The B-log

On ablism, poster children and "curism"

2011-01-08T16:21:00.000-08:00

Most of his post will be a comment I posted in response to another reader's comment on this article about ablist language.

On a similar theme, this article about poster children and depictions of people with disabilities, which outlines the trouble with some approaches to charity fund raising, which I touched on in the comment re-posted below.

At least one former poster-child when on to protest the MDA telethon (there's a documentary about it) and I'm feeling like doing the same thing, given some of Jerry Lewis' ablist comments.

Edit: Here's something marginally relevant to these posts about ablism (about a very disturbing argument made by Peter Singer).

On a related note, here's a great post I randomly found at the blog "Planet of the Blind"--a beautiful and insightful read. And in the spirit of looking at the positive in all this ablist bullshit, check out this video on disabled pride.

Here's the comment I replied to and my response:

So should doctors stop trying to find a cure for disabilities because that implies it's better not to have the disability? it's not like they're trying to make a pill to *make* you blind, because being blind is so awesome and empowering, right? They only want to cure it. That's so ableist.

If you consider Jerry Lewis and the MDA (muscular dystrophy association) telethon, for example, it becomes evident why there are issues with this.

They portray kids with muscular dystrophy (nevermind that folks like me, going on 28, have it too) as though they have a fate worse than death. They do this to raise money for a CURE! Because obviously the most important thing is a cure, because look at how terrible and hellish these kids' lives are! Jerry's an awful great guy to help us wretched cripples out (note my sarcasm--Jerry Lewis has made some pretty disgustingly ablist comments).

Certainly it's sad that many people barely get through adolescence with the severe forms of MD, but touting this single narrative makes it seem like MD must make everyone's life not worth living, or a living hell. It makes us sound monolithic and tragic, which is part of the problem with how our society views disability.

Let me add that the MDA does not focus 100% of their resources on a cure--only a lot of them--and they do some other good things like helping with treatment and doctor visits (btw, the notices they send to *us* don't ignore that there are adults with MD).

I think my point is, there are things to improve people lives *besides* curing every disability that it would be nice if people would feel as willing to fund to help people now--access for people with disabilities, adaptive equipment, etc. Instead, people get angry about these things, for example, when having to wait for wheelchair users to get on the bus and then move seats.

Anyway, to focus solely on a cure at the expense of people who have the disability *now* is part of the problem. The thing about cures is, if people *want* to be cured, that's great to work on curing their ailment! It's the removal of agency, "you will be cured", with a side of "so you can stop dragging everyone else down" that is really offensive. Using "lame" to convey badness is just moldy sprinkles on the rotten cake that is ablism.

So the point isn't that disabilities are all OK just how they are (that's a personal issue, and at the very least most of us do require adaptive solutions to cope with the difficulties they present). The point is that there are already disabled people here, cures and treatments in many cases may be a long way off, and the lives of people who are here are also important and deserving of respect as full human beings, not just inspiration or a word you can rely on to convey that something is "bad", because, you know, being lame, etc is the worst thing ever.

Dis-ease

2010-08-01T16:27:00.000-07:00

Last week I went to an event at Hidmo, an Eritrean restaurant in Seattle's Central District with great community involvement--an open mic night about pain, oriented toward people with sickle cell disease, but open to all. I didn't talk much to anyone there, friends included, especially because I was tired and lost in thought. But the people I did speak with briefly on the way out were extremely kind and welcoming. I hope I see them again.

It was a good experience for me, and I think for everyone, but it made me even more aware of my whiteness than I've ever been. Then it allowed me to stop thinking about it. This was clearly in response to educating myself on issues of race, privilege and whiteness, but also to thinking more about other types of "minority" groups--including the one I belong to: people with physical disabilities.

But the first thing that happened: a black woman kindly moved her daughter to another seat to make room for me. I didn't ask, being awkward and unsure of where to sit, but I was sure to thank her. I do often encounter people moving for me because I walk with a cane, and I'm generally grateful. But it's hard not to think about it when there's a connotation of white male privilege right in the face of a woman of color. It was also a reminder that you can't actually disentangle things like race and abledness.

This started me off feeling very awkward about entering the place with two other white people. (my partner, M, and my friend, H). I'm always hesitant to speak, but this made me more so. White men, in open forums, almost always dominate time and speak more than other people. Classroom discussions, whatever. So in spaces of mixed anything (gender/race/class), I feel it's very important not to dominate discussion or take up time that someone else could use (white men have had centuries in which to do this--give someone else a chance already! Anyone who wants to argue that this isn't true, by the way, is already engaging in apologism for the silencing of women, people of color, and many others).

I started off just trying to not act like an entitled white person entering a space filled with people of color, something I've been reading more about and making more effort to be aware of. I think I mostly succeeded.
(Note: It's certainly not the same feeling a black person must get when being surrounded by white people. For one, that happens a lot more often; for two, the history of racist violence just isn't there for white people--no matter how nervous we might get thanks to the unfounded fears and prejudices we pick up in our racist society.)

In spite of the beginning, the way race and disability intersected became powerful. In some ways it heightened my awareness of my whiteness, but in many ways the night took me beyond the realms of race and color, distractions from the fact that we're all just people. That we share some common pain. Some, but not all.

And gradually, I was overwhelmed with pain. My own pain wasn't the big deal--it was the pain of sickle cell disease that occupied my thoughts--a disease I knew only a little bit about, before this night. I could relate to a lot of it as someone with Muscular dystrophy (in the case of my fairly mild Becker's MD, it's something I think of as a condition or impairment, more than a disease). Some of the people who spoke were not performers, per se, but shared with us their experiences, which had as much impact as anything else could. Some were certainly practiced performers, and damn good, I thought. One man was "put up to" writing something by his wife last minute--it was also damn good.

For something that I started out knowing only from a vague description, this night had a huge impact on me.
I was worried about taking time away from others (and more generally about getting in front of people), but later I I realized that by saying just a few words, I could have showed solidarity beyond sitting at the back of the restaurant. My friend, H, did so, and I'm glad for that (even if she forgot what she originally meant to say!). I think it served to remind us all that some people with chronic medical conditions should be aware of each other--disability affects all groups of people, and ultimately we're all part of the same struggle despite different needs and symptoms. It's a reminder that we're not alone.

Maybe in the future, I'll be less apprehensive about speaking, but I was weirdly reminded of the few occasions I tried to speak in Mormon church meetings as a kid--which didn't help. Or maybe, in the future, I'll defer to others. I don't think either way is necessarily wrong, but I am content with what I did.

It pulled me away from any tendency for narcissism. I do deal with pain. It's not as bad as fibromyalgia (which H has) or sickle cell, but I could relate to what a lot of the men and women who stood up shared their experiences with us. Hospitalization is common for people with sickle cell, which is not the case for me. But I could understand the lack of energy, not being able to do some things, sometimes. Not always being able to predict what you can or cannot do, not knowing how tired you'll be. These are familiar things.

This event made me think. It made me feel. It made me human, made me empathize and relate to others I didn't know, or even really know about. It was a dose of humanity I didn't know I needed.

The most shocking result for me was that I realized how long it had been since I contacted a friend I made on the internet who I'm pretty sure was affected by sickle cell. I wonder how she is, and I found myself regretting not being better about staying in touch with people. It's hard to reconcile leaving the past in the dust with this kind of feeling. I had plenty in common with this friend. And really, socializing over the internet kept me alive for some years, until I was better able to socialize with other people face to face (I had a number of emotional issues that made it difficult, and my departure from Mormonism didn't help with people I wanted to interact with. Anxiety made college difficult). I hope she's doing well, now, and maybe I should find out.

I'm thankful to everyone who put that event at Hidmo together. It wasn't for me, but it was good for me. It doesn't have to be for me to free me. If it makes others free--our brothers and sisters free--it frees the rest of us, too.

This infuriates me (a.k.a., fuck the Mormon church)

2010-08-01T15:08:00.000-07:00

[Note: this post vents a lot of my anger (language!), but also details some of the homophobia and sexphobia that pervade Mormon culture. For the record, I don't begrudge individual Mormons their religion in general, as they don't all agree with church policies--but I do think they're accountable for belonging to and supporting an organization that is dishonest, exports bigotry and firmly believes in marginalizing many minority groups. Also, in case any Mormons read this, I reserve the right to remove your comments arbitrarily, if I think you're acting like a shower.]

8: The Mormon Proposition is on YouTube. I watched it earlier. I yelled at the computer screen a lot. I'm not going to detail the documentary too much, but it got a reaction out of me, and I think that's what the filmmakers were after.

It details the covert but pivotal involvement of the Mormon church in passing proposition 8 in California, banning same-sex marriage. While they tried to maintain a low profile (as they did in Hawaii before), they contributed funds, volunteers, you name it. (They initially claimed only $2,000 in expenditures until someone filed a complaint; then they admitted to spending more like $200,000--and I doubt if that's a full accounting.)

I was raised Mormon. Half of my immediate family is still actively Mormon. I recently resigned from their church (though I'm waiting for them to finish with their own convoluted internal process and mark me as a "non-member").

Frankly, this film and the entire Prop 8 debacle make me want to have nothing to do with my family members who are still Mormon, knowing how they feel about gay marriage--especially if they gave money to this campaign. Maybe that's just a knee-jerk reaction, but if any of them supported this (as their leaders exhorted all Mormons to do), I'm not sure I can suppress my disgust, or do anything but leave them in the dust. (It seems a bit late to ask, but maybe I will.)

Back to the documentary: the smiling-faced shiny-bright-happy-people way in which these mother fuckers recite lines about religious freedom pisses me off--as if imposing their beliefs on others is somehow 'religious freedom'.

Personally, I don't think the Mormons give a shit about religious freedom for anyone but themselves, at the institutional level--regardless of what individual members may think. They tried to establish an independent, theocratic state and failed (partially). They only dropped polygamy (officially) to get statehood, because the U.S. wouldn't have them marrying as they saw fit. I think that given half the chance, the church wouldn't hesitate to restrict and encroach upon the religious freedoms of others--provided it would leave theirs intact (see the above link).

So I'm not terribly surprised by things like this, except in the way they're exporting their anti-gay agenda. And given how legitimate and honest I was raised to believe the church was, the covert nature and broad extent of their political involvement in these marriage propositions does surprise me, somewhat. It's hard to believe that this doesn't violate the requirements for a non-profit tax exemption (see page 5). They more or less set up a front in the form of a coalition (mostly Mormons with some token Catholics, etc) and used that to do their dirty work.

They also talk in the most callous and patronizing way possible directly to the faces of LGBT/queer people about how they are just confused, emotionally stunted--in other words, they erase their experience and any legitimacy to their claims for equal rights, and tlak down to them like children. They are the ones who decide who is legitimate. Whose experience to believe, who determines which identities are legitimate. Straight white people (notably men) have, as the dominant group in America, been doing this kind of thing for centuries. It's clear what tradition the Mormons hail from: one of control and domination, despite the fact that the same tradition oppressed them, in their infancy. Now, the Mormons have fastidiously grabbed onto what legitimacy they've obtained and used it against others.

I'm not shocked, given their patriarchal hierarchy, belief in a direct pipeline to god via their prophet and their history of racism (they didn't allow black men to hold the "priesthood" until 1978, if I recall the date correctly, despite the "but early Mormons were abolitionists!" horseshit I was taught as a child. Joseph Smith believed slavery would end when god wished it).

Talking down to queer people is part of a larger pattern, I feel. The Mormon leadership talks down to the members as though they were children, frequently--a symptom of top-down Truth. Almost anyone who's had confrontations and doubts about the church is chided for not having a "testimony", and not being faithful enough. People investigating the church are told if they haven't felt the spirit when reading the book of Mormon, they aren't living purely enough (yes, convincing people to join involves convincing them that they have to change to even be aware of the truth). They alone know the truth, and therefore how you should feel about it (in everything). Despite the fact that there are many Mormons who can think for themselves (within certain parameters that don't violate the fundamental beliefs of the religion), the institution is extremely authoritarian in this regard.

Their rhetoric makes it sound otherwise, but they aren't only erasing and silencing individual experiences, but families as well. And not just gay couples (which they say cannot be families), but their parents, siblings, etc--that gay folks have families is something they ignore. They deny that non-hetero couple who love each other can be family--and appear ignorant that such couples can and do have children.

I feel that such rhetoric makes it abundantly clear what their goal is: despite saying "religious freedom" out the other side of their mouth at the same time, what they want to control other people's lives--in contrast to how they control their members, this is being applied to people who have not consented to their authority at all. They want to determine what is a legitimate "family" (based of course on their own strange religious beliefs), and impose this upon the rest of us.

It's very clear that they feel threatened, although given their rejection of non-hetero orientations, it's sometimes hard to see how they are personally affected. Clearly, they don't want gayness to be legitimized. But what is it about LGBT people that they find so threatening that they must pump cash and effort into banning gay marriage?

Sex is the simple answer. Mormons are against all forms of extramarital sex (even heavily petting your fiance is discouraged--this has been know to cause some wedding dates to move up). Being gay (especially when marriage is outlawed by asshole religious groups) equates to premarital sex, and of course, all homophobes can think about is sodomy (which of course is not all gay sex! Also: misnomer. I recall that in Sodom, they basically wanted to rape god and his angels, but gladly accepted Lots daughters instead). I wrote "premarital", but in the Mormon view, "extra-marital" is more accurate, since "pre" implies that there could be a post-marriage state for gay folks.

This is all about controlling people, especially young people, and keeping them chaste and "pure", because of course, nobody wants a licked cupcake (or gum that's been chewed--that's a commonly employed metaphor for people who aren't virgins--sorry, converts to the church! The kids are more important than you). This talk about defending their way of life is semi-accurate, but I would say they're definitely on the offensive. Last time I checked, nobody was trying to gay marry Mormons against their will. This was a preemptive strike in a war on the "permissive"culture that is perhaps typified by homosexuality.

So it's again no wonder that they treat those who profess to same-sex attraction as lost little children (even when they aren't children--at least, when they aren't simply cut off from all contact and kicked out). Most of their chastity rhetoric is focused on young people prior to adulthood--which of course results in sex-negative attitudes and in some cases (like mine) some extra screwed up emotions around sex and relationships (thanks guys), which take (took me) awhile to get over.

I'm digressing a bit, but the sex-negative culture of the church is evidently incompatible with anything but sex between a married man and woman.

Mormon leaders have been out as homophobes as long as gay issues have been discussed in the public sphere ("Gays have a problem" said a recent ~~CEO~~ president of their church), perhaps because their ~~divine revelations~~ odd ideas of "god's plan" leave no room for people who don't fit the norm (this is covered in the documentary). They only have square holes, and triangular pegs won't fit in them.

It's certainly a catch-22 though: you can be gay, you just can't act on your attraction at all (for life--I think it can be hard to wait for marriage, let alone forever to get it on). You can be treated. You're also still expected to marry the opposite sex and have children (I don't even want to know how much more terrible Mormon culture is for trans, intersex or genderqueer folks than American culture already is in general). I suppose if you believe that people can change sexual orientations by coercion (all evidence thus far says they can't), that sex for anything but procreation is bad, and that homosex(ual sex) is just a sinful, sinful choice, then the rest follows.

So fuck them. The organization, and especially those members who explicitly and monetarily supported this act of hate. Ttheir views on homosexuality and an array of other issues are harming and killing people (Utah has the leading suicide rate for males ate 16-24, I think it was). (If you watch the documentary, you'll see one case of this being exploited by the family of the deceased for Mormon PR ops.)

I still haven't digested this fully, but my anger has subsided, somewhat. People who fight against the liberties of LGBT folks speak and act like they're in a vacuum. They act like the people their actions harm are isolated clusters of promiscuous disgust rather than human beings. things to be castigated, discarded, removed. "Treated".

But they're not. These are friends, neighbors and family members. People who live and love, who feel joy and pain. These are people I live with. These are people., no matter what you might think you can do to diminish that truth.

[Here are the links for all of the videos on YoutTube]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8wE2A7_bOA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSeV80hZECM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvnTGnGqHjI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1Kaa9Uozoo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVya-qas8Us&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Vg1oyTAlP8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYaeGkI3yLM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-Yo_Jq-toA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Dxt7Kj5-0U&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjS0HH8_dZw&feature=related

[Note: I don't exactly have a readership here, but I'm not sure where a transcript or captioning can be had, for any people with hearing or visual impairments. I would hope the DVD has captions, though.]

[on a somewhat related topic, a pretty good interrogation of the Mormon "Proclamation on the Family" http://www.lds-mormon.com/potf.shtml]

Racist Shit I've Said

2010-03-28T04:56:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder if the random, non-malicious but nevertheless privileged and bigoted statements that have escaped my mouth before I had much awareness of racial issues haunts me sometimes, and makes me wonder: do people associate this with me, anymore? Do they realize how much my views have changed, or if they see a change, do they just think I learned to shut my racist mouth? Probably neither is the case, but I don't know. It's embarrassing to remember, but most cases where I've unintentionally or ignorantly spoken racism, it's been a learning experience on how not to be racist.

A couple examples--the only incidents I can think of, actually, but they may not be the only racial faux pas I've made:

Something to the effect that none of us there was not white--oops, my sister-in-law is chileña, with Mapuche heritage (the indigenous people of the area). Of course, the fact that her skin is fairly pale does mean she's probably less discriminated against, and I mentioned this, but I only really thought about this after the stupid racist comment, and then co-opted it--not to mention co-opting her identity as being 'basically white', which I doubt anyone whose ancestors were victims of the conquistadores is pleased with, when it happens. I'm not sure I could have saved any face in front of someone with darker skin--and I probably still would have said it, which is mildly disturbing. I guess at the time, I was suffering from race being an elephant in the room rather than actually being aware of it in a benign and positive way (specifically, native with light skin who can be mistaken for white). I can't claim to be perfect on that front now, but I'm far ahead of where I used to be, and getting better about it all the time.
Another time was something against Asians--specifically I guess it would have been the Vietnamese, since it was something about "five dolla sucky sucky", bringing to mind a scene in Full Metal Jacket (maybe it's a direct quote?) . Probably the worst thing about this is that it came into my mind on the way to a Thai restaurant with some degree of perceived relatedness--oops, Asia fail! I may have realized that part immediately after the fact, but I don't know if I really by my then-raciallly-unconscious mind. I was called on this by my (white) friends, and I'm glad, although I kind of realized in some sense that it was bad as I said it. Good thing nobody Asian was within earshot to be offended by my ignorance (sorry, Asians!). Kind of mortifying to think I ever thought things like this at all, in any case.
This one was something I said in complete innocence. I described a character's power on the show Heroes as "Monkey see, monkey do". She could learn to do basically anything just by watching. Aaaand she was black. My brother said something like, "wow, that's pretty racist". First of all, what a stupid slur--surely it goes back to the idiotic notion that Africans are 'less evolved', which is ridiculous (even in light of the out-of-Africa hypothesis, there's really no such thing as 'more evolved' people, more like 'adapted to another environment'. This whole time white and Asian people and everyone else has been adapting and evolving? Yeah, so have African people). In my mind, people are generally 'monkeys', no one race more than any other, a la The Prophecy, Christopher Walken. He uses it as a slur against all humans, being a very misanthropic version of the angel Gabriel. A friend of mine in college also used the term to refer to humans in general. So this is where I was coming from, in terms of how I might have used the word "monkey" even aside from the phrase I uttered in this unfortunate context. Second of all...I think there was a second of all. I suppose second of all, I protest my innocence. It's unfortunate I was unaware of the unfortunate connotations of my choice of words, but least it wasn't born from sheer racial insensitivity, like the other examples. Again, there was nobody I offended who was black, but sorry, black people!

