Word is spreading that acclaimed philosopher (and atheist) Thomas Nagel has praised Stephen Meyer’s new book Signature in the Cell. Nagel writes:

Stephen C. Meyer’s Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperCollins) is a detailed account of the problem of how life came into existence from lifeless matter – something that had to happen before the process of biological evolution could begin. The controversy over Intelligent Design has so far focused mainly on whether the evolution of life since its beginnings can be explained entirely by natural selection and other non-purposive causes. Meyer takes up the prior question of how the immensely complex and exquisitely functional chemical structure of DNA, which cannot be explained by natural selection because it makes natural selection possible, could have originated without an intentional cause. He examines the history and present state of research on non-purposive chemical explanations of the origin of life, and argues that the available evidence offers no prospect of a credible naturalistic alternative to the hypothesis of an intentional cause. Meyer is a Christian, but atheists, and theists who believe God never intervenes in the natural world, will be instructed by his careful presentation of this fiendishly difficult problem.

Brian Leiter’s strong reaction is typical:

Nagel has become a disgrace. He was a philosopher who made some significant contributions, but in areas far afield of this one.

{In the original version of this blog post, I critized Leiter’s reaction; while I do disagree with Leiter, I now think that my particular criticism was unwarranted.}

For more by Leiter on this issue, go here. People in Leiter’s shoes should perhaps wonder if it’s not the case that Nagel, an incredibly smart and (at least until recently) well-respected philosopher, has “jumped the shark”, and instead it’s the case that Nagel’s position is more reasonable than they realize.

Some doctors listen, carefully, to their patients. They listen first, consider, ponder, and make thoughtful suggestions.

But there are other doctors who dash into and out of the examination room and seem to get all slaphappy with psychiatric labels. Years ago, one such doctor ranted to a very sick friend of mine in this vein: “Listen, 95% of the things people come to see me about aren’t even real. They’re not sick; they just hate their jobs or can’t stand their husbands. And it builds up, and next thing you know, they’re in here, whining to me about all these aches and pains that miraculously disappear if they get a good night’s sleep or a decent day at work.”

This latter kind of doctor infuriates me because when I was in grad school, studying clinical psychology, I lived in terror of diagnosing a patient with a psychiatric disorder when, in fact, he or she had a medical disorder. The first thing I’d do with a new patient was to ask them to go see a doctor and explain that their shrink wanted them to be worked up, stem to stern. And what fascinated me was how often a patient who’d come in self-diagnosed as “deeply depressed” turned out to have mononucleosis or some other very real, and sometimes extremely serious, medical ailment.

On the other hand there are medical doctors who have very little training in psychology or psychiatry but who blithely toss around labels that can have a very destructive effect on a patient’s ability to be properly diagnosed and treated. I’ve had more than one patient tell me that once one doctor labeled them as having a psychiatric issue, most other doctors wanted nothing to do with them.

So, consider for example, vocal cord dysfuction (VCD). The fourth edition of Murray & Nadel’s Textbook of Respiratory Medicine notes that “VCD … has historically been considered a functional or conversion disorder with terms such as ‘factitious asthma,’ Munchausen’s stridor, or ‘hysterical asthma.’”

In fact, a more recent term, irritable larynx syndrome, has been introduced, in part to reflect the “greater appreciation that factors other than psychological problems, such as gastroesophageal reflux disease [GERD], posterior nasal drainage, neurologica dystonias, or intense irritant exposures can lead to laryngeal hyperresponsiveness.” [Ibid.]

In other words, Munchausen’s stridor is out. VCD is out. Irritable larynx syndrome is in. And what has historically been written off to a psychiatric etiology may well be due to a perhaps not-so-obvious physical problem.

Ah, but if I could only have a dime for every time “Munchausen’s stridor” appears in patient charts and files in the next year, I bet you I’d be well off. These labels are an easy way to quickly identify and dismiss troublesome or difficult patients. Those labels are sticky, and it takes quite some effort to get them off once they’ve been applied.

Reference: Balkissoon RD, Baroody FM, Togias A. Disorders of the upper airways. In: Mason RJ, Murray JF, Broaddus VC, Nadel JA. Murray & Nadel’s Textbook of Respiratory Medicine, 4th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier Saunders; 2005.

