Publicly Private

Returns

2012-01-22T14:14:00.001-08:00

Democracy requires an informed citizenry, so be informed: Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Large Facilities.

What a World

2011-10-09T20:12:00.000-07:00

The liberal blogosphere was awash this weekend with mentions of a gathering of conservatives at something called the Values Voter Summit. It seems that the evangelicals have a hard time being led by a Mormon, and many are saying some that Romney isn't *gasp* a Christian! Which is a bad thing to not be in the universe of the VVS.

Romney reacted to the accusations, which included calling Mormonism a "cult", which this statement:

Our government should respect religious values, not silence them. We will always pledge our allegiance to a nation under God. Our values ennoble the citizen, and strengthen the nation. We should remember that decency and civility are values too. One of the speakers who will follow me today, has crossed that line. Poisonous language does not advance our cause. It has never softened a single heart nor changed a single mind. The blessings of faith carry the responsibility of civil and respectful debate. The task before us is to focus on the conservative beliefs and the values that unite us - let no agenda, narrow our vision or drive us apart.

This statement reminded me that the world of the VVS and the world that conservatives claim to want is quite a horrible place. Instead of discussing world issues and determining ways to deal with them, conservatives are playing identity politics based on who believes which version of the sky daddy story. I cannot think of a more worthless way to spend time, unless your goal is to solidify the conformity of your own group, in part by driving out those who do not conform. But if the Republicans want religious purity in their leaders, then that is their prerogative. The do have many examples from history that they can use for this, like Stalin, Mao, and I think the Catholics called theirs The Inquisition.

I find the last line in that statement pretty amusing in that Romney thinks that anything he says will make any difference at the VVS. Everyone knows that VVS people base their decisions on a nebulous concept of values, rather than on anything objective. They will not be swayed to accept Romney's Mormonism just because he says a few words. These are people who will still not accept that Barack Obama was born in the US, even after he presented the document they had been demanding all along.

But I want to get back to Romney's statement, because there is an awful lot of crazy in there:

Our government should respect religious values, not silence them. We will always pledge our allegiance to a nation under God.

You might, but I prefer to follow the advice of the gentlemen that founded the country. I make no pledges and prefer to keep this god concept out of government.

Our values ennoble the citizen, and strengthen the nation.

So long as that citizen is white and male, or respects the supremacy of the white and male citizens. And if by strengthen, you mean to send all money to the military instead of education and infrastructure.

We should remember that decency and civility are values too.

Yes, they are values too, gold star for Mitt!

One of the speakers who will follow me today, has crossed that line. Poisonous language does not advance our cause.

I don’t like poisonous language either, but have you really looked at your cause, Mitt?

It has never softened a single heart nor changed a single mind.

Well, not changed a mind for the better, at least. I should commend Mitt for getting the first part of that statement right.

The blessings of faith carry the responsibility of civil and respectful debate.

This is an especially confusing statement. What are the “blessings of faith,” anyway? What extra good could come from believing in an ancient mythology despite all of the evidence that said ancient mythology is as mistaken as the rest of them? The only blessing I can think of - that doesn’t have an analog in a non-faith-based life - is the comfort in thinking that dead people are in heaven and/or one is going to heaven after death. Still, I don’t know how that “blessing” necessarily is followed by any responsibility.

But if we follow that logic further, that would mean that only faith can inspire people to be civil and have respectful debates. That is an interesting statement, since there are many people with no faith to speak of who can conduct themselves civilly and participate in respectful debate. Romney’s logic would conclude that, without faith, they have no responsibility to have civil and respectful debate, yet they do not routinely call others cruel names or throw chairs at debates. It would seem that the responsibility to be civil and respecful might not come from faith at all.

The task before us is to focus on the conservative beliefs and the values that unite us - let no agenda, narrow our vision or drive us apart.

At least, let no agenda narrow our vision any further - we don’t tolerate Muslims, gays, independent women, poor people, government workers (unless they’re in a high enough position of power), unemployed people, hippies, hipsters, anyone not Christian, and anyone under 55 who wants single-payer Medicare when they retire (and not a pathetic voucher to give to some corporation).

For how bad all of this is, I am still laughing. The Republicans are clearly self-destructing, and I think fewer Americans will be voting this year on the premise that “I voted D last time, maybe now I’ll give R a shot”. Those people couldn’t tell that the R’s made the mess in the first place, but maybe now they can see that the R’s are full of crap.

I'm Not Alone

2011-10-05T17:19:00.000-07:00

I was raised on America, the land of the free, the home of the brave, where anyone - even you - could be President. Democracy meant we all had a voice, and history laid out triumphs of the powerless against the powered. The African American experience engrossed me as a teenager, and we read about the struggles our ancestors had to go through to get us the things we took for granted. I remembered my education teaching me a good sense of respect for my ancestors' struggles and a proper understanding of corporate interests.

We all react to and retain information differently, but every year, for a few years at least, at least 100 8th Graders in my school saw Glory (with Denzel Washington & Matthew Broderick, I think) in History class. Everyone with the same teacher for our 10th grade social studies watched another movie about the origin of a labor union, staring Sally Field. In 7th grade English, we watched a movie about a teenage black boy who suddenly finds himself thrown back in time, to the antebellum southern America. I know from my Facebook page that many of the people that I grew up around must have learned something similar. And Occupy Wall Street looks like people my age.

This is our generation in action. We are watching our parents and grandparents claim that the Social Security that saved the elderly of The Depression from starvation and the Medicare that lets them go to the doctor when necessary is good for them, but we can forget about it. I know I'm not the only one that wants the same retirement that the last few generations got. We will not be content with this obvious concentration of wealth, and we will not let our parents and grandparents take a giant dump on our future. I do get the sense that we are not embracing this generational concept, in part because these movements are being attended by the parents and grandparents who get it, but also because it is hard to think we're rebelling as we fight the battles that we thought our great grandparents already won.

Cause for Concern

2011-08-28T07:44:00.000-07:00

Irene grew to a size of the Southeastern United States. An official at the Department of Atmospheric Research at Colorado State University described, "If you were to just put it on a map of the United States, it could go from South Florida to Pennsylvania, and from North Carolina to eastern Oklahoma." (Mitch Weiss and Samantha Gross, "Huge storm churns up East Coast", Associated Press via San Francisco Chronicle, August 28, 2011)

This is a big storm, and it is dumping inches of rain on the east coast. Oddly enough, the ground there cannot handle the 5 or 6 inches of rain because it is saturated. As it happens, there has been unusually high rainfall this year.

The National Hurricane Center at NOAA is putting our tax dollars to good use by monitoring these storms so we can prepare. We will need that this year as there is another named storm right on Irene's heels. The yellow spot is an area of atmospheric activity that has below a 30% chance of becoming a hurricane (actual, 10%). The orange spot has a 30-50% chance (actual, 40%).

I don't want to forget about the scientific method in all this, which helped us examine the skys appropriately both directly and indirectly by helping to create the ability to even get images of our planet like this. Remember to thank science that the death toll is in the single and double digits, instead of quadruple and quintuple. Of course, one could argue that science caused all of this in the first place, but at least we can use it to protect ourselves too.

Free Speech and Dangerous Delusions

2011-08-07T09:15:00.000-07:00

After walking Steve to work yesterday, I bummed around Telegraph and stopped across from the Delusion Corner to observe. For the longest time, some Jesus Crispies have been preaching near a fenced off plot of land at the northeast corner of Telegraph and Haste. The used to use the natural volume of their voice, and hand out fliers. Then they got microphones, and now they have a rock band.

The music, itself, wasn't that bad, and had they just used their instruments, it might have been a nice backdrop for shopping, but there was singing too. At first, the songs were inanely delusional - stuff that would cause an individual to waste her life following someone's fever dream, but nothing that impacts me - but then they pissed me off. In a litany of things we should trust Jesus for, they claimed that we should trust in him for our government and economy.

I had set myself up on the southwest corner of the intersection to observe in amusement, but I was furious. I stated "No we shouldn't" a couple of times, but not loudly. For all the idiots whining about Sharia Law, here was someone with a permit issued by the city declaring his wish to undermine the constitution for religious purposes. I angrily wondered how to get these idiots off the street, but then I remembered.

Long ago, I saw a video clip of an interchange happening in the middle of the 20th century between someone speaking out in favor of Communism and some observing US Soldiers. I think the interchange was staged, for propaganda purposes. The Communist had his standard speech and one of the soldiers said [roughly]:

You should be happy to live in the United States, where you are free to say these things.

The legal precedent of our nation also allows these people to say what they want, even with amplifying devices, on the street. So while the authoritarian in me wanted to shut these idiots down, I decided instead to observe and record their now less than amusing delusions.

I got audio of a song with a completely contradictory message, and observed a completely indifferent crowd pass by the band and the people handing out fliers. My initial fury gave way to a larger perspective. Just as communists can say what they want, even about "radical revolution", so too can these people, and it looks to be just as productive.

Ewe Ess Aye! Live Blogging

2011-07-17T11:51:00.000-07:00

In the dawn of Internet 2.0, I seem to remember that live blogging just meant updating a post. I might have made that up. I was compelled to do this today.

Just Before Game Start: The commentator called the US team 'attractive', which in context simply means that they perform well, but strikes me as an odd adjective to use.

10 minutes in: We're in the World Cup Finals today. This is the second finals I've watched, and it is a lot more exciting.

30 minutes in: There is an image of a flower on the Japan team's uniforms. The specific flower is a Japanese cultural symbol of the ideal woman.

33 minutes in: Japan is dominating the ball, and it's intense!

40 minutes in: If Japan's Ohno scores the winning goal, I will be sad, but the newspaper headline is already written.

Half Time (45 minutes): Steve has noted that there are fewer fouls in this game, and I agreed that it seems cleaner. Compared to the 2010 final, the field seems smaller, there is a lot more action, and there are hardly any penalties. Soccer is growing on me, and this game is helping.

48.5 minutes in: My heart was in my throat. We need to score!

68.5 minutes in: GOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!

79 minutes in: Oh my, the game is even more fun now. Steve is noting that they are using the words 'attractive' and ' beautiful' in the commentating.

80 minutes it: Tension is back, but I think we have the upper hand.

72 minutes in: Hope Solo is a f*cking awesome name.

End of Regular Time (90+2 minutes): This is exciting, but I feel like an All Blacks fan watching the 1995 Rugby World Cup.

1 minute of extra time: A Japanese win could do wonders for Japanese spirit/morale.....

6.5 minutes of extra time: First yellow card.

13 minutes of extra time: USA Ahead Again!

19 minutes of extra time: Thrilling excitements

24 minutes of extra time: The goalie keeps being lead away from the goal. I hope she is still ok to play.

25.5 minutes of extra time: I don't think Hope can pull this out.

30 minutes of extra time: That penalty was incredible - it has become upper hand versus destiny

End of Extra Time: Ending a game with penalty kicks is kind of eh, but they're really good teams.

Before first penalty kick: I just saw a guy with a sign saying "Marry Me, Hope I'm Solo".

After Japan's first penalty kick: Hope is definitely limping...

Before Japan's second penalty kick: I think it is going to be destiny

Before Japan's third penalty kick: I call destiny

Game End: Congratulations, Japan. This is yours to celebrate.

