October 4th is the birthday of my oldest friend, Adam. When I say that he was my oldest friend, I mean that in the most precise method of hippy time measurement: I was at his birth (along with probably 20 other friends of his parents, their babies, a midwife and probably a doctor). His siblings were likewise present at my birth, at my parents' home in the student family housing campus at a certain midwestern university.
While I still see Adam occasionally at family/holiday events (he wasn't technically "family" until the union of the parents of my nephew, but for all intents and purposes, we are cousins), my time is more recently spent with a certain friend born on October 4th, some 2 or 3 years later: Viktor "Wheeektorious" Nilsson.
The above picture of Viktor in an attitude reminiscent of french neoclassical portraiture, is surely appropriate for placement within the Nilssonian movement, that is to say, it captures the essence of what it means to be a person whose abilities encompass the ideals inherent in scientific thought, processes and inquisitiveness, as well as kindness and humor. While style is not de facto it certainly transforms this specimen into type material, sui generis.
As for what he is doing here, I wish I could explain more, but instead of fully listening I was caught in raptures by the lighting arrangement. Basically, this is his food chamber, where he grows and harvests plankton for his juvenile damselflies.
Viktor is also the genius ornithologist who makes music videos with birds (see below a few posts) possible. On my one and only trip to the island in the Baltic where all this magic happens, I was perusing various ornithological journals with him and began to notice all the Professional Hating (Academic Deathmatch?) going on within articles, aimed at defending previous works, but mostly with the intention of being able to talk shit in an official arena. I'm not really sure how this rampant
A recent example, found within my own field:
Case Study
- Bates writes a critique of Hjørland's critique of her own "efforts in defining and conceptualizing information as a core concept in information science (Bates, 2005, 2006)."
- A quotation which represents significant ire, notwithstanding the move to invalidate Hjørland's academic mien: "There is a standard of coherence, consistency, and logic that is expected of an argument presented in a scientific journal. In discussing my ideas, Hjørland so severely misrepresents what I say that the reader would think that I am developing a totally different set of ideas than, in fact, I do. A fundamental premise of scientific discourse is that one should argue against what the other person actually says, not against a misrepresentation of what the other says. It should not be necessary to state something this obvious but, apparently, in this case it is." (Bates, 2008. See above link)
- Oh, another quote! Here, Bates proclaims that Hjørland not only sees the metaphorical "man on the moon" but proclaims he exists. Well, sort of... and if you think this analogy goes overboard, she continues in the next paragraph by pulling Pangea and the relative placement of North and South America out of her hat. This is a favorite personality type of mine to talk shit about too, so I can't really blame her. I frequently say about someone with close familial ties: "if a tree fell in the woods and _____ didn't see it, did it really fall?" "Hjørland seems unwilling to countenance the possibility, expounded in my articles, that information, differences, in the universe can exist in some objective sense while at the same time, we humans observe those differences according to our own subjective perspective, whether that of an individual with numerous idiosyncracies or as a member of an intellectual community that approaches those differences out of a specific conceptual paradigm. The patterns of organization we observe are, in many respects, constructed by us. We see the “face” of the “man in the moon.” There is, of course, no man in the moon, but our imagining of a face in the moon is not baseless—there are mountains and craters that create a pattern on the surface of the moon that allows us to see that pattern as a face." (Bates, 2008. See above link)
- And a few choice sentence fragments: "The overriding impression he leaves is one of incoherence and fragmentation," "Familiar as I am with my own articles, I find it very hard to recognize my work in Professor Hjørland's description," and "My own argument is considerably subtler and more interesting than this simplistic description." (Bates, 2008. See above link)
- Thankfully, in contrast to the abstract, where Bates refers to herself in the third person, the article proper takes use of the much less ridiculous first person personal pronouns (singular, not plural!). I can only assume this is a method de jure, although I would seriously love to read a full he-said-she-said article in the third person.
The Hazards of Butterfly Collecting reads like a self-aggrandizing memoir of the Indiana Jones of bugs. Highly entertaining! Which makes me wonder if anyone has done a study of the archetypes within academia and/or infighting?
So, Wheeek, tack för att du finns. Thank you for being you, and thanks for your friendship. And thanks for introducing me to these subtexts within research.
So, Wheeek, tack för att du finns. Thank you for being you, and thanks for your friendship. And thanks for introducing me to these subtexts within research.
Sashi, with first the lunch and then this blog, you single-handedly made my birthday awesome (instead of the lousiness which is my usual birthday-mood)!
ReplyDeleteAlso, you write wonderfully.