Copyright © 2009 by Candace L. Van Auken. All rights reserved.

Eben noch in der neuen Ausgabe der Instyle gelesen und schon halte ich DEN Nagellack Trend des Winters in den Händen: Mattlack! Klingt komisch und sieht auf den Nägeln auch erstmal gewöhnungsbedürftig aus, schließlich lackieren wir uns die Nägel ja, damit sie glänzen! Aber ich finde der Trend hat eine Chance verdient: also bin ich schnell in den Laden meines Vertrauens gegangen, habe mich für einen OPI Mattlack in der Farbe You Don’t Know Jacques entschieden (schon der Name war jeden Cent wert) und war sehr dankbar für die Tipps: Nagellack vorher schütteln, Unter- und Überlack sind tabu! Wichtig sind glatte Nägel, Rillenfüller sorgt dafür! Beim Auftragen wollte ich schon fast BETRUG rufen, weil er doch geglänzt hat, aber 2 Sekunden später (ich glaube das war Zauberei) wird der Lack matt, trocknet wahnsinnig schnell und sieht irgendwie cool aus, so ein bisschen nach Understatement!

Die OPI Mattlacke gibt es in sechs verschiedenen Farben: Alpine Snow (weiß),  Russian Navy (dunkelblau), La Paz-itively Hot (pink), You don’t know Jacque (taupe), Lincoln Park After Dark (dunkles lila) und Gargantuan Green Grape (wie der Name schon sagt: sieht so ein bisschen nach hellen Weintrauben aus). Ich denke ich werde mir noch den Russian Navy zulegen!

Was sagt ihr zum Mattlack Trend – haben wollen oder eher nicht?

Chad’s DJing at the Churchward [Pop Inn] tonight, 9:30-2.
He is not annoying!

I don’t know if you guys have heard Major Lazer or not [it is Diplo, who did that M.I.A. mash-up album back in two thousand ought something, and a bunch of people a la that album Brand New Heavies did, with a tropical/electro/club bent. Fun stuff, though I liked the N.A.S.A. album earlier this year way more.], there is this one song called Baby that samples a baby’s cry and autotunes it and it is kind of funny for a moment but about halfway through I feel like I’m going to start lactating and I am wondering why anyone would do this because it is really upsetting.
Play it here.
[though the guy on it, Prince Zimboo, who is totally that Eddie Murphy vampire skit [incidentally, there is a karaoke regular who sings like that. all kinds of songs.] has the most awesome song about I don’t even know what, “Say Heh”, play that.]

And there is this one song that sounds like a warped old tape where the sound fades in and out.
Play this one, too.

Chad says he has also heard several songs lately that sample that loud BLAT the car radio makes when my cell phone is too near.

For my final project, I created an animation around the theme of sleep. It starts off with me going to bed and falling asleep. As I fall asleep, I enter a dream in which I am falling out of the sky. As I fall, several other scenes transition between scenes of me falling. The first scene is of me going to Church like I do with my family. The next is of me skiing and hitting a jump. The other scene is of me playing paintball and getting shot out. All of the animation was done through a first person perspective to give the viewer of it a look through my eyes as I “do” all of these activities.

What these scenes have in common has to do with my original theme of sleep. All of these activities are things that I usually have to wake up early to be able to do. Normally I hate getting up early, and I often sleep into the late afternoons or even sometimes into the evening hours. However, these are very possibly my three favorite activities in the world, and strangely enough, they all cut pretty heavily into the amount of sleep I get the night before.

At the end of my animation, as I get closer and closer to the Earth (the image is an aerial view of the area around my parents’ house in New Hampshire), my bed appears and I fall toward it. Just before I reach it, I wake back up and find that it was all a dream.

Hej, där är nåt jag har varit skeptisk för ett tag, och jag pratar om att “putsa någlar”  jag har alöltid trott att någlar bli svåga efter den här behandlingen, men.. jag har så dåliga någlar, de spräcker sönder, kan aldrig ha långa någlar så hade inget att förlora verkligen.. och resultatet? Jag är väldig nöjd! de blev fantastiska fina kan man säga! man kan putsar de kanske en gång i veckan, kanske 3 gånger om månaden.  Filen man använder för att putsa någlar man kan hitta överallt, de måste ha 3 olika ytor: en svarta, en mörk gråa och en ljus gråa.