Countdown to Picasso: Man With a Guitar (1911)

2011-06-23T22:00:00.000-07:00

This is one of Picasso's Musicians, and one of a series of 'Man with a Guitar' paintings.

Countdown to Picasso: Two Brothers

2011-06-21T22:12:00.000-07:00

Today, we have Two Brothers, from the Rose Period.

Countdown to Picasso: Portrait of Olga in an Armchair

2011-06-19T21:55:00.000-07:00

Today's artwork is Portrait of Olga in an Armchair, from 1917.

Portrait of Olga in an Armchair, 1917, depicts the Russian ballerina and Picasso's first wife Olga Khokhlova sitting on a Spanish-design tapestry, the space around the figure left purposefully unfinished.

- Picasso masterpieces to tour the U.S., USA Today, October 6, 2010

Countdown to Picasso: Portrait of Dora Maar

2011-06-13T22:04:00.000-07:00

Today, I present the Portrait of Dora Maar.

The 176-work exhibit also highlights Picasso's depictions of his numerous mistresses and muses, including Dora Maar. A 1937 portrait of the French surrealist photographer features a colorful Maar displaying flamboyant, red-nailed hands. It serves as a contrast to another oil-on-canvas portrait of Maar, who inspired his "Weeping Woman" series.

Countdown to Picasso: Celestina

2011-06-12T13:17:00.000-07:00

On June 24, 2011, I get to see some of the 20th century's most esteemed and influential artwork, without a [costly] trip to Paris. Over the next two weeks, I will post daily links to and information about one work of art at the exhibit.

Today's work is la Celestine, from Picasso's blue period.

Picasso's 1904 oil-on-canvas masterpiece La Celestina shows a solitary, gray-haired bordello owner with a blinded eye. Picasso painted several similar portraits during his early-career Blue Period, characterized by somber tones and marginalized subjects such as beggars and prostitutes.

- Picasso masterpieces to tour the U.S., USA Today, October 6, 2010

Imagine That You Were Born 50 Years Earlier Than You Really Were

2011-05-23T20:53:00.000-07:00

It is 1961, and you've just heard about those people riding the bus through Alabama to test segregation laws. You heard that one bus was set on fire, and the riders on the other were beaten up, severely. You get wind of students and others going down to Alabama to continue the ride to New Orleans. You have the free time... So, my question is,

Would you get on that bus?

Apocaylpse Not

2011-05-21T21:48:00.000-07:00

Today was, from my perspective, remarkably calm. I mean, the American southeast is still recovering from massive tornadoes, and the Mississippi is having the biggest floods in decades, but today, it seems that the flooding is lower than expected, and it didn't do as much damage as was expected. A volcano is exploding in Iceland, but rather than being a repeat of the April 2010 eruptions that closed several European airports, it seems to be rather run-of-the-mill.

It seems to be as boring as a day can possibly be. In my life today, I woke up and went out to breakfast with friends. After breakfast, I picked up some cute things at a yard sale, and relaxed all afternoon. After a nap, Steve and I headed downtown to see Bridesmaids at the Shattuck Cinemas. We got some fro-yo, and waited in line, only to hear that the 7pm showing was sold out. That was disappointing for us, but good for that movie. There were no other movies that we wanted to see, so we decided to go to the park by the high school and chill on the grass. After that, we headed back to my place, had some sausages, and watched some television. Right now, we're watching IFC free on On Demand, and we'll be turning in shortly.

So, now it is your turn. How eventful [or not eventful] was your May 21st, 2011?

The Ultimate Votive

2011-05-08T13:12:00.000-07:00

These were never part of my Catholic upbringing, probably because my family wasn't sufficiently Spanish, but when I saw this in the bathroom of a party I was at in July, 2010, I knew that I needed at least one. Granted, the teachings of Catholicism are painfully outdated at best, but the pageantry and artifacts of the religion can be beautiful and fun. My friends told me to poke around my grocery stores to find them, but I live in Berkeley and go to hippie Berkeley grocery stores, so I didn't think I'd find them there.

Actually, I never looked for candles a those stores, but one afternoon that fall, I went to a Safeway in Oakland to get groceries and see if they had these candles. I found two, one with Jesus, and the one I got, with St. Jude. I couldn't get the Jesus candle, because it didn't exactly scream "Catholic" the same way that any saint candle would. An added bonus to these candles is that they all come with prayers on the back, in Spanish, then English. Over the next few weeks, whenever I lit the candle with friends, we would recite the prayer for fun.

Having been an atheist for now nearly half my life, I have absolutely no idea what it must feel like to say something, light a candle, and assume that something or someone can actually hear me. I've had experiences that could be considered religious, like the time I "found inner peace" on a cross-Atlantic flight after some significant sensory deprevation, but I've never heard voices or felt presences. Not that I am lamenting my lack of mild schizophrenia. My approach to solving my problems involves things like talking to real people about how to realistically solve them.

Of course, a pretty candle is a pretty candle, and I have been determined to build a respectable votive collection. So in the following months, I found the ultimate in Mexican Catholocism, the Our Lady of Guadaloupe candle. That was when I allowed myself to buy a Jesus candle, but I decided to go for the gory angle.

But today, after taking Steve with me on my weekend morning walk, we stopped at the corner store to mainly get some B&J, but browsed through the store too. We saw the votives section, and found the goriest, creepiest votive, that I obviously had to buy. The prayer on the back is more or less a prayer to exact revenge on someone. It seems like some kind of fusion between Catholicism, Aztec death stuff (a la Day of the Dead), and maybe a bit of voodoo. So, I present the Zombie Votive.

Trump's Bluff

2011-04-15T08:46:00.000-07:00

When Donald Trump first came out with his presidential bid, I saw some show on MSNBC berate the bid as a publicity stunt for his TV show. I looked up whether or not Trump supported Obama, and came up with one comment he made in 2008 that was complimentary to Obama and less so to McCain. My search also revealed that Trump's alliance was clearly Republican, so he still could be genuine.

However, I remain unconvinced that he's not just stirring up stupid people just to laugh in their faces later.

Atheists Can Get Up Early Everyday

2011-04-13T19:44:00.000-07:00

I like this post, but Amanda's footnote on the atheist benefit of being able to sleep in on Sundays made me think....

I get up early on weekend days, no matter when I go to sleep. For instance, last weekend, I went to sleep around 3:30am. Four hours later, I was fully awake. You could probably find other evidence of my early morning weekend habits by looking at my Facebook activity.

What's more, I actually like that I get up this early, and I like having things to do on Saturday and Sunday mornings. I just don't need to listen to the same old ancient stories told over and over again, followed by meaningless comparisons between modern events and misinterpreted hallucinations.

21st Century

2011-03-19T16:02:00.001-07:00

Thursday, I bought tickets to a presentation happening that same night with my smart phone. Today, I am watching live footage of the African wilderness.

An Open Letter to the Guy Who Laughed When My Friend Said She Couldn't Stay Because She Had Therapy

2011-03-08T19:54:00.001-08:00

Fuck you.

Do you think it is funny that someone has mental illness? Are you going to laugh at me for going to therapy? What about when I tell you that part of the reason that I go to therapy is lasting effects of a brain injury from a car accident that I don't even remember and that put me on life support, jackass? You think its funny? Fuck you.

Background: While tabling for SANE on Friday, two smug, middle-aged men came up to me and started asking me about the sign I was holding, which stated "God is a myth". Sensing my inability to explain myself very well without ample preparation time, a friend came over to where I was to take over the duties of dealing with annoying middle-aged men on a college campus. At one point, another friend of ours walked up and we shifted our attention away from these guys as she stated that she could not stay and table because she had to go to therapy. One of the smug bastards chuckled, and I wanted to kill him. I didn't say anything though, and its eating at me.

My Freedom

2011-02-19T09:38:00.000-08:00

Support Choice for your Mother and choice for your father.
Choice for your children, your sisters and brothers

The inability to plan parenthood would rob me of the liberty to plan my life. But don't support this just for my sake. I am wealthy (for now), but most of America is not. I have used Planned Parenthood once, when I was switching insurance providers. My friends and family have used it for essential services.

The activities of this Congress are stripping us of our essential rights.

The Price of Freedom

2010-12-05T14:52:00.000-08:00

We have paid with blood before, but it would be nice if rich people would invest in us a little more. They could take that money they've been holding on to and just start hiring more people to do things. I mean, the infrastructure needs help, our city sewers could use an upgrade, schools and public areas need upkeep, and millions need simply put their skills to good use by doing something.

Oh, I forgot - only government does those things... I guess, then, that we need to figure out how to increase the revenue of the government. The best way to do this is to remove the tax break they got during the bubble that isn't doing shit to create jobs right now.

Warren Buffet and Bill Gates want to be taxed more. They know that the best charity out there is the US Federal Government. Only that body can reach all needy people because it is required to. Grow up, teatards. Stop demanding that people that make thousands of times more than you do get to keep more money than you make in a decade. They get to do this each damn year, while you get nothing.

We lowered taxes on the rich so they would create jobs, but they aren't creating jobs. They're waiting for housing prices to go up first, but those won't go up until the unemployment rate is cut down from 10%. So, are we just expecting a mass die-off of the unemployed? Why not just create some damn jobs???!

Seriously? Spending cuts? That's the policy you think is vitally necessary for economic growth? Spending cuts? Because — what? Unemployment is too low for your taste? God save us.

It is time we grow up and take responsibility for our country. We need governance, not politics.

I Guess it's Not That Bad

2010-11-06T12:28:00.001-07:00

~~Oscar Grant is scheduled to come back to life in two years anyway~~.

Update: It isn't even two years, Mehserle gets to count the time served, so he will be out in seven months! Apparently, justice only has compassion for someone if that person is a police officer who killed someone. All I know is that guy better never show his face in the East Bay again.

Choices

2010-11-04T22:15:00.001-07:00

I just saw the last part of Off and Running from POV. Avery is an African American teenager who was adopted by a Jewish lesbian couple. She and her boyfriend are track athletes. In the course of the show, she wrote a letter to her birth mother and received a response that set her into an identity crisis and may or may not have been a trigger for fights she had been having with her parents.

When I started watching, Avery was having trouble with her running. Her boyfriend was concerned about her because of all the things she was worried about. She was not living at home and was skipping school. The next set of scenes involved her taking a pregnancy test, then going to Planned Parenthood in Manhattan. Her comment was that she did not want to give up any of her children for adoption. She later ran in the Empire State Games and got the bronze. After acing the GED and studying for the SAT, she got a track scholarship to Delaware State. In the end, it seems like she made peace with her struggles and decided to hold off on contacting her birth mother until she finished college.

My Own Stupid Fears

2010-10-23T10:34:00.000-07:00

I heard yesterday morning that Juan Williams had been fired, but I had to go into the office before NPR covered the story. It wasn't until I got home and opened up Pandagon that I learned the basics of what had transpired. Juan indicated that he is fearful of people in "Muslim garb" because he thinks that they are all terrorists. There may be more to the story - that he actually implicated that Muslims are to blame for his fear - but I am not usually the type to look things up.