The bizarre thing about all this, looking back, is the fact that I went to a pretty diverse high school. A pretty large portion of people was Asian, specifically, but even the cliquishness of high school was somewhat reduced, and in my perception at least, the more popular groups of kids crossed racial lines (hell, even I sat at what I would call one of the more affluent but mostly non-jock tables, at times--which is weird, in terms of social ability, I was a complete outcast, but I knew these people from classes and spent a small amount of time awkwardly sitting with them instead of awkwardly sitting with some Mormon people I knew from the 6am Mormon seminary class).

So there I was for four years, and apparently, if I learned anything about race, I still had a very long way to go. I suppose this is common, especially for someone who grew up Mormon and in Seattle suburbs (read: surrounded by other white people most of the time).

I try not to judge myself too harshly, as high school was hard enough on me socially. I had such a hard time interacting with people without being nervous, that it's a miracle I had any social contact at all, though what I did have in terms of friends was basically enough to make me merely awkward instead of terrified. I was still often terrified.

Another point: I also didn't learn much about other races, ethnicities, etc, in college. I can cite some of the same social problems, but at least the couple anthropology classes I took demonstrated reasons why racism was so ridiculous, and gave me a good basis for evaluating nonsense racist ideas at large in society. Given some of these, my comments recounted above are pretty innocuous--to be clear, I don't feel a pronounced sense of guilt over them, just mortification at the embarrassment I have occasionally been to myself.

It's really only recently that I've really read about and internalized the perspectives of people of color. In some ways, I can make analogy to the way I've occasionally been treated due to my condition (I'm smelling a post entitled, "Ablist Shit Other People Have Said"--the only strong example I can think of is being greeted with "hey gimpy!" by a bus driver).

Mostly though, the thing I've been learning is how different things are when people are faced directly with racism. Anyone who faces oppression or discrimination will have a unique experience and unique problems based on the particular prejudices they're up against, but I try in every way I can to understand and appreciate what they go through, be they minorities, women, LGBT, disabled, homeless, or part any other marginalized group (not to mention people who fit into several such groupings), so I can stop being part of the problem.

And with any luck--stealthy racist words willing--stop saying racist shit! If I can't avoid it at all times (everyone makes mistakes), I've at least learned how to apologize and move on.

Edit: I'll try and add links to articles and such that I've found to be informative on confronting racism

"You Lie!" - and Health Insurance

2010-03-23T14:05:00.000-07:00

I have mixed feelings about the bill itself (there's some good, a bit of bad, and a lot of ugly in there, check it out at a glance), but I can't really take the pres' words at all seriously.

Special interests didn't play into this? What about deals the Whitehouse made with the industry? Health care is now a "guarantee"? There is a lot of expanded coverage, but I still don't feel this is entirely accurate. It will still cost--and people with medical conditions or low income are going to feel it the most, especially if according to the government's standards, they don't qualify for help--and the situation for people with "medical problems" seems sketchy until 2014, and possibly beyond.

Now there are a lot of expanded subsidies, additional help for low income people, including coverage for people up to 133% of the national poverty level (regional differences in cost of living, anyone??), and subsidies for people up to 4 times the federal poverty level. The states will also be required to expand medicare eligibility

So it appears that this will cut down on people with no coverage (supposed to go from 83% to 94% insured), but it's hard to evaluate what the exact effects will be. A lot of it seems to be good, and hopefully it plays out that way. As long as I'm employed at MS, I'll be in good shape, but I'm not sure how much this will help M, since she doesn't receive any employer benefits. I guess we'll see what happens.

I'm also curious to see what will happen with the lawsuit some state attorneys general (including Washington's own Rob McKenna) are bringing in regards to the constitutionality of a mandate to buy something from private companies. It doesn't escape me that adding a public, optional insurance plan would mitigate this issue, and that a single-payer setup would eliminate the issue altogether. Somewhat ironic that these were taken off the table in favor of more complex plans that simply favored the status quo and nasty insurance companies who don't have to compete in a real market. Their market just got that much more surreal--what a weird "compromise" that was.

Too bad in the 70's, when the republicans were proposing some good health care reform, the democrats decided they wouldn't go along with it because . Now the democrats hardly went along with the democratic health reform plan. They're more republicans than the republicans used to be, now that the nominal republicans have lost their minds.

Hopefully any kinks in the new legislation are figured out without too much pain, but I very much doubt that'll be the case. What I'd really hate is for a knee-jerk election of Republicans this fall turn this over before we really know how it's going to work. They claim this bill is fiscally irresponsible, but the deficit reduction in the bill is significant, but the Republicans seem to have no idea how to reign it in. They haven't given much sign of departing from Bush's approach of tax less, spend more.

assorted comments on atheism

2010-03-17T18:13:00.000-07:00

[Originally posted as a comment here]

I think a lot of people misunderstand agnosticism, and therefore atheism.

Agnosticism is the position that something cannot be certainly known, although generally when people speak of being agnostic, they do only mean they are agnostic regarding the existence of god.

In my experience, most “agnostics” are agnostic atheists: they don’t believe in any gods, but they admit that they can’t know that there is no god. You could also be an agnostic theist, and I think many reasonable people who believe in a god accept that they could be wrong about it, but they choose to go with their faith anyway.

I would say that the several types involved in most discussions of the existence of god are as follows:

1) “strong” atheism: I know there is no god
2) “weak” atheism: I believe there is no god
3) “agnostic”: I’m not sure if there’s a god
4) “weak” theist: I believe there is a god
5) “strong” theist: I know there is a god

You can grade these in terms of tolerance, often. 3 would be tolerant of most positions (barring extremism), 2 and 4 allow for some uncertainty and probably tolerate each other best. Using the term loosely, 1 and 5 are “gnostic” positions, and generally not very tolerant of disagreement or waffling.

Of course, plenty of people who agree with 1 and 5 think of it as merely a personal issue, and are perfectly willing to tolerate dissent–much of it is a matter of temperament and social attitudes about tolerance, freedom, etc. On the other hand, the more “aggressive” atheists and religious fundamentalists fall under these categories.

You could class 1-3 as atheist (or at least secular) positions because they don’t promote a god, but because society (in the US at least) is mostly theistic, 3-5 are essentially the status quo–3 only because it doesn’t rock the boat of 4 and 5 too much. Arguably, this is the reason for the term “agnostic” being used as it is–it’s used by people who don’t feel particularly invested in belief/argument for or against god. 3 often sets itself in opposition to 1 and 5: it’s like the ‘opposite’ of extremism.

I would say in attempting to define “atheist”, it’s done either by agreement or opposition, based on one’s agenda.

1-2 will tend to set it up in terms of logic, burden of proof etc, because evidence and reason are typically what matter to people who believe 1-2, and this is extended to the realm of the supernatural.

5 (and at times, 4) will try to frame it as an issue of faith, because they see faith as overriding evidence and logic in importance, at least with regards to a deity.

Atheists are generally trying to get a foothold in a world full of faith and religion using evidence and reason, while theists are generally framing the atheist position in terms of faith and belief, because to do otherwise would be to concede that maybe the atheists are right about the lack of evidence. Essentially, each side is playing a different game, and consequently uses a different definition.

I see it like this: a theist has faith in two sets of knowledge: 1) small f ‘faith’ (confidence) in their interpretation of perceptions and evidence they have encountered and 2) big F ‘Faith’ that the evidence points to god–which is generally where a ‘leap of faith’ is made.

Loosely speaking, (1) relates to how gnostic vs. agnostic your position is, while (2) relates to whether you’re theist or atheist. It’s like confidence in your data vs. confidence in the results you obtained using that data.
To be atheist, you only have to disagree about the meaning or interpretation of the extant data, which means you don’t need big-F-Faith to be an atheist, while you do need it to be a theist.

It’s annoying when religious folk argue that atheism takes faith, because they (at least smarter religious folks) seem to acknowledge that there’s a ‘leap of faith’ that happens when you decide to believe in something that’s not seen. It follows, then, that someone who doesn’t believe in the unseen has made no such leap.

Therefore, in attaining their (un)belief, even the most vehemently avowed atheist hasn’t undergone a similar process of ‘faith’ to even a very level-headed believer in god.

Free

2010-03-13T16:30:00.000-08:00

[Followup to Hunted]

I was stalked, but only by ghosts.

None of these apparitions had a substance, and so with light they were destroyed--they evaporated under scrutiny.

My fear now looks silly in retrospect, but I still feel like I've finally done what I needed to do for a long time. To shake my worries and doubts about the direction my life has taken. To free my mind from whatever would limit it. Free not so much from a Church but from myself, from the crippled feelings I developed while in it and breaking away from it.

The most dread feeling, my largest specter, the one that came up in place of the supposed sense of spiritual inspiration and truth I should have felt--when confronted with articles of the Mormon faith. When confronted with their idea of Jesus, or with their interpretation of a terrible god who loves you. I dreaded this, and for ages had no idea what it meant.

So I finally screwed up enough courage and brought this long-denied feeling to light. Was it a still small voice trying to bring me back? Was it a seed of knowledge that I'd abandoned the truth? Was it the love of my family or savior, calling me back to a righteous path?

I needed to know. I let the feeling come, finally, without fearing the consequences.

It was my confidence. It was the ability to hold my head high without judging others. My own strength has been sapped all these years by something good that was placed in me as a child. Turning away from things that child believed, things that child was told by adults, I allowed this spark of goodness to become a nagging doubt about where my life was headed. Inspiration--which I never could identify with a holy spirit without discovering it was simply my own feelings (real or imagined).

Denying this feeling, which I thought had something to do with a heavenly father or Joseph Smith or Jesus Christ or eternal family--perhaps this has been the source of my pain. This was the last thing I was suppressing, the last thing from which I had dissociated my conscious mind, back in those dark years when that was my coping mechanism.

A well of uncertainty from which so much more anxiety sprung--I unburied it and let it drain out.

Does this mean I'm really free? Perhaps it was the first step to finishing this process, but it felt like the last step I needed to take to attain self-knowledge. The path continues, and there are more things to be done to recover, but this was the big step. This was the beginning of the end for the last vestiges of Mormonism within me.

I'm not sure what I was afraid of--perhaps it was only my fear that I wasn't free from that religion, bottled up over years.

Hunted

2010-03-11T04:01:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I feel like I'm being stalked. Strange, distant and coldly calculating eyes are upon me, housed in no human awareness or intelligence.

This is not a person seeking to harm me, nor a powerful predator hoping to hunt me down for an easy meal. I'm stalked by Book of Mormon stories. I'm stalked by a past that continues to exert an influence even from a distance.

An upbringing, going well beyond family and into the very social environment that was my crucible.

Is it any wonder, with my budding logical side fighting to reconcile the many contradictions and ill-logic of a world-twisting, mind-bending religion, that I turned out as I did? A young adult with emotional problems, social problems, trying to find a spot where I would fit? As if I didn't enter this world with problems enough. It sometimes amazes me how long it took to scrape together any friends, and how hard it is to replace the lost feeling of community I knew as a child. The feelings of certainty that still appeal to my baser side, like a distant siren song--and it's not wax in my ears protecting me.

Ironically, my emotional problems may have been my salvation.

There's nothing as all-surrounding, pressuring embracing as a ward of Mormon faithfuls, and their invisible friends the "inactive members", that I've yet encountered. Not to mention the idea of their god, their heavenly father. The one they know loves them, that loves them to say they know their church is true when they "bury" any semblance of reliable testimony under a heap of rubbish.

In truth, I think my very nature abhorred Mormonism from the beginning. Or at the very least, spaced-out kid that I was, I was enough on my own wavelength to avoid being programmed to any strong degree with Mormon thoughts. Mormon awareness. Mormon dogma.

How my parents could be a party to this religion, I don't believe I can understand. Do they simply not see all the fear? The contradictions? I always did have a case of scruples--like Martin Luther, surely a sign of hidden doubts. But my parents were always much more casual about obeying. I suppose it's one way to avoid losing one's mind over the many mistakes one can make when trying to aspire to Mormon perfection.

The Western Apache have a concept, "stalking with stories". It hit hardest the Apaches who had lost their way, lived among whites, far from the tribe and its home lands. Apache lands are full of stories and meaning, woven straight into the landscape. When they hear a place's name, they hear a story, they hear their people's culture and mores: it strikes them: they have lost their way. They feel shame. They feel distant from their real identities.

In some ways, I feel this is how I'm being stalked. It describes my feeling to an astonishingly accurate degree--hearing or recalling tales of Mormon fiction, Mormon-interpreted Bible verse, children's songs asserting gnostic faith: it's as if I'm being shot with arrows, to use an Apache analogy.

None have hit so far. Not one time have I been unable to see the fears and doubts they instilled about the secular, "temporal" world, for what they are. These are the things that keep people on the path, that control people. Those doubtful thoughts, they're the whisperings of Satan. You are deceived. Indeed, anything counter to their Truth is Satan--there is no neutral ground.

Oddly, these are post hoc observations. They didn't drive me away--the sheer implausibility of what this religion--what all religion--proclaims did the heavy lifting for me. It was just a matter of time before reason, or perhaps intuitive understanding, had chipped away enough of the foundation for it to crumble in my mind.

Still hunted by deep-seated lessons taught while away from parents, lessons taught by older white men, songs taught by smiling happy women, rhymes and reasons that come to mind at random.

Yet this is what it feels like to be free. Am I?

Admittedly, I am not continually assailed. But as I sort out the fragments of my once broken mind, the jagged remnants of the Mormon mindset I demolished, memories from childhood Sundays filter back to me, just as all the pieces of other, less subtle traumas manifest.

These simply come in a sweet and sunny guise. Happy thoughts, happily turning away from where my life has led me and back toward the ubiquitous spiritual realms of demons and angels said to surround the prime material, the temporal plane.

I can no longer run. Armed with weapons of the mind, I must confront my stalker.

[aftermath: Free]

Astronomy Picture of the Day

2010-03-08T02:18:00.000-08:00

Here are some I'm using for my desktop:

And some more:

Also, a video tour of the known universe

Disability Blog Links

2010-03-07T01:29:00.000-08:00

Links to selected blog posts by fellow disabled folks:

Not quite about disability, but quite good:

Sex and gender

Wheelchair!

2010-03-04T09:12:00.000-08:00

This seems really obvious, but thanks to some good comments in response to this thread, I think I want to get a wheelchair for part-time use.

How freeing it could be! I'm excited.

It might seem strange that, even though I walk pretty well, a chair could be freeing, but it does have freaking wheels on it. It's like a vehicle. It's also like a chair that I can move around, to save myself the belabored effort of climbing to my feet and relocating, especially when I'm already tired.

I already do this to some degree by using a rolling chair, but it's really not well designed for that purpose. It's not a vehicle.

A wheelchair is a vehicle. Not a symptom of disability, might I add, nor a political symbol--sure, the reason someone has to use a chair might not be the rosiest part of their life, but the chair makes a mobility impairment less of an impairment.

A wheelchair. That name is descriptive, but if I had to re-brand the thing, I think I'd go with "freedom chair". And not out of a misplaced sense of patriotic...I don't even know what to call the odd process that resulted in "freedom fries", but it does cause me to slap my forehead.

For me it might be mostly an indoor vehicle, but maybe I'll get M to push me around on it. I could go for *walks*, even! Normally this is stressful and can result in falls, overdoing it; and I have to moderate and stop way before I'd like. I guess more accurately, it would be a stroll.

This also has me convinced to start using those scooters they have at larger stores, if I end up spending a lot of time in one.

The one--ONE--drawback is that people see a wheelchair and assume the inability to walk. So maybe I'll catch flack for being a "fake" if I stand up, but hopefully using the chair will keep my brain from being addled like it gets from too much physical activity, so I can wittily oppose them, if needed.

Or maybe my cane will just doubly confuse them. (In a pinch, it could also be wielded as a club--I saw this great move using a sword like a mace in a medieval combat manual, which can be duplicated using my current cane.)

I feel like it's important for me to note here that people are always making assumptions if you have any "stigma" associated with disability. Some people with actual disabilities are confronted for using parking spaces or wheelchairs. People actually have the nerve to accuse others of "faking" (faking the usefulness of a wheelchair? Not likely!)--complete strangers mind you.

Perhaps more common is the assumption that larger-proportioned folks who have disability simply have the disability of "being fat". The more likely story is that they have a mobility issue and for that reason have a harder time controlling their weight. But really, the way to think of it is: there are many disabilities/impairments and they are ALL different. Not only are no two conditions identical, but no two people's experiences with the same condition are exactly the same.

(And by the way, there's really nothing wrong with being fat. Weight isn't the only factor in a person's health, and everyone has a right to be. Not to mention, everyone deserves to be treated like a human being, and not have their body accosted by people who don't even know them.)

There are many invisible conditions as well, and it really is not possible to tell by looking if someone has such a condition. Then there are things like weakness/fatigue that can strike without warning. And very obvious things like people needing to use that handicap stall to avoid exerting themselves.

No matter what you may think, you do not know what a stranger's disability could be. So don't assume.

Our already society gives people enough crap for having bodies that don't conform to a narrow (an impossible) idea of "normal". A little bit of attempting to understand goes a long way!

On Helping People

2010-03-04T07:45:00.000-08:00

Anyone with a mobility impairment like mine has probably fallen down in public. Some of the time, people nearby will rush to help a fallen person get up. These attempts can be successful and welcome, or very awkward and undesirable, depending on how they go about it.

The last thing I would recommend is some kind of Randian non-involvement, and I certainly don't find it a bad thing that people are willing to help (the most negative experiences I can think of involve people ignoring the fact that I've just fallen down, but thankfully that's not very common). However, taking action before you know what a person's situation is, and whether or not they will be able to pick themself up, can be detrimental.

Imagine someone trying to help you up and dropping you. If you've just fallen, the last thing you want is to end up on the ground again--for me, the process of standing up already takes a lot of time and effort, and a fall can attract a lot of attention from bystanders (it can be noisy--my ankle braces perhaps loudly hitting the ground, cane flying in another direction and loudly bouncing to the ground with a spring-loaded sound). This adds a bit of pressure or embarrassment to the situation, so it can be nerve wracking, especially if it takes a long time and several tries before I'm finally on my feet again.

In contradiction to the way time can seem to slow down, it's usually over before I fully register what's happened.

In part because of this (and the general awkwardness I've had as I've come to accept and learn to deal with my condition) it's taken me awhile to have any idea how to ensure that I am helped in a helpful way

There have been many times when people have tried to pick me up from a crowded dance floor or bar room floor, only for me to have to get put back down and hoist myself to my feet--there's no shortage of manpower in crowded rooms, and it's a better feeling than crawling across a bar's gross floor (if you've ever thought it's bad to walk on, try crawling hands and knees on it!).

There have also been plenty of times where people tried to help and I wasn't able to use their help. Apart from some people who were obviously trained to lift another person, most attempts have wound up being awkward embraces that do as much to unbalance me as they do to lift--the way you'd think you pick up a person isn't necessarily the best, hence medically trained folks having more success. It also helps to have a plan beyond "lift!", for example, is there something the fallen person can brace themself with, is there a chair or other place they can be set, etc, etc.

