Advanced Film Criticism, Monday, Period 1

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"Hey, congrats, you figured out how to come to the same place two weeks in a row. Now, just so you think you're not going to learn anything in this class besides an appreciation for stupid things, you're getting a pop quiz," James said. "That there's a real old timey popcorn cart. Figure out how to make me some popcorn and then make me some popcorn. The manual's there, and I'm pretty sure everything you need is too. We're starting the movie now, but you don't get to watch until there's a tub of popcorn in these beautiful hands of mine."

"Oh, and today's movie is Bel-Air Yorkshire Terrier, which is terrible, probably offensive to English people, and definitely offensive to my ears. Also, get that popcorn done fast because eventually they try to make one of the girl dogs the 'sexy' girl dog and I want to make sure that stuff's digested before I feel like retching."

Practical Philosophy, Monday

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"We talked about it a little last week," Ender said, "And since nothing catastrophic has happened since, we might as well continue on that yarn-- about identity, and specifically, the debate surrounding nature and nurture."

It was another nice-ish day, and so they were outside again. Bag of sandwiches, drinks, the works. Ender seemed fairly serene about it all.

"The nature versus nurture debate is an old one," he said. "The original progenitor of the term was the polymath Francis Galton. He approached it as something of a binary. Philosophers like John Locke claimed the nurture end was the right side of the stick - that all humans were born blank slates to be imprinted on. On the other side, you had people such as the behavioral geneticists, who felt most behaviors were derived from your DNA."

He smiled a little.

"Common wisdom dictates that this binary isn't so clear-cut," he said. "There's a little bit of nature and nurture in all of us. But how much, and how?"