Officially, I'm deciding not to have an opinion on the events, positive or negative, cuz the guy is going to be financially ok. The events have made me think about the times when I have been nervous when seeing a young brown guy with or without typical Muslim clothing in an airport/plane setting. It's a knee jerk fear that I significantly dislike. The vast majority of brown guys I see are either like me - citizens going about their day - or people from other countries who work here and are also going about their day. I work with brown guys all the time. I've even dated brown guys. One told me a story about the reaction that some of his friends in London got on the subway right after the subway bombing. His friends were just going about their business that day, sitting on the train with their backpacks. They noticed that on one else was sitting near them on the crowded train. There was nothing for anyone to fear - the guys had laptops, work papers, and their lunches in their bags - but the people were nervous anyway, and the guys understood it completely.

Every time I have an episode of fear around a brown guy in an airport, I realize a) that if something were to happen to me, it is going to happen, and being nervous isn't going to change anything, and b) that the guy is just going about his business, just like me.

Of course, there was one episode in my life where I assumed that the guy walking down the street was just going about his business too, then he crossed the street and mugged me. There were other factors at play in that situation, and I saw it as mainly a $35 learning experience. I became a little more paranoid, but that has probably been for the better for me, since I was rather naive. However, I know that most people walking around in my neighborhood are just going home or going to a friends' place, even if for "nefarious" reasons. They don't give a crap about me beyond the five seconds when we are passing on the street.

Fears exist for so many reasons. Mine exist because of being brought up in white America in the late 20th century and picking up on so many negative messages. They are also borne of embarrassing and scary experiences of my own. I force myself to see just how rare those experiences have been, and how the vast majority of the time, the people around me couldn't care less about doing harm to me. It might not be how I feel, but it is a fact. Those feelings are not important to anyone but me.

Love at First Sight is Not

2010-10-16T23:14:00.000-07:00

One cannot love anyone or anything based on the evidence gained from sight and sexual reaction. The only thing that really does is encourage us to learn more, which can lead to learning good or bad things. Sometimes, the one you might overlook at first becomes more and more interesting and then you see them differently. Many times, you will meet someone, talk for a little while, exchange numbers, then talk later and realize that you don't need to call that person.

If the person ends up being undesirable to you in this way, odds are that the other person can tell. You do the person a disservice (not to mention yourself) to continue to pursue when a fundamental incompatibility surfaces, despite coming from an attractive frame. Love must be based on as many senses as possible, including the things like ability to communicate, agreement on fundamental issues, and physical compatibility, among many others. Anything less should not be considered love.

Oh! You've blinded me!

2010-10-11T19:58:00.001-07:00

Can my dear sciency friends read this article and tell me what is not true? I am finding this article wonderfully genderless:

Incidentally, these cues work because they derive from the basic mammalian infant-caregiver attachment behaviors that enable us to fall in love with our parents and kids. Only in rare pair bonders like humans can adult mates use similar subconscious cues to sustain their romances indefinitely.

I kept waiting for some hunter-gatherer, evo-psych bs to pop up, and if it did, I didn't catch it.

Thoughtfullness

2010-09-09T21:16:00.000-07:00

A Westboro Baptist Church wannabe out in Florida wants to make a stink. Why not hold a cook-out and use some old books as kindling? Distasteful, indeed, but we are assured that the books are copies of other books, and contain no new information.

But once word gets out to a medieval society torn by war, warped by patriarchal traditions and often deadly misogyny that someone, somewhere, is burning a ream of bound paper that contains a copy of information they have readily available to them... Once that word gets out, the backwards society decides to flip the fuck out.

I don't like the idea of kowtowing to the kind of person that would relegate me to shrouded breeding stock had I been born in their country and not mine. Violent reactions to peaceful demonstrations, even if carried out by brain-dead morons, demonstrate significant insecurity.

Huh

2010-07-30T21:45:00.000-07:00

I found this link buried in my drafts, from two years ago.

Queen's bloomers sell for £4,500

That's Why I Don't Read Movie Reviews

2010-07-17T17:34:00.001-07:00

I saw Inception last night, and apart from some bright spots, I was mostly bored with the movie during the second half. Its about these spies that go into people's dreams - an implausible thing in reality, but I buy it for the movie - to collect secrets or plant ideas. In the dream state, you can still feel pain, but if you are killed you just wake up - that is until the characters are in the first stage of the main dream state of the movie when we get the "oh, wait, we need more suspense" addition to the movie where people killed in the dream now just enter a limbo state as their real brains melt. At that point, I rolled my eyes and started eying the time.

Like most action/heist movies, this one starred mostly men, which is part of the reason that I don't like such movies (the other part is that the typical heist plot bores me). A couple of the things I did like about this movie were the addition of a female character playing a role in the team on the heist who never becomes romantically attracted to any of her co-workers and the Cobb's realization that he can't create an accurate representation of his dead wife because no one's perception of anyone can match the complexity of an actual human being.

Andrew O'Hehir's review review of Inception mostly mirrors my own take on the movie, except for one detail. He never mentions the second thing I liked about the movie, and that being such a tiny, unimportant scene, I don't care about that. He does, however, refer to Ellen Page's character as "genderless" and refer to the dead wife character as "all the female, erotic energy" that is missing from a universe of professionals. Apparently, Andrew must be reminded that women are different from men and only exist in a sexual space lest he forget to be attracted to them. He never refers to DiCaprio's character as genderless, even though he has all the sexual masculinity of a cardboard box throughout the film - just like most male movie characters. This is just another reminder of how most movie reviewers can't see women as people. When one is presented not as window dressing, but as an average woman, they claim she is androgynous. It's as if Andrew never met a woman in real life.

HAPPY FISCAL NEW YEAR

2010-07-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

My Travels So Far

2010-05-28T01:16:00.000-07:00

visited 14 states (6.22%)
Create your own visited map of The World

Basically, if I had a layover there, I was there. I've had a couple of 16 hour layovers in Frankfurt, where I got to go out and enjoy the city or nap in a hotel room. The layover in Heathrow was during the day, so I got to hang out in their mall. I was only in Argentina overnight. I leave for Peru today.

visited 16 states (32%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

I tried to include only the states where I have spent a night, but I've spent enough time in Covington, KY to consider it for the map. I also did visit the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, so I include that one.

MicroBlogging on the Subject of the Television Series Lost

2010-05-24T14:10:00.001-07:00

I do not care about this show.

Heydays of the Adirondacks

2010-05-17T18:54:00.000-07:00

by M. DeSormo

Mother's in the kitchen
Washing out the jugs,
Judy's in the pantry
Bottling the suds.
Father's in the cellar
Mixing up the hops,
Johnny's on the front porch
Watching for the cops

The Giant #&$%up is Revealed!

2010-05-13T21:09:00.000-07:00

Yes, in day two of testimony before the publicly elected leaders of our government, the leaders of huge private companies - and indeed the rest of the world - learned more about the platform explosion that will significantly* #&$% up our Gulf Coast.

This morning, I heard that yesterday, the executives played a little game. Transocean said that this was actually caused by the bad cement job done by Halliburton, and Haliburton puts this right back in the hands of the main company at hand, BP. BP, of course, goes back to Transocean, since it was their equipment.

Apparently, it was shoddy workmanship all around. Someone cut corners, several someones cut corners, and the world pays. The executives didn't have many mea culpas, which is really in their best interest, and they may be equally to blame, after all.

Today, Transocean said that if a certain battery was dead (which it was), their sensors would have told them, but [oops] they were lost in the wreck.

One of our publicly elected leaders responded with

"The American people expect you to have a response comparable to the Apollo project, not 'Project Runway,'" -- Washington Post article by Steven Mufson and David A. Fahrenthold

My take is that we reached the limit of our ability to drill for oil under the ocean. Setting the record ain't all its cracked up to be.

*Well, depending on which state governor you hear. Crist and Jindal are shitting their pants, but, the Mississippi state governor isn't worried at all.

Little Things

2010-05-04T19:16:00.001-07:00

Driving down 880 - well, I was going North, so up, but whatever - reminds me that Oakland is not just a place with a bunch of houses and facilities named after famous African Americans, it is often a big craphole.

Driving my Taurus makes me feel like a little old lady, and reminds me of how well we normalize bad situations. After being in my shiny new toy that runs on sunshine and farts, the green car is just that much worse.

I also cannot figure out magnets yet, cuz the only people that ever tell me about them are scientists, and those m^$*@%#&%*ers make me pissed.

Government is Us

2010-05-02T11:05:00.000-07:00

I like the meaning of the statements I am reading and hearing. I do wish that the great quotes were grammatically better, or, at least not passive sentences. Short, simple words, spoken in an active tone make for amazing lines.

... the only thing we have to fear is fear itself...

... ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.

Still, many of Obama's lines inspired me, as I hope they can inspire the rest of my fellow citizens.

"We can't expect to solve our problems by tearing each other down."

"...this kind of vilification and over-the-top rhetoric closes the door to the possibility of compromise."

"It may make your blood boil. Your mind may not be changed. But the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship."

"When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us."

-AP News Story via Yahoo

This is our country, and in our country, we elect representatives to use our collective ability to make our country a great place to be.

Nothing Not to Like

2010-05-01T09:43:00.000-07:00

After a nice dinner at the Green Papaya, we saw this:

I may swing by after hiking to see if I really can earn $20 AND protest with kitties. I guess my participation will depend on what they are protesting.

My Saint

2010-04-17T21:50:00.000-07:00

My Saint, Saint Ursula, is really awesome. She isn't even a saint, there was just a cult that developed around her and she didn't exist [so they say].

Saint Ursula ("little female bear" in Latin) is a British Christian saint. Her feast day in the Catholic Church is October 21. Because of the lack of sure information about the anonymous group of holy virgins who on some uncertain date were killed at Cologne, their commemoration was omitted from the Catholic calendar of saints for universal liturgical celebration, when this was revised in 1969, but they have been kept in the Roman Martyrology, the official, though incomplete, list of saints of the Catholic Church.*

Her legend, probably unhistorical, is that she was a Romano-British princess who, at the request of her father King Donaut of Dumnonia in south-west England, set sail to join her future husband, the pagan Governor Conan Meriadoc of Armorica (Brittany), along with 11,000 virginal handmaidens. However, a miraculous storm brought them over the sea in a single day to a Gaulish port, where Ursula declared that before her marriage she would undertake a pan-European pilgrimage. She headed for Rome, with her followers, and persuaded the Pope, Cyriacus (unknown in the pontifical records), and Sulpicius, Bishop of Ravenna, to join them. After setting out for Cologne, which was being besieged by Huns, all the virgins were beheaded in a dreadful massacre. The Huns' leader shot Ursula dead, supposedly in 383 (the date varies).**

-Wikipedia, accessed April 3, 2010

*This is a horrible paragraph, here is a revision that makes sense.

Saint Ursula is a British Christian saint. Her feast day in the Catholic Church is October 21.

The information about St. Ursula, whose name means little female bear in Latin, is not well supported. The virgins that accompanied her were never identified and the exact dates of events are completely unknown. When the Catholic Church revised their calendar of saints for universal liturgical celebration in 1969, Ursula was left off. She has remained in the Roman Martyrology, which is the official, though incomplete, list of saints of the Catholic Church.

**This less horrible paragraph could use some work too. There are too many passive sentences up in here.

Her story has become more like an unhistorical legend. She is said to be a Romano-British princess who, at the request of her father King Donaut of Dumnonia in south-west England, set sail to join her future husband in Armorica (Brittany). The legend indicates that she was accompanied by 11,000 virginal handmaidens.