I can think of one time where I didn't have to instruct people with care that ended successfully (nor did I have to forcefully tell people to hold on until I could catch my balance or think of a strategy to stand up). It was at a pub/club, Dante's in Seattle's U-district. To get to the pool tables you have to cross the dance floor--I have a rough time playing pool, but sometimes I try. On my way out of the area with pool tables, I missed the timing on walking past some dancing people (who'd been drinking, of course), and tripped over the guy's foot, doing a faceplant and nearly earning a fat lip--it felt fat, but didn't swell up.

Somehow, and maybe this was because they were young people, they knew to grab a chair to help me into. I barely had to say anything (as usually I was already flustered and didn't have much time to respond), and it worked out--which I'd call very lucky. If I weren't a skeptic, I might consider it miraculous.

So those are the several ways it can go. My other first-run successes have all been a result of 1) planning on my feet (irony and pun intended!) and 2) instructing people what to do to help me up.

To these people--even those with good intentions that didn't work out--I have to say thanks for helping me get to my feet!

The takeaway here for the non-disabled (or "disability-impaired", shall we say?) should be pretty clear. There are only a few right ways to go about helping someone up:

Don't ignore someone who's fallen! At a minimum, ask if they're OK. A fall can be socially awkward, and of course serious injury is always a possibility. In my case, I fall a lot and it's kind of routine. Sometimes I don't want help, but it's nevertheless really offensive to ignore a person completely (even if you don't think you can help them). This should be common courtesy to anyone, really.
ASK before you do anything. Communication is paramount, as is consent before you touch someone. If your help is indeed wanted, it's also good to communicate on the logistics--say what you're doing, ask if something else might work better, etc.
Be attentive to implements like canes or wheelchairs. I've found it best when people ask if I want the cane. If I'm able to pick myself up without too much trouble, I will want to grab my cane from my 'giraffe' stance and use it to prop myself up. So if someone grabs it, I need it close by. If I need help being lifted, or if my cane is far away, then it's much more helpful for someone to pick it up and bring it closer, even if I don't need it before I'm on my feet. Again--communicate, because there are no hard and fast rules. No two people or falls are exactly alike!
Make sure you're not going to injure yourself, and that you're strong enough. If you're not, you might be able to help by grabbing a cane, steadying a wheelchair, etc.

I may sound like a relationship counselor or some such, but communication really is the most important thing here. I know that once I'm on the ground, there's plenty of time to figure things out before I start--I can use that to gather my strength and focus on making my body do what it needs to do.

I guess that's all I've got at the moment.

Dramatis Personae

2010-03-03T03:01:00.000-08:00

I like metaphor. I enjoy framing and viewing things in terms of other things, and my life is no exception.

Sometimes it feels like a microcosm of the universe--which it is--or of a culture or period in history--which it is.

Every period has its trends and tribulations, has its heroes and villains, its legends and deities; its gods and its monsters. My life is no exception.

Who are the major entities in my life? Which forces, whether willed by unseen intelligence or mechanical determinance, dominate the direction of my life?

One force that might be considered my antagonist, or even my oppressor, is gravity. I've often cast it in the role of villain, and often this is correct, if somewhat embellished.

But just as often, it's not the physical force of gravity that oppresses me so much as those people who determine how I must interact with gravity. Like unseen manipulators, they arrange and shift the city, erect buildings and structures with casual disregard for me. Perhaps they even collude and conspire against me.

Some are living and dynamically change the world from behind the shadows. Others have long since passed on, but their influence can be felt, their malevolent legacy carved out of stone and wood.

These architects (of buildings and my demise), urban planners, designers, carpenters, and the society that teaches them their trades vex me more than gravity ever could alone. Where nature has begun with hills, stones, and other such obstacles, they've added steps, curbs, lips, second floors, third floors, fourth floors (etc), heavy doors, detours and rough floors.

And it took a lot of work to get these things relieved by the occasional handicapped parking stall or elevator. And considering that I can walk, despite my difficulties, this must be magnified much more for those in wheelchairs.

In some ways, though, it's a relief to think I will likely need one, in the future. I'm wheelchair bound, yes, yes, one day safe and sound because I'm wheelchair bound. And not in the ableist "stuck in the chair" sense, praise the gods of my little microcosm. The reason? I've listed some obstacles in space (by no means exhaustively), but there are obstacles in time as well--of the probably dozen or so dimensions, we're aware of and acting in four, not just the three.

Some four-dimensional obstacles: long walks, long climbs, standing for a long time, waiting in line, working overtime, sitting in a chair too long, getting on a crowded bus, long drives, slow reactions, slow standing up,deciding whether to sit or stand, calculating when I need to give myself a break, slow recovery from high activity.

It's almost as if time and space are against me--but there's a reason I am not the standard model of humanity in a couple of ways! Evolution may be lacking in a conscious mind or indeed, in any sense of mercy, but it had sense (or mercy?) enough to prevent the common human experience from being my experience.

Thinking like this at times--that my body is flawed, that I am defective, that I am inferior--it may seem as though my life and its particular impediment of muscular dystrophy are quite terrible to endure.

But it's not so bad, really.

In some senses I've internalized the unfriendly world, with its steps and hills, ramps and frills and gimmicks. We all do, especially when we belong to an "oppressed" group (I use quotation marks because in my own case, I feel more impeded than oppressed, but there are certainly parallels when it comes to internalizing society's prejudices on ability as well as other issues--and perhaps I am oppressed, after all).

Beating myself up over being genetically beaten up doesn't help, and society doesn't help much more. Physical barriers aside (which of course, are collusions of human and natural processes, all of which are complex), the attitudes engendered by society have strange effects. These range from people feeling inadequate in their gender or other socially constructed roles, to people assuming that I'm injured rather than permanently subject to a mobility impairment. (Giving me the benefit of the doubt? Or trying not to assume "the worst"? Expecting a wheelchair?)

It's easy to treat my body as the enemy. Maybe it's a white male tradition of oppression, but in many ways I find that I still view my mind as master and my body as servant. The situation can be as ugly as that metaphor, particularly when I don't listen to my body, when I shut down its natural modes of feedback and ignore pain, and keep going until I complete the task at hand.

It might seem courageous. It might seem that I'm very strong-willed. These things may be true, but the sensation I have when I over-exert myself is always the same: dumb! That was dumb. As in, lacking in intelligence, consideration and even compassion for myself. Dumb, doubly so because I'm in myself, and it hurts after I've overdone it. Usually I'm at least dimly aware that I'm mistreating myself, but my body's own protests often go unheard.

Clearly, there is certainly a fine line between courage and sheer stupidity.

The point here is not to attack myself, but to point out that I do not always act in my own best interest, even though not doing so results in a significant amount of pain and discomfort. In some cases I can cite social pressure, or not wanting to inconvenience others (or myself--for example, staying on my feet too long so I won't have to stand back up).

In many cases, however, the only pressure is from my own will. I decide when to quit--or I decide to keep going. I decide that I've got to get this done to prove something, or if I don't do it, who will? Or I don't want to do something better for me because it'll take longer.

In many ways, it's as though I'm two entities, true to the ancient notion of mind-body duality. But can a person really be separated in this way? It can't possibly be good--body and mind are one being, not two, however thoroughly they may be divided into opposing forces, they are still two sides in a civil war, which can only end in union or a permanent split. I shudder to think...

This oppressive thought process has made me accomplish things--but always at a price. And usually, if there is a bodily price to be paid, it comes out in sleep. It comes out in destroying precious muscle mass, thus hastening my loss of the ability to move about on my feet. Sometimes it comes out in falls. When exhausted, my body starts to fail on me, and can't cope with my own weight. Oof. Downyago. To date, I haven't had any critical injuries, but a bruised bum, a banged knee, skinned flesh; these are bad enough in their own right, especially when you need your all just to get by.

I learned how to dominate my body with my mind at a young age. Keeping up with other children, keeping up with boy scouts--it had its price, even in childhood. Even once I was diagnosed, it was all to easy to fall into the same, well-baited trap of justifying the need to press on despite my legs protesting, despite my eyes bulging and my faculties becoming dulled, crazed even. Days without sleep, sleeping on trains and in stations, walking for miles; so many more miles than I ever should have.

The stress hormones have surely shortened my lifespan. There's a reason sleeping a lot is associated with early death--people like me. We're tired a lot. We have a lot to recover from, especially when we think there's a lot to be done.

So it's a hard lesson I'm learning, all tied into life and death, and back into life again, because even being resigned to one's fate, still you must wait and live for it first, to come. Some day, soon I hope, I'll overthrow the shackles my mind have placed over my body. The rift between these two sides must be healed, and I think by acknowledging this tonight, I'm taking a first step.

Confronting expectations from within and without me may take awhile, but I think I see now why I need to learn to love my body. Like any body, it's come with its share of problems. Regardless of other influences, I need to be the one responsible for knowing its limits and boundaries. I need to be the one who says, "now is the time to quit".

Now is the time to preserve my strength, so I can reconcile these characters with one another.

Been awhile...

2009-07-22T14:05:00.001-07:00

Approaching a year since I did any updates.

Some of what I've been up to is over at the NARN blog.

In addition to running VegSeattle.com, I'm on the NARN board of directors now in addition to working full time, hence the utter lack of time for posting here. Even my creative blog BS Extract has seen little action (though I have a backlog of poetry and such to add).

I've also been posting to twitter in tiny bursts of poetic imagery, lately.

VegSeattle.com!

2008-09-01T13:19:00.001-07:00

I've Just started maintaining VegSeattle.com and figured I'd plug it. It's a good directory for anyone interested in vegetarian and vegan food in Seattle, and includes restaurants and other types of businesses.

I haven't made many changes yet, but I hope to improve it more, bit by bit. check it out!

ACLU on FISA

2008-07-29T17:53:00.000-07:00

"Congress & President Bush are giving away your rights"

The erosion of civil rights must be a gradual process, or else people will sit up and take notice.

The intention of lawmakers is probably not even to attack our rights, but they have overlooked the priority that civil liberties deserve in this case, in favor of capitulating to the Bush administration in order to look like they're doing something.

For that, they've compromised the justice system with respect to our privacy and granted the government the ability to spy on almost anyone for no reason.

Craving vs Suffering

2008-07-13T16:02:00.000-07:00

Something that annoys me (and surely other vegans) is when people use reasons like "I like steak" or "I like cheese" to justify their cruelty-inducing eating habits.

Craving meat (or anything else) is a matter of flavor and nutrients. It's a chemical response to specific needs or desires, and there's no denying that there's a complete disconnect between how food was obtained and what it tastes like once in your mouth, so we can't expect our taste buds to reflect our conscience. When you consider that we're in an age when it's possible to grow meat without an animal, it becomes clear that the product and the ethics aren't so directly connected. This is why I lose respect for people when they seem somewhat aware of what goes in in the animal industry, but still eat something that probably caused suffering just because they really like it or crave it sometimes.

In a lot of conversations vegans talk about how gross animal products are, but I think focusing on the food is exactly the problem in society that allows people to compartmentalize and think only of how something tastes, ignoring how it was produced.

Logically speaking, saying you're not vegan because you like meat is an irrelevant response, because being vegan is not about meat (or eggs, etc), it's about the animals slaughtered or confined to create it. It's like a flier we often give out while tabling, 'even if you like meat, you can help stop this suffering...' It's a poor excuse used in place of a good reason.

The same problem extends beyond food to products that are often produced by sweatshops, or products that cause damage to the environment. People don't think beyond supermarket shelves, especially in an urban-suburban type environment, but it's true of any situation involving an industrialized means of production.

I would say that on a global level, it's more important in terms of the environment and reducing the suffering of others (human and non-human) to be a conscientious consumer in general than just to eat vegan foods. I think ignoring the way any product was produced is a bigger put-off to me than someone just eating meat, or consuming other animal products. On the other hand some people are 'conscious' omnivores, but to me that translates as 'apathetic', which is a personality trait that chafes me whether it's about politics, animals, or the environment.

To sum it up, the most important aspect of veganism, which can be applied to any purchase, is considering the source, and whether or not it involves actions you disagree with. I won't go into specific reasons to be vegan in this post, but the most important single reason is for animals. Everything else is a bonus.

[mostly a response to someone on facebook]

Guns for Home Defense?

2008-06-28T12:18:00.000-07:00

Some interesting facts cited in this Washington Post opinion piece, written by Arthur Kellermann, a professor of emergency medicine and public health at Emory University"

More than 20 years ago, I conducted a study of firearm-related deaths in homes in Seattle and surrounding King County, Washington. Over the study's seven-year interval, more than half of all fatal shootings in the county took place in the home where the firearm involved was kept. Just nine of those shootings were legally justifiable homicides or acts of self-defense; guns kept in homes were also involved in 12 accidental deaths, 41 criminal homicides and a shocking 333 suicides. A subsequent study conducted in three U.S. cities found that guns kept in the home were 12 times more likely to be involved in the death or injury of a member of the household than in the killing or wounding of a bad guy in self-defense.

Oh, one more thing: Scalia's ludicrous vision of a little old lady clutching a handgun in one hand while dialing 911 with the other (try it sometime) doesn't fit the facts. According to the Justice Department, far more guns are lost each year to burglary or theft than are used to defend people or property. In Atlanta, a city where approximately a third of households contain guns, a study of 197 home-invasion crimes revealed only three instances (1.5 percent) in which the inhabitants resisted with a gun. Intruders got to the homeowner's gun twice as often as the homeowner did.

"Thou Shalt Not Kill"

2008-06-27T20:12:00.001-07:00

This is kind of a silly thing you can bring up in the context of vegetarianism, yet I see it happen more often than I'd expect. I suppose in a modern context it makes sense to people, but that just goes to show what people know about ancient cultures and religions, however much their own religions have ripped off from them.

So I kind of have to laugh when I see people applying it to vegetarianism because it couldn't be a worse fit. I'll explain.

First of all, it's probably best translated as "thou shalt not murder". This makes perfect sense if you consider that in the same era in the Bible, there are many conditions under which killing is not only acceptable, but deemed the correct course of action. So technically this commandment is misinterpreted by people who consider stoning people for witchcraft wrong. In fact according to the Bible, it is the right thing to too! Go fundamentalism...

Similarly, animal sacrifice to Jehovah was mandated under the same Bible laws from the Old Testament. No wonder people took to Christianity a lot more readily than Judaism (apart from the fact that they didn't proselytize, and the whole notion of Israel being the chosen of their god because they're specialer than everyone else, or something.)

This more or less strips the phrase of any application other than killing someone who hasn't committed a capital crime is an Israelite. If I recall, there was some protection for foreign slaves and other people's livestock, but pretty much old Jevovah never minded a bit (a lot) of slaughter and mayhem for his own. In this way there's a lot in common with gods of polytheistic pantheons, and not a lot in common with what people believe in today.

On the other side of things, screw Biblical law. On its own, it's hardly a more a consistent basis for morality than pure whim, and then only because it's written down (I'm overstating this, but not by much as far as I care). Religions today are so selective about what they take from the Bible that I don't think any of them can claim to take these old laws seriously. If any god wrote the Bible, he's probably wondering where his sacrifices are. Fortunately, humans have no problem committing genocide on their own, so he's probably happy that's still going on. (Of course there's all kinds of things about this that technically only apply to the chosen of this god, but that's a mantle Christianity and other post-Judaic religions (I'm looking at you Mohammed) are more than happy to assume. No need to dredge all those details up though.)

Commandments like 'thou shalt not kill' are more or less given meanings that have nothing to do with this ancient religious code nowadays. So it goes with ancient text. Sorry Jehov', we do things different now. To appeal to modern understanding of the Bible is to appeal to an idea completely different from the original--an oversimplification and misinterpretation of ancient Judaic law, though a sensible one to make in my view. To avoid mincing terminology, I'll lump it all together as 'the old stuff in that big book a lot of people take too seriously'.

Personally, I prefer to altogether avoid appealing to a commandment given by an insane god in an ancient text. (Okay, so it was obviously written by a human person who fancied himself a Hammurabi, but you get the point.)

I'm done. I may not be remotely religious, but I suppose ignorance bothers me. It's kind of sad that I'm probably more educated about the Bible than most people who read it and don't realize how much fiction and rubbish you have to sort through to get anything of worth out of it. So it goes.

I prefer the perhaps too new-age-associated 'do what ye will, an ye harm none'. We could argue over none of what, exactly, but for me it extends as far down as is practical. (For me that includes things like shrimp and clams. Regardless of if they even have feeling the way vertebrates do, why would I want to be an asshole to clams? They've got it rough enough as it is without a population of 6 billion digging them up at the beach.)

To put it in the words of a contemporary fictional character: "Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other 'sins' are invented nonsense."

(The author would possibly disagree with me on extending this to so many non-humans, but Heinlein's dead so I win the argument by default. Not to disrespect the guy or anything, but I'm free to interpret it however I like and regardless of the author's intention, right? Just like with this commandment.)

FISA spying bill

2008-06-25T22:48:00.000-07:00

Read this/watch the video if you're wondering what's wrong with this and why it annoys all hell out of me. There's actually still time to put pressure on your senators to reject this garbage, try here for contact info if you're into civil liberties.

They've invoked cloture today, so they have to vote within the next 24 hours (30 from whenever they began the cloture).

I found out about this via the ACLU mailings...if you're concerned about this sort of thing, go to ACLU.org and sign up. The same sort of useless compromises on FISA have been going on for months now.

(PS, Obama fans: Obama's apparently going to vote YES on this capitulation to Bush.)

And I repeat: "How?"

2008-06-23T22:47:00.000-07:00

Meat: it's not personal

2008-06-21T23:55:00.000-07:00

Some people seem happy to become vegan and leave it at that, not regarding it as having much impact on lives besides their own.

For a few years, that characterized my stance, and was my reason for not advocating much or discussing about the issue with others—at least, not in an argumentative way that might provoke some thought. It's probably also the same reason I never looked critically enough at being a lacto-ovo vegetarian over the course of two years to realize that it is really no more animal-friendly than eating meat. (Some of this post applies to any form of vegetarianism, but the main thrust is veganism, specifically.)

Even if people are vegan for the sake of animals (and not health or the environment), often enough they don't seem to think there's much reason to convince others to do likewise. For whatever reason, such vegetarians (as I was) don't seem to mind the killing and misery that other people's diets are causing, as if it's merely a personal preference, like having a favorite color or a favorite TV show. To take this stance is essentially to assume that it's a decision with minimal impact.

So my question is: is it just a personal choice if it affects other individuals and has a wider scope than oneself? I think the rather straightforward answer is: no, it's not. Decisions about food shape a lot of events and policy in the world, especially since the advent of industrialized agriculture, and it should be clear that what you buy impacts others (sellers, manufacturers, farmers, etc). Being a fundamental requirement to go on living, food is a more intrinsic and ubiquitous sector of the economy than anything else, at least qualitatively.

While in this respect it is a personal decision, people who eat meat are probably harming themselves. Increased risk of colon cancer is one example of this; so are kidney and heart disease, among other problems. But bill to this the protracted costs of health care due to complications preceding death in your average American omnivore. This clearly impacts one's family at the least, and generally affects society at large (for instance by raising the cost of insurance, or otherwise by taxing national health care systems).

As for harming others: the meat itself isn't going to harm them the way that smoke does. The negative consequences are all behind the scenes.