Hur funkade det? Lätt som en plätt: (ledsen.. men mina händer är inte precis jätte fina, hallå!!! jag sköter hushållsarbete fulltid)   Före:

1) Vi filar våra någlar så ränder bli uniforma, så det bli inga risk att de kan spräcka senare.

2) Vi använder den svarta ytan PÅ någlar, så den bli en jämn yta, men inte så hård eller mycket, använd lågom.

3) Sedan använd den mörka gråa sidan PÅ någlar precis som före, tryck lågom hård mot någel och putsar, det kommer att börja glänsa, du kommer att märka det på en gång

4) Sen, tryck igen filen (den ljus gråa sidan)  mot någeln lågom hård och putsa den, vid sidorna också så glänsen är uniform, och kommer att bli otrolig vacker, du behöver inte måla någlar, kanske lite olja eller handkräm för huden bli den underbart!

Å vissa morgnar är bättre än andra, de är i alla fall mer energifyllda och kärleksfulla. Jag känner hur jag nu sakta fyller mig med livs och skaparkraft. Efter motiga tre kvartal fyllda med upp-poppande monster som jag stirrat i ögonen känner jag nu att livet är som det ska, HÄR och NU.

I morse gick jag till min förskola, månen var så vacker där den låg på himlavalvet. Som en smal smal nagelbit på den ljusblåa morgonhimlen. Där solen var på väg att stiga upp var det vackra gyllene moln, smala och krusiga som tre långa änglavingar. Ur min strupe kom en sång, en sång till gudinnan.

Månen skiner i natten och fyller oss med kraft
Månen skiner i natten och fyller oss med kraft

Oh Inanna, oh Astarte, oh Selene och Artemis
Moder Frigga, syster Freja
Lek med oss och välsigna oss

En underbar kraftsång som fyllde mig helt, jag sjöng högt där jag gick på gångvägen. Jag kände mig lycklig och tillfreds. Så gick jag förbi en stor och gammal granhäck som jag både cyklat och gått förbi förut. Men idag så såg jag den för första gången. Jag tittade på de svängda grenarna, det växte lava på dem och de svajade svagt i vinden. De svajade mot mig och plötsligt hörde jag granarna tala till mig.

“Hej Eva, här är vi, lika glada som du är, lika tillfreds med att vara HÄR och NU”. Åh, jag har inte hört en gran tala på flera år. Jag blev så genomlycklig och en varm känsla for genom min kropp för att landa stillsamt i min själ. Mitt inre ljus blev än något starkare. Alla tecken har nu börjat peka åt ett håll och detta var ännu en bekräftelse på att det går åt det hållet. Det enda rätta hållet! Ingenting är säkrare än det.

Jag är vild. Jag är vacker. Jag ÄR.

10/14/89

Dear Journal,

I was supposed to get a perm today but I’m not! Because some of the Beauty Salonists said I was to young and it was to dangerous and my dad didn’t want me to so I’m not getting it.

He was even willing to pay me but I don’t need his stupid money!

Now my mom is going to the salon (for a trim) and then we will stop by Kings Highway for me to get some tapes. (my Idea.)

Maybe that will cheer me up. I DOUBT IT.

In the 1980's no salon was complete without a Nagel poster

It’s been said before, but it bears repeating: the 1980’s were all about big hair. Being burdened with pin straight hair as a young girl, I did everything I could to get extra volume: crimping, curling, abusing mousse and hairspray, you name it.

My mother got regular perms and I was quite envious of the way her hair puffed out at the sides. When I look at photos from back then, I can now laugh at the pyramid-like shape the chin-length curls gave her head. But at the time I was desperate for a permanent solution to my flat hair dilemma (sorry, bad puns are one of my guilty pleasures).

Obtaining permission from Mom and Dad to get a perm took hours of pleading and coercing. When they finally said yes and I made it to the salon it was utterly heartbreaking to be told that the strong chemicals in the curling agents might hurt my young head of hair. I was furious and beyond disappointed. Stupid beauty salonists!