Before she could arrive to marry the pagan Governor Conan Meriadoc, a storm caused the ship to land at a Gaulish port. This storm is dubbed miraculous because it transported Ursula and her handmaidens incredibly far in one day and saved her and the virgins. At the Gaulish port, Ursula declared that she would undertake a pan-European pilgrimage before marriage. She headed for Rome, with her followers, and persuaded Pope Cyriacus (unknown in the pontifical records), and Sulpicius, Bishop of Ravenna, to join them. After setting out for Cologne, which was being besieged by Huns, all the virgins were beheaded in a dreadful massacre. The Huns' leader shot Ursula dead, supposedly in 383 (the date varies).

Brave New World

2010-04-15T00:09:00.001-07:00

Huxley vs. Orwell

What the $&@% are You Talking About?

2010-04-13T22:06:00.001-07:00

I forgot my new Alternet password, so you will start to be treated to the comments I may or may not make over there. I finally posted a comment that I would like to send to Sister Lauren, but I can't figure out how to contact her. And today, I was reading about characterizing the American right wing like the characters in Animal House [a move that I don't really care to see]. The article was ok until I got to this part:

Such people are on the fringes. But those fringes are growing. In any case, it only takes one angry person with a gun to make the difference.

No, it does not take one person with a gun to stir the American public. It does not take one person with a &^$%ing plane to stir the American public.

I will be [very pleasantly] surprised if it gets any better before it begins getting worse, maybe much worse.

To Sister Lauren

2010-04-13T21:54:00.000-07:00

On an otherwise stupid post about "New Atheists", filled with comments pointing out the flaws in the article, was a comment from Sister Lauren about the abuse she suffered from many of us "New Atheists". Her emotional trauma sounds real, and although she is a religionist, I recognize her as a generally compassionate and good person.

I wondered why, when I set out to start a new religion based on freedom, "new atheists" regularly made the argument that I was insane and should be locked up in a mental institution. That is not a lame threat, that is a very serious threat. I found it well enforced and positively life threatening.
-Sister Lauren

Some of what she says sounds, without me having additional evidence, paranoid. However, what most people fail to grasp is that many paranoid people would have their fears eased greatly if someone sat them down, listened to them, then explained why their fears are unjustified with facts.

I may think Sister Lauren is misguided in her attempts to find reason and meaning in the universe or in her religious beliefs, but she's a human being. I'm really sick of the internet atheists who think any good is done by calling otherwise good people who have God delusions "stupid" or "crazy". It represents a massive lack of maturity on their part and it is not what atheists should want to project. It just shows that atheists, just like religionists, can be d-bags too.

Dear America,

2010-04-10T20:34:00.000-07:00

No matter what the current state of the government is, it is still, in letter and by law, your government. In order to keep tabs on what is yours, you may want to know exactly what it is doing. I implore you to go directly to the primary source material yourself. Therefore, I have placed a direct link to the Thomas.gov entry for your Health Care Reform Bill and Thomas.gov on the top of the right navigation bar.

And pull up your pants.

Thanks,

Counter Commute

2010-04-06T01:59:00.000-07:00

Last week, Amanda had a post on commuting, happiness, and how it relates to our current American political climate. The comment thread got too long for me to be able to read, because I have my own story that basically proves the point of the article.

I commute 45 minutes to work one way, driving.
I used to have a 3 mile, 10 minute commute before I moved here.
I am much happier now than I was before I moved.

But wait, you say, that's the counter point? Oh, silly me, here is what makes me different.

I often find driving at freeway speeds to be therapeutic, giving me time to sort out thoughts and practice explaining myself and my ideas.
I live in a urban/semi-urban residential area, 3.5 blocks from a BART station. I routinely leave my car unused for entire weekends and spend the weekends with friends, shopping along Telegraph, seeing movies, planning events, and having engaging, intelligent, and fun conversations. My apartment here is not in some estate, it is one of 7 units in a building with character. I enjoy spending time by myself at home, and like making the place look good.
The traffic congestion in the Bay Area is always in the opposite direction of the direction I am going [with the exception of random accidents -- 3 in 8 months].
I work in a suburban area with strip malls, manicured lawns, and multi-million dollar homes. When I lived there, I could not walk anywhere that I wanted to be. I sometimes spent my weekends in Berkeley or San Francisco, but it required a lot of preparation and I was far from home. Other weekends were spent inside my apartment, completely alone and bored just because I didn't want to drive anywhere, even at freeway speeds. And my apartment was a stifling place, with beige carpets, oversized rooms, and no character. In short, I hated the place, and I had no desire to keep it looking nice, ever.

Not only do I not sit in traffic while I commute, I live in a real community area, validating Amanda's point about the factors that do influence happiness.

Counter Protests

2010-04-04T23:42:00.000-07:00

One of the most heartening things for this empiricist is the prevalence of fellow empiricists speaking out against the massively mean and stupid elements of our society. One aspect is the growing effectiveness of the members of SANE at Berkeley. Another is the way more and more people are learning how to effectively counter the misinformation thrown out by certain "entertainers." But specific to this post, I have two links to videos of counter protests to the presence of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Turning the presence of the WBC into a big diversity festival

Using the opportunity to help people make donations to organizations that help LGBT populations and anti-AIDS groups in honor of Fred Phelps and the WBC.

Thank You Silent and Baby Boomer Generations*

2010-04-02T22:49:00.000-07:00

Thank you for the work you did to popular music. You wanted something syncopated, uptempo, with back-beats, and definitely physically charged.

Your work has, so far, culminated in awesomeness. And knowing the artist in this case, we may have only seen the beginning.

Wa-wa-what did you say? Huh?; You're don't think this is awesome? [you're wrong] Sorry; I cannot hear you, I'm kinda busy

Nostalgia for the Ventura Years?

2010-04-02T00:45:00.000-07:00

He may have really low popularity, due to the furthering the anti-tax stance of this state, but still promising utopia. The same state where a couple of the primary industries pay incredibly low wages for all of the jobs they create and most others are either office-type or low skill service jobs.

Still, I will miss the Governator.

My Atheism, Part 2

2010-03-31T18:36:00.000-07:00

Religionists often assume that atheists must have an important text like the bible. They will often pick the Origin of Species. They ask who we worship rather than cope with the reality that atheists do not worship. Atheists are not the opposite of religion, we are completely foreign from religion. Atheists also understand the underlying concepts of religion and find it to be lacking in providing any kind of benefit.

To boil it down to a bumper sticker, atheists prefer to know the truth rather than simply believing in a story written a long time ago.

Never Learned to Read

2010-03-29T19:00:00.000-07:00

H.R.3590: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

According to Jenna Wisen(ph), who owns an asphalt company with about 150 employees, interviewed at the Nevada Tea Party rally this weekend, "Nobody's read the whole [Health Care Reform] bill - could say that I can't wear brown on Tuesday. Nobody knows whats in there." It is interesting to note that Jenna also thinks that the bill will bankrupt her because now she will be "forced to" provide health insurance to her employees. She must be a GREAT boss.

I heard this on NPR this morning, and Ina Jaffe's comment after Jenna's tirade, "But most of the people at the rally were pretty sure that whats in there could destroy the health care system and put an end to freedom in America," is quite brilliant. I do, however, really wish that she had taken it further, asking Jenna if she had bothered to find and read the bill, since it is public record and Jenna has a vested interest in knowing what is in there. My guess is that they would have said "I don't have the time." Ina could have then asked, "how do you then find the time to go to Tea Party rallies?" A punch to the Ina's face might have followed.

Tea Party people are, quite clearly, know-nothings about how our government actually works. They can not and should not be taken any more seriously than the random homeless person shouting insults on the street. Not only are they too dumb to go and look for the bill before shouting nonsense about it, they don't have enough shame to realize how horribly dumb they look to the rest of us. These are people who have been told for years that they don't need to listen to experts because their own "common sense" was good enough. Now these people are coming unhinged, and it would be funny if I was the kind of person that could laugh at stupid people.

I don't think of myself as someone who is significantly more intelligent than the average person. I have had more opportunity to learn than most people, true, but most, if not all, of the information that I know is stuff that anyone can learn. Some of it takes a while to learn, but some of it just takes the ability to remember a website, like thomas.gov.

President Clinton helped make this a reality, so the know-nothings are probably proud to not know about this, but it allows anyone, anywhere, access to the full text of legislative branch documents from our government, including bills just signed into law. Unfortunately, our worthless mass media doesn't mention this, or give us the tools to find the bill - like the bill number or the official name. I only learned about thomas.gov because I used to work as a government document reference librarian. So it took a little sleuthing on my part this time, but now you have it with no effort at all: H.R.3590: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

You can also go to thomas.gov and search for bill number H.R.3590, in case that link doesn't work and if you're not a complete idiot.

My Atheism, Part 1

2010-03-28T18:21:00.000-07:00

Even in the worst of times, knowing the truth of the situation was always better, and the sooner I knew it, the better. For instance, my recovery from my brain injury was actually an enjoyable experience because I understood what was happening, thanks to science. This, my brain injury did not affect my worldview, like many assumed that it did.

I knew three things when I was recovering from my brain injury. I knew that I was a vegetarian, I knew what I was going to school to do, and I knew that I was an atheist. I recovered very well from my brain injury, which caused some "survivor guilt", for lack of a better term. I wondered why I was recovering so well and considered that it might be something supernatural. When I explored my thoughts and what I knew about my accident, I realized that there were natural factors to my recovery, the most significant being that my injury simply was not bad enough to cause permanent harm.

This did nothing to support my ego, like thinking that I was better than other people or that something mysterious had an affect, but I was proud to be able to apply reason to my situation and find an explanation that can be tested*.

Two atheists I know have chronic illnesses that will eventually kill them, one possibly in the next couple of decades (24 year-old). The other one (20 year-old) may have more time. These are two people around whom I feel comfortable stating my actual atheist viewpoints, like that the bible is just another [damned] book, written by people. I'm comfortable stating that there is no afterlife around these people, knowing full well that their lives are likely to end much sooner than my own. These are atheists in foxholes.

* Imagine you were able to create a brain injury in others in increasing intensity and monitor their recovery. Conducting this experiment, however, would be painful and occasionally deadly. The loss of life for some and the loss of mental capacity for pretty much all the other people in the study is unacceptable to me because I assume that there is no afterlife, which is an important thought in my own atheist cannon.

Evidence Based Tax Philosophy

2010-03-13T09:30:00.000-08:00

We Haz It

Really Good Thread

2010-03-12T21:23:00.000-08:00

I'm almost done reading a great thread on Pandagon. This is just one of the comments that I'd like to share. I would post others, but there are so many.

I am a climate scientist in the US. Over the last several months I’ve watched colleagues and friends get slandered, have their private communications completely misinterpreted, and been variously called a hack and a fraud. Already most of my colleagues have decided not to participate in the next IPCC assessment report, since all it does is make us targets for the most vicious personal attacks. We’re expected now to respond to the most assinine, ill formed, and usually wrong criticisms from bloggers. And, except for a few people stepping up to help, we’re largely being thrown to the wolves by the media, public, and politicians.

Here is my prediction. In fifty years time, when climate change is real and apparent right before everyones eyes, there will be all sorts of hand wringing and concerned comments from people on the tv. And everyone will soberly talk about how nobody could have predicted what was happening (much like the levee comment after Katrina).