First there's the animal being slaughtered for its meat—not only is it killed, generally without much consideration for a 'humane' death, but in most cases, it spends its life in confinement. By the way, egg and milk producing animals go through hell for some years in such conditions before finally being slaughtered, so they have it worse than animals used for meat. Farm animals are granted essentially no protection against inhumane treatment in the US, as long as it's a 'standard agricultural practice (other countries really aren't much better. I think Canada is more or less the same, and Europe has only recently begun to set standards on this). Unsurprisingly, the animals are treated like pieces of meat rather than living things, and economically speaking, that's what they are--'protein production units'.

As an example of ways in which eating animal products like meat affects the quality of life of other humans, consider industrial-type animal farming. These operations produce massive amounts of sewage runoff, which has an impact on groundwater quality nearby. The confined spaces where employees of these facilities spend their time are also noxious, causing a high rate of respiratory disease. Besides this, there are factors such as air pollution; a UN study put animal agriculture at 18% of contributions of greenhouse emissions, and that includes a lot of methane. On a more aesthetic level, gigantic animal farms stink for miles, as anyone who's driven through central California on the I-5 freeway can attest (of course the same is true of the smaller operations I've passed as well, on a smaller scale).

Contamination of groundwater near large factory farms is not merely potential; it's already happening in the Midwest, and I shouldn't have to explain that this is very bad for people who need water (that's most of us, much to the chagrin of the soft drink companies) and the other species who inhabit the world. Obviously, there's too much shit happening.

Another problem with meat: food poisoning. Animal products are a very common cause of disease (salmonella, e. coli, etc). This would usually affect someone who consumes meat, but if improperly handled, infected meat sources contaminate other foods as well, so you don't have to be eating meat to get sick, necessarily. This is why you should store meat at the bottom of a fridge, so it doesn't drip contaminated juices on anything. There are other ways to get food poisoning, but those are easier to avoid than meat. You can wash your vegetables carefully, for example. (By the way, in the US, there are about 26,000 cases of food poisoning per 100,000 people per year—that's about 20 times as much as France. That makes me especially glad I don't eat the most common vehicles for several of the most common pathogens—milk, eggs, and meat.)

I can't find detailed information on how much food poisoning is caused by animal products. I've found the number 95% on a couple of vegetarian websites, but it wasn't cited. Looking at a list of the most common bacteria to cause food borne illness though, most of them are associated with animals (including humans) and consumption of animal products. So 95% doesn't sound completely ridiculous, but I would like to know where that figure came from. At any rate, I think it's safe to say that most food poisoning has its origin in animal products.

These are only some of the consequences of eating meat and other animal-derived products. There are many other environmental impacts, like deforestation and habitat destruction. Some of these are consequences of agriculture in general, but are compounded by animals used as food: animals are not highly efficient converters of food, and factory farms can only feed their animals via industrial agriculture—most cows do not just eat grass. This means that for every pound of beef, you have to produce more grain to feed them than you would for the same amount of vegetables.

What should be clear is that eating meat has a rather far-reaching impact, as does any economic decision in an industrialized society. Minor discrepancies in the details of the above won't really change this.

Talking to people

Now on to vegans themselves. Some people talk about not imposing their beliefs on others, and that's fine. But when the desire avoid 'imposing' a nonviolent view causes us to be completely silent and avoid discussing the issue, we are turning a blind eye to the suffering of animals. Now we can't expect other people to instantly accept our beliefs (I know it took me long enough to get to where I am now), but we can try and talk about the issues.

Really, that's all we can do, because there's very little we could do to actually impose vegetarianism on others, even if we really wanted to try. Especially keeping in mind how few people are vegetarian, let alone vegan. More often, the opposite happens, and vegans are imposed upon by a meat-hungry, cheese-lovin' culture that doesn't bat an eye at what's being done to produce these products at the rate it demands them. In the face of this culture, attempting to 'impose' veg beliefs by simply decrying or insulting people who eat animal products is counterproductive, if it supplants discussion.

I think anything less confrontational than empty insults or rhetoric is too polite to be considered an imposition, so unless you're being a loudmouthed ass, I don't think there's much risk of imposing on anyone—there are always polite ways of stating the problem without necessarily offending people, though a vegan position is going to contradict a meat-eater's. It seems that the best approach to take is to get informed and take any opportunity for serious discussion of the reasons for being vegan.

I think the only excuses anyone can have for silence on this matter are ignorance or apathy: in other words, if you believe that what's being done to animals is wrong but don't advocate for them in some capacity, you have a motivation problem. If you believe something is wrong, it seems pretty clear that at least talking about why with people in your life is a must. Being informed on and caring about any such issue is really all you need to do. Skill in finding opportunities for discussion and discussion itself has to be learned, and can only be done most effectively with an open and educated mind.

These are also the only excuses for eating eggs, milk and dairy: ignorance and apathy. Neither ignorance nor apathy validates a choice of cruelty, but they are the only support for statements like 'I like meat/cheese' and 'it's too hard to be vegetarian'. These are not only poor excuses to harm others and irrelevant to ethics and the treatment of animals, but they also depend entirely upon ignorance of the treatment of farm animals or apathy for the plight of these animals.

Either you don't know, or you don't care.

But my point is not to point the finger, but to point out that there's more that many of us could be doing to support the cause of compassion.

Personally, I just never realized what animals were being put through for the longest time—for meat, or for eggs and dairy. I went vegetarian on an almost theoretical basis, with only a tenuous connection to what actually goes on in slaughterhouses. So looking back, it's not a surprise that it took another two years before I went vegan, and that it took me another year after that before I realized the importance of talking about it and encouraging others to do the same (tis all in the last few months). My only excuse was that I didn't want to be 'one of those animal rights people'.

Much like an omnivore who won't go vegan because it's not socially convenient, the decision to remain silent is a matter of putting social normalcy above the suffering and death that normalcy causes—not an equitable trade. (I'm planning to write a post about animal rights, its stigmatization, and the inconsistent animal rights already-present in society.)

To wrap it all up

So what it all boils down to is this: if you eat meat, it's not a personal choice because it affects the creature you're eating as well as other people. If you are vegetarian or vegan for the sake of animals, it's not just a personal choice; it's a compassionate choice made for the sake of others, and therefore is by definition not just a personal decision.

That alone seems to make it a message worth spreading. If you're vegetarian for the sake of other creatures, you should speak up. You can help far more animals by making others aware of your diet and lifestyle, even if it only persuades them to reduce the amount of animal products they consume. And if you persuade others to become vegan, you will have done good to still more fellow creatures, human and otherwise.

To me, it seems better to address the issues more than the person, but we have to keep in mind that culinary choices are at the heart of the matter.

Once you start trying, skill in taking advantages of opportunities and in discussing vegan issues will develop with time. I often find myself passing up opportunities to casually spread awareness of veganism and the reasons behind it, but I'm learning how to catch them more and more. Talking about this sort of thing is an acquired skill, so of course anyone will pass up opportunities like this, especially in the beginning.

While you can't expect others to share your ethics (especially if you took as long to develop them as I did), you can talk about why they don't. You can talk about what's wrong with the animal industry. You can speak up for creatures that have no voice, no protection, and virtually no consideration for their well-being.

I've been working on this for a little while, finally decided to finish. Hopefully it's enlightening or interesting to non-vegans and vegans alike.

Global Warming again

2008-06-21T18:42:00.000-07:00

Just thought I'd share a link.

http://www.realclimate.org/

It's a site about climate science by climate scientists. The nice thing is that they address a number of topics and respond to comments.

It can be a bit technical, but as far as global warming science goes, I don't know a better resource.

(this makes my last post a lie, but only partially)

Househunting

2008-06-20T23:46:00.000-07:00

It's occupying lots of my time, and will until I have a definite new residence. Thereafter moving and settling in may occupy my time, but probably not as much as digging through craigslist does at the moment.

Until that time should come, I'm pretty much not going to post.

Repostings

2008-06-15T20:22:00.000-07:00

Is Being a Vegetarian Important?

This was a pretty interesting read. A good summary of why to go veg, and why to encourage others to do the same. Especially be sure and read the middle section if you aren't at all vegetarian. Please re-post this if you think it's good!

In Defense of Animals action page
I've linked this permanently at the side of the page, but it's worth calling out. If you want to send letters to decision makers regarding animal issues, this is the place to do it!

Inquiry into animal cruelty in Horse racing (you can voice support for this on the linked page).

On that last topic, it's probably a waste of time to respond to comments on the web, but I've done so here on the PETA blog.

The video in this entry really doesn't show anything but a horse not wanting to go into a gate, but there are plenty of better reasons to be critical of horse racing.

Quoth I:

Most of you people supporting horse racing are splitting hairs and ignoring the larger picture. This is a human game that results in lives being treated as disposable; regardless of how well it treats champions, it often enough results in misery and death for the animals. For example: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/sports/othersports/15racing.html

Horses like to run, but do they see the difference between first and last place, or even first and second, the same way people do? I doubt if they're as hung up on photo finishes.

Arguing that horse racing provides jobs is about as valid as arguing that we should fight more wars to give soldiers something to do. Plenty of people make their livings by theft, should that be okay?

It's the same logic here, except the victims in this case aren't human. (How often do humans die in horse racing? I'm betting it's far fewer than the number of horses.)

And regardless of factual inaccuracies or PETA's flaws (nobody's perfect), at least PETA is people trying to work against industries that promote this sort of casual disregard for the well-being of animals.

What are you doing to work for a better world?

Responses (vegan children)

2008-06-11T19:30:00.001-07:00

A couple of comments I posted elsewhere on the netterweb. I don't know where that word came from.

They are responses to this incident/article & to other comments on it. For the record, a number of sources have stated that a vegan diet is healthy for children.

On randomn3ss.com (thanks to Sofia for posting the link to her post & the article in question):

It's obnoxious to hear things like this getting blamed on veganism. Clearly British docs aren't more educated on nutrition than their American counterparts. Actually, although the UK food agency states that a healthy vegan diet is a good thing, all it says about younger vegetarian children (toddlers) is to feed them cheese, milk and eggs. WTF! As if these things were abundant throughout the whole of human history...and as if they are without their own health risks.

Anyway, if being vegan was inherently problematic for Vitamin D, the US at least wouldn't be fortifying everything with it (since most of the US is below 50 degrees latitude and not vegan). Nor would rickets have been a big problem in the past if a non-vegan diet was sufficient protection from it. Apparently people just like to think that veganism couldn't possibly be healthy for children...let alone adults.

Info on Vitamin D in the wikipedia article is pretty good.

The lack of details makes it impossible to comment intelligently on this case though. I sympathize if the parents watched her diet and this still happened--it could be that she has a vitamin D absorption problem.

I'd sympathize if these parents simply didn't know what was going on, but if there was anything to notice (I suspect it would be) that'd be no excuse for not getting medical attention. Though I could imagine them being told, "feed your daughter milk, cheese and eggs!"

Here's another on "tigers and strawberries"

Thanks for a good post on the subject. It’s sad to hear about conditions like this, but some googling shows that in one part of Lancashire alone, some 60 cases of rickets were found between 2003-2005 (particularly among the asian community–skin color is always a factor for vit D). So the decrying of veganism is hardly appropriate; this is almost certainly a case of neglect as you wrote!
And not only are non-dairy milks a fine source of vitamin D, but of protein and other nutrients as well. And at the same time, you don’t risk as much pesticide buildup–which does happen in dairy when cows ingest plants that were grown with pesticides. (Non-organically grown soybeans like the GM pesticide-resistant varieties may not be better, but are easily enough avoided. But again, it escapes the concentration that occurs in cows fed similar ilk.) This effect can be easily seen in studies of the pesticide content of human mothers’ milk, where vegans had the least and meat-eaters the most, with lacto-ovo vegetarian mothers in the middle (if I recall, meat contributed far more than milk or eggs though).
artcargirl: are your acupuncturist’s vegan patients (or are they marks?) intended to be an example of holier-than-thou vegans? It sounds more like people who are just happy to live by their consciences (if being a bit self-deluded at the same time). Veganism tends to be about what you kill/harm, not so much what you eat. Hopefully this doesn’t sound self-righteous!

Monthly Animal Rights Social Hour/Discussion Group

2008-06-11T19:30:00.000-07:00

From the NARN weekly email (this is in Seattle):

When: Thursday, June 12th @ 7:00pm
Where: Blue Star Cafe & Pub (4512 Stone Way Ave N, in Wallingford)
Why go? Because it is FUN. As usual will be going to the Blue Star Cafe on Stone Way, right off of 45th. We will have a table reserved in the back room where it is quieter.
This month's topic will be: "What is the best response to the question: "Why are you vegan?"
Do you miss hanging out with like-minded people? Then come to the NARN Discussion Group! This is a recurring social discussion group for those wanting to talk about various animal rights issues while having fun with fellow activists.
Non-vegetarians are also welcome (and even encouraged) to join us. Most of us don't bite. Unless you are really into that sort of thing.

update:
With the weather so gray & cold, why not come inside and hang out with good folks.....
I will have the new Animal Services Guide for everyone to see as well.
Everyone welcome! (Ordering food or drink is not required)
Monthly Animal Rights Social Hour/Discussion Group

Earthlings

2008-06-02T22:50:00.000-07:00

About us and out relations with the other species on this planet.

Part I

Part II

Part III

Fighting FISA telecom spying STILL

2008-05-31T21:23:00.000-07:00

This has got to be the third time I've written a letter at the behest of an ACLU action alert on FISA. Once again, some bastard is trying to make it okay to break the law if the president says to.

Tell elected representatives to fight this!

Global Warming

2008-05-31T16:11:00.001-07:00

Within a week, I came across several people denying global warming on the internet (I know - people are wrong on the internet, what a surprise!). I link to the wikipedia article on Global warming here because it's well-sourced and at the minimum introduces most of the issues.

Among the arguments I ran into: global warming is the left-wing equivalent to the right-wing terrorism scare, the temperature's no longer rising, we're recovering from the little ice age. I also heard mention of the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, which essentially paints global warming as a global conspiracy of scientists to hoodwink everyone into funding their research. (This is the sort of thing I'd expect to hear in a debate about UFOs, not something that can be measured, and is not too poorly understood.)

Who wouldn't want to believe it though? Don't worry, the impending catastrophe we're causing isn't your fault! Don't worry about going out of your way to change the way you live, keep doing what you're doing. The government needn't be concerned about global warming, it's a hoax! Keep burning as much fuel as you like, climate change is purely natural, not our doing at all.

If I didn't have million alarms going off in my head at all the faulty implications of the documentary, I might be easily lulled into the same complacency. After all, my sense of outrage is well-developed and my opinions are largely outside the mainstream, so surely the idea could appeal to me? It might, if it weren't for all that pesky evidence I've seen. (It also helps that I have a degree in science, so I know more or less how science works.)

In the interest of debunking these supposed debunkings, and reasons to discount global warming, here is a rebuttal to the documentary by Sir John Houghton, who was co-chair of IPCC Scientific Assessment working group 1988-2002, and Director General of the UK Meteorological Office 1983-1991. I also watched this video, which shows segments of the documentary and points out their flaws. Another rebuttal can be found in this PDF, and any number of rebuttals can be found elsewhere on the web (hence, I won't go into detail on specific misconceptions and flawed arguments about humans playing a role in global warming).

The documentary itself is so riddled with logical fallacies and misrepresentation of the truth that I can't regard it as anything but propagandist bullshit. I also find it funny that the film maker's rebuttal to criticism: "You're a big daft cock." What a wanker.

I've noticed certain trends in these denials of our role in global warming. It's almost always people clinging to a minor point that either has no real bearing on the evidence for global warming, or even fails to be relevant to the current warming trend. Every contention is anecdotal as well.

For instance, a lot of people talk about an apparent downturn in the temperature in recent years as if it invalidates the warming trend which has dominated the last fifty-plus years. If you look at the graph at left, the temperature fluctuates up and down but the net effect is an increase.

Even still, the best that I've heard anyone do is essentially to argue that correlation does not imply causation. So the best we have is: we can't really be sure we're causing global warming, so we shouldn't worry about it. The implication is that we should not take action unless we are 100% certain. (There's no such thing as 100% in science, by the way. There's only the best hypothesis, and that's true from basic physics to evolutionary biology to big bang cosmology.)

The attitude that we are innocent until proven guilty is one that I laud when it comes to criminal justice: if there is not strong evidence that a person is guilty, they should not be convicted. This means that sometimes, the guilty go free, but on the other hand, it means fewer innocent people will be punished.

But global warming is not a blame game, and its consequence could be catastrophic. If it's our fault (the IPCC is 90% certain that it is) we have the ability to prevent catastrophe for ourselves and for many other creatures. If it's not our fault, we can't say we didn't try (unless we don't).

The other problem is: if it's not us, then what is it? There does not seem to be any possible terrestrial cause besides us. So the best explanation for global warming is us. The only other explanation that might hold water is that the sun plays a role in climate change. A mechanism for this hasn't been discovered, so it's really not an alternative explanation to anthropogenic climate change. Aside from that, if we knew of a mechanism, it would only establish that the sun contributes to climate change and would not necessarily absolve humans of our role in it.

This summarizes why I think the supposed, overplayed 'controversy' over global warming reeks of the same garbage as the creationist argument that evolution is not scientific consensus (it is--the only things lacking consensus are specific details). In other words, the controversy is not a scientific one.

That's more than I wanted to write--when I saw all the rebuttals to the documentary and its bunk arguments, I thought this would be much shorter.

In the grand scheme of things, even if global warming destroys or decimates humanity, the earth may well recover and life may continue with or without us. Of course, we've never seen warming happen like this before, and we don't know where it stops.

I prefer to err on the side of caution. If we curb our greenhouse emissions and in ten years find it hasn't helped, or that something else is responsible, then we haven't really lost much besides maybe a bit of money. I think economic loss is an acceptable risk, if you consider what else at stake.

Complexification.net

2008-05-31T15:01:00.000-07:00

Very interesting results.

Action & Info Update

2008-05-27T00:45:00.000-07:00

Well, this has been a nice weekend. I haven't been home for a few days - first I stayed in Seattle so I could help table for NARN (the Northwest Animal Rights Network). We were doing vegan outreach at 5th & Broad next to the EMP at Seattle Center, where the Folklife festival was being held. It went well (I brought banana bread) and we distributed lots of literature encouraging people to live healthier and more compassionate lives. Hopefully the message hits home with some of them! We also gave out restaurant guides, so now they know where to find delicious vegetarian/vegan food in Seattle (I hope it helps!).

If you're in Seattle and interested in this sort of thing, visit narn.org and afa-online.org and join the mailing lists! Check out groups like Compassion Over Killing, Mercy for Animals, In Defense of Animals or PETA if you live elsewhere (and yeah, I know how people feel about PETA, they're not really my favorite either, but they're certainly a good source of alerts and action items).

Then last night I visited my parents, so I just came back this evening. I'm still a bit sunburnt despite having had my back to the sun pretty much the whole time I was tabling; next time I'll have to be careful in the sun. For now, aloe vera is already helping!

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Awareness

Got eggs? Boycott them. You can't trust "free range" eggs to be what they claim and "organic" does not mean "humane". You won't die without eggs. I promise. (If you insist on eating eggs, at least get them from chickens in someone's back yard or something.)
1. American Egg Board illegally diverting federal funds to defeat humane farming act in CA. The USDA seems to be utterly complicit.
2. California Egg Investigation:
  Here's the rather gruesome video footage.
  Here's a news article.
  