Over the course of the last ten years, my hair has mysteriously developed a natural wave. This is something that would have thrilled me as a little girl, but instead of embracing my hair’s new texture, these days I prefer to wear it straight and frequently use a flat iron to get it that way. Maybe it’s human nature to fight against what you were born with. Or maybe it’s just me.

Yay! Things are going my way these days:

1. I finished my first serious assignment six days in advance.

2. I received the confirmation of my degree transfer, meaning official bye-bye to Skinner, Gaddis, and Trachtenberg and good-day to Voorhoeve, Nozick, and Nagel.

3. I secured a place on the LSE100 pilot course, Thinking as a Social Scientist.

4. I landed a big speaker for the Scandinavian Society to come in January.

5. I got my first article in the student newspaper published, and people seemed to like it.

6. I met a lot of new UWC people, and nice UWC people I knew but had never really spoken with.

Ich hatte die Freude, Nagel von Muff Potter Ende September für das frisch gerelaunchte polli-magazin interviewen zu können. Unvermeidliches Thema: Die Auflösung von Muff Potter. Nebenbei habe ich ihn noch ein bisschen über die VÖ-Politik der Band ausgefragt und auch erfahren, dass er an einem Nachfolger von Wo die wilden Maden graben, seinem ersten Roman, arbeitet.

Auszug:

Ich komme halt aus einer minikleinen Punkrock-Szene und ich hab immer nur das gemacht, was ich glaubte, machen zu müssen und ich freue mich, wenn andere mich unterstützen und wenn nicht, dann mach ich’s trotzdem. So. Ich bin da relativ abgeklärt und habe weder geglaubt, dass der Himmel sich öffnet, als wir einen Major-Plattendeal bekamen, noch war ich am Boden zerstört, als wir keinen mehr hatten.

Wäre es heute möglich, so abgeklärt eine Band zu starten?

Zum Glück bin ich nicht mehr 21 und gerade in meiner ersten Band! Ich stell mir vor, ich müsste da auf dem Red Bull Tourbus spielen und versuchen, groß rauszukommen. Ich meine, als ich 21 war, war ich erst mal 5 Jahre lang besoffen und habe Lieder auf drei Akkorden geschrieben. Jetzt muss das aber alles viel schneller gehen. Ich bin tatsächlich froh, dass ich darüber hinaus bin, weil ich mir vorstellen kann, dass man ganz schnell – so mit 25 – total desillusioniert ist. Ich bin das erst jetzt mit 33! (lacht)

Seitdem ich diesen Blog habe, wollte ich das mal imitieren: Read on, my dear…

Thomas Nagel points out early on in the book, The Last Word that it’s the need to get the last word that does in too many statements made in philosophy. He gives an example like, “two plus two equals four, and cruelty is evil, not just for us, but absolutely”. This might very well be true (if we had a firm ground to say what truth is), but one doesn’t necessarily follow the other. I think Nagel means something more here, something that is interesting and which I kind of understand but which is going to hurt my head to try to put into words, so I’ll leave it like Wittgenstein’s things being passed over in silence.

It’s towards the end of the book that Nagel says one thing too many, and leaves the book hanging in an uncomfortable space. In roughly a fifteen page chapter he lobs in his thoughts about what might be one of the real $64,000 questions of philosophy, why do we have consciousness, but he doesn’t only just ask that question, but why are we creatures that have this ability to reason? He’s not really that concerned with answering the question, well because it’s unanswerable right now and it would take more than 15 pages to do so, but with making it clear that religious and naturalistic accounts can not be correct; rather reason itself has to be relied on. This is more than a little confusing to me, and I believe that Nagel is being sloppy, something that is very strange since he is hard-core methodical and dissecting everything in the pages leading up to this chapter. Here is part of the chapter’s conclusion:

“It is natural to look for a way in which our understanding of the world could close over itself by including us and our methods of thought and understanding within its scope. That is what drives the search for naturalistic accounts of reasoning. But it is also clear that this hope cannot be realized, because the primary position will always be occupied by our employment of reason and understanding, and that will be true even when we make reasoning the object of our investigation. So an external understanding of reason as merely another natural phenomena—a biological product, for example—is impossible. Reason is whatever we find we must use to understand anything, including itself. And if we are to understand it merely as a natural (biological or psychological) phenomenon, the result will be an account incompatible with our use of it and with the understanding of it we have in using it. For I cannot trust a natural process unless I can see why it is reliable, any more than I can trust a mechanical algorithm unless I can see why it is reliable. And to see that I must rely on reason itself.”