And I’m gonna have a really, really hard time caring at all.
Comment #70: TransientEddy on 03/12 at 12:31 AM

This post is illuminating so many things about me, my life, my family, former friends, acquaintances, frustrations that I have had. It is about, on the surface, climate change denialists, but the thread gets into the basic motivations of the denialists themselves. Pandagon is a both/and blog, so as long as arguments are in logically and rationally sound, they're an awesome add. Unsound arguments are shut down at one comment so far. I'm actually looking forward to a response just to see what angle they go down this time. It reminds me of the report I gave and the book on which I gave it back on the 2nd. I found this book on Feb. 28th after shopping all day with a friend. I skimmed it that night and bought it the next day.

Friday, I talked with protestant evangelical teenagers about science and religion. The arguments were all either cruel (maiming and death are adequate punishment for not wanting to be pregnant was one), stupid applications of science (an anti-gay marriage argument from the standpoint that same sex couples cannot reproduce), or unsuccessful attempts to find holes in scientific explanations. It was a great experience to have, and also very draining. Rational claims are pretty awesome. The Pandagon thread is rife with these.

We Can Haz Progressive Tax Structure?

2010-03-09T19:24:00.000-08:00

The top marginal tax rate for income over $400,000 in the 1950's wonderland that conservatives try to emulate was about 91%. These days, the top rate for income over about $310,000 is 35%.

Colorado Springs is turning off a third of the streetlights, trash services in parks, and other services because they don't have the budget.

And tonight, I heard about another idea some states are pushing - a 4-day school week. Now, I don't have kids myself, but I both was one once and know people that have them (shocking, I know), and my instant reaction to this idea was a bunch of swear words. Like it or not, working parents rely on school to watch their kids while they are at their jobs, making the money to feed those kids. I can't tell you the numbers, but my guess is that about at least half of families need to have two incomes, most of which are earned during the traditional work week.

The school districts that stand to "gain" the most from this idea are those that have large transportation costs. I use the quotes around gain because the only members of the school districts that gain are the ones pushing the paper around. Parents not only gain nothing, but may lose a significant amount of money from lost wages or extra childcare costs. Furthermore, areas where transportation is needed are often the rural areas, where the houses are far apart, and it isn't as easy to just "drop a kid off with the neighbor".

The radio program focuses on the lost learning time with this 4-day week, but that, to me, is a non-issue compared with the insult to working parents that this idea presents.

But, schools are hurting, just like the rest of our public sector. California students and other residents took to the ~~streets~~ highway on Thursday to protest the state's cuts to education. They walked right out onto 880 during rush hour, which made me really glad that I never, ever have to take that highway to get where I need to be. Just like the takeover of Wheeler Hall last year, nothing much will come of this - or, at least if we say that, anything that does happen will be a pleasant surprise - because the state is bleeding money. Of course, if we heeded Glen Beck's advice and seceded from the Union, we would have all that Federal tax money back to, but that's neither here nor there.

What we need to do, in reality, is stop being greedy hoarders and pay for our society already. We have ample evidence that giving rich people money does not work because they just use it to make more money for themselves. We know that raising the minimum wage allows people on the low end of the economic scale to spend more and live better, and we know that spending on public programs makes our towns better places to live. I'm hoping that we can some day act on evidence rather than ideology, but with the stupid Quiverfulls pumping out more idiots to be brainwashed with young earth creationism, I don't know how optimistic I get to be.

You Are What You Eat

2010-02-27T03:37:00.000-08:00

Literally, what you eat is digested and used to energize and re-build your body as your cells live and die, as you gain fat or build muscle, or when your broken hand heals after participating in a very bizarre riot on the streets of Berkeley at 2AM. If you eat like shit, you're not going to be healthy, and you're never going to be an Olympian, despite what McDonald's and Coca-Cola tell you. You can also become very very irrational. These maps make an interesting illustration. The most interesting maps are broken down within the states.

Dumbing of the Citizenry

2010-02-19T23:49:00.000-08:00

I am watching - and, I guess, part of - a Q and A with the director of The Most Dangerous Man in America. My friend and I were going to see the new Leo DiCaprio film, but it sold out while we were in line. I picked this from the choices, citing my past as a history major.

More later...

Standards

2010-02-03T19:27:00.000-08:00

The blogosphere was awash with fervor a couple of weeks ago over a recent poll published on DailyKos. The poll, conducted by Research 2000, asked self-identified Republicans a few questions about their beliefs. I've also been thinking a lot recently about the concepts of being entitled to an opinion and the fallacy of debate style reporting. One of the members of SANE was going to present on being entitled to one's opinion back on the 2nd, but he was sick, so he's presenting it on the 23rd. It should be interesting.

The poll demonstrated that the Republicans polled believe a lot of things that plain ain't true. Some things that are just fabricated falsehoods, and other things that are clearly proven with real evidence.This gives additional evidence to the case for reducing the number of falsehoods that are allowed to filter through society. I found this comment on Ginandtacos.com to be a great description of why we are in this predicament.

You might think vanilla cake is better, I might think chocolate cake is better, but we'll never settle on one to order for the party if you scream that every option I bring up is poisonous and will kill children and I'm only trying to order it because I hate freedom.

And if we take those positions in present America, the media just reports "X says vanilla cake is nice, Y says it kills children" and they don't bother sending it to a lab to test… and even if they did that, they wouldn't hold the person screaming "poison" responsible for trying to create irrational fear and panic.

And so our political debate is poisoned with lies and madness. And people like Corey who come in trying to pretend otherwise are not helping, they're feeding an unhealthy fiction that is derailing the country's ability to function on even a basic level.

-a response to Corey [and Trevor - ok, not really]

About a week ago, a friend defined himself as a free speech purist. I am certainly not, at least, not to the extent that he was indicating. I think that speech coming from authoritative sources must be well reasoned and supported by evidence. If it does not do that, it should cease to be regarded as authoritative. Non-authoritative information can and should be disregarded in public discourse. This doesn't make it illegal, and that is all free speech really concerns.

Amanda and others at Pandagon frequently call out people that think that free speech is infringed by the actions of individuals in the marketplace. For instance, many might call my continued boycotting of Whole Foods due to the health insurance op-ed the CEO gave last year an assault on that CEO's free speech. The 1st amendment is about the government infringing on speech, not about an individual deciding to patronize a business based on how they use their position in society. I don't think the guy's opinion should be illegal, or censored. I disagree with what he said and I decided not to shop at Whole Foods anymore. Private citizens are not obligated to continue listening to people that they do not want to listen to, for whatever reason.

I can't stand the loss of citizens to the lot of hucksters selling them bizarre conspiracy theories to explain away facts that disrupt their insular, patriarchal, entitled, bitter worldview. I refuse to listen to these people and it frustrates me that they are allowed to masquerade as authoritative when they cannot meet the qualifications. I think the time has come to hold ourselves to higher standards - with, of course, constant review of the standards to ensure that all well reasoned opinions supported by evidence are considered.

Consistency

2010-01-24T14:06:00.000-08:00

One of the member's of SANE has amateur expertise regarding the medical sciences due to his having spent roughly half his life (IIRC) in hospitals and researching this stuff. He's only 20. He said that his identification with atheism comes more out of his focus on dismantling bogus medical practices. So yes, he does not "believe in god", but that seems to be a by-product of this skepticism.

My identification is similarly different from the common definition of atheism. Unlike this member, my identification involves the myth of the afterlife, which is another vestige of religion. But that is the subject for a longer post.

PZ Meyers, who spoke at UC Berkeley on Friday, posted a poll on a homeopathy site and the Pharyngulites swarmed it. Those that posted the poll and were even in it reacted just like the other poll that was Pharyngulated earlier this week.

I Do Love 'The Nostradamus Effect'

2010-01-14T20:26:00.001-08:00

A while back, the SciFi Channel changed to the [utterly idiotically named] SyFy channel because they didn't think Science Fiction was the right term for their programming (it is fiction alright, not so sure on the science part, at least not anymore).

In the same way, I propose that the History Channel become, simply, Hztry.

Thread of the Year

2010-01-12T21:39:00.000-08:00

In the genre MST3k

At the Expense of Others

2009-12-31T08:17:00.000-08:00

The movie Leap Year asks if women should propose marriage. That begs the question of if women should be making decisions at all. Really, should women be leaving their homes or even spending money?

The only people that think this way are narrow minded idiots that think "tradition" is a valid reason to continue bad policy. Unfortunately, these people also happen to be the majority of the population. So, sorry gals, looks like you're not in charge of your own lives.

Some People are Not Stupid

2009-12-05T14:19:00.000-08:00

Like Ed, from Gin and Tacos.com. I love this blog. I have formally decided that Ed is now my future second husband (for the record, my future first husband is Kai Ryssdahl and I plan to have the babies of Morrissey and Amanda Marcotte. I also wanted to have the babies of my friend Nancy, but I think now I prefer want to gay-marry her to show my affection and admiration)

Ed recently received his PhD in Political Science. He teaches college at a big school in GA. Read and love.

In the Meantime

2009-12-03T22:17:00.000-08:00

I have a couple more Stupid People posts coming up, but in the meantime, allow me to link an article by Barbara Ehrenreich: The Pink Ribbon Cancer Cult

Unrelated, but "Her presence underscores the impact and importance of bowling." I'm not sure if that line can be any funnier.

Dear America,

2009-12-01T13:41:00.001-08:00

Pull up your pants.

Thanks,

More Spiders!

2009-11-19T10:43:00.000-08:00

So, I missed a good picture opportunity Tuesday night when I hobbled out of my car at home. There was a huge spider on the wall of my "garage" and I didn't snap a picture of it. Today, however, I finally watched my cousin's video, titled (in a different uncle's font)

Uncle Tommy and the Jaguar in the Corn Field

The video's high point, for me, was the shot of a GIANT SPIDER near the end. This is shot in Wisconsin, in Septemeber. I can only assume that the white stuff on the ground is fertilizer, maybe the audio on the video explains this, but I couldn't hear the audio well. Click on the image to go to the video.

People are Stupid, Part 1

2009-11-19T07:15:00.000-08:00

Last night, I learned that a woman who HAD CANCER that was detected by a mammogram at the age of 42 went and canceled her surgery to remove the cancer because of the new guidelines. At 42, this woman may have already had children, so when she dies, she won't be able to get a Darwin award, but she certainly deserves one. This is the concern - that stupid people will be stupid and do shit like this. Frankly, I could not care less about stupid people who ignore diagnosed problems. I think a lot of energy is lost trying to help people who are demonstrating no desire to help themselves (the cost issue has been ignored in this case, on my part, but the fact that cost is a factor in having life saving procedures is the fault of our shitty system anyway).

Then there are the emotional outbursts from people who think that the guidelines would work as restrictions and no woman under 50 would be able to get a mammogram. These people are idiots. The guidelines clearly state that this is ONLY the case for women who are not otherwise deemed to be at high risk for breast cancer. I understand the concern that this may mean that health insurance providers may stop paying for these screenings, which, when done correctly, save lives. Republicans are using this as a political football too, even though they have demonstrated that they have no problems with cutting off funding for procedures that save women's lives. But the problem with that argument is that the fault there lies with the ruthless tactics of the health insurance industry, not with well reasoned guidelines.