  The industry spokespeople (of course try) and distance themselves from it - apparently without even condemning what was found out or speaking of taking any action against it. Maybe what's going on is against their ideals and it doesn't happen when they're around, but obviously if their methods of enforcing policy are flawed, their ideals won't enter into the equation. Given that the egg industry is prone to dishonesty, I don't really believe what their spokespeople say anyway.
  
  "They won't stop until they destroy animal agriculture," said Gemperle Enterprises. While it may be true that many animal rights activists want to see the end of animal agriculture, videos like this wouldn't be very effective if crap like this wasn't happening.

An article on the PEW Commisson report, which criticizes factory-style animal farming practices. See also the PEW item in this post.

Read about Oprah's (temporary) tryout of veganism for "cleansing" purposes. Here's a dietitian's take on it. You can write to the show (if not to Oprah herself) from this page - encourage her to stay vegan! For more info on going vegan and animal issues, visit narn.org or afa-online.org

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Action

This just in: DMX is a puppy-kicking asshole. If you like dogs and/or hate assholes (or just hate DMX for his rap? what! what!), you can use this link to learn more & follow it to write the Maricopa County Attorney and encourage a well-earned, harsh prosecution for Mr. Simmons. Hopefully they were already planning at least to prosecute in earnest.

Heard of a little company called ExxonMobil? They're boasting record profits. Tell them to use their money for good instead of their typical behavior. Of course they're looking into reneweable energy, but they could be putting a lot more into it.

Support the Clean Water Restoration Act! Does this one need any explanation? (If you answered yes, try here.)

Write to people in charge at the NIH to discontinue useless research that forces animals to smoke. A lot of this stuff is just trying to reproduce things we already know from humans smoking. Seeing how animals don't smoke and there are plenty of human smokers to study, the point seems to be nonexistent. See the link for lots more information.

By the way, see my list of action/awareness links for good sites and organizations dedicated to a number of issues. There are some great sources of info there.

edit: added Up In Smoke campaign

Univ. "Ave" St. (Wy) Fair Mk. II

2008-05-19T21:35:00.000-07:00

Here are the promised items: Pictures and Brownie-Cookies!

Apparently this chewy chocolate chocolate chip cookie recipe is great as-is. Knowing the ladies behind the PPK (not personally, just through their recipes) the hype is well-justified.

Here's how my cookies turned out (or what remains of them now):
What I did differently:
instead of flax and soymilk as stated in the ppk recipe, I used:

4 oz (115 g) silken firm tofu (blended with just enough soy milk to liquefy it) - any high protein variety should do. This stuff is kinda slimy and stiff, so go for about that consistency.
1 teaspoon (roughly) Ener-g egg replacer. It's mainly starch, and I bet any other form of starch would work (though it might make for a different consistency, cornstarch probably stiffer/crunchier). Whip the egg replacer with a tablespoon (roughly) of warm/hot water till frothy.
I added both of these where the recipe indicates you should add the soy/flax mix
I did not measure out any soymilk, but used as much as I needed to blend the tofu, an to fold in the dry ingredients - but only enough to make it wet, it should have a very thick, cookie-dough consistency. I used maybe 1/4 cup per batch.
I just used regular cocoa powder
I'm also paranoid, so I added about 1/3 teaspoon of baking powder in addition to the soda. Probably not needed.

Otherwise, I followed the recipe by exact substitution. I baked a bit longer - the cookies baked for 15-20 minutes were still soft, but a bit more cohesive. They're ready when the cookie portion is dark. This should mean a lot of contrast with the now-melted chocolate chips.

A close-up:
These were on the bottom of the container, and baked first (not for long enough). They've also had several days to fall apart, and I fell three times while carrying them.

Here's my housemate Xiao Xin reading my redecorated cane:

stickers: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world", "Revolution begins with an individual", "Recycle", Peace sign, "Eat Organic", "VGN" (vegan). On the back side: "We must be the change we wish to see in the world."

University Street Fair

2008-05-18T23:05:00.000-07:00

I just spent the weekend tabling for the vegan/animal rights group Action for Animals at the Seattle University District Street Fair. It was tiring, but a lot of fun as well. I also made vegan cookies for volunteers and my friends who came by, which were delicious, brownie-like and organic. It was basically this recipe, but instead of flax (forgot to buy it) I used about 2 'eggs' worth of Ener-g egg replacer (in a triple batch) and a block of mori-nu tofu. If anyone wants to know, I can figure out how much that would be for a single batch. I should add a picture, because they're as good as they look.

For AFA, the weekend didn't go that great (about hit pessimistic expectations), but we did hand out a lot of veg literature. I bought a crapload of stickers and decorated my cane with them. Another thing to add pictures of.

Enough about me though. Check out the AFA literature I was helping pass out, especially if you're wondering what veganism is all about (largely it's an act of compassion). Just visit the link above!

Indenting Blogger posts

2008-05-16T22:43:00.001-07:00

This is mainly for Paul, but I already figured this out on account of my unconscious drive to figure things out, so I might as well share it. Maybe someone else will find it useful.

What this will do:
Allow you to easily make blogger posts indented by paragraph, without having to tag each and every one. It will definitely work with the scribe layout. It should work with others, but it's possible that it won't (let me know if you try it on others, if it doesn't work with the instructions as they now are, it can be made to work).

Step-by-step:

Modify the layout by selecting 'customize' then 'layout' then 'edit html'.

In the Scribe layout do the following:
1. Search the text for ".post-body p"
2. Add the code in red below so that it appears as follows (indentation is not important for the function of this code):
  .post-body p { text-indent: 2.0em; line-height:1.5em; margin-top:0; margin-$endSide:0; margin-bottom:.6em; margin-$startSide:0; }
  (note the line "margin-bottom:.6em;", this maybe be important later depending on how you prefer paragraphs to appear. You may want to read here before proceeding.)
For layouts that do not have the text ".post-body p" (untested):
1. Search for the text ".post"
2. Add the code in red before or after one such entry, for example:
  .post h3 a { color: $postTitleColor; } .post p { text-indent: 2.0em; }(It's not actually important that it be done exactly in this location, but it's good form and it will ensure that you are pasting this into the right section of the code - the style sheet. Note that it's likely there will be conflicts if there is already a definition for ".post p", but scribe doesn't have this problem. I suspeect most layouts won't.)

Save the changes to the layout. If you check your blog now, nothing should have changed unless you were already using 'p' tags. (For the html-unfamiliar, that's a p inside of <> by the way, blogger's editor doesn't like me to display raw html. It's like [p] with <> instead of []. Hopefully you get the picture.)
Now for posting
- The easiest way I've found is to paste directly from a word processor. I use Open Office Writer right now. I haven't tested with MS Word, but it should work as well (update: it works for MS Word as well - you don't need your word processor to display indents, by the way). Here's what my test looks like in Writer:
  
  If you paste this into a new blog post, here's how the result should turn out:
- The other way to do this may be a little tricky, but it is simple.
  1. Create a new post.
  2. Click "edit html"
  3. Insert something like this:
  4. Now go back to "Compose" mode. Put the cursor at the end of the 'Starter text' and press enter twice. It should suddenly skip several lines.
  5. From this point forward, you should be able to type as normal. Each time you press enter, it will create a new paragraph. If you're fine with this, you now know how to indent your posts!
  6. You can delete the 'Starter text' now. This may leave a blank line above your first real text. You can easily delete this in the 'edit html' pane, being careful not to mess with p tags around the text you want to keep (thought the first tline, whether in p tags or not, will always be indented).
If you don't like the spacing between paragraphs or the inconsistency between pasted/non-pasted posts, proceed as follows (for Scribe layout):
1. Go back to editing the layout html.
2. Again find the text ".post-body p"
3. Modify as follows:
  .post-body p { text-indent: 2.0em; line-height:1.5em; margin-top:0; margin-$endSide:0; /*margin-bottom:.6em;*/ margin-$startSide:0; }
  (The "/* */" comments out the bottom margin out so your browser will ignore it. This is the same as deleting the line altogether. If this doesn't work on another layout, consider making that line read "margin-bottom:0;")
4. Note that if you want spacing added to pasted text, depending on your word processor you may have to manually remove "margin-bottom=0in;" from each paragraph.

Now there's nothing more to be done. Hopefully this isn't too complicated. Note that the value "2.0em" is arbitrary - you can increase or decrease this depending on your preference.

I noted above that this will automatically indent the first line of any post. The best way I've found to avoid this looks like this:

I'll edit this post as new fixes and workarounds become apparent.Much of the trickiness required for this is due to the blogger what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editor, which is invaluably convenient, but as always there is a tradeoff for convenience.

(By the way, let me know if anyone is at all interested in modifying the scribe layout to allow for wider lines. I always felt it to be cramped, hence the [non-final version of the 'Scribble'] layout of www.hexalm.com, which is based on Scribe. I moved the sidebar outside of the papery-looking section.)

This title... -- some titles

2008-05-13T22:22:00.001-07:00

They've had to use very specialized punctuation to quote president Bush in text.

Seriously. Those aren't sentences. And people don't really speak in sentences, but those aren't even coherent statements. Either Carter implies that being popular in blaming Israel to be popular in the middle east, or other people do. You can't implicate half-both!

Anyway, as far as making coherent sense is concerned, there's no hope for this guy.

appearance change

2008-05-11T02:35:00.000-07:00

Thought this layout looked a lot cleaner than the last one. May go for something slightly brighter in the future, but I don't know.

Great Expectations

2008-05-10T22:57:00.001-07:00

If only people would fight this hard for things that matter.

You'd think getting one politician or another in power is all you have to do to effect change in this world.

If they were activists for real change instead of for a particular candidate of the two parties that have a stranglehold on this country, it would be great.

As it stands, they're pumping all their energy into a broken system.

Regardless of which candidate is the best or the most likely to work for the changes you want, voting for them is not enough.

And while it's nice to see people excited about Obama's campaign and interested in politics, it's like Tom Morello said: people need to get involved locally.

In other words, grassroots action is good, but grassroots action that ultimately panders to the status quo is a waste of energy.

This is one election where I will probably support democrats (though either way it goes will be an improvement over the current administration), but I'm still not satisfied with the two party system we seem to be stuck with.

Enough people are of the opinion that there is not enough choice, but betray themselves when they refuse to vot for anyone else on the basis that there's no choice.

It's self-defeating.

Just a few issues

2008-05-07T20:04:00.000-07:00

More abuse of chickens at egg farms - It's not surprising to me anymore, but it's just as nasty as ever.
Tell the House Judiciary Committee which questions to ask about torture under the Bush administration.
Send a comment to the to encourage disclosure of corporate risks due to climate change. These go to the SEC. You don't have to be an investor (I'm not, yet)...but you could become one easily. More corporate transparency is always a good thing. (It's also not a bad idea to invest!)
Lots of information on health and environmental issues around the home. The kitchen section told me more than I already knew about different types of plastics and possible problems with them.

Free (!!!)

2008-05-07T16:39:00.000-07:00

Writing

2008-05-06T23:42:00.000-07:00

Go here.

Finally got some poems posted which have been in limbo for ages.

This one, however, is fresh (even if the event that inspired it was some time ago).

New Religion

2008-05-06T22:40:00.000-07:00

BOW DOWN AND WORSHIP THE PTERODACTYL-HEADED GOD OF CHAITÉN

YOU ARE NOTHING BEFORE HIS VOLCANIC MIGHT

FEAR HIS WRATH

Take a look around you...take some action

2008-05-05T19:32:00.000-07:00

Here are the action items on my plate for this week: gimme a hand and speak up, if you're so inclined! (If you're not so inclined, I recommend a bit of research. It may change your mind.)

Broken down by human/not human (it all affects all of us, but I know some people think animals are less important or relevant. This is for you guys so you don't ignore important civil rights stuff!). Each list is roughly in order of magnitude.

Humans:

Awareness: Confessions of a Sweatshop Inspector - an enlightening read, though according to co-op america's PDF on sweatshops, Nike's factories have recently still stifled Union activity (in Turkey)
Awareness: drugs in the water supply? - not a conspiracy
Awareness: Corporate Vultures Lurk Behind the World Food Crisis - interesting read, it + comments got me thinking

ACLU Action item regarding FISA and illegal wiretapping - rumor has it there may be back-room deals aimed at undermining legal oversight and accountability for wire-tapping. How Byzantine.
See also the ACLU Action page, there's another item on there relevant to FISA with more info.

Other Animals:

Read the Pew Commision report and support the Farm Animal Stewardship Purchasing Act - this is a big one. This report was made by a panel of experts who seem unbiased, and its findings support a lot of what animal rights and animal welfare groups have been saying for awhile now.
Make a comment on how the Washington Dept of Fish and Wildlife should manage...fish and wildlife... - important as much ecologically as in other ways
Tell congress to end medical experimentation on Chimps - who could refuse that smile? Even if showing teeth is actually a threat...
Please support this campaign against horse racing & betting - it's brutal for the horses, for instance the new casualty "Eight Belles" - related article
Tell Western Washington fairs to break from this shady & inhumane circus - performing animals have it bad. Nuff said.
Tell authorities to counter neglect of a menagerie of animals in WA state - they need to be encouraged to pursue this, since the perp is just avoiding the issue
Goofy campaign to offset Al Gore's damage to the environment - veg pledge. Kinda goofy, I signed it since I won't be eating any meat anyway...

Writing Blogs

2008-04-30T23:17:00.001-07:00

I've combined them into one blog for the sake of simplicity. More changes may come soon.

Hopefully this means I will get back to posting new material, soon. A week is too long, but I have been writing - I just haven't had time to make sure the things I've written are finished.

This and this are my favorite two recent pieces.

Rev. Jeremiah was Wright about this country and his language was too mild

2008-04-30T20:45:00.000-07:00

Nuff said.

"He said, she said" deserves zero serious response. And I'm only holding my tongue on this (fingers) because my mom might read this page sometime soon.

Next we will find out Obama's doctor was an atheist or something equally moronic.

Scandal = nonexistent, overblown, irrelevent. Incendiary comments my arse.

Speaking of, here's an unsurprising result of US imperialism in its earlier incarnation. Kudos to these guys, although they'll never reach their goal.

Sorry native peoples, no freedom for you! The U.S. just has too much to lose if we let you go! After all, white people invented freedom so we know which people deserve it. Hint: they're not brown.[/irony]

And nowadays, most Hawaiians are just Americans, so there's no fight left in them. And the international community isn't going to get behind freeing Hawaii if most Hawaiians don't even care. Why would they want independence? After all, the United States brought a great economy and infrastructure, so the ends justify the means. Bill Clinton signed an apology. He should have apologized to Mexican farmers for NAFTA while he was at it. (That one was even his fault.)

Another news item: didn't this just happen? Deja vu? I swear something very similar happened not too long ago. Must be Bushonomics working (they don't).

(let them eat) Cake

2008-04-28T21:11:00.000-07:00

Props to Cake for being awesome and paying attention to the world.

(And for having cool music that I like, too)

Note especially McCain vs McCain, and food, food waste (and poverty) in America.

Edit: also the risks of cell phone use.

Just...turn it off whenever you can. Or put it on the other side of the room. I'm considering a hands-free set now...we'll see how this pans out, since the guy saying all this is widely dismissed, but it's better to bet on the side where there isn't any risk of brain tumors.

Edit: I'm gonna stop linking myself and just say: read cake's news page. But one last one: are you destroying the rainforest? I will have to double check my sources of soy...see also my opinion on biofuels. This is more ammunition against them. The stuff is only good if it's coming from what would otherwise be garbage - very much not typical of ethanol production.

re: food waste:
Due to poor planning, poor thinking or sheer negligence, people throw away so much damn food it's ridiculous. I see it so much; unfortunately, only so much can be salvaged. A lot is not even due to individuals or families, because stores throw a lot of food away too.

Invade the dumpsters! So much of it is in plastic wrappers that it won't decompose for millennia. Looks okay? Smells okay? It's okay to eat, trust me.

They like to talk about poverty -12.5 million children living in it (or somewhere around 1 in 5 I hear), among other numbers - but I have no idea what someone below the poverty line has. What does it mean? How bad is it?

I prefer knowing 33 million people in this country have trouble with feeding themselves and families (even though most of them do work, btw).

Don't waste food, people. Just. Don't. Do. It. Buy a little more often, buy a little smarter. Eat a bit smarter. It's ecologically sounder, saves you money, and while it won't automatically transfer food to the hungry, you can donate the savings if you're so inclined.

See this post for some insanely small scale ways to be environmentally friendly.

-B!

Edit: also don't buy biodiesel. Unlike a bumper sticker I saw on a VW would have us believe, it is NOT part of the solution. It's environmentally worse than regular diesel when you factor in growing and processing, and see the link above for direct human consequences. Sustainable? Only as long as it doesn't suffocate us and bring about more riots by starving people.

Pending Changes

2008-04-27T15:29:00.000-07:00

I'm reconsidering the number of these blogs I'm going to have. I will at least probably combine the two writing logs, if not this one as well.

I'm working on that right now, once I finish I will update things more.

Crosstalk

2008-04-23T21:03:00.000-07:00

Point A

Point B

Point C

Just a thought...

2008-04-22T09:59:00.001-07:00

When one person does something strange, it's a quirk.

When many people do something strange, it's a culture.

edit: try replacing "quirk" with "crime" for subversive fun.

Awesome Oregon Political Commercials

2008-04-21T23:04:00.000-07:00

Just had to link these.

http://www.horsesass.org/?p=4712

http://www.horsesass.org/?p=4195

http://www.horsesass.org/?p=4120

Save the Internet, if you can!

2008-04-21T21:17:00.001-07:00

One thing that I like about Senator Kerry is that he is well aware of the internet and its importance.

There's a hearing on Net Neutrality tomorrow, and Kerry's taking suggestions.

If you're in the US and you value...well, all of this, I suggest you pay attention to this stuff.

Here's the SaveTheInternet.com action page.

Various Items

2008-04-20T22:07:00.000-07:00

Here's something that annoys me about religion.

"I had this vision weeks ago and told my spiritual director that I believed that my son would be healed," she said. "It was beautiful, it was absolutely beautiful."

And I'm 100% positive their son still has muscular dystrophy. You might as well ask for a different color of hair - or no, dyes can already accomplish that, though it's not miraculous, per se. A blessing from the pope is a false and useless hope. There's sure as hell no psychosomatic effect that can help muscular dystrophy, either. Oh well. This experience will either make them feel enriched (despite it's lack of substance), or perhaps they'll realize their faith can't do certain things. Neither can the Pope.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quoth Tom Morello:

"As the half-Kenyan Harvard graduate from Illinois who is not running for office this year, I've got to say, there's been a lot of talk of change in this election year," Morello said. "It remains my belief that change is not made by politicians, but by people. No matter who is elected, we do not abdicate our responsibility to take action, to organize, to struggle and to push who is in office to make change on the ground. You can't wait and hope your vote will turn the system around. You need to take action where you live and where you work."

Good advice.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Action items (also for myself so I don't lose track of them):

Humans:
Support banning of cluster bombs -read the page if you don't understand why (or grow some compassion)
Stand against torture, illegal wiretapping, and more

Other Animals:
Protect Yellowstone Buffalo
Keep Downed animals from abuse and from being eaten (this one is a health issue for meat-eaters, too)
Help stop increases in animal testing for cosmetics
Stop excessively nasty animal testing - More Info
Petition Adidas to stop using Kangaroo leather. Shoe leather's not all from cows, and kangaroos are killed only for their skins.
Tell Gucci to stop selling fur

Health Insurance in America

2008-04-20T16:54:00.000-07:00

Found some interesting info.