This is a reaction against an evolutionary account of why we can reason, and why reason is of vital importance to the way that we think. Nagel seems terrified of the idea that natural selection could have produced in us this ability, and that if it came about this way then there is no reason to accept that it’s quality of being absolutely correct. I don’t quite know what Nagel would rather have as a solution, something that relies on reason itself, but I don’t know what that would be, save for some kind of Platonic ideality, which we are attuned to by? By what? I don’t know, and Nagel doesn’t seem to say either, since he also rejects teleological / religious answers to this problem.
I think that Nagel is making some mistakes, I’m probably wrong, because he’s smarter than me, but I still think there is something missing. One of the reasons he doesn’t like the evolutionary account is that the odds are terrible that something like this could naturally occur. I’m taking other writers at their word on this, but it doesn’t matter if it is one in a billion that everything exactly right happened to produce life that led eventually to rational / conscious beings because it happened, we are here as rational beings. One can throw away the whole evolution argument, but in it’s framework there is nothing overly surprising that we are here, and it’s not even that statistically improbable if one thinks that this cosmic lottery is being played out in billions of spots all over the universe. It would be like meeting someone who is driving a Ferrari, who used to serve you french fries and you won’t believe that he is driving a Ferrari with money he won from winning the lottery, because the odds are against any one particular person ever winning it.

Is it inconceivable, that the reason we are thinking rational creatures is that we have been navigated through natural selection to have brains developed in such a way that we can engage and understand logical reasoning and math? Nagel thinks not, and see’s this as something that is reducing reason to naturalism, but that is just not the case. He gives the example of a mechanical algorithm, and how he won’t believe that it works until he sees it, but it’s impossible to view a mechanical algorithm outside of the machine that it works with. If one had no idea of what kind of machine a computer code would work on, and one was shown some computer code how could one know that it is reliable or not? The algorithm and the machine are intertwined; there may be a universality involved in the algorithm, but without the existence of the machine the algorithm is meaningless.

This is not the case with the type of logical reasoning that Nagel is talking about though. One doesn’t think that humans developed logical reasoning and then the world reacted to it accordingly, or that if humans never existed then the physical laws of the universe would no longer be applicable, or that mathematical concepts would not exist. There might not be a creature that could appreciate them, but the laws would still exist, and those laws are also the basic premise of how we come to understand and become aware of reason. I doubt anyone is born knowing that “If p =q, and q=r than p=r”, at a certain point we would all undoubtedly understand it, but I’d be willing to bet that the first understanding of this logical law comes from a toddler seeing one thing that looks like another, and that other that looks like yet another thing, and realizes that the third thing looks just like the first. This could be said for math also, children don’t just know that 2 plus 2 equals 4, they learn that basic truth through a very concrete. These things are true and form the basis of what we know of the world, but they are no innate in us, if someone or something never showed them to us the ability to do simple math, or know basic logic would be lacking, it would be something that one could potentionaly know and understand, but it would have to be explained to a person in someway.

The ‘naturalistic’ account of natural selection rather can posit that present man evolved as a creature that has a brain that is able to understand these concepts, use them, expand on them and is conscious of this. It’s quite easy to imagine a way that natural selection could have done this in small steps that led us from simple toolmakers who knew ‘reason’ in that if you hit something it will do this, to much more sophisticated and impressive heights. The evolutionary account can give an adequate non-magical way for us to have evolved in a way that we can understand and use reason as a basis for our thoughts.

One must assume that if reason and mathematics is fundamentally true than it is true even if humans do not exist, and that the way in which the world operates that makes these things true were occurring from the earliest moments of existence. The basic causality that results from a natural application of these things can not have been non-existent before we were present, and if we can accept that there is a known world outside of ourselves, that we empirically know and have certainty in, then we can not believe that these laws come from ourselves, but we know and can understand them because they are true and independent of ourselves.