I can't emphasize that word enough - guidelines. Furthermore, these are guidelines for women who are not otherwise at high risk. Paranoid women and women with an ancestral history of breast cancer can get their damn mammograms every year, every 6 months if they really want it. However, had nobody ever come out and said that women under 50 need to have this done, we wouldn't be in this situation. I'm just glad that the paranoia didn't reach a point where they started proclaiming that women get mammograms in their 30's. After all, I do know women who have had breast cancer that early too.

[sarcasm]And lets not even try to think of better cancer screening procedures while we continue to post x-rays of women's breasts on the nightly news all the time, we're saving lives by barbarically smashing body parts and then posting them to the public![/sarcasm]

No Indication of Terrorism at Fort Hood

2009-11-09T22:39:00.000-08:00

You know, if that was a true statement - as I saw posted on CNN tonight while at the gym - that would mean that this is an ordinary week at Fort Hood. Soldiers getting ready to deploy, processing physicals, and watching the tearful families separate. That would mean no "terrorism" occurred. Instead, someone shot at people without noticeable provocation, injured a bunch, and killed about a dozen of them. However, it seems like terrorism got re-defined in the last decade to the acts of people working for organizations. If the OKC bombing happened now, would we breathe a sigh of relief that this wasn't "terrorism"?

E-mail written by [Bananaman]

2009-11-05T21:09:00.000-08:00

Dictated to E*** Z****

I got this feelin' - R** C****** is near. Yes, November 19, 2009, on college campuses near you, the R** C****** Posse of Idiots will come knocking to tell you how great God is, how baaaad Hitler is, and how somehow, he was Darwins' gay lover? I read some of the piece - well, I skimmed part of it when we looked at at SANE - I would read it, but I've already had one brain injury, and they say that the next one will be worse.

Alternet had a post about R**'s celebrities, Kirk Cameron and Ben Stein, passing out this 50 page fairy-tale piece. I didn't read the article, but I saw some comments, including this one.

The real story here is the big cash behind making stuff up. We live in a world where all the scientists believe in man-made climate change but half the population doesn't. In general, if the science doesn't suit a big company we get a science-washing campaign. This goes back to the 1920s when doctors endorsed cigarettes to make women slim. Then Exxon/Mobil bought a climate change campaign, the nuclear industry bought a radiation is good for you campaign, coal became clean coal (use it like soap!). This evolution serves Jesus deal is just one more schtick.

50,000 copies, for free, and lots of money put into the product. Of course the public will buy it!

-Source

I find the highest moral offense of Martin Luther to be valuing faith over works, but how else to sell a lie?

More Like Project Funway

2009-11-04T18:03:00.000-08:00

This year's season on Lifetime is much more melodramatic than the Bravo seasons. I don't root for any of the designers to win, and things seem less "real". Maybe it is their location in LA, maybe it is the new network. In the middle of the season it became clear that the design skill was split by gender, which is not normal for this show. Christopher needed to go, as did Logan. Nicholas was annoying sometimes, but he was more talented and creative than Logan and Christopher. Chris was one of my Minnesota boys, so I enjoyed watching him, but his dresses were all "play on volume" crap, emphasis on the crap. Logan was boring and no, I did not find him to be attractive, I don't know what everyone is so excited about. I was so happy to see him go, yet Christopher is still here. Here is how I think it should shake out.

Winner: Irena, but I will not be surprised if Carol Hannah wins.

Bryant Park, no win: Althea, possibly Gordiana (but unlikely), and Carol Hannah

Next off: Chris (retroactively enforced five episodes ago) and Gordiana

Spider Time

2009-11-02T20:28:00.000-08:00

So, I pledged a whole blog section about spiders, but apparently, there is only ONE post tagged with spiders. This is wrong. I have seen some good ones lately, including this one on a stop sign near my place.

I saw another big one a month ago or so. A couple was looking at it. Can you see it?

Late Night BART

2009-11-01T04:19:00.001-08:00

I just got home around 4 or so after riding the BART from Powell. My friend and I got to Powell, camped out on the floor, then consumed ourselves untangling his Mardi Gras beads. Some girls near us caught his attention too and one was dressed as the raisin lady. He only noticed that after staring at the raisin box she gave him for a while. At 4 minutes to the train for Con-cord, people stood up. My friend got up when it about one minute. The group convened near the black tabs and I worried that someone might fall off into the train. When the train neared, we cheered and then we began to pack the train. I was wedged around a bunch of guys, one bald-headed white guy was drunk and also seemed to have wandering hands twice. He also accidentally slapped me on the tunnel, which I found pretty amusing.

We stopped at Embarcadero, but we had been packed at Powell. The conductor was not very patient with us, but at the same time, the people in the middle of the cars could have gotten closer. I looked around and saw nothing but passed out heads with arms clinging to the bars. Halloween zombies hanging from the handrails on the train who were not moving. I made room where I could, and the conductor threatened to take the train out of service if the doors could not close. We started, stopped instantly, then started again. And we were on our way under the bay. That tunnel took forever this time, and we had to wait until 12th Oakland to stop.

People, including me and my friend, poured out of the Con-cord bound train and I followed my friend onto an almost empty car going up through Berkeley to Richmond. We had to wait for a second train from San Francisco, but then we were off on the Richmond bound train - well, El Cerrito del Norte bound. We were to stop at MacArthur, Downtown Berkeley and El Cerrito del Norte. I guess the BART thought, "screw Richmond."

A couple of times during the night I got to note on our being a part of SF history with our BART ride. The Halloween Party Commute, 2009.

Flower Time

2009-10-31T19:09:00.001-07:00

I call this "Potential" or something like that, then I cut the flower part off.

Just kidding, lol.

Here was a purple flower as seen through our fall foliage.

How I'm Surviving the Second Bay Bridge Closure of 2009

2009-10-29T20:00:00.000-07:00

I don't know if any of you watch the national news. I only see it at the gym, but I did get to see that the Bay Area made national news a couple times. The big one is big, and might just complete our trifecta of transportation issues this year. A few weeks before Labor Day, we had the threat of the BART strike. The night before it was due to start, the state and the union reached a deal and trains ran on schedule. Disaster averted. A couple of weeks later, the Bay Bridge was shut down and we all forgot about the BART issue.

It is an El Niño year this year, and this last week has been hella windy. Tuesday night must have been really incredible. I didn't hear the traffic reports that evening, but somehow, by the next morning, I knew full well that pieces of the new Bay Bridge had been blown apart during rush hour on Tuesday. A few cars were damaged, one person was insignificantly (I think) injured, and the Bay Bridge was shut down. Not for repairs - no. It was so the engineers could figure out how to fix it.

The San Francisco Bay Area lives and breathes by its bridges, and the Bay Bridge is like shutting down the aorta of our traffic flow, carrying most of the East Bay out of the MacArthur Maze and into the city. Since the bridge went out on Tuesday night, the BART has been running longer trains and they even added a second ferry across the bay. However the other bridges are packed.

Its nice because there is no back-up to the one east bound lane of the Caldecott tunnel, but the traffic on 680 negates any time saved. I run right into all the Martinez, Pittsburg, and Concord people that usually take 24 to the Bay Bridge all rushing down 680 to get to the San Mateo and Dumbarton bridges before... well, before nothing cuz those are clogged and we made national news.

I don't know how things were after the Loma Prieta quake, but the recent 20 year observances made it clear to me that all hell did break loose during that time. The traffic issues with the Bay Bridge were likely dwarfed by the chaos that engulfed the area. They may also have been just as bad, but people were probably so shell shocked by the 15 second nightmare that caused it to barely care.

I'm lucky that my only concerns with this shutdown are not knowing which ways are the best anymore and that I don't work in the city. Some of my co-workers live in the city and commute out to San Ramon, but I don't know what they are doing. If it was me, I might think about packing a bag and staying with a friend that lives near-by instead of trying that commute. I don't work tomorrow, but I am not sure if it is a Furlough Friday or not. I hope it is - or maybe the state should trade them. I can only imagine the money our state doesn't have that's being spent. I wonder if the money lost on those tolls is being made up on other bridges, ferry fees, and BART tickets. I also wonder if the BART will run 24 hours in order to have some kind of traffic along that vessel.

We Need a Miss Manners for the Internet

2009-10-28T20:09:00.000-07:00

I have absolutely no sympathy for the person that sends an email to me, either as an individual or as part of a large mailing list, with a demand to be taken off an email list. I have some respect for the request if I happen to be in charge of that mailing list, but if I'm just a user, especially if the email is to me directly, that person can kiss my ass. This week, I got one sent directly to me, and rather than respond or forward, I hit the delete button. One of my co-workers suggested I send the person an email saying that I did remove them from the list, and while I like the way that guy thinks, I opted for deleting rather than causing more havoc.

I know that people get on lists that they later realize they don't want to be on, and I also know that many lists are on other lists - signing up for the Hmong Student Association got me on the hotline to all the major API groups at UC Berkeley - and there may even be people out there that sign up group email addresses on those mass sign-up sheets that groups have out during festivals. It happens and the best way to get off the list is to ask someone to remove your email unless you happen to be at a university with a university account and can remove yourself.

What bugs me are the demands and the comments along with the demands about how they don't care about the subject at hand or the group in general. I liken it to being in a room where a conversation begins, then loudly shouting how you dislike everyone there and can't find the door. There are more polite ways to extricate yourself from a situation without making an ass of yourself and without insulting everyone else.

Now, the email that I sent out was a response to two other people. The email that I got back stated that this person was not interested in this group and wanted to be removed from the list. I was just about as able to remove this person as any of my grandparents are and I happen to have a very high opinion of the group this person was talking about. I might have forwarded a message that read something like "Hello, I don't know how I got on this list, but I would like to be removed. I contacted the other two people in this thread as well but they have not responded. If you cannot remove me, could you forward this message to someone who can? Thank you."

My mother always says that I'm constantly complaining that people do not say things correctly, and its true that I hold people to a high standard of decorum. Being as emotional as I am, I react strongly to rudeness. I have thin skin (metaphorically and literally - well, its transparent and burns easily), but I'm a human so I problem-solve and try to figure out how someone could achieve the same ends without acting like an ass. So if you're on a distribution list that you don't want to be on, do as Urs says, use please and thank you and your request might actually work.

Now, I could have been nice myself and forwarded the message, no matter how rude, but the person insulted my group, so &*#$ them. I mean, hell, I'm not a computer.

Another Quote

2009-10-24T20:20:00.000-07:00

Over at Pandagon, I don't care for the bloggers that quote a lot because I want to read their analysis. I read the blog because I like the writing and opinions of the bloggers, so reading a bunch of quotes bores me. But, I'm not as skilled a writer as Marcotte, or this writer, so I guess I have to quote.

The fourth point: If you fail to respect what women say, you label yourself a problem.

There’s a man with whom I went out on a single date—afternoon coffee, for one hour by the clock—on July 25th. In the two days after the date, he sent me about fifteen e-mails, scolding me for non-responsiveness. I e-mailed him back, saying, “Look, this is a disproportionate response to a single date. You are making me uncomfortable. Do not contact me again.” It is now October 7th. Does he still e-mail?

Yeah. He does. About every two weeks.

This man scores higher on the threat level scale than Man with the Cockroach Tattoos. (Who, after all, is guilty of nothing more than terrifying bad taste.) You see, Mr. E-mail has made it clear that he ignores what I say when he wants something from me. Now, I don’t know if he is an actual rapist, and I sincerely hope he’s not. But he is certainly Schrödinger’s Rapist, and this particular Schrödinger’s Rapist has a probability ratio greater than one in sixty. Because a man who ignores a woman’s NO in a non-sexual setting is more likely to ignore NO in a sexual setting, as well.