First is this film. It makes valid points, but doesn't do a great job of accounting for its numbers, and makes at least two conflicting claims. According to one of its sources, only 8 million people actually have no access to medical care (despite 45 million being uninsured). It's implied that these are dismissable non-participants in society (cutting to shots of homeless people lying on the ground). Which is a whole other can of worms, but it would be nice to know the context of the 8 million number - which is a lot of people, even if it's not a very large percentage.

Another contention I have is the assumption that people who fall into these various categories 'should be able to pay for insurance'. Undoubtedly many people not living responsibly, but I have a hard time waving off 37 million people's lack of insurance by simply blaming them. It smacks of the elitist conservative ideology that hard work always pays off and people who have a hard time in life are always to blame--as if luck and corporate decisions are within one's control. The converse of this is that people who have money must have earned it and deserve every penny. (I would argue feel that nobody can do enough work to 'earn' millions of dollars, when the people at the bottom work harder and get less in return, despite being just as crucial to a company's operations.)

Nevertheless, the film does raise a very relevant question: why are the 45 million people without insurance uninsured? Who are they, exactly? It seems that many can afford it but choose not to pay for it, but without delving a bit deeper, I don't think the problem can be written off so neatly. Hillary Clinton's health care idea (mandating health insurance) sounds somewhat less ridiculous now, though I would still contend that it's an inadequate measure to fix the problems in US health care (and Obama rightly points this out, so props to him, though we'll see where his ideas go).

That brings me to the next item, an article that points out the flaw of simply introducing socialized medicine in the US. It's basically a response to Michael Moore's film Sicko, by an economic adviser to Barack Obama. Hopefully this means that Obama is aware of these points of criticism, despite the above film's implication that politicians are simply being dishonest or disingenuous. (Obama does mention 45 million uninsured, but also seems intent on addressing the problem of service being denied: "no one will be turned away because of a preexisting condition or illness.")

Oh and here's further elaboration on the sort of things people have to go through. It's much less rosy picture than that film paints, and gives fewer statistics, but it provides some anecdotal context to the plight of uninsured people.

-B

On a Lighter Note

2008-04-19T21:35:00.000-07:00

Homemade Calzone = delicious.

Don't Believe Their Lies

2008-04-19T16:50:00.000-07:00

Can you believe this? This is an administration under which waterboarding and other forms of torture are defended, along with secret prisons with no accountability. The party successor for next term sings about bombing another country.

Here's one way to take some action. Or click on the flag below after reading some more.

I wish now I hadn't been so self-involved and unable to see beyond myself when these bastards got into office, because it wouldn't have taken much to see what kind of people these were. And the trouble is, you can't escape them by simply voting for the other party - but I still think Anyone But Bush is a great slogan.

Shame I got so angry about this so late in the game.

This is a government which delayed for 4 years just to apply the Geneva convention to detainees! Let alone abide by a torture treaty it has signed. It also refused human rights monitors (despite U.N. requests) access to Guantánamo, and denied prisoners access to legal counsel. They "seriously considered" it for over 3 years. Of groups who have been granted access, I don't think any were allowed it without many restrictions.

This country is not what it once was. Once it was the self-determined rebel fighting for independence; now it selectively quells or supports rebellions and installs rulers it finds amicable. It once had no standing army; now it spends more on "defense" than the next 18 largest economies combined.

Land of the free? It's the land of the free-time.
The brave drop bombs from 10,000 feet.

A noble experiment? No longer. The results are in and it's a botched experiment.

So while people are raising their voices against China, don't forget the other large country with a dubious record on human rights. Those responsible need to pay. The innocent need to be freed.

Torture as Art

2008-04-19T00:22:00.000-07:00

This outrage should be vindicated.

I found out about this a couple days ago, but didn't have time to post till now. I was reminded by a bulletin someone posted on myspace about this so-called 'artist' who starved a dog to death and called it art.

I'm not gonna say a lot about this one. This guy and everyone who did nothing to stop him are disgusting. It's one thing when modern art is stupid and fails utterly to meet any meaningful or aesthetic definition of art. When it fails ethically and becomes an act of utter sadism, the bullshit must be stopped.

The blog linked above has a link to a petition in Spanish. I've found another petition here.

3 seconds of typing and clicking is the least you can do for this outrage.

Domain Name

2008-04-18T22:59:00.000-07:00

Now that I have a blog which would be the logical default site for it, I'm thinking about getting a domain name for this page.

Before I couldn't decide whether the prose or poetry page would be a better main site.

So the question now is: what to use?

I'm thinking www.hexalm.com is simple. Hexalm is my name on the net because it's unique enough to never be taken, and I like the sound of it. It's actually an amalgamation of two former aliases: Hex (Zero Rouge) - which is an apparently meaningless Mars Volta lyric - and Almighty Ruler (or just Alm) - which is taken from an obscure movie called High Strung. It featured a young and uncredited Jim Carrey. Anyhow, the main character (Steve Oedekerk), is annoyed by a "phone automatron" from a carpet cleaning company. He tells it his name is "Almighty Ruler" so it will call him that whenever it uses his name. I'm surprised I remember that, because it has easily been over a decade since I watched that movie. Made an impression, apparently.

I just read a bit about the various domain names. I find .net appealing - it can be a pun since it's a Romanization of the Russian word нет (nyet, no or not).

We'll see what I decide.

-hexalm.not

Microenvironmentalism

2008-04-18T20:20:00.000-07:00

I do a lot of very small scale things to be less wasteful. I thought I would share them, along with many other ideas I have. If nothing else, it might provoke some thought about ways to conserve energy and resources.

I don't adhere to all of these items, buy I try and do the ones I can when I can. These are things that can be done on a day-to-day basis, which DO make a difference. Though it might be a small one individually, if a million people did half of these things, it would probably have a visible impact (though maybe just barely visible).

Green is supposedly in fashion, but I'll bet few of these things are actually widespread. Most of them are probably rarely considered by anyone. I'll also try to do a breakdown of steps needed to produce certain goods in another post.

I haven't actually done the math and followed all of the energy and every single step of production on every item in this list, so I could easily be wrong on a lot of these. So correct me if you know otherwise!

I'll start the list off with a big one: Buy vegan. Animals are terribly inefficient middlemen. They need space (at least a bit; they also need some temperature regulation in indoor facilities), water (they use some 50% of it in the US) and feed crops (e.g., 97% of meat comes from factory operations that have far too many animals to successfully allow grazing. They're fed grains, instead). Humans, for one, are only able to take 20% of the calories they intake. The rest is crapped out again. Other animals are often better at this than us, but they nevertheless are an extra step of production, including additional shipping (the animals themselves and their crops, feed, etc).
Buy local (less distant shipping = less energy used)
Buy organic (more sustainable than non-organic; less pollution for us, less pesticide ingestion for you)
Use a reusable cloth shopping bag. Paper or plastic? Neither! Even a reusable poly-plastic type bag is much better than using countless plastic or paper bags.
Re-use any and all bags you come by as much as possible. If they're recyclable, recycle them when worn out.
Buy grains from bulk bins - this allows you to reuse plastic bags and such. The more in a package, the less packaging require, typically. To demonstrate: this one bucket |___| has 56% as many lines as three buckets |_| |_| |_| The difference isn't always so drastic in 3 dimensions, but you get the idea.
For food items that last awhile, buy in larger packages. See above: 2 plastic containers of 1 liter take more plastic than a single 2 liter container (generally, but not necessarily always; geometry is funny that way).
For items that don't last awhile, never buy more than you need. You'll throw less away. Can't finish it off? Invite someone to help eat it! It can be a cooking and eating party. Yum.
Avoid highly processed foods. The more processing, the more energy.
Use as little pre-prepared food as possible. This reduces packaging waste. (For things like yogurt, for example, I make my own in jars which I am also reusing. Occasionally I have to buy a container of it, but soy yogurt containers are very handy for re-use.)
Don't buy individually wrapped things.
Buy items in reusable packaging; failing that buy recyclable packaging. Reuse it. Recycle it.
Don't buy electronics unless you need to. Maybe that new toy looks cool, but your current one still works. Hey, when that one actually wears out, there will be even cooler gadgets on the market!
Bring your own take-away container when eating out. In case you don't finish. (I have yet to get this down.)
Don't buy individual drinks. Aluminum, plastic or glass bottles, you're not going to be able to re-use more than a few. If you must indulge, at least recycle. You will also get more mileage if you get juice from concentrate and mix it in a reusable pitcher
Recycle as much as possible. Cart your garbage with you if there isn't a recycling bin for the particular product you have instead of just trashing it
Steal people's garbage and recycle it if they won't do it properly themselves
Steal any garbage that's still good. I stole a thrown-away banana and made banana bread last week. Delicious garbage! (I saw a guy trash it, it was just too mangled to eat, not to cook though!). Obviously beware of sanitation, but don't be picky just cuz it's in the garbage.
If you have an individual trashcan (with its own plastic bag) at your workplace, don't use it. Put things in a larger, common garbage bin. This uses fewer plastic bags. And trash bins, if companies can be persuaded not to buy the things.
Drive less. If you have to drive, carpool as much as possible. (This is something I'm still working on. I'm considering moving somewhere nearer my social activities where there's also better bus service, but I also need a place accessible without stairs, where I can reach a park& ride or bus stop easily, etc; so it's tricky to find places.)
Don't buy a car. If at all possible. (Too late for me. I at least have a decent excuse - I live in the suburbs and have somewhat of a disability).
Drive a hybrid/energy efficient car. This is generally going to be an improvement over a non-hybrid, though it (by the way, bio-diesel is not all it's cracked up to be. Producing corn to produce ethanol is not very efficient and produces a lot of greenhouse gases. Sustainable? Sure, but this emits more greenhouse gases.)
Don't be a motor sport hobbyist. Go hiking or something, instead of burning more gas on the weekends.
Don't buy a motorboat; buy a sailboat or a rowboat. It will be so much more soothing - no petroleum fumes, no loud engines, just you and the wind and the sea...
commute as little as possible (taking a bus for 30 miles is worse than a car for 3. Also 3 miles = bikeable for most!)
Ride a bike (if you can; I can't)
Walk when you can (another non-option for me, unfortunately)
Use rechargeable batteries. Charge often and don't let things discharge too much. This preserves battery life.
Turn off any lights that are not in use, no matter how short a time it will be (unless it results in a strobe effect. That's not really worth it.)
Have a room with 6 light bulbs and 1 switch? Unscrew half of them . Or even more than half.
Use fluorescent bulbs (but only once your current bulbs die - no sense in tossing something good, that's a waste of energy AND materials.)
Turn off the water any time you're not using it: brushing your teeth, soaping up in the shower, washing dishes, etc (I recommend plugging the shower drain once to find out how much water you're using. I have yet to remember that, mornings. It makes people feel more accountable when they see what they are actually using up)
Use energy efficient appliances
Do your laundry with cold water when you don't need to do otherwise. This preserves color, too! Only use warm/hot water for smaller loads.
Use natural laundry detergents, like soap nuts. This may not be a net improvement from a production standpoint, but the water you release will be less nasty and harmful.
The same goes for dish soap. Use something biodegradable.
Don't use a garbage disposal. This unfavorably modifies chemical properties of the water you wash down the drain (I believe it was something about starches; needs further research)
Compost your biodegradable garbage and/or mulch your yard waste and use the result instead of buying fertilizers and plant foods!
Line dry instead of using a machine to dry your clothing
Get energy-efficient windows (and other parts of your house), especially if you already have old ones that need replacing. You'll even save money in the long run.
Ignore your lawn. Cut it as infrequently as manageable. Forget about watering it.
Don't smoke. That's energy and acreage you're burning there! Medical care also costs energy and resources.
Don't drink (alcohol). See 'Don't smoke'.
Don't overeat.
Opt for online correspondence from your employer, insurer, bank, etc
Dodge junk mail. Never give away your address to parties that will abuse it. Don't go for rebates (they sell your address and personal info, that's why you get $50 back). This means junk mailers are actually a lower form of scum and villainy than telemarketers, if you ask me.
Do more things online. This eliminates some paper, prevents you from having to drive around everywhere. If you buy from a store you have to drive there (unless you bike or bus!), but mail trucks tend to make the same routes everyday, and it may be more efficient to have 100 things delivered by one truck, than to have 100 cars pick up 1 thing each (see buying delivery below, I'm not 100% on this though)
Buy second hand clothing. (I'm not sure how this demand interacts with the demand for new clothing, but it probably does)
Buy organic clothing. Pretty expensive and there isn't that much variety, but most cotton is not being grown sustainably! It's usually fair to the producers, too, to buy from a company like Cottonfield.
Don't watch so much TV or use computers so much... oh dammit! (heh, heh. I mean: use your computer. Come to this site. All the time...). At least turn it off when you're away (that's what I do).

There are a lot more of these, I'll add another list sometime, maybe.

Possible other things:

Refrigerate less. Trouble: this might mean you cook more, which may use more energy.
Microwave less. Trouble: it depends on what uses more energy, microwave, toaster oven, stove, etc. No matter what it's going to lower nutrient yield per calorie, so from that standpoint it will always be less efficient. (Microwaving destroys more vitamins in your food than any other method, generally. Unless you habitually burn your food)
Replace your lawn with rocks or something. 'Beauty bark' I seem to recall is not good stuff, maybe gravel would be better. Requires more research. Additional run-off from the lack of roots could also be an issue in some areas, but you could also use some hearty shrubs or trees instead
Buy delivery instead of picking up food yourself. 1 guy distributing 5 pizzas is at least slightly more efficient than the same 10 people picking up the pizzas (in general, though not necessarily) (conflicts

Most of this is not certain. Sometimes very counterintuitive things turn out to be the case when it comes to energy/resource efficiency. For example what I say basically means buying more basic ingredients and cooking for yourself; in some cases it might be much more efficient to prepare in bulk in a factory and ship out from there than to have a million people cook it themselves. In the case of individually wrapped or prepared items or canned foods, I doubt if the energy savings makes up for that. Sending the raw ingredients to a factory then to the retailer also creates another production step, but this depends on if the processing facility is near the place they grow the ingredients, etc, etc.

Obviously it would be a lot of work to trace even a single product and find out how much stuff goes into it.

Campaign against coal power

2008-04-16T21:12:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of Co-op America (click here)

Coal is nasty business. Here are some nice bullet points hijacked from the Union of Concerned Scientists to underline why you should raise your voice about this.

Burning coal is a leading cause of smog, acid rain, global warming, and air toxics. In an average year, a typical coal plant generates:
3,700,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), the primary human cause of global warming--as much carbon dioxide as cutting down 161 million trees.
10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide (SO2), which causes acid rain that damages forests, lakes, and buildings, and forms small airborne particles that can penetrate deep into lungs.
500 tons of small airborne particles, which can cause chronic bronchitis, aggravated asthma, and premature death, as well as haze obstructing visibility.
10,200 tons of nitrogen oxide (NOx), as much as would be emitted by half a million late-model cars. NOx leads to formation of ozone (smog) which inflames the lungs, burning through lung tissue making people more susceptible to respiratory illness.
720 tons of carbon monoxide (CO), which causes headaches and place additional stress on people with heart disease.
220 tons of hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds (VOC), which form ozone.
170 pounds of mercury, where just 1/70th of a teaspoon deposited on a 25-acre lake can make the fish unsafe to eat.
225 pounds of arsenic, which will cause cancer in one out of 100 people who drink water containing 50 parts per billion.
114 pounds of lead, 4 pounds of cadmium, other toxic heavy metals, and trace amounts of uranium.

That's in addition to the dangers and environmental troubles associated with mining. Coal is cheap, but clearly not a good value. So sign & send this letter!

There's a pre-written letter on the webpage. I modified it heavily myself, so what I sent was almost my own. If you're lazy or busy and you hate theirs, you can borrow mine (assuming you like it better).

Subject: Start Building Green, Stop Building Coal!

Dear Mr. Williamson, CEO Dynegy and
Mr. Farrell, CEO Dominion:

As a concerned resident of this country and planet and an electric power consumer, I strongly urge you to halt your plans to build new coal power plants.

I challenge the sort of advertisements for coal I saw recently, which almost tried to put an environmentally friendly spin on coal. The emphasis of course was on how cheap it is. 'Coal fuels our way of life', said this ad. If burning even more fossil fuels and consuming ever more energy is our way of life, it's a lifestyle that won't last long.

Hiding behind a low price can be nothing but a smokescreen. I do not believe the economic savings can be measured against the environmental and health impact in a case like this. In the long term, the profitability of self-destruction is a net loss.

Burning coal causes a hefty amount of global warming emissions, mercury pollution, and highly destructive mining. It's clear that for reasons of safety, cleanliness, reliability and sustainability, we should be investing in conservation, efficiency, and renewable energy sources. Research has demonstrated that this is the best path, time and time again; the climate situation only seems to be getting worse, not better.

Further, congress is considering a pollution tax now. Senate Majority Leader Reid recently said “There’s not a coal-fired plant in America that’s clean. They’re all dirty.” On account of your shareholders, it would be wise to incorporate the cost of pollution into your corporate strategy for expanding your ability to generate energy. It may be a very real dollar cost, soon.

So for the good of your customers, shareholders, the environment and yourself, I reiterate the call to scrap all plans for additional coal power plants. I would laud you for increasing your investments in wind and solar power. In particular, solar energy research promises exciting new possibilities in terms of better efficiency and lower production cost of solar panels. That's something worth investing in—clean and secure energy sources which would reduce your company's contribution to the end of the world as we know it.

Yours sincerely,
Bryan Schultz

Nastiness in Canada & Fish

2008-04-15T22:40:00.000-07:00

You may have heard about the seal hunt. It's brutal, nasty and senseless.

Here's the Humane Society page for the campaign against this madness about the slaughter of seals. On that page is a pledge to boycott Canadian seafood. On this page is a petition supporting a measure by the EU to ban seal products.

Were you bothered by a marine throwing a puppy off a cliff? Millions of other babies are getting violent deaths. I care as much if they're piglets or puppies or seal pups, but if you like cute animals I guess helping them is a start.

They say the hunt protects populations of seafood, but humans are a already threatening that by themselves. In many places harvests are noticeably poorer (to put it mildly--the word in that article describing 30% of fishing stocks is "collapsed"). I'm sure there's not information about this at your grocer's seafood section, but things do not look good in general, and won't improve until fishing is severely restricted.

Regarding the pledge not to eat Canadian seafood on the humane society page: I'd encourage anyone to stop eating seafood altogether, giving research like the above article. Research the impact fishing has had on fish stocks; the article I linked above is a start. Fishing is not sustainable.

They talk a lot about omega 3's and fish--the best plant sources of omega 3 fatty acids are flax and hemp. Hemp actually has the perfect balance of omega 3 and 6 for humans. There you go: no risk of getting too much mercury that way, either. So a very wasteful net-based fishing industry is not necessary at all! People using fish as a 'healthy' protein source should realize that on average a meat-eater gets about twice as much protein as is needed [so go vegan already ;-) ]. This helps you get: colon cancer, kidney stones, cholesterol and cardiac arrest (that's a heart attack, Kyle!). Here's one more link about fish for good measure.

