Far be it from me to criticize the work you do. I certainly haven’t the slightest concept of how to cut, style, or shape someone’s hair. It is, quite clearly, an art to style hair. A quick examination of the chronology of my hair styles reveals that I clearly have no sense of fashion for these kinds of things:

1. Baby hair
2. The “bowl cut”
3. The “Mr. Spock”
4. The “Lego Hair”
5. The “Lego Hair” / pseudo “Clooney” variation

That’s right. Five distinct hair styles in my 30-odd years. My hair is not difficult to style. Perhaps it is the relative ease with which my hair can be cut that encourages hair stylists to engage in what is commonly known as “small talk.” Am I just getting in from work? What do I do? Does a PhD count as work? Do I like the city? What temperature is the weather outside?

I understand that a good reason for many people to get into styling hair is the promise of regular interactions with a variety of people. I understand that, despite my uneasiness with “small talk,” the social contract requires me to engage in idle chit chat while what should take about 3 minutes is stretched into 10 minutes. Tops.

The limits of my patience were stretched the other day, however, during a round of “small talk” with a new stylist at the place where I usually go for the Lego Hair / Clooney. It was a normal enough conversation, until I made the mistake of saying:

“Hey, is that a picture of your dog?” (As I glanced at a picture of a small rottweiler pinned to the mirror)

What followed was a litany about this dog (although curiously, I never caught the name). The stylist stepped away from me to chat about the dog face to face. Oblivious to my blank stare, she went so far as to take a photo album out of the drawer under the mirror, and show me pictures. I am not making this up. I didn’t know what to say.

Clearly, I need to find a new “regular” spot for my $12 haircuts. I can’t go back in there. I have a feeling this woman has multiple photo albums, just waiting to be unleashed. I seriously couldn’t take it.

To all the stylists who will cut my hair for years to come: Please, please do not ever make me look at pictures of your dog when I am just trying to get a hair cut. The alternative is that I grow my hair out à la Steven Segal.

And no one wants that.

-sh1wn

I am less enthusiastic, however, about the price of a MacBook, or any other piece of hardware from Apple. Granted the MacBook Pro is probably the most impressive piece of notebook hardware out there, but even when “carved from a single block of aluminum,” I find the price off-putting. At least with the Pro, however, I can forgive Apple for trying to recoup some R&D costs on some truly innovative additions to the world of laptop computers. The more classic-looking white MacBook is ridiculously overpriced at $1149 for 2GB base RAM and 120GB hard drive. That configuration would have impressed me in 2007.

I’ll probably get a MacBook Pro when they come down from the price stratosphere. I’ll be getting a windows laptop from my new job, and so the timing is right to make Mac my “personal” computer. I am looking forward to putting the OS through its paces, especially the promise of running ubuntu in one window with windows in another window against the backdrop of Mac OS. I have long heard that Mac is superior for anyone who wants to make movies, do graphic design, or edit/record music. I have no doubt that is true.

But I had a family event recently for which I decided to put together a retrospective movie. For the record I used: Paint.NET, Goldwave Sound Editor, and Windows Movie Maker for Vista. And you know what? I was able to make a decent, 15 minute DVD movie with Hi-Def resolution and kickin’ audio tracks. My titles were animated, as were my end credits. The software worked well, and my 2-yr old Vista laptop did not hang once. So, for the record: Windows Vista has its flaws like any other OS. It was shipped too early. But SP1 fixed a lot of problems. And yes, you can make a movie with Windows.

-sh1wn

WHEAT AND EVERYTHING THAT MAKES FOOD DELICIOUS.

Ahem.

Although I do not show any overt symptoms, I have decided to test myself by avoiding gluten and gluten-related foods and food additives for one month. I find this self-diagnosis procedure preferable to the more invasive, and not entirely conclusive, medical testing. Why do this to myself? Well, I had a lot of allergies as a kid, and I continue to have asthma as an adult. Asthma + skin reactions to food MIGHT equal wheat allergy. Although gluten intolerance and an allergic reaction to wheat are not the same thing, both are the result of a sensitivity to gluten.

Given the genetic component of this problem, I am purging all gluten-free things from my diet. No more bread, bagels, cereal, prepared foods, or baked goods for me. Rice flour and xantham gum ahoy. Rice buns and gluten-free substitutes are my new reality, at least for the time being. From the perspective of being forced to cook your own food from scratch, it’s not really that bad. From the perspective of not being able to enjoy a delicious Harvey’s value meal (Go ahead, imagine making your hamburger a beautiful thing without a bun!), it sucks. It also makes eating prepared food (i.e. frozen chicken wings) impossible.

I’ll keep you informed. Off to eat some gluten-free animal crackers. They explode into a thousand dust particles on the first bite!

-sh1wn

Yesterday, however, the city of Toronto raised the bar. I was on my way to the HMV megastore, northbound on Yonge Street, when I was stopped by a group of people who had obviously been standing outside for some time.

“Free hot sauce, sir?”

Toronto, Ontario. For all your hot sauce needs.

-sh1wn

I find it difficult to overstate just how bad of a president Mr. Bush was. Historians will spend entire careers evaluating the repercussions of such notable achievements as, say, the suspension of civil liberties, sweeping unchecked executive powers, the response to Hurricane Katrina, domestic wiretapping, and the endorsement of torture. Also, the war in Iraq. Let’s not forget that.

