[GROANING]
[ELECTRIC HUMMING]
Hm.
MAN: No!
Thor is a lady now, at least as far as the comic books
are concerned.
For anyone who hasn't been keeping up with the Odinses,
here is the intel from Asgard.
Stripped of the powers making him
capable of wielding Mjolnir, brawny, bearded bae
Thor Odinson is forced to find self-worth elsewhere.
He looks lots of places, including
the bottoms of some flagons of mead, as you do,
while a mysterious woman happens upon a said marvelous magical
mallet and handily hefts it, assuming
literally the helm of Thor.
One point made explicit is that this new Thor is just
that, Thor.
Writer Jason Aaron explains this is not She Thor.
This is not Lady Thor.
This is not Thorita.
This is Thor.
This is the Thor from the Marvel universe.
Now, many fans got upset about this,
and they asked many very good questions.
Is this in the best interests of the story,
or is it just a marketing ploy slash cash grab.
Lots of characters have wielded Mjolnir in the past.
Why didn't Captain America or Beta Ray Bill become Thor?
Is this just more PC clap trap from the feminist Illuminati?
Well, as a card carrying member of the feminist Illuminati,
I can answer that last one with a confident yes.
But the others I have no authority to say really.
I do think Jason Aaron is doing a good job addressing
these questions in the story though.
And I'm sure every upset Thor fan has given the book a read
to see if their concerns have been addressed.
And I'm guessing if they haven't, they'll
judge it the same way they judge any other sudden continuity
shift in a comics universe, because I am absolutely
positive that this uproar has nothing to do with the fact
that Thor is now a lady.
Oh come on!
But politics aside, what I'm most curious about
is how this person got Thor's name.
And in answering that question, I
think if we can learn some things
about names, how they work, and even the story itself.
So initially, this is deceptively simple.
How did new Thor get Thor's name?
Odinson gave it to her.
At the end of issue four, new Thor calls Odinson Thor,
and he balks.
"Do not call me by that name.
I am not worthy of it," he says. "I
am still the prince of Asgard.
I am still the Odinson, but she is Thor now."
New Thor protests.
But Odinson insists.
We could do this the way Jaiman views Link from the Zelda
games, as a kind of title.
By this logic, it makes perfect sense
that Thor could be someone else, because Thor is
a position, a honorific even.
But what if Odinson doesn't intend to convert
his name into a title?
What if he actually wants to give this mysterious stranger
his name?
I mean he does say, "I am not worthy of that name."
This does give some credence to Jason Aaron's claim
that this is Thor.
Like, as far as I know, Throg and
various other hammer wielders were never
described as being actually Thor.
It also means that the name Thor and the ability
to command Mjolnir are a package deal.
That the latter is the singular trait necessary to be,
not be called but be the former.
This situation and its fallouts sort of unearths or, I guess,
unmidgards some of our ideas about how names work,
about which there has been endless debate.
So we're going to focus on only one sort of dichotomy,
that between a Millianism and description theory.
Millianism, named after JS Mill, says that names
reference a singular thing.
In our case, people or, I guess, gods.
Thor then means the person referred to by the word Thor.
In short, quote, "all there is to the meaning of a name
is its bearer."
Were that it was so simple though,
because when a fictional person, Odinson, or actual people,
comics writers who have the authority to do so,
change the meaning or bearer of a name,
that doesn't mean it just happens.
There is protest, both in the book and the actual world,
for many reasons.
One of them being, hey, this lady just isn't Thor.
Names are related to their own history and how we use them,
not just who has them, however that is determined.
In other words, for the upset masses
new Thor might not match some sense of a Thor.
And so the reference is all wrong.
For them the cognitive construct that exists at Thor
is this, not this.
And so angry tweets.
[TWITTERING]
Further complication is provided by Thor's mononymity.
As a name, it is singular, distinct.
Like Sting, Shaq, or Oprah, Thor is more
like the Empire State Building or the Nile River,
than it is, say, Mike.
Thor and his fans then are being forced to confront something
that I, as the bearer of a name that was the most popular
in the United States for 40 years, did in first grade.
Either there is more than one meaning for the name Thor, one
for each bearer, or there is some specific, if contingent,
trait or traits determining which person or people Thor
gets attached to.
In essence, there is a description
meaning Thor, and whoever meets that description
is the god of thunder.
So where for Millianism the name means only its bearer,
description theory holds that a name references
a bundle of characteristics and means
whatever person or thing fits those characteristics.
When Jason Aaron and Marvel say that this is Thor,
I think this is what they mean, that Thor is not
meant to refer rigidly to one person
but rather will travel to whatever
bundle of characteristics describes its bearer,
which in this case, Odinson no longer does.
Though this is untidy by the fact that Thor is fictional,
so one could argue that as a name
it references nothing or an infinity of things,
which is a little beyond our scope right now.
Instead, we will exit stage left pursued by a frost giant
to discuss how all of this is relevant
when you Google yourself.
The fun of ego-surfing is beholding the internet kingdom
that you have built all at once.
Ah yes.
That time I wore ICP makeup.
Wonderful.
That's a beautiful song.
But because it's coming out of our mouths--
But also, finding people who have your name and seeing what
characteristics they possess, the vastly different senses
and references for something as personal as what
your friends call out when they want to tell you
that your shoes are untied.
Of course, those sense and references
might be less exciting the more common a name you have.
Like, I'm always curious about what the other four Mike
Rugnettas are up to.
