Warming Up

I am sitting here with my 200+ degree (no, not centigrade) coffee that is to hot to hold, and trying to get myself going to get the last part of my homework done for the week. It is discouraging to think that I am going to spend another two hours or so on this, and then I will have to start all over tomorrow. Oh well; I have my coffee and my wonderful wife, so everything will be ok. I am somewhat disappointed that I have not had more time to write on here. It has been a very busy week at work, and I have not had much of a chance between that and school work. I did get to have a very nice Saturday. It started off with a nice work out with Deb and Chris, and then I got to hang out with Josh for a bit. Then Deb and I went to D-land to hang out with Chris and another friend. After that we went and hung out with Josh and Laurel, which was very nice. Today has been church and homework.
I am planning on writing a piece on multi-cultural relativism soon. Originally it was going to be on multiple cultural levels, but I think that it is more important to address relativism. Depends on how you look at it I guess. I will probably end up writing both I suppose. The thing that is getting to me right now is Black History Month. I cannot think of anything that is going on in society right now that is more P.C., and yet, I cannot think of anything that is more racist. Are people really that blind?
Sigh, I'm stuck in procrastination mode, so I'm going to expound a little more on multiple cultural levels. I guess Dr. Reynolds made a comment about it in Deb's class last week, so we were discussing it during a drive home one night. The basic premise is that for X (where X is something that exists), there will always be a different perspective on X depending on what culture you are from (where culture is defined as any specific confined group of people). There are two different ways to look at this. You can either say that there are many different types(categories) of subjects to be discussed (for example: Slang, or a Pun), or you can say that all things are based around a singular definition. I hold to the later, while Deb believes that there are many different categories. The reason for my view is that there is always a certain level of abstraction you have to go through before you get to a given definition. I say that whether you are discussing slang or a pun, you are still debating the definition of the words that you are using.
Ultimately I decided that none of that mattered in our discussion, because you have to either be a part of the same cultural background as the person you are arguing with in order to fully understand the topic, or you have to have a thorough understanding of that background. Deb has a very strong background in linguistics and engineering, while mine would be more based around relationships and computer theory. Fortunately we have a lot of common ground due to the mathematical basis of linguistics, ("math is just another language") and the linguistical basis to computer science. However we do still have different enough thinking patterns that we run into issues often with communicating due to our different cultural backgrounds. For example; Deb tends to interpret questions literally, and I usually interpret the intent behind the question. While these are not cultural traits, cultures to tend to be formed around such traits.
Suppose I were to ask you, "What would happen if you cross a mountain climber with a mosquito?" One person might be apt to say, "I don't know... a hairy man with wings that flies around and bugs people?" While completely wrong in terms of the joke, it would be a perfectly reasonable answer to the question based on that person's particular culture. The joke is in fact a mathematical/scientific pun based on the words "cross, mountain climber and mosquito". The answer? "Nothing! You can't cross a scalar with a vector". The explanation: "cross" is short for "cross product", which is a mathematical term for fun multiplication of vectors (normal multiplication would be referred to as scalar multiplication, or dot products). The mountain climber is the "scalar", get it? The mosquito is the vector. You cannot combine scalar and vector mathematics in a cross product.
I am sure that my explanation is not exact, but it is close enough to make my point; even though I have a strong background in mathematics, I did not remotely get that joke for a very long time because I do not normally approach jokes looking for a mathematical explanation. This caused me to be in a different culture from the person telling the joke (Deb).
Now, what is it that separated me from Deb? The different definitions of the words in the joke(fragment, AAGH!). What would separate me from Deb if I were using slang? The different definitions of the words being used. If I were British, and Deb came up to me and told me that she was very made up, I would assume that she was happy, whereas as an American, I would think that she had on to much make-up. Even though two different categories of cultural levels are being used in my examples, they are still differentiated per culture by definition.
Ok. I am done now. I either made my point, or you are wondering what I am smoking, and where you can get some. My coffee is still too hot to drink. I either wrote really fast, or I shouldn't have put it in an insulated cup.

TTFN