brains to bones

First off, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t think my brain has hurt this much since the start of our course. I’m finding these ideas really hard to sink my teeth into. Though the examples at the end of class really helped...I think.

Secondly I would like to tip my hat to Klages. After finishing her last chapter I would like to note that I found her text to be extremely helpful with tackling this course. There are so many ideas and theorists; I found her material to be an excellent guide for the majority of the year.

Finally, something that comes to a shock for many of my friends is my family’s TV situation – we only have four channels (including the French one). How do we manage? We have a lot of DVDs and our favourite TV shows on DVD. The most recent TV show to our collection has been the first couple seasons of Bones (which has quickly become a member of my top five favourite shows). The show is about a forensic anthropologist, Dr. Brennan (aka Bones), her team of scientists (‘squints’) and her partner, FBI special agent, Seeley Booth. The two investigate crimes where the victims are less body and mostly bones.

The reason I bring this up is in the first season Bones’ assistant Zack, said something that I thought fit with today’s class. Zack is brilliant, and very rational. The team was being interviewed by a government agent to determine whether or not they would be a threat when dealing with sensitive matters. The agent purposed a scenario to Zack, ‘If you had a piece of knowledge that was very sensitive, could I get it out of you?” She then went on to list a series of ways she would try, beg, bribe, etc. To all of these he responded ‘no’. Finally she asked if he would give it up if she presented a logical, reasonable argument. At this he faltered, and nearly agreed.

(SPOILER) In a later season it is this reasonable logic that causes Zack to become the apprentice to a cannibal following a secret society.
Zack followed the Humanist idea about absolute truths to a t. A reasonable (scientific) argument was the only way of convincing him. It was this that was his undoing. As a result I feel that this is an argument against a humanist existence, and perhaps one of mixed humanist and postmodernism ideas.

** the images title was a bone lampost