behave in a sort of Rube Goldberg mousetrap. Usually the ideas are clever or frightening--or both.

The readers who are interested in characters gravitate toward writers like Joyce Carol Oates or Anne Tyler or Amy Tan. (Incidentally, my mom falls squarely into this category.) When they read, they're empathizing and sympathizing. These are emotional readers, who look for realistic portrayals of humanity and genuineness in pathos. These readers get angry with characters who do foolish things when they knew they could have done better; they get angry with writers whose characters are shallow or two-dimensional. Readers like these appreciate the complex interpersonal situations that lead to decisions made in noble and anguished desperation. They are emotional readers who might return to the same books years later for comfort.

The readers who are interested in style lean more toward authors like W.B. Yeats or Thomas Pynchon or John Crowley. When they read, they're hearing the melodies and harmonies created by words and phrases. They look for poetic prose and prosaic poetry, they love rhythm and will reread a sentence several times if it is musical enough, and they appreciate clever plays on words. They don't mind extra prose if it flows well, and they don't mind if the story wanders a bit. They're content to read lengthy books and delight in the creative use of language.

Not only do readers fall into these categories; writers also do. And again, as with readers, many writers embody some combination of these categories. But i have yet to find a single author who writes equally from all three (though Homer and Shakespeare come close). Oddly enough, i'm not sure whether such a balanced approach would be a good thing--perhaps the perfectly balanced story would be too long or too boring.

Then again, it could be brilliant.

I think i've found my new quest: the perfectly balanced story.

29 June, 2004 - 12:11 p.m. - Getting settled
The apartment is coming along fairly well. We unpacked more boxes last night than i'd expected, the living room furniture is pretty much in place, and most of the dishes are put away. The bedroom needs a little rearranging (not to mention another set of blinds--naked Circus in front of the window is a bad idea!), the "anything" room is a complete disaster (hello, boxes filled with 500-odd books...), but the bathroom is more or less okay.

And we've graduated from eating take-out to eating things like popcorn and canned soups. It'll be a while before i'm really cooking dinner again, methinks. I'd forgotten just how much money gets eaten up in a move, over and above the cost of hiring movers or a truck or buying boxes.

Sadly, my brain is filled with practical concerns at the moment, so i'm putting most entries of serious substance on the back burner for now.

28 June, 2004 - 12:30 p.m. - New place, same routine
Well, we moved. The big stuff is over. Now it's just a matter of unpacking, which (i keep forgetting) is far more painful than either packing or moving.

The cats have adjusted well. They seem very happy to have stairs. Gali has discovered The Basement; surprisingly, she didn't stay down there long. Must've been too boring.

Work is crazy busy. Home is crazy busy (asleep before midnight in the last week? not bloody likely). We're frantic but sane.

Still planning on that solid entry, but i don't think it'll happen today.

On a personal note: for those of you who have our phone number, we were lucky enough to be able to keep the old number at the new place. If you need our address, please email me and i'll send it 'round.