One other small argument that can be made for a naturalistic understanding of reason in people can come from looking at case studies of people with localized brain damage and the abilities that they lose. If there wasn’t a physical correspondence in the way we think and our brains then it would be very difficult, if not impossible to account for some of the stranger cases of neurological effects that can be noticed in certain peoples whose brains aren’t working properly. This is just something that I’m mentioning for now, and maybe later I will write more about this.

That all said, I’m probably off base, and I’m missing exactly what Nagel meant, but even if I was it was fun to write all of this.

Medger faktum med blossande kinder.

Läste några rader till mig skrivna i Hannas kontaktbok.
“Hur går det med stipendiesökandet?” ja någonting ditåt.

Fan också!! Det går ju inte alls… inte för fem öre.
Jag min klant hade helt glömt bort att ansöka
och ansökningstiden gick ut den 15 Oktober.
Kommer ihåg nu att jag fick lappen för länge sedan.
Tydligen så måste jag ha glömt bort den på direkten.
Jag gillar inte detta alls ju..
Nu är det tydligen nedförsbacke och det är bara och hålla i sig.
Ja det verkar inte bättre ju..

Vad kan jag skylla på? Mitt minne? Vilket jefla minne?
Kan jag skylla på att jag hade mycket med bok 2 att göra?
Eller rentav rampfeber för bok1..
Ja nu hade jag ju inte det… men kanske undermedvetet..Haha
Hjälp mig då… Vad kan jag tänkas skylla på
så jag inte behöver stå här med skammen
över att ha missat chansen att få pengar till Hannas klass.
Så att vi kunde göra någonting tillsammans..

Nääni… jag kan nog inte skylla på annat än att jag är en klantarchel.
Nu får jag ta en sparbössa och ställa mig utanför Hemköp.
Får väl ha ett plakat runt halsen med lämplig text.
Så hörrni… är jag inte här så står jag där.
eller så ger jag pengar själv… Ja så får det nog bli.
Barnen ska inte behöva bli lidande för min skull.

Nu vet jag vad jag ska göra på min barnfria helg.
Jag ska skriva en ansökan för vårterminen och skicka in.
Den ska vara inne senast 15 April.
Gör jag inte det nu så missar jag väl den också.. Bläh!!

Ja om den nu blir så barnfri.
Hanna fick ju Svinflunssprutan idag..
Och den kan ju ge lite flunssa symptom med feber och så.
Får hon feber och mår kass så kan hon inte åka till korttis.
Då blir gumman min hemma.
Fast om det kommer så ska det väl komma inom ett par dygn?
Så om det kommer så hinner det väl försvinna innan fredagen.
Ja förutsatt att reaktionen kommer snart då… typ i morgon.

Sen skulle jag ju åkt till Västerås denna vecka.
Men glömde bort det för bokade mig på annat ju.
Det i sin tur gjorde ju att jag missade Lunchen med Finaste Udo.
Den skulle vi ju ta när jag var i Västerås.

Ja ni ser…
Jag både glömmer och målar fan på väggen.
Hungrig får jag gå också.
Bra kvalité på tanten va? Haha

Jamen i alla fall så ska jag föreläsa på torsdag på Kompetenscenter.
Om jag nu kommer ihåg att gå dit.

Och en nagel gick av idag

Musen den krånglade också så jag fick köpa en ny.

All Potatis i Korvsoppan bara försvann under koket i kväll.
Men skyn var extra tjock .

Men tvättmaskinen fungerar i alla fall
Så jag måste nog börja hänga upp tvätten som ligger i.
Innan det börjar växa gröna slemmiga alger på dom.

Sen ska jag faktiskt hoppa i loppsoffan
Är en aningens trött nu…
Uret den visar ju på 00:10 just nu.

Men tvätten först….

Ha en underbar och rofylld natt ni alla.

KramKram!

These were good. They explained a lot of concepts from Flash and introduced some really cool concepts and ideas. I am taking Analytical Inquiry, which is a math foundations course that teaches animation and actionsript through Adobe Flash, now, and I am learning a lot, so hopefully this project will help build my skills even more. I am excited to start working on our animations!

For my textual portrait, I decided that I wanted to find a picture of me doing something that I loved, so I found this one. It shows me doing one of my favorite things in the world, skiing! I define myself more by the things I do than by how I look, and skiing is one of my favorite things to do in the world. It has actually even influenced the way that I look, dress, and behave.