So if you speak to a woman who is otherwise occupied, you’re sending a subtle message. It is that your desire to interact trumps her right to be left alone. If you pursue a conversation when she’s tried to cut it off, you send a message. It is that your desire to speak trumps her right to be left alone. And each of those messages indicates that you believe your desires are a legitimate reason to override her rights.

For women, who are watching you very closely to determine how much of a threat you are, this is an important piece of data.

-Sweet Machine

Here is something that I already realize, but I did not have the capacity to put it into words. Fortunately, I can leverage the words of someone else and use this to put words to instances in my own life.

We Do Not Exist Just to Breed

2009-10-18T14:20:00.000-07:00

Something is said to be alive if it is an item that grows on its own and creates identical items that grow on their own. So it happens that the life patterns of humans would include a period of growth, then procreation. A major difference between humans and other species of life is that we don't just stop at making copies of ourselves. We create and build, we discover and invent, we fix and improve, sometimes never stopping to have more than one or two children.

But many people have it in their heads that our purpose is to breed, they may be forbidden by others from preventing pregnancy, and many are unable to resist sexual contact. In the past, the human population stayed stable because we were unable to keep a large segment of babies from dying shortly after birth. The population was further held down due to disease, war, and in Europe, witch burnings killed a significant portion of the young adult population. These days, science gives us the technology to limit the number of people we create and to take good care of the ones that we do create.

But now and then, the past comes back to haunt us. Will we make the right assessment of the problem and fix it? Will we discourage religious dogma and encourage contraception? I hope we do.

Santa Claus and the Baby Jesus

2009-10-17T16:45:00.000-07:00

Two cute Christmas mythologies, both that people commemorate with little displays of the story every year. Only one that millions of people actually think is true past their childhood. My parents had a ceramic nativity scene that we would display under the eastern window in the dining room. We put some books down to act as a platform for the barn, then put a felt cloth over that, and placed the ceramic figures. We put fiberglass down next as the "snow" (or maybe that went down first).

When the Decorators in my house went atheist, we put the nativity scene away and used the space for other decorations. In college, I bought my parents some little snow-people -- two big ones and two little ones -- and they sometimes go there. I don't know the Christmas decoration plans this year though. The nativity scene and angel ornaments were the only casualties of our atheism, but now there is an angel on the top of the tree, where before we always had a star.

Today, at the Ashby Flea Market, I stumbled on this, and then haphazardly bargained it from $15 to $7.

The books (or rather, paperbacks in the dust jackets) have been there for a while, and this was the perfect location in my living room.

I Love You, Caren

2009-10-16T22:31:00.000-07:00

So...by not going to SC and getting herself hurt or killed, Michelle Obama is oppressing the freedom-loving, conservative patriots who just want to express their “dissent” to her personally. Is that right?

On that note, I’m pretty fed up with theocratic assholes who think that their First Amendment right to be free from government impediments of speech means that they are allowed to force any particular person to listen to them.

Chicago just passed a law creating 50 foot buffer zone around abortion providers’ workspaces. Within 50 feet of the building, you cannot approach someone closer than 8 feet without her permission. The ACLU is actually on the theocrats’ side in this, evil socialists they are, b/c it’s hard to leaflet from 8 feet away.

Anyway, tons of screaming about how these wonderful people who never harmed anyone and have saved countless baybeez are being discriminated against and not being allowed their freedom of speech.

You can talk. You just can’t talk to a specific person if they don’t want to listen: that’s called harassment.

Specifically to this post, no one is stopping anyone in SC from dissenting. If they can’t behave like civilized people or like Americans, then it’s their own fault if they can’t have nice things like a visit from the First Lady.

-Caren-Sun-blocking Creator of Animorphic Pancakes

Here is My Cat

2009-10-11T19:07:00.000-07:00

This is Kitty Amin, she lives in the barn at my parents' place in Wisconsin. My dad blames our family's acquisition of her on me, so she became my cat, but as I recall, I just wanted to give her some kitty treats, it was Dad that let her in the house.

See, when I was home after my brain injury, things were a bit boring. Splotches, the only cat we had at the time, was not very exciting since she was never really a people-cat. One day, as I was trying to pet Splotches, I saw a cat walking down the driveway. I called to my dad about the cat and he replied, "yeah, that's the cat that comes over and eats the left over cow feed!" I went out to give her some treats and then Dad let her come in the house. We thought she was pregnant because her belly was so big and she looked otherwise starved. But the gestation period for kittens came and went and no kittens. I had some friends that were on a dictator-cat-name theme, so I decided to call this cat "Kitty Amin". Her size fits her namesake perfectly, though I wasn't thinking about that when I named her. She is a very friendly cat, which is problematic because she smells like the barn.

Under New York State Law

2009-09-10T19:31:00.000-07:00

I turned on the TV tonight and the only thing on was Seinfeld, so I caught the end of the "Bra as a Top" episode. Elaine is annoyed by an acquaintance that never wears a bra, so she buys her one as a gift. The woman wears it as a top, with a jacket and causes Kramer to get into a car accident. It could be said to be a distraction, but in Manhattan, toplessness is legal, regardless of sex.

Names So Much

2009-09-04T11:04:00.000-07:00

Three years ago, I got into Project Runway. I finished Season 3 and saw Season 4 to the end. Somewhere in there, I forgot TV and/or got busier, so I missed Season 5, maybe 6 too. Anyway, suddenly, I'm into the show again and Episode 2 had a maternity wear challenge. Pregnancy experience seems, to me, like a rare occurrence in popular culture and the winner worked with a model who had a 2 year-old. The Losers shook out like this:

Ra'mon: an interesting optical illusion dress with contrasting color choices to create a bowling-ball-bag look.
Mitchell: cute outfit, horribly sewn.
Marvin: concept design to feature pregnacy: a mother hen.

. I don't remember as much about the winners, except that they were all women and Sharin won cuz she had an awesome dress and a super hot coat. I'm interested to analyze what I do know, however.

In other news, Project Runway is on Lifetime now, which allows me to see Lifetime commercials, including those for other shows on Lifetime. They all have incredibly emotional plotlines that can usually make me cry from intensity and wear me down. I have heard of a study claiming that having severe emotions one day reduces your physical ability to cope with the mental stress the next day. In other words, Lifetime stresses people out and the commercials are painful to me and I try to avoid them.

Just Don't

2009-09-01T17:26:00.000-07:00

I love you, Energy 92. You give me the high bpm I need. You have Greg and Fernando, but wtf is up with playing the dance remixes of Pink songs? Who the hell is making those in the first place? No one wants to dance to her song about her dead friend, or her crumbling marriage. None of her other songs are fast enough for dance beats either. And let's not even mention Katy Perry, ugh! Are you trying to make her sound slow and retarded? Just stop - if I want to hear those songs, I'll listen to my CDs.

I Hate Zombies

2009-08-20T12:05:00.000-07:00

I really can't stand them. Actually, zombies do not exist, what I cannot stand is the cultural obsession around them. There are all these stupid quizes and retarded hypotheticals about how they would survive a zombie attack that could. never. happen. Now people in the UK have wasted the world's time determining that humans could not survive an attack by this completely fictional entity.

Why aren't we spending time determining if the world could survive an attack of werewolves? What if we were infested with witches and warlocks that had a desire to do the world harm? How about a massive infestation of Big Foots? Sure, people are having fun, but this genre ceased being fun when people started putting zombies in every other movie, video game, and social conversation. Now that people are investing the world's conciousness in a stupid made up monster, it is just retarded.

Also, note that this post is a replacement for snarky comments on friends Facebook statuses. I have enough respect for the friends I have that find this interesting not to rain on their parade, but, as you can see, I hate the obsession with zombies.

Why I Use Natural Products

2009-07-14T22:54:00.000-07:00

One time, after a shower in my flat in Cape Town, I noticed that I had not rinsed a bit of soap off of my leg after I got out of the shower. It was a small amount and I dried it off. A day or two later, I noted that I had acne in that area. Lesson learned, I paid even more attention to rinsing myself off in the shower.

Six years later, I was reading an Alternet article about something or other and saw a comment about natural soap products, specifically natural hair care products. The commenter mentioned that normal products contained petro chemicals that made your hair feel clean for a short while, but actually made it dirtier. With Whole Foods right across the street from work, I decided I would try out these products and find out for myself if my hair was any cleaner. This was how I learned about the value of "lather, rinse, repeat", and noticed that after a day without washing, my hair did seem a little bit cleaner. It wasn't until my three day trip to Houston when I used hotel [conventional] shampoo every day, yet couldn't wait to get home to finally wash my hair [with natural] that I really observed the difference.

So I stopped using conventional shampoo, but still used conventional products for everything else. About a month ago, I ran out of my deodorant. I used Secret Platinum, which had 19% of the active ingredient. Secret Clinical Strength, which was half as much for twice the price, was 20% of the active ingredient. It didn't matter which one I used though, I still had big rings of sweat on the pits of my clothes most days. It was usually small enough that I could conceal them by not raising my arms too high, but of course, that just made the sweat patch get bigger. I was out of deodorant, but only wanted to go to one store - Whole Foods or Target that night, and I needed dinner. Whole Foods had fresh food, Target didn't, so I tried out one of the natural deodorants at Whole Foods. The first day I tried it, no sweat. The second day I wore it, no sweat, and so on, for about a week. The main problem was that it didn't cover up my BO as well, but no one except me noticed - even when I asked people. Then I was chatting with a guy I know in the deli at Whole Foods and he suggested Crystal Stick deodorant, so I bought that. That takes away the smell and still, no sweat.

So my hair is clean, I smell good, and I'm not sweating like crazy anymore. Back when I was in Cape Town, I had brought with me my first ever bottle of Neutrogena's body wash. I remember seeing the commercial. It had nice, clean looking white teenagers standing on a white sound stage, confessing that people get breakouts on places besides their face. Being able to relate to that, I noted the product and bought a bottle when buying my toiletries for Africa. To be honest, however, I can't say that Neutrogena's body wash worked any better than any other soap for reducing acne on other parts of my body. It did help when I rinsed all the soap off, of course. Earlier this year, I started using natural soaps for my body more often, and now I use them exclusively. This weekend, I realized that I no longer had any body acne. In fact, I haven't noticed any breakouts or even single zits for a few months. I'd have to go back to conventional soaps - maybe I could use up all my Bath & Body Works things - to fully experiment on my body, or maybe I could just keep using this soap and see if I get acne anyway.

In my life, a number of things have caused me shame. For the last 12 or 13 years, one had been random breakouts, and in the past two years, another had been excessive sweating. They seem to be gone now, without making medication changes, without going to so-called "stronger" products. In fact, because my hair stays cleaner longer, I have less incentive to shower than normal. Though, now I will shower and not wash my hair more often because my hair is getting obscenely long.

Let the New Movies Begin

2009-06-30T19:03:00.000-07:00

Will it be Made for TV or Big Screen? Michael, The Movie.

The last one was 1992, which was before the first time he was accused of molesting children, but after he began to whiten. There are so many more things that we need to know, and the rumor mill is stating

I don't know what is true, but I will be interested to see the tale of our 21st century Howard Hughes.

