Celebration Day

In keeping with my policy of song titles in post titles as they're appropriate to the subject of the post (do you follow?) the title of this post is a Led Zeppelin song from their Led Zeppelin III album full of mainly acoustic and folksy stuff.

But anyway, I'm done with finals. Finito. Sayonara. Well, until comprehensive exams, then finals in December, then...well, you get the picture. Final analysis:

GY-566-->
Nailed it, got an A in the class. I felt confident about everything I answered, except for that one question's calculations. That really verified that I am a transportation geographer. I looked through the notes twice, maybe three times.

GY-532-->
Well, this remains to be seen. Ironically, the one class I struggled with the most was at an undergraduate level. It dealt with planning, but not transportation (though it did dabble into transportation issues...Infrastructure, networks, you get the picture). In stark contrast to GY-566, I read though these notes six or seven times, but didn't feel nearly as confident (again, consistent with how I felt throughout the semester).

GY-500-->(geeky moment, a la Kelly, forthcoming)
Turned it in 7 1/2 hours before it was due (i.e. at 2:00pm). Department secretary said that she thought I should get extra credit for that (I agree). I was the second person to put it in his box (which is not necessarily to say I was the second to turn it in as we had an e-mail option as well). Basically I rip into post modernism as it applies to the sciences:

1. Post modernism's criticisms of modernism, while superficially valid, do not hold any water. How can a post modernist, the very foundations of which emphasize the lack of absolutes, say that anything that arose out of modernism was bad? (The failure of the nation-state in Africa, for example).
2. If "Nothing exists out of the text" (according to deconstructionist and postmodernist Jacques Derriea) and everything is left up to the individual for interpretation, then who is a post modernist to say that what Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, or Saddam Hussein (among others) were wrong in how they killed thousands and millions? Where not they doing what they interpreted as right in eliminating subversive peoples?
3. Since science (geography specifically) and academia in general seek out universal truths, post modernism is a pox on the sciences--the arts are a different story.
4. Post modernism has led to the disunity in academia that exists today wherein people specialize in singular fields, rather than diversifying their knowledge. No one (generalized statement) knows about Mozart AND molecular biology AND American History anymore, which is bad according to E.O. Wilson and, after having looked at it some, myself.
   

That is the essence of what I said. I go on for five pages about that using notes, texts, handouts, and readings from class. I felt pretty decent about it, but I haven't a clue as to what to expect in a grade. If Dr. Webster is a post modernist, an A, if not, then who knows? (get it? haha!)

Now I get ready for Africa. Two weeks from now, I'll be hurdling across the Atlantic Ocean in a piece of metal at several hundred miles per hour.

My pepper plants are droopy. They were out in the rain and the wind today. Hopefully they'll perk up tomorrow, less I have to get stakes.