Author: Jason D. Rowley
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A Quote from Current Reading: Generosity by Richard Powers
“From where I sit, the whole human race did something stupid when young–pulled some playful stunt that damages someone. The secret of survival is forgetting. If evolution favored conscience, everything with a backbone would have hanged itself from the ceiling fan eons ago, and invertebrates would once again be running the place.” – Richard Powers,…
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On College, Critical Thought, Cattle, and Baking
I’m not afraid of expressing my misgivings with the “education” I’m receiving at the #4 ranked institution in America. UChicago possesses a certain self-righteous rhetoric pertaining to its general, or Core, curriculum. Founded in the constructivist school of learning theory, the Core’s teaching methodology consists of reading “primary-source” text documents and leading students, like cattle…
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Some Tweets (Consisting of Very Undergraduate Poetry)
http://twitter.com/Jason_Rowley/status/19589929519 http://twitter.com/Jason_Rowley/status/19352955492 http://twitter.com/Jason_Rowley/status/18983393691 http://twitter.com/Jason_Rowley/status/18569074800 http://twitter.com/Jason_Rowley/status/17510080528
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A Couple of Quotes On Which Recently I’ve Leaned
Okay, okay… so four isn’t, strictly speaking, a “couple.” Consider the last two a bonus, or this to be A Couple of A Couple of Quotes… – – – “Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibility.” —Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki – – – “Forget…
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On Snuggling the Wet Blanket
He reframes the elitist argument not as the racist, male-chauvinist one its made out to be by the warm-fuzzy GreenPeace crowd, but, rather as one simply against egalitarianism. Essentially: We aren’t all equal, get over it.
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Introducing Oratorize.
Of many things, the prime one that precluded me from writing on The Halcyon Days is not my college workload (which can be largely shirked and/or explained away) but the fact that I’ve been doing a lot of freelance writing for a couple of websites and fleshing out the skeleton I built for Kairos Praxis.…
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How I learned to stop learning, gush platitude, and get A’s in Critical Thinking courses…
UChicago prides itself on its hard-Core Curriculum. In theory it’s a pretty great idea. Ostensibly, it puts students through a rigorous liberal arts education focused on reading “Great Books” and “Developing a robust set of Critical Evaluative Methods” by which one can—ahem—critically evaluate said texts. Putting aside the fact that this type of education is…
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On Life Imitating Fiction Imitating, Reifying the Abstract Transactions of Life
Below are three paragraphs that I had squirreled away in the Orphans folder. I like the idea so much I’m currently contacting professors in the music department at UChicago to see if I can do this as an independent study to render fiction real… And to fulfill the ridiculous A-M-D Core requirement. ——— Consider his…
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On the Killing of Brain Cells
I don’t really understand the appeal of college parties. I found myself at one last night/this morning. It was what I expected: crowded, perspirant, and loud. Drunk for the first time in their lives, they waddle, stagger and shout. The standard male greeting, “Whatdup”, elicited responses ranging from “Shit… […] …my fucking face is tingly…
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Twenty-four thousand, seven-hundred fifty-five :: Or, “On the Pleasures and Sorrows of Returning to School”
Over this past summer, I’ve seen and done and learned many thjngs. I’ve visited exotic and not so exotic locales, read over a dozen books, became more involved with an entrepreneurship organization—the first whose mission statement I can actually stand behind—and, most pertinent to the readers of The Halcyon Days, published a total of 24,755…