Ponder this idea: Those who treat life as expendable do not deserve life themselves.

-B

More Bullshit

2008-04-14T23:22:00.000-07:00

Here's what's wrong with alternative medicine in the US.

Companies like these shitheads, who advertise herbal remedies based on no apparent research (except for 'mining it from herbal texts') for disease like muscular dystrophy piss me off.

I have muscular dystrophy. A fairly mild form of it. I hope this company sells none of their worthless product, but I'm sure some well-meaning or desperate people have given them their cash for nothing at all. Just another guise of exploitation.

It's the same bullshit as homeopathy.

I'm not one to discount the possibility of herbal remedies, but if they work, empirical methods and proper studies will demonstrate it. If they can't, then people promoting such things (natural path doctors, companies selling products) without proving their effectiveness (with something besides purely anecdotal evidence) are con-men. Pure and simple, that means they're exploiting people and helping promote such exploitation, no matter how much they think they're helping.

And if they are truly convinced that they're helping, they should be willing to go to the rigor required to prove that something other than the placebo effect is responsible. I doubt if most such 'researchers' have enough grasp of the scientific method to do so, but surely they can find someone who does. Some honesty and accountability would be nice.

To get back to the company in question, I note that they say there are no side effects. They also fail to mention any benefit this 'medicine' is intended to have! Big surprise. The shameful part is the USFDA's utter complicity in this. I don't trust them to manage every single supplement or remedy out there (especially since the difference between the two is fuzzy at best), but duplicitous practices should absolutely be stopped, and information about effectiveness needs more than a "the FDA has not checked that this shit works" disclaimer.

The best we can do for now is educating people about things such as science and making informed purchases. (I hope not everyone who's into this mystic stuff isn't a lost cause, anyway.)

Don't be a sucker.

-B

edit: just a note, the long and the short of homeopathy is this: they're selling people water as a medicine.

Antiwar

2008-04-14T22:43:00.000-07:00

"Blood" a very short story (vignette).

This Is Why We Fight, a poem. Note also the link to the documentary Why We Fight on youtube.

I've written better things, but I felt the message was important on these.

Random comments on MLK

2008-04-14T21:02:00.000-07:00

For some reason I felt like posting this on an Obama video on youtube. Go figure.

MLK's fight's not over by a long shot. Nobody should let themselves think that voting Obama will change the world's problems or even the country's. Nobody should forget that MLK was against militarism, and the militarism in the US foreign policy hasn't changed a bit since Viet Nam, not under any president. There's a lot more to do, and it will take more than one leader, more than people making one vote in one election. And don't forget the democrats have been just as much a part of the problem as the republicans, even if Obama seems like he may do better than others. Screw unity, we can have unity when we have justice. Until then there needs to be struggle for what's right.

edit: unity just sounds like complacency. Here's the link for the video in question, BTW. It's Obama in IN.

Sorry to switch again...

2008-04-13T21:53:00.000-07:00

I've decided that the hexalm.blogspot.com URL will be for this page, since it makes sense to have a central location where I can make comments independent of my writing blogs. That will leave those blogs free of plain old non-fiction blog commentary, and give me an outlet for that here.

Expect lots of informational, political and important things here. They may or may not relate to creative works of mine.

So I apologize if you were after my writing pages, but they're only a click away in the sidebar!

Or right here for your convenience:

Prose - Poems

In other news...

2008-04-13T21:29:00.000-07:00

Here's a summary of how fucked our climate is.

And here I was, about to start complaining that global warming was detracting from other major environmental issues...it's kind of a shame--you can't really overstate the problem.

Back with Bite

2008-04-13T19:43:00.000-07:00

Pissed and vinegar; here it all flows out.

Read the breaking news links over at Axis of Justice. If they don't piss you off, you're too fucking apathetic. That makes you part of the problem.

Here's the reason I'm soured by MLK day being a national holiday. Now he's endorsed (but only some elements of his message) by everyone who didn't back him when they should have.

Fuck the US government and fuck the media. Institutions bent on preserving the status quo. Or to take from Dr. King,

There's something strangely inconsistent about a nation and a press that will praise you when you say, 'Be non-violent toward Jim Clark,' but will curse and damn you when you say, 'Be non-violent toward little brown Vietnamese children.' There's something wrong with that press!"

Or maybe the price of getting a radical activist into the mainstream is abandoning what was deemed most radical? I sure as hell hope not, because radical activism is the only thing that's ever gonna make a difference in this world. And MLK was pretty mild, when it comes down to it

Don't confuse that for promoting violence or destruction; I don't. There are so many better things you could be doing...

Take action against sweatshops and human misery!

2008-04-12T22:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a petition to Hanes and Wal-Mart. It takes about 5 seconds to sign it and it's the very least we can do!

This is a guide with lists of companies with good/bad human rights records. Takes a bit more thought to shop sweat-free, but think about the human cost of that great shoe deal, that tasty food, that cool shirt...

::pasted over from myspace::

Closed for business

2008-01-23T22:34:00.001-08:00

I don't write here anymore, see here and here instead.

effital

2008-01-16T22:51:00.001-08:00

It's a new medication, solution to any floundering, struggling or Syd Barretting.

But seriously: fuck everything.

This isn't anger, it's positive destructive behavior. I'm scrapping a lot of shit and starting anew. Yet not really throwing anything out.

I've been writing a blog, which was fine when I was in Germany and had things to tell about, and maybe some people paid attention; now there's nothing so interesting.

I've been getting interesting ideas at work and while trying to sleep, I have other things beckoning to me.

I'm putting some of it here. And of course there's this place.

Some of it is top secret, and some of it is simply not going to be online.

All of it is going to be something that comes naturally.

So let's get to it, shall we?

edit: it

A short one, for reals!

2008-01-13T23:34:00.001-08:00

So this time I'm not tackling any philosophy.

Just carrospibeanoa. Which is a name I just made up for my dinner.

It was quinoa and green beans, then I started fixing up some greens. Trouble is they were normal spinach and carrot greens, which are both kind of tough. Carrot greens are especially difficult to chew.

So I tossed the greens into the pot with everything else, after finding hat wilted carrot greens are tastier and easier to eat. I only let it go for a couple minutes to avoid losing nutrients. I took no pictures and I ate all of it. Which was surprising: I felt compelled to eat all of it, so I guess I needed food.

This is the second time I ate carrot greens, and it was much better than my last, rushed raw ones. I realized at some point how stupid it is to buy carrots with greens attached, then throw the greens out, so I'm going to be eating them. I looked into it, and apparently they're very nutritious. I think I'll be cooking them from now on, thought they're a pain to pick apart and wash.

I'm lso hoping to make my blog a bit less...typical. Philosophy is okay, but I'd much rather be less clear and let a bit more writing into it instead of just telling. Less exposition. It'll be more fun.

On a side note (of pure telling), what a dumb weekend. I didn't even leave the house - granted I don't have that much to do, but I think I just need to wake up earlier. Get going faster. Whatever. My music collection is finally sorted, no thanks to the stupid Zune software, which really needs a fixing. Winamp was my savior though, and now I won't have to spend any more ridiculous amounts of time on that.

Another reason the Zune isn't doing as well as it could be in the mp3/PMP market. At least it's a nice player, even if the software is clunky and you can't have regular file access to the damn thing. Mine makes a tiny noise too, I guess I should take it in or something.

Oh, then I resolved some space issues on my system drive, that's also good. The last thing wrong with my computer is this update that won't install, but it's been ages and notjhing bad has happened, so hopefully it doesn't matter.

Time to go to bed.

-b-

Addendum

2008-01-13T22:33:00.000-08:00

Really I think the most interesting question I've been considering (and which I mentioned yesterday) is: how much of a role does the conscious mind play in altering behavior? It would be silly to discount it - I've implied that I do, at times - when it's just as much a part of the human organism as the unconscious mind.

We all have natural tendencies, but what is the nature of making a decision against such tendencies? I suppose I characterized it as something of a feedback mechanism.

The paradox in this characterization is that it sort of sidesteps the question - I said it really all looks like a causal machine of whatever degree of complexity. But really what I was wanting to get at is the nature of decision-making. It is clear that different factors affect the conscious/subconscious minds, but how do they split the work, exactly?

I'm still floundering here - I need a concrete example. I was saying to my friend that for someone with certain natural tendencies and in a certain situation, cheating on their partner (or picking a new one) is the same decision as being faithful.

That makes sense to me still - if you are selecting the most attractive mate, and your current partner fits the bill, then choosing the most attractive partner means staying faithful. If you happen to meet someone more attractive, then a decision based on this criteria will inevitably mean straying from the status quo in some way.

It's slightly more complicated than that: you might just find this extraneous partner sexually attractive, but not 'relationship material', or you may be more secure to keep your original partner out of social expectation or simplicity. Having your cake and eating it, too.

For pragmatic reasons, being non-monogamous in whatever way (cheating, polyamory, etc) can be a genetically beneficial thing. And for similar pragmatic reasons, monogamy can be as well. (And I'm ignoring several purely genetic benefits which the individuals involved aren't likely to see.) For instance, if a woman gets impregnated by a successful but unreliable man, having a reliable but less 'fit' partner raise the cuckoo's egg would be the best of both worlds. Conversely, just sticking with the reliable guy in the first place can be a good idea, if he's considered just as fit a reproductive partner as this unreliable jerkwad I mentioned. (I can insult him all I want because he's imaginary. Neener.)

In the non-human animal world, monogamy doesn't quite exist. Or I should say, faithfulness doesn't exist. Many animals, especially birds, partner for life, but they do mess around with individuals besides their partners, which is an example of the first scenario I described.

But the point I'm coming to - in more words than I had hoped - is one of morality. What is a moral decision?

Probably morality, at least in a basic sense, is a sort of Lamarckian survival tool. You learn certain behaviors from previous generations which keep you out of certain kinds of trouble.
Try and sort out Old Testament (pragmatically-based) dietary instructions from purely moral instructions: Thou shalt not bear false witness and thou shalt not commit adultery are the closest, and there are certainly practical reasons to follow that advice. On the other hand, there are rules about how to plant crops and not eating shellfish.

Which reminds me of a Native American belief held by tribes in the Northwest coastal regions - it was important to throw back the bones of river fish like salmon, or else they wouldn't come back. This looks like superstition, but it's possible that there was once a good reason for doing so, if there wasn't in more recent times.

What is a moral decision, in this context? Sometimes it seems illusory. A similar kind of decision to examine might be an eccentric tendency of some person. Not stepping on the cracks between tiles, for example, which can take a lot of conscious effort to manage. But it's generally clear that it accomplishes nothing. Neurosis.

This cannot be called a moral decision, but these two types of decision are similar: they both involve making an abstract connection to a certain behavior, appealing generally to some at least supposedly-higher reason than mere pragmatism. Not to put neurotic behavior on the same footing as morality, but often the two are indistinguishable.

I've thought more about this because I was reading a bit of Ryle, whose The Concept of Mind addresses Cartesian dualism. Ryle's argument is that Cartesian mind-body dualism arises from a logical fallacy - and they can't simply be called different 'types' of things (physical/mental) if they are considered to be interacting.

My take is this: minds are perhaps more than the sum of our neurons, but they are, ultimately, physically based. As Ryle mentions in the beginning of that work (all that I've read): How else could thought result in action, or be the result of action, if it was non-physical?

So if we can't assume that the mind is something that exists apart from the body, then it must be deterministic, so is a conscious decision a unique sort of decision, or is it ultimately just serving other purposes? Like the decision I made earlier to finally get up and go to the bathroom, I think any specialness is illusory. (Especially noting that any relief of bladder pressure made me stop thinking about going all together.)

An interesting question: do deterministic arguments influence people ? I think it's the same thing as a religious person choosing certain action out of the threat of punishment in the afterlife: an abstract

It comes back to a point Robert Heinlein made repeatedly through his character Lazarus Long: people do what they want, every time. On the surface people tend to think this sounds false, because people can be forced into doing things they don't want to.

But look at it this way: suppose I forced a man to cut off all his darling wife's beautiful hair at gunpoint. (Don't ask me why, it's the first thing I thought of. Maybe for dramatic impact in a hostage situation - hopefully it's not too trivial) He loves her hair, she loves her hair, it's half of her personality. It stands to reason that they don't want to do it.

But they also don't want to die! They want to live, and if I am a gunman and they are taking me seriously, I define what actions must be taken for that. So: they do what they want. Or: they choose the option that is the most desirable, if only because it is the least undesirable. It amounts to the same thing, you just have to up your perspective of what someone 'wants'.

I guess I could then get into what makes up one's 'wants' - for the sake of brevity, I'll just toss this out: basic needs, emotional needs, biological needs (there's lots of overlap on these), wants based on craving or preference (overlap again). Basically everything that went into making a person who and what they are, and put them in whatever situation they find themselves in.

This is long enough, and I STILL haven't exactly got at what I'm wondering. Like some phantom, it seems to be gone when I'm actually typing, only to reappear when I stop and think or read what I've written.

Maybe I already know the answer. Which is: people do make decisions, but theres nothing mystical or special about it, and the ability to choose or have free will has certian constraints on it.

Duh! now I realize that free will is the problem I'm considering, I will have to find some philosophers' work on that. Someplace to start, at least, now that I've written all this ^

I might make another little entry here.... so

not -B-

picking apart the universe

2008-01-12T14:55:00.001-08:00

In conversation with a friend last night - well, really in monologue for the relevant portion - I reminded myself of this hobby of mine: pulling the universe apart to see what makes it tick. In a philosophical way i mean, and I think it was largely caffeine-induced. Even teas hit me pretty hard in the caffeine department, but I probably could have slept earlier than 3, which is when I did sleep.

I've realized though: part of the reason for human interaction, for me anyway, is to get a better idea of what makes another person tick. Getting behind whatever preconceptions you have about someone, and maybe even seeing behind the facades that everyone inevitably puts up for myriad reasons.

This arose out of talk about what it is to be in love with a person. How that is actually perceived versus what is actually going on there. Chemical things and social things and biological things.

It's all very complicated, really, but for me it's sort of a rejection of human perception as anything but extraneous noise. A ghost in a machine.

Which isn't something I believe so much as something I suspect. It could be true, but there's really no way for us to separate our perceptions from what is physically happening.

The interesting part about this talk was what it came down to, a centrally ironic point: that while I was talking about love as a somewhat mechanistic thing, engaged in for biological purposes and imbued with a difficult to understand magic that generally gets people - while I talked about this I was essentially doing the same thing. Putting love and human companionship/relationships in a box in order to make me feel like I'm not missing much.

It always comes down to that with me and the universe. I take some of the magic out of it, said my friend regarding this discussion, but then that can't eliminate the magic of experiencing something.

That is, I can perhaps remove the magic regarding what one believes about such things, but I can't change the fact that these things are interesting to experience.

It's like another thing that interests me: timing.

I notice all kinds of funny coincidences and symmetries of timing, but ultimately I believe them to be more or less incidental, not guided by any intelligence or anything. Just the way things run.

But I still see them and wonder.

That's what all of this comes down to. I don't believe in any gods, I don't believe in fate, I don't believe in magic, I don't believe in astrology.

But I do believe that the things we experience and perceive as any of these phenomena are, for lack of a better word, neat.

Almost to the point that once they've gone by, I no longer maintain much interest in them. Which might explain why I don't pay the slightest bit of attention to things like astrology. Maybe there's something there, but that doesn't mean anything to me because I don't want a zodiacal filter on my experiences.

Unfiltered experience is important to me. It's why I hate censorship, why I hate people trying to put a pretty picture of everything or ignore aspects of life. It's tied up with the notion that wthe world used to be a more 'innocent' place.

In some ways it's true: the public realm contained very few overt references to sex and other taboo subjects in certain periods and places, but some people seem to get the idea that these 'indecent' things weren't going on.

I guess it's just the people who don't want to think about it.

Which is an idea I can't really sympathize with. There are some things I don't discuss, at least in mixed company, but I don't think the idea of taboo really exists in my mind, only sometimes as a courtesy to others.

Basically: holiness excludes wholeness.

Many people would argue otherwise, I'm sure, but it's a matter of perspective. Being anti-magical thinking and generally seeing the world as a deterministic but complex place,
it's not hard to see why I see things this way.

My favorite part about topics like this is that there's no end to the potential recursion. That is: if the world can be explained in such a way, then my thoughts on the subject can be explained in the same way, and of course my thoughts about my thoughts, and further levels of meta-thought...

Fun, huh?

It always comes back to one point: is consciousness consciousness?

Humans, like other animals, are certainly aware of certain aspects of their environment, society, etc. And we also have an extreme degree of behavioral plasticity. We can learn to behave in many various ways, to the point of utter ridiculousness. Furthermore, we're extremely inventive, in an opportunistic way if not more significantly so.

I think you can even take someone who is quite stupid, and if you relax your world view a bit, you'll see something about them is actually kind of remarkable. No really, I mean it - you just have to look at it from a non-human perspective and even willful stupidity looks amazing in a logic-defying sort of way.

But the question was: are we actually sentient? And the spin I've had on it more recently is more like: how much does 'conscious' control of our minds actually impact upon the many unconscious processes we can't fully conceive of? (see all the branches of psychology, psychiatry, biology and cognitive science, among many other fields of inquiry).

People tend to talk about such things as if it's obvious that the conscious mind is distinct from the rest of the mind, but in what way? What I'm asking, specifically, is: does conscious thought in anyway work against the unconscious mind? Is it maybe just a feedback system, because there are environmental factors that the subconscious can't properly respond to? That, to me, would explain why most animals have varying capacities for this kind of function.

In any case though, I don't really think conscious thoughts are 'special' except that we have a certain level of access to them. We have invented things and modified the way we live in the world such that conscious thoughts have an expanded role: from 9-5 jobs to myspace to music and the entertainment industry. We're sort of far off from a primal society.

My 9-5 is incredibly abstract, since it involves putting notes I read from tech support into an organized tree structure in the appropriate place. The nearest primal analog might be a shaman, but the purpose is utterly different: I serve an abstract entity known as Microsoft corporation. Websites like myspace, viewed as a social function, are nothing new, but it's a whole new outlet to be full of yourself. A new venue. Then music and entertainment are not anything terribly new, but the form they've taken is transformed drastically from more humble, simple origins.

This is only loosely connected with what I was discussing. But I really wonder at what the role of it all, sort of why we seek out forms of stimulation like this.

If you do certain forms of meditation - bare attention (mindfulness) - the way to start is simply to observe your thoughts. Don't try and control them or anything. Then, after a time, you get the hang of how your thoughts behave, and you can use this to maintain a consistent meditation.

I've only done a little bit of that, but it's interesting to see how thoughts really behave. You can't really stop them and they have certain predictable patterns.

So for me, having watched this in my head, thoughts and the conscious mind don't seem that far removed from other biological phenomena with a more obvious physical basis. And of course, these are ultimately governed by physics at the smallest level. They transcend physics in some way because of their complexity, but that is what's at the basis of biological happenings.

Of course, the weird part is what is sometimes called the observer, which is sort of the conscious speck that can watch these thoughts passing through the mind. That's really the one bit that defies explanation: the ghost in the machine. I have possible explanations for it, but they either stray into superstition and metaphysics, or else they feel like incomplete mechanistic attempts to explain away something that cannot be mechanistically explained. Or maybe it just looks that way.

Maybe it only looks so special, for that matter.