Like many people around the globe, it was with a fair amount of hope that I tuned in to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama. It was actually quite an interesting moment in technology for me: I was sitting at my desk at school, watching the CNN live feed while instant messaging with friends living in 3 separate countries. I watched CNN’s track people’s Facebook status messages from all over the globe, and the enthusiasm was palapable even in a virtual world.

I’ve been giving Obama’s overwhelming appeal giving it a lot of thought recently. His message of “Change we can believe in” is more than just rhetoric, although he undoubtably excels at rhetorical flourish. The tacit understanding belief under every one of his speeches is that people want to not only help, but also participate in a nuanced dialog on important issues. He does not talk down to people, he sets a high standard for discussion and tries to maintain it. In short, he treats voters like intelligent adults.

His predecessor was the polar opposite. Mr. Bush was the master of slogans (Smoke ‘em out, Evil-doers, Axis of Evil). Perhaps what he was best at in his self-styled role of “the decider.” He seemed to want every issues, foreign and domestic, distilled down to an either-or slogan that he could decide on. Mr. Bush was, paradoxically considering his background, an anti-intellectual. In the words of the Economist:

Mr Bush is what the British call an inverted snob. A scion of one of America’s most powerful families, he is a devotee of sunbelt populism; a product of Yale and Harvard Business School, he is a scourge of eggheads. Mr Bush is a convert to an evangelical Christianity that emphasises emotion—particularly the intensely emotional experience of being born again—over ratiocination. He also styled himself, much like Reagan, as a decider rather than a details man; many people who met him were astonished by what they described as his “lack of inquisitiveness” and his general “passivity.”

David Frum, who wrote speeches for Mr Bush during his first term, noted that “conspicuous intelligence seemed actively unwelcome in the Bush White House.” The Bush cabinet was “solid and reliable”, but contained no “really high-powered brains”. Karen Hughes, one of his closest advisers, “rarely read books and distrusted people who did”. Ron Suskind, a journalist, has argued that Mr Bush created a “faith-based presidency” in which decisions, precisely because they were based on faith, could not be revised subsequently.

The attitude of making decisions based on faith in one’s prior assumptions, rather than rational and careful thought, is a dangerous one to have. It is the attitudinal source of discrimination in all its forms. I agree with Suskind’s assertion that Bush created a “faith-based presidency.” After all, if Bush believed that God was telling him to do the things he did, then surely any decision he made is beyond rebuke. This kind of reasoning follows naturally from his religious tradition, one noted for framing the word of God as static, recieved truths that are 2000 years old rather than as a dynamic text that requires considerable intellectual, emotional, and spiritual investment from the reader.

Mr. Bush was thus a man who believed that slogans and propositions would carry the United States through difficult times. He treated people as vessels to be filled with the truth as it was decided upon by his own far-right ideas. President Obama, in contrast, seems to be a man who is willing to engage the population in dialog. He seems to believe that principles for moving forward are to be discussed, not transmitted for mass consumption.

The future of American politics looks bright, at least for the moment. In spite of what many of his opponents might say, words do matter. They frame the discussion. Let’s hope that the discussion continues.

-sh1wn

One of the concepts that I touch upon is the idea of cognitive dissonance, which Tavris and Aronson discuss at length in their recent book, Mistakes were Made (but not by me). The basic idea of cognitive dissonance is that our brains are wired to try and reduce the disconnect between what we believe is true and evidence that calls those beliefs into question. The result is our uncanny ability to convince ourselves of just about anything, partly to reduce the discomfort we feel as a result of cognitive dissonance. We might continue to smoke, for example, because we believe that a few cigarettes here and there is not a big deal because we get a lot of exercise. We justify this and many other behaviours to ourselves. There is, of course, a good reason to do so–everyone makes mistakes and we need to learn to forgive ourselves. But, too often, it seems like our overarching desire to minimize cognitive dissonance in our lives because a way to, in the words of Tavris and Aronson, justify “foolish beliefs, bad decisions and hurtful acts.”

In my research, I use the concept as a way of thinking about the tensions that teacher candidates experience when their vision of the kind of teacher they’d like to be comes in contact with the realities of their practicum experiences. I’ve been applying the concept more and more in daily life, however, and I am stunned at just how well it explains so much of human behaviour. After all, I think everyone likes to believe that they did the right thing, even in the face of incontravertable evidence to the contrary.

See Bush, George W.

-sh1wn

You and I have had some good times. We’ve enjoyed great works of literature, great music, the allure of HBO (it’s not TV…) and the smell of beef roasting in the oven.

You’ve been a good brain throughout my life, asking only that I don’t make you do a lot before 10am. You’ve been loyal throughout graduate school. I need one more thing from you in 2008.

I need to finish this draft by the middle of next week.

I know you can do it, brain. I’m even giving you regular doses of caffeine now.

Suit up, brain. Let’s finish this

• Hear Bob Dylan play “Like a Rolling Stone”

Check.

2. The dissertation is chugging along. My final analysis chapter is proving to be intense and lengthy. I had a dream last night about cutting and pasting a paragraph in my Word document. I think I might need help.

3. One month from today, I plan to hand in the first draft of my dissertation. How’s it going? Well, let’s just say I am glad I came up with the idea of growing a beard.

-sh1wn