In this image, I used each portion of the picture to tell different stories about my experiences with skiing. In my helmet, I played on the idea that helmets are supposed to provide protection and safety, so I described the injuries and damage I have done to myself through skiing. The jersey is a Buffalo Sabres jersey, which is where I was born and where my family is from, so I decided to write about how I started skiing and about ski trips I’ve been on with my family and why I ski. On the pants, I wrote about skiing in high school. I talked about how I developed as a skier, both in skill level and in style of skiing. I also talked about the programs that I did in high school for skiing. On the rail, I wrote about how I started doing freestyle skiing and why I like it. On the jump, I wrote about some of the friends I have had from skiing and my trips to Whistler for summer ski camps. For the shading in my pants, I decided to play on the idea of shade and talk about trees. Gladed skiing, which is skiing in the trees, is my second favorite form of skiing after freestyle skiing, so I decided to talk about some experiences I have had with gladed skiing. The poles contain an explanation of why I use the poles that I use, which are several inches too small for me by normal standards. On the boots and bindings, I talk about the boots that I use, and on the skis, I talk about how I broke the binding on one of my skis last season. There is also a phrase that is repeated on its own and in some of the narratives in the image. That phrase is: “Sesh the gnar!” Gnar is skier slang for snow, and sesh is a shortened form of the word session, so seshing the gnar means to have a snow session or ski, snowboard, etc.

I wanted to talk about my past with regards to skiing, so all of the narratives were improvised as I worked on the project, as if I was just recalling a bunch of memories about skiing. I liked the idea of telling stories about me and skiing in the text because, while the image showed me skiing, it did not give much about me away. The stories give the picture context and tell my autobiography through story. These stories explain how this picture tells a great deal about me.

Hej allihopa!

Jag började morgonen med att besviket titta på mina naglar och nagelband & bestämde mig för att göra något åt det!

Jag biter och river av nagelbanden och skinnet omkring, så det ser ut som värsta vietnamn-köttsåret!
Nu får det vara nog, nu börjar jag få lite längd på naglarna och kan börja göra dom snygga och fräscha.
Det ser inte så bra ut om man har värsta såret på en nymanikyrerad nagel…

Lånade hem ett par “baby-pyssel”-böcker från biblan häromdan, så gårdagen ägnade jag mig åt att göra en prov-boll
Bara för att se hur genomförbart det faktiskt är!

Till saken hör att jag har dåliga händer.
Reumatologerna tror att det är psoriasis artrit, då vi har väldigt mycket psoriasis i släkten.
Plus att jag är överrörlig, och det kan tydligen smärta en hel del också.

Detta innebär att jag har svårt att röra händerna, som att ; diska, hålla i en penna, greppa saker överhuvudtaget och till detta hör då synålar.
Så när jag började hålla i nålen igår så krampade handen och känslen försvann, otippat va?
Men jag gav mig inte!
Med många pauser och lite slarv så blev det såhär:

Sådär, nu tar jag väl och försöker diska undan lite, sen kan jag ägna mig åt mig själv och mina naglar

På återséende!

Here is the image that I will be working with for my text project:

Das Sortiment von Najel, Hersteller und Grosshändler von traditioneller Naturkosmetik, umfasst unter anderem eine Reihe hochwertiger Pflegeöle.

Dazu gehören Schwarzkümmelöl als Nahrungsergänzungsmittel zur Stärkung des Immunsystems sowie als Massageöl, das für seine beruhigenden und regenerienden Eigenschaften geschätzt wird und besonders bei trockener, sensibler und gereizter Haut zu empfehlen ist.

Das Massageöl aus Oliven-, Lorbeerbeeren- und Schwarzkümmelöl ist ein besonders sinnliches Öl. Es sorgt für eine wohltuende Entspannung und eine seidige Haut.

Arganöl verwöhnt Haut, Haare und Nägel mit Feuchtigkeit und Kaktusfeigenöl wird aufgrund seiner heilenden und Falten glättenden Eigenschaften geschätzt.

Vgl.: http://www.najel.net/ger/huiles.php

Eine Hand

Eine Hand ist wie ein Handschuh.
Nur mit Knochen gefüllt und mit Nägeln.
Aber – man kann ihn nicht ausziehen.