But ti doesn't actually seem to do much. Hence the name 'observer'. It's the means of perception and not of action, though maybe it's the step between perceiving and reacting as well. Which may explain what it's for and why it's outside of conscious thought.

Actually, much of what seems to be happening in our minds could be explained by the fact that our brain is compartmentalized in its functions. You have different pieces of brain for different reasons; they do not form one solid unit, but rather a set of sub-units. It's broken down much like a computer's different functions are broken into different components, though it is more complicated, at this point. So why wouldn't it look like a couple of different kinds of streams of consciousness?

The problem I get into when I hit on topics like this is that the speculation never ends. It's enjoyable and imperfect and mysterious and wondrous, so I'm not too worried about having answers. I don't think it would make much difference anyway. Even if I understood it better, I would probably behave the same way.

I'm always curious though.

It's the same when it comes to people, friends. Spend time with them, and you always get a clearer picture of what's going on with them - well, maybe not always, but usually, by action or discussion, that's what happens. You kind of spiral inward toward a clearer understanding of others, but you can never really get to the center of it and actually understand fully.

I've generally been of the opinion that in order to fully understand someone, you would have to be them. It's like this paper on what it's like to be a bat. Interesting philosophical discussion: we can't even really imagine what a bat 'sees' via echolocation. It comes down to differences in experience and in perception. But anyway, you can get a decent idea of what it's like for someone. I suppose that's what empathy is all about: putting yourself in someone else's shoes. Of course if your feet are a different size you won't get the exact idea, but you can get close enough.

I guess that's where this ends, because it's got to end somewhere. =)

-B

Floundering

2008-01-06T00:17:00.000-08:00

Well, writing about the world as if society was a machine was interesting. Took me off of borderline depression, which is a terrible line to border on.

Self-motivation does seem to be the problem, none of my habits get me engaged enough in anythign truly interesting or important. It's not hard to do, really, but what a complicated set of histories and uncertainties I have to face when attempting to change my habits.

Like the thing I have to do in order to keep turning so that things can continue to progress as they currently do.

A certain Mr. Reznor has pleased me, the little 'story' if it may be so named fit right into the sound of his latest album release.

Honestly if I wasn't ever-so-mildly ill right now, it might be easier to just plain get out - it's got me a bit tired, a factor for which I also blame Kurosawa and a film started late. A throat-soring disease is kind of obnoxious, but I seem to have hit it hard on its first day.

It seems that people do have some voluntary immune control - it's why morale is important, fighting is important, when someone is fighting an illness. It affects how your body is working.

What I did was this: I induced a fever. I did it the first time last year, and I'm not sure it was the best move. But what I actually did was to tell my body: burn it.

Not really in words, but that's the attitude. It feels like attacking. The real idea is to sort of get a rabid anti-infection mindset, you might say, but none of this really describes what happened.

I felt sickness coming on, realized I wasn't just parched. Then I thought: no. This infection will not see any mercy. It sort of distracted me from working part of one afternoon, my mind was a bit feverish.

Anyway it hasn't progressed to much in the way of sniffling, but it's kind of stuck, and usually the sore throat lasts a few days. We'll see.

I actually dared to hope that I would avoid getting a cold entirely, this winter. Usually I get it once, last year I got it several times. I blame drinking a little too often, and a foreign environment in Germany.

This time I blame mainly just drinking and not sleeping on new year's, then not eating a thing till the next evening. Time flies when you're having fun, but where was my stomach?

Oh, it also didn't help that a co-worker is sick. Someone who sat nearby me was sick earlier this winter, but I was passed over entirely.

And people think veg*ns (* stands for either "a" or "etaria") are sickly. Hah. I'm shaking my fist, by the way.

Meddling kids...

Time to stop this and do something better. Maybe I'll write my project which I have been neglecting! Ever since I sketched out events...I'm not devoting enough thought to it.

Working during holiday weeks makes it really weird. Time goes to family or hanging out in a celebratory manner, then the other days I'm trying to put in a bit more work time due to the fact I'm new on contract and therefore not eligible to be paid for holidays without working.

Good thing I'm not strapped for cash or I'd be feeling it a little with my slightly smaller paychecks. Not actually complaining though, 30ish hours weeks are okay.

And off.

b

cogs of lore

2008-01-05T23:49:00.001-08:00

Amid the momentum of a million turning cogs, it was usually impossible for any one of them to simply stop.

Released from duty temporarily, each of these billions of cogs could nevertheless at times suddenly find itself wishing for a different sort of existence. Self-motivation was required, but often this was replaced with desperation or sheer necessity, and so often behavior had little to do with a cog's actual design or aspiration.

For cogs, they had an overabundance of thought capacity, but they rarely used it when it really counted. For instance, they could easily think about how to do the-thing-they-need-to-do-for-things-to-continue-developing-as-they-do,
-at-least-up-until-such-a-time-as-a-better-way-to-develop-them-is-found, but they weren't very good at thinking about how to get around having to do that sort of thing. Most of those that did were only thinking of ways to continue the need for cogs to behave in their current configuration: ways to have enough resources to have all the things they thought they wanted.

Most failed to realize that such desires merely encouraged the turning of other cogs to churn out the same results as efficiently as possible. This was already a standard practice, however: giving regard only to one's own turning rather than to how the things that touched one's own function were produced by other cogs - let alone by how these other cogs, themselves, turned.

In other words, cogs were scarcely aware of any turning that did not seem to directly impact them.

The functioning of cogs was hierarchical; it was divided up in a complicated way. Each division was further subdivided, and each subdivision was further broken up, compartmentalized and chained together in various ways.

The point was growth. The cogs, all together, formed a vast, hungry machine, which thrived on the production of cogs and on the turning of cogs in efficient ways. This machine had only one desire: to keep expanding itself as much as possible as quickly as possible.

There were exceptions to this machine's configuration and motive, but they were few enough to make no real difference. Most cogs which removed themselves from the machine permanently simply forced others to take their places.

The only way to change the machine was for cogs to change themselves individually; however it just so happened that cogs were only designed to interlock with a relatively small number of other cogs. This meant that they were barely able to grasp much of anything beyond their immediate functioning, as biased by the functioning of the cogs closest by.

So the deck was stacked against cogs even realizing their situation, and this was further worsened by the fact that many cogs benefited from the machine's current configuration, and therefore benefited from convincing other cogs to just go along with things. It was pretty easy to convince them that they needed things that, to any outside observer, would appear ridiculous.

This essentially meant that only a small number of cogs were even making the slightest effort toward real change.

The machine was so vast, that most individual voices were swallowed up by it. Despite being attributed with a sort of malice, the truth is that the machine was just a blind thing, the sum of its cogs and possessing no greater driving force than those basic forces turning each individual cog.

It had once been the case that cogs wore out and were replaced at such a rate that the machines - there were many machines in that time, which had not become interlinked - did not grow quickly, but very gradually.

This kept them more or less in harmony with the environs in which they existed, and it was easy for cogs to see a good portion of their entire machine.

This changed drastically once they found ways to prevent cogs from premature destruction. It might have happened anyway, but cogs grew and grew in number, until it became a vast behemoth in a surprisingly small number of years.

Even the old days had been ugly, and the modern times had not given birth to one entirely unified machine, but gears were locking into place and sizes and numbers were growing.

Though an end had always seemed to be in sight, now it was becoming a real possibility
that too many cogs would be made in order for their surrounding resources to sustain them.

And amid all the momentum of all those billions of cogs, it was becoming increasingly difficult for the machine to change its direction.

derailed

2007-12-29T20:46:00.000-08:00

Well it's been a nice week. Forget about summarizing it though.

I'm moderately annoyed at Zune (I got one of those for xmas). I was happy at first, then I tried using the software and got annoyed. Then I figured it out and got happy. Then it didn't implement my changes to song info and I got pissed again. It should really just work; no reason there should be any discrepancy between two different views of the files. Bah.

I had hoped to go do something today but never got around to it. Barely got to work around the house to, just managed laundry. If nothing else, the weather is terrible and it's comparatively comfortable here. Even if my only company is feline.

I made giant pancakes this morning. Chatted with my house mate, whom I offered the other two enormous pancakes. So that was nice.

Otherwise though, despite feeling okay, I'm kind of grumpy. I guess getting bored with how my life is running. Pretty much the same old, though always better. I just probably need to work on my ability to maintain human relationships...kind of important. But whatever.

The real problem is that I didn't make any effort to see if there was anything *to* do with anyone this weekend. Which had been my plan but I never tried. Oh well, I guess I get out as much as I put in, sometimes.

Guess I just need to get back on track.

there and back again

2007-12-22T21:51:00.000-08:00

Of course Tuesday is when my family actually has xmas dinner...that should have been obvious. And tonight I basically watched football, which generally means that there was nothing else to do and that's what was being watched. I'm happy for the clips of (hilariously edited for television) Kill Bill.

Oh well, could be worse. Plus I got Thai food for dinner. Sweet.

And one of my brothers (the one who told me to show up) didn't show up, anyway.
But no big deal.

I decided on the way back to drive slowly. 55 mph. Last Thursday I was behind someone going 55 mph and I asked aloud, "why are you going so slow?" This was in the far right lane, btw, so it wasn't actually any reason to be annoyed. Apparently I'm trying to understand that speed now. I also remarked yesterday how I was something of a zen driver, but that has since given way to comments and sarcasm.

Which is fun, but in every other way driving more alert and less emotionally involved is better for everyone. I guess it was the year in Germany (when I didn't drive) that changed that. Time to get back on the horse.

So maybe the zen freeway master is making a comeback, but I generally went for the speed limit before, rather than 55 mph. Back in the day.

The world looks a lot different at 55 mph, especially the freeway. Everyone is passing you. Unless you're a jerk and in any but the far right lane, anyway, in which case people should tailgate you and honk until you get over because forcing people to drive slowly only aggravates them and forces them to do things like get two lanes over to the right to pass you and three other cars and then zoom back over to get back in the lane you blocked.

Clearly I have strong feelings about proper lane-choice protocol. Even when I'm going the speed limit in the "Fast lane" - which I rarely stay in because it is a PASSING lane and should be left open when possible. Seems to be a little-known fact.

In heavy traffic of course, there's no point in a passing lane so then it's ok to hang out there.

But you also have to be more ready to allow traffic to merge at 55 mph. Merging is another of those sticking points for me. At 55 mph it happened to me twice tonight that I didn't properly merge, but merging traffic was exceptionally poor about it. Plus I was cruise-controlling, which I do a lot to make it easier on the footwork. Unfortunately I wasn't disengaging it in time to avoid double-carring the lane for a moment.

Anyhow, ordinarily I merge smoothly (barring idiocy) and more people should gain that ability, because few have it. And back when I was a zen road master, I was never caught off guard.

As for 55 mph, it slightly improves fuel economy and safety, and only takes a little bit longer, so maybe I will stay there for some time, even if it's kind of hard to not just speed up when people get up behind me.

More importanyl, maybe my zen driving abilities are returning. It requires a certain placidity and detachment that leaves you both alert and not prone to the mistakes of aggressive, non-defensive driving.

That reminds me: they're supposed to teach defensive driving, but many people's driving is just offensive.

And with that, it's laundry time.

Heh heh...

2007-12-22T02:27:00.001-08:00

So there I was, on the verge of jumping into bed, when I decided to write down a thought.

Basically, I applied some detective methodology to a common human phenomenon: sex.

What I'm talking about are three important criteria in determining whether someone is guilty of a crime. Means, Motive and Opportunity.

Means is how you do it. Everyone, except for people born or later made a certain way, has the means for sex.

Motive is also generally shared by all of humanity, but for a small number of people who seem to be completely uninterested in sex. Genetically speaking, this is probably a fluke.

Opportunity is therefore the crucial criterion. Not everybody gets any, so not everybody gets some.

The moral of the story is: once people get mean and motivated, chances are they'll be all over any opportunity to get off.

2007-12-22T00:55:00.000-08:00

It's actually been a strange week.

I ran over a little bird, which shouldn't happen for practical reasons and was too bad. Maybe it survived though.

I've been less productive in terms of what my actual job is at work, but mainly because I've been training a new guy. It's involving but that will change soon enough. But it's hard to train someone into independence on this kind of thing.

I also found out, after being moved to another floor, that I'm just a couple of rows over from a girl who went to my high school. In fact, we had the same art class once, in my junior year, so that was a cool little coincidence.

Then I've been having this stream-of-association engagement with someone I just met last weekend, and that's interesting. It's mostly just typing words. Very random. It also turns out that she works in Issaquah, despite living in Seattle. Funny how these things work out; I met her through a friend I met through my German language group.

It's like this loop that was not quite closed one way, but instead closed the other way. If that makes sense: a partial ring. With some kind of gap, and of course where it went depends on where it started.

I'm also happy about some cauliflower soup I made. I used (more or less) this recipe. There's a word/thing I don't often use. But I wasn't sure what to do with the most-of-a-head of cauliflower that was in my fridge.

And it's looking like I'll be waiting a few days to get to finishing it, due to plans that promise to occupy my dinners for a couple of days. Sweet.

I've also been finding food, which reminds me, I need to take some rolls out of my backpack.

It's easy to find food at Microsoft. People have meetings with food, or just bring it around, and then it gets left in the kitchens, and it's generally free to take. I guess I ranted about this and how wasteful people are =)

I relax veganism a bit when it comes to salvaged food: it's freegan. That is, nearly vegan, but since it's effectively saving garbage, it doesn't contribute any further to the various things I am vegan to avoid. I generally only take blatantly non-vegan food if it's clearly going to get thrown away or spoil.

Nothing that blatantly non-vegan. Just vegan stuff that may have a couple non-vegan ingredients. Like chipotle leftovers, or rolls, or such things. And usually not sweets, which I don't really need to bother with and are more markedly unhealthy.

I'm sure some people find the idea repulsive, finding food. To take a line from Penny Arcade, you don't find cake. Well, I sure do.

Oh and on the topic (I guess Istill haven't gotten off the topic since I got on it recently) I found a vegetarian restaurant in Issaquah! My friend Frank and I tried to see what there is, but we settled on a Pho place that had some veg options (teriyaki though, not soup, because I don't trust broth). I may have written about this already...my memory is obviously messing up!

Anyway the place is called Pabla, seems to be predominantly Indian/subcontinental (they list some diffetypes of cuisine). Found it via Happy Cow, which also told me of the ridiculous number of veg places in Seattle proper. 34 results or something, pretty sweet. I can't believe I've only been checking out the three places in the U-district. This calls for investigating, via taste bud.

So there's my vegan culinary zen for the day, ignoring my delicious soup. And, uh, it's tomorrow anyway.

I guess I had more to say, but I forgot it. Tomorrow (today) is "Christmas Dinner" with my family, but clearly it's not Christmas and the dinner will be takeout. I think it's funny, but I don't remember anymore if they plan on a dinner on Christmas day?

I leave the country for one year and I forget how these things work. Anyway I like the idea of talking about yule instead. I'm not actually pagan, but I like to talk about paganism, so it fits for me. And not neo-paganism, either - I 'm talking about sacrificing eight different animals and one man by hanging them from Ash trees in honor of Odin One-eye.

But anyway, I was headed for bed and I digress.

-B

Another cheery topic

2007-12-18T22:29:00.000-08:00

Muscular Dystrophy! Okay, it's not really something to get excited about, kind of the opposite.

I figure, having it, I should at least make people aware of it. So there you go, Wikipedia. There are lots of kinds; I have Becker's MD. So if you meet me, or if you've met me, that's what's going on with the cane and the medicine (which is for long-term preventative heart maintenance more than for problems I have now). Note that the disease is caused by a lack or deficiency of a certain structural protein, dystrophin (it has to be produced by muscle cells, typically a gene for dystrophin production is inactive or damaged, hence the problem).

On a related note, this also means I'm not über-skinny because I'm vegan. I have been vegan for 8 months, whereas I have been slight of build forever. And while I'm at it, eating animal protein, contrary to popular belief, does not make people spontaneously grow, unless they eat too much of it in which case they will grow rounder. This is true of food in general. Food from animals, though, is also useful for growing cancer and arterial plaque, but that's a whole other can of worms that I am not getting into here (primarily it's about this).

Not to talk down to anyone, but there is a serious gap in knowledge between health and PE classes, biology 101, and what people think about food and nutrition. Trouble is, because most people receive such huge amounts of protein from animal flesh, they are also taught that this is how you get protein (generally without much indication of what you need, unless you count the food guide pyramid, which closely resembles a marketing scheme of beef and dairy industries).

Oh well, so it is. I've learned ridiculous amounts about nutrition since becoming curious about veganism; it's almost surprising how many misconceptions are out there. My favorite is the notion that protein is hard to find; you'd think it wasn't present in significant quantities in beans, peas, lentils, wheat, spinach, rice, oats, soy, broccoli, peanut butter, yeast products (like marmite of vegemite, which I'm pretty fond of), and a host of other foods. Incidentally, these things I've listed make up a large portion of my diet--I've estimated my protein intake a couple of times before, but generally there's no point in thinking about it. Protein comes from...food.

Yet one thing people seem to realize is: that I eat pretty healthy. At work I tend to hit the salad bar if I buy a lunch (read: if I forget or run out of time to bring food), and a plate full of salad makes people think, "that's healthy eatin". Just kind of funny, how that works.

Of course, many people don't seem to believe you can survive vegan...I've even heard of people referring to it as "fasting" because there's no "Real" food in the diet. People are funny like that.

In fact the only nutrients a vegan diet is prone to deficiency in are: vitamin B12, iodine and calcium. Iodine is a problem in some places because soil iodine content varies greatly by region. I've actually been meaning to get some iodine because you can test yourself for deficiency by application of it to your skin.
B12 is produced only by microorganisms (cyanobecteria and apparently some algae--chlorella and lavers, it would seem). It's mainly present in animal products because they are supplemented with it, but natrually it is probably taken up from bacteria present on regular food types. It's also known that gut bacteria produce it, but how much of that is absorbed is unknown. My solution: vegemite (at the moment because I got my hands on it) and brewer's yeast.
Calcium is present in a number of vegetables and things, also not hard to come by, but a non-dairy drink like soy/hemp/rice milk is always fortified with it, as are a million other commercial products. Same goes for vitamin D, which is also produced by exposure to sunlight. Dietary intake is small, but again, they re-fortify (cow) milk after pasteurizing, and a million other products are fortified with it - it's important during the winter, especially in extreme northern or southern latitudes.

So that's veganism 101, I guess. It might also work for a nutrition 101, but this is clearly the vegan-oriented version. Plus I didn't say that dietary variety is rule #1. Now I have said it. It's a rule.

Anyway life doesn't suck because I have to explain my dietary choices (they're ethical with a philosopho-spirituo-emotional backing), or because I can't walk so well. And just for the record, I didn't actually become vegan because I care so much about animals and I'm a big bleeding heart - I surely love that stereotype though, you bet - though I do love animals, it so happens.
It's kind of the same way animal lovers can eat steak (most do) - it was other things that motivated me.

I probably outlined it already in this very blog, so bollocks to giving further rambling on that issue.

Past time for sleeping.

-B-

Wow

2007-12-15T20:59:00.000-08:00

Ever feel suddenly like your life has become something else?

Even if it was well after the changes had occurred?

That's me at the moment, I just noticed that I actually have a social life, even while pursuing my quiet hobby more than normal. It's a good change, even if