Good News, Governor Sanford

2009-06-25T18:33:00.000-07:00

You're NOT the biggest news of the week. Who would have thought?

So, get this, the governor of a mid-size state goes missing. The Lt. Governor wasn't notified, his wife is clueless, and aides claim he went off hiking in the Appalachians. About six days later, he shows up at the airport, blabbering about a love affair with a woman in Argentina. Amanda writes a great post about the meanings of passion and conservatism and BOOM

Michael Jackson effing dies

Can anyone say Gary Conditt?

Never Studied

2009-06-12T10:02:00.000-07:00

A friend on Facebook posted a cool photo of a storm in Iowa. The people that saw the clouds in this storm think that there should be a new cloud classification based on these clouds. But not everyone agrees and the article mentioned that meteorologists would classify these clouds as an existing type of cumulous clouds. It sounded like an interesting debate until I got here:

But Pretor-Pinney, who never studied meteorology, believes the clouds merit their own cumulus sub-classification.

This person is not an amateur meteorologist, one who might have read a bunch of books but never got a formal degree, no, Pretor-Pinney "never studied meteorology".

Well Said

2009-05-27T23:30:00.000-07:00

marriedtothesea.com

You're Kidding Me

2009-05-26T00:30:00.000-07:00

I'm watching all of the episodes of Bullshit from Penn & Teller. I'll be posting reviews of certain clumps of episodes, but I'm starting with the episode College, which is actually an indictment of diversity. I can hear the bs reason for the society in Fahrenheit 451 already. In all seriousness, I am censoring my post because I am nervous about having this blog deleted, literally. Though I have almost every reason to believe that the threat of this is gone, the risk is too great, censoring away!

That is an image of [a college], my alma mater and the episode actually talked about [something I vividly remember]. [I had another paragraph about my relationship with the events and people and locations portrayed] [Finally there was a paragraph about the racial make-up of the campus and other things] I can say that the episode's description of events does not match my recollection in that it leaves things out and doesn't actually answer any of the questions I had 8 years ago.

The white rich guy in the episode said that women, people of color, LGBT, etc people are treated like children when we are "told" that we should not be exposed to certain types of speech or opinions. In my experience, these same people are asking for a learning environment free of these assholes. It isn't just speech or opinions either. Remembering going to my alma mater, I remember a lot of conversation and yes, vitriol aimed at people who said stupid racist shit. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from criticism of your hate speech. But a lot of what was said also wasn't protected speech. Harassment and threats are not the same as free speech. Sure, attention to diversity can be problematic - I am not a moral relativist - but you can't have an open discussion with someone that insists that "f****ts", "n****rs", and "b***hes" are less than human.

We have a history in this country that creates a context of hostility towards anyone not that "majority" group with which we are familiar. It is very easy for members of a group that has not been threatened with violence or are seen [more in the past than now, thank goodness] routinely as less than human to tell us what we want. In fact, they do it all the time and they did just now. Sure, diversity is rationally ridiculous to people that don't benefit from it, but ask the out black lesbian who is going to college to learn chemistry about the tangible benefits of diversity training and even awareness in the people around her in her ability to obtain her degree.

This episode could have been much more powerful and I did not come away from the episode with any new knowledge, literally, even about the incident at my alma mater. It could have been an indictment of the excesses of diversity training. They hit on some overreactions at my alma mater and pulled a stunt protesting diversity at a diversity event. Tolerating intolerance is not tolerance and the episode proved that universities are aware of this fact. The tolerance of any idea without editing, without regard to effect is an excess of diversity and no one is doing that. Making campus safe for a KKK group would be a problem, but it isn't happening. I think the fact that this episode had to go to a second rate state university in a state that most people in America forget about to get an example of "diversity gone wrong" when it wasn't even ABOUT "diversity" is an indication that they REALLY had to reach for something that just ain't there. Seriously.

The show could have also addressed the issue of too many people going to college or getting crap degrees with which they cannot get a good job after they graduate. What about grade inflation and the snowflake epidemic? They tried to address this issue by trotting out names of talented and/or lucky people that struck it rich without college, but that does not a criticism of college make. Everyone knows that being an entertainer does not necessitate college, with the exception of maybe Peter Graves. But these days college has become what high school used to be - a training ground for young people before they enter adulthood. But we consider that college and made high school into a holding pen for children and elementary school is elaborate day care. Colleges need to be places that create future leaders, artists, professionals, and scholars to enhance society for all people, whether or not they went to college. They should not pass students after they skip the final and even ask not to be failed so they can have time to drop the class.

There is so much this episode could have been, and it should have been two episodes to address the excesses of diversity (because they exist) and the problems in college today. As is, this episode just taught me that some highly educated and high powered and uneducated but wealthy entertainer white guys don't think that diversity or college are good things, respectively. I should probably make up some kind of rating system, but overall, this episode is bullshit.

Yeah

2009-05-23T23:37:00.000-07:00

toothpastefordinner.com

Related Posts: Waste

Classic

2009-05-21T22:23:00.000-07:00

It dawned on me tonight, after I refreshed Pandagon, that almost any motion picture clip that existed, especially after the advent of VCRs, probably exists on YouTube, even if the copyright holder takes it down over and over again. So I went searching.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Modern Times

2009-05-20T19:22:00.000-07:00

So, Sunday morning, I woke up with a headache, probably from that skittles vodka shot or something, but I had no food in the apartment. I headed to Whole Foods for some breakfast and grocery type things and made my way through produce and near the fish, I saw that they had fresh eggs out near-by. Some of the eggs were larger than normal and I noted that they were goose and duck eggs. Then I looked up and holy crap...

What kind of a place do I live in? I would buy one, but would be too worried that I'd open my fridge to see a baby bird inside. Is anyone else reminded of Jurassic Park?

I guess it isn't SO weird, I mean, there are ostrich meat farms, and ostriches can lay unfertilized eggs, just like chickens, ducks, and geese. But holy living fuck.

Stupid Stupid

2009-05-19T12:03:00.000-07:00

In a document released yesterday, committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, and Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, the panel’s top Republican, said taxing health benefits would address so-called “Cadillac plans” they said promote overuse of health-care services and boost the cost of care.

-Source

Most people do not go to the doctor for fun. This jackass probably thinks that normal insurance is just like congress insurance. I have good insurance, but I still have to pay a little fee any time I want some medical help, and the company that handles my p[rescripotions can still trump anything my doctor says and just refuse to cover the necessary medications. I tagged this post with politics, but health care should not be a political issue. I do want my tax dollars to pay for it, for me and for everyone, but government is not the same as politics.

Miracle, by Anatole France

2009-05-18T21:13:00.000-07:00

A few pages of text, pages 175-181, to disprove any mythology.

What is the definition of a miracle ^ We are
told : a breach of the laws of nature. But we do
not know the laws of nature ; how, then, are we to
know whether a particular fact is a breach of these
laws or no ?

Recent Memory

2009-05-09T02:35:00.000-07:00

Due to all the time spent in waiting rooms yesterday, I saw a bunch of magazines. One was the issue of Newsweek with the article about the decline of the Christianity in politics.* It had a tagline with a comment saying that there is less religion in politics now than in any other time in "recent memory", which made me wonder just how short our memories really are. Seriously, less religion in politics since when? Unless "recent" translates to 5 years, and "now" translates to two months, or the day Obama decided to not have evangelicals visit the White House for the National Day of ~~Ignoring the Constitution~~ Prayer.

It seems as if our cultural memory has been limited to less than a few years. We live in the constant present, thinking that anything that happens could mean the collapse of society. In other words, there is a significant lack of historical literacy in our culture. This is different from cognizance of perpetuation of historical trends, but the definitions are always easier to say than to apply. Regardless, "recent memory" of religion in politics should go beyond one presidential administration, and an assessment of the status quo should too.

*I guess I was too annoyed by the tagline and the knowledge that any amount of religion in politics is a bad thing to actually read the article. Not to mention the fact that the doctor came in too soon.

OMG This Rules

2009-05-08T19:45:00.000-07:00

superpoop.com

God, I love Superpoop.

Vindicated by "Several Studies"

2009-05-08T13:11:00.001-07:00

I was about to title this post "Exactly What I've Been [fucking] Saying [you goddamn idiots] because I get rather tired of fighting the "hard wired into our biology" vs. "there is shit we can actually DO to prevent and change this" and yes, the importance of time of year in our development arguments to people that refuse to admit that ::gasp:: present evidence just might be overlooking some factors that will probably be proven later on. Guess what, readers, I keep seeing new information to validate my side of the argument.

I should let you on to the fact that I have been to the dentist, work, doctor, and pharmacist today. At the dentist, I wasn't prepared to have half my face numbed, so my day started out stressful. I didn't want to go into work, but my boss needed something urgently, which caused a great deal of anger that didn't really dissipate for a few hours after I finished the assignment. The doctor was ok, but I had to fill in my "gender" on the intake, which I crossed off and wrote sex. Sometimes, I wish that I never knew that gender wasn't necessarily biological, or I wish that I had more patience when other people keep doing and saying things that I have realized just don't make sense/aren't true, but I don't. Then, at the pharmacist, I discovered how great our health care system is another time. Apparently, corporate bureaucrats know better than my doctor and have determined that I can only have 1 of my prescribed 2 pills per day. Don't we live in a great country. My only respite so far was the article I linked, which refreshingly referred to a generic human without the male pronoun.

And so, I end my ranty post, and oh yeah, I doubt you're the idiots to which I refer. You might be, but you are probably aware that I already think you're an idiot. I'm stressed and therefore more abrasive.

Put to Words

2009-04-25T21:21:00.000-07:00

This post about Conscience Clauses by Jesse put words to a thought I've often had.

It’s the same problem as the tolerance/intolerance argument: you create an insane recursive loop of oversensitivity, where your conscience violates my conscience, but since you started it, you get to call me a hatemonger and yourself the innocent victim. If I don’t have to issue a marriage license because of my moral convictions, why should I have to process unemployment benefits or respond to your crime report or deliver your mail? The entire point of America is supposed to be that, at the very least, we extend rights to all who abide by the law, regardless of who they are or where they come from.

If you find yourself unable to extend a constitutional right to those to whom it applies because your sky-man told you it was wrong, then go pray for a new job and let someone else serve the public. It’s certainly an issue for taxpayers to get angrier about than, you know, teabagging.

A Comic for Me

2009-04-23T20:29:00.000-07:00

toothpastefordinner.com

I miss severe weather

So Glad This Exists

2009-04-19T20:13:00.000-07:00

I can't claim to understand this very well, but it is hilarious.

O_O

2009-03-10T20:14:00.000-07:00

Let's play with women by lying to them and then pretend it doesn't matter! We'll call this a game, in fact, The Game. Let's exploit the fact that sexism harms women in a number of understood ways. We can call that the "special psychology" of women, and use it to get them to do things that they don't want to do! Hahahahaha - yeah, dude, dehumanizing rocks!

Lookie What I Found!

2009-03-07T21:51:00.000-08:00

It's a big ol' bug, just hanging out by my apartment.

What kind of bug is this?

And here is a video with my shoe in there for perspective. My shoe is a size 10 hiking shoe cuz of my ginormous feet.

To Our Favorite Drug Addict

2009-03-05T21:15:00.000-08:00

I'm so sorry I called you ugly so I sent you an apology note.