Subject: Chat with Mark Cohen
From: Mark Cohen <mark.simon.cohen@gmail.com>
To: barriticus@gmail.com

Mark: "Year Zero of the Golden Obamic Age (The Year of Our Lord 2008 by the outlawed reckoning of the Occupied Liberty Resistance Force Wolverine Squad of the 300, or “Old Republic” adherents clustered in what will soon become Territory Seven of the Global Caliphate)"
Mark: wtf?
me: it's a secret
me: I mean, no
me: yo, I got a new place over here by Lorimer stop with ol' Mirna if you want to "hang" some time
Mark: lorimer?
Mark: moving up in the world
me: well, for lack of alternative direction
Mark: quite so
Mark: but yeah, i'll drop by sometime
Mark: mirna is the lawyer?
me: yep
me: http://www.tengaged.com/blog/Beautiful/189125/russian-sleep-experiment-o
me: Russians
Mark: ack
me: keep in mind that this may come from 4chan
me: and not Russia
me: and by "may"
Mark: yeah, that seems to be the gist from googling the first line
me: I mean almost certainly
Mark: however, from googling something like that, you get to find out all of the ridiculous places it has been posted
Mark: e.g. http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?p=456010951
me: bodybuilding is actually a surprisingly clever forum
me: http://encyclopediadramatica.com/I_got_married_last_weekend
me: oh, wait
me: wrong forum
me: close enough
Mark: NSFW
Mark: or i guess technically NSFS
Mark: i'm in my office at nyu
me: OH SORRY PROFESSOR BRAINSHIRE
me: lol pwned
Mark: no shit
me: PROFESSOR MARK COHENBERG OF THE JEWNIVERSITY OF JEWYORK
me: double pwned
me: in short, you should probably block me at work
me: wait, one more
me: NYJEW
me: (instead of NYU)
Mark: ah
Mark: i'm sure NO ONE has ever thought of that before
me: me too
me: I mean me JEW
me: lol
me: I'm sorry, but that was funny
me: anyway, I've got a meeting tomorrow with True/Slant regarding the media project
me: they're interested in getting involved in some capacity, perhaps using the software Stein develops and incorporating my ad hoc blogger network into their outlet somehow
me: sorry, I mean JEW/Slant
Mark: that might not be an exaggeration. do you often feel like your in the middle of a "jews control the media" conspiracy theory?
me: more like JEWS control the media
me: oh shit
me: sorry
me: not really
Mark: but anyways, that sounds like a good opportunity
me: obviously, there's a high proportion of Jews in the media, but there's also a high proportion of Jews in New York, where the media is
me: also, Ted Turner alone weighs the scales down like 500 goyim points
me: what with him being a crackerjack
me: anywho, how's the academics going?
Mark: not bad. still a fuckton of reading
Mark: and this semester i'm TAing
Mark: which means having to deal with the absolutely atrocious writing of the typical undergraduate
me: I can imagine
me: I'm seeing this girl now
me: who works for TED
me: and who worked in higher education previously
me: and she's had some horror stories
Mark: what's TED?
me: including about TED
me: this big conference series/outlet
me: like $5000 tickets
me: I didn't know what it was either but all my friends did and so did my fucking mom
me: basically, secretive conference with various high-concept ideas being thrown around by movers and shakers in technology, science, art, etc.
Mark: hmm
Mark: i think that falls under the category of "weird shit that goes on in the u.s. economy for no real good reason"
me: It's pretty highly thought-of by the sort of people who would be most sensitive to such a category
me: sort of a showcase for developments
me: and, of course, marketing those developments
Mark: i guess i won't prejudge
Mark: i still suspect it's actually an excuse for midlevel executives to travel on the company's money
me: everything is
Mark: oh, that reminds me
Mark: i came across this abstract of an article recently
Mark: it is a truly choice example of the gibberish that gets written in academic journals
Mark: "From a critical security studies perspective is the concept of human security something which should be taken seriously? Does human security have anything significant to offer security studies? Both human security and critical security studies challenge the state-centric orthodoxy of conventional international security, based upon military defence of territory against threats. Both also challenge neorealist scholarship, and involve broadening and deepening the security agenda. Yet critical security studies have not engaged substantively with human security as a distinct approach to non-traditional security. This article explores the relationship between human security and critical security studies and considers why human security arguments have not made a significant impact in critical security studies. The article suggests a number of ways in which critical and human security studies might engage. In particular, it suggests that human security scholarship must go beyond its (mostly) uncritical conceptual underpinnings if it is to make a lasting impact upon security studies, and this might be envisioned as Critical Human Security Studies (CHSS)."
me: I've seen worse
me: actually been reading some academic papers for the first time while composing articles on the internet's potential effect on cognition
me: and I'm now more confused
me: as the studies seem to contradict each other
me: so, thought experiment it is!
Mark: ha, yeah, it can be tough to get a handle on the literature on a topic
Mark: since odds are over half of the articles produced are garbage
me: I suppose best way to go is trust the ones that are more often cited and which appear in better journals?
Mark: to some extent
me: and cross fingers?
Mark: it's really hard when you're reading about something very technical that you don't have much background in. so if you're reading cognitive psychology stuff, that might be what you have to do
me: the stuff I'm reading isn't particularly nuanced
me: just contradictory
Mark: huh.
Mark: the different researchers must be making different assumptions or employing some kind of different methodology
Mark: the trouble is deciding which one is right without being a specialist
me: the trouble is that JEWS CONTROL SCIENCE
me: I mean, you're right
me: read reddit?
Mark: no
me: don't start
me: information addiction and whatnot
Mark: yeah, i have too much of that just with blogs i follow on my rss reader
Mark: but anyways, speaking of the jews controlling science
Mark: i need to get some more reading done before i go home
me: very well, adios
Mark: later