PAT SAJAK: Michael Rugnetta from right here in Philadelphia,
going to school at the University of Pennsylvania.
That's right.
Love it there.
But Eric Brown from Kornhaber Brown
could probably make a full-time job out
of tracking his Google-gangers.
Either way, the best and weirdest result
of such endeavors is finding the least "your name" person
with your name you can.
My name's Jeff.
The complete and seeming conflict of terms,
a conservative mommy blogger to your punk rock guitar player,
a wilderness photographer to your economics graduate
student, a Mike Rugnetta that loves "Big Bang Theory"
and hates noise music.
What's that guy's deal?
And I wonder if this is because over and above,
referring to us, we also think of our names as describing us.
And for some, though definitely not all, the more unique
their name, the more bizarre the confrontation,
the conflict of all possible senses and descriptions.
Or maybe even the more devalued their own description feels
because of that confrontation.
When really, weirdly, neither one's name
nor the description it suggests might
be totally and necessarily theirs to begin with.
What do you guys think?
Does a name describe you or refer to you?
And if you have a really unique name,
do you get excited, or frustrated, or neither
when you meet someone that has your name?
What is that experience like?
I'm very curious about it, because my name is supernormal.
Let us know in the comments.
And of course--
I'm actually on a road trip this week.
Some of which you're going to get to hear about
in next week's video.
So for now, comment responses have
to come from the temporary Idea Channel offices
in Louisville, Kentucky.
Let's see what you guys had to say about the SATs.
OnlyInThisLight talks about how the SAT is maybe doing exactly
the thing that colleges want it to, which is showing which
students come from wealthy backgrounds and therefore
could turn into high profile alumni, which will then
donate lots of money to the college when
they become very successful.
And I would be really curious if anybody has seen anything about
this idea, or if there's been any research on it,
because I think, yeah, this is-- it seems a little
tin-foil-hat-ee.
But it also sounds like a really interesting way
that people could possibly be thinking about test results.
So I'd be curious to know more about this
if anybody knows more.
Dan Smith talks about how the SAT is really
just a symptom of an educational system that's
been designed to sort of just churn out students.
That it's kind of been industrialized.
And this reminds me of Sir Ken Robinson,
who we didn't talk about, but is very much
a part of this conversation.
He's talked a lot about how creativity is something that's
kind of been run out of a lot of educational systems
across the world.
So if you don't know his work, check it out.
It's really great, and he's an awesome speaker.
Really interesting guy.
CrusadingChristian talks about how they think the SAT
is a test of actual important real world
skills, things like preparing and being
able to work the pressure.
And I can see that, but I think that the response to that
is that it does it in such a specific and rigid environment
that you have to ask whether or not it really shows how someone
works under pressure, because the SAT is
a very particular kind of work.
And also, to ask whether or not it prepares different people
for those things in the same way.
And I would argue that it kind of doesn't.
Mike sits down in his chair and bubbles
in letters for three hours.
Sam Auciello writes about how tests
and maybe the SAT specifically kind of
are being used the opposite of what they're good for.
That if you use a test to show where everyone is starting from
and then teach from there, you're
actually getting a sort of lay of the land,
see what everybody's level of expertise is.
But when you use it as the thing at the end of a learning
experience so that people have to prove that they have learned
something, you are causing this incredibly stressful and loaded
situation that has all the problems that the SAT does.
And I think that this is a really, really great point
and one that we don't talk about nearly often enough,
the test as the start of a learning experience
to make sure that everyone is taught
equally as opposed to the end of the learning experience.
Callum Hodges talks about how they
do testing in Australia, which is
related to a set of sort of specializations
that students choose.
And yeah, I think this makes perfect sense.
And I know it is sort of related to that the way
that they do it in the UK with GCSEs and A levels.
And this is not a thing that we do nearly enough in the United
States.
And I think it's because we don't trust our students
or don't want them to specialize too early, because there's
this idea that maybe that's not what they're going to be
interested in in the future.
But if you specialize early, it will always
add interesting perspective to whatever
you do after that, even if it's not directly related.
And so, yeah, I just think-- I think
it makes perfect sense this way of doing it.
Relatedly, Tim Wallace talks about the idea of engagement,
which is getting students to design
their own curriculum, which is a word that I've never heard
used to describe that.
And yeah, this comment is really, really interesting.
Links to this one and all of the others in the doobly doo.
Danielle Groten talks about the importance
of standardized tests being used to make sure
that curriculum is actually being taught in schools.
And as far as I understand it, right,
the question or problem with this use of standardized tests
is that the success of teachers is not always tied directly
to the understanding of the students,
and that the futures of the students
are in a certain way still determined
by the outcome of these tests, even if it is just
meant to make sure that things are actually being taught.
So yeah, it's, man.
Right.
It's always-- it's very complicated.
It's such a complicated thing, but these
are things that also we need to make sure that curriculum
is being taught.
We need to make sure that there is a set of knowledge
that we know is getting into the brains of students
just ideally it's not, yeah, it's not so industrialized.
This week's episode was brought to you
by the hard work of these gods of thunder.
We have a Facebook, an IRC, and a subreddit,
which I forgot to get comments from again.
I always do this when I'm not answering
comments in the studio.
I'm sorry.
Links to those things in the doobly doo,
and the tweet of the week comes from MadSc13ntist,
who points us towards a Saturday morning breakfast cereal comic
about, of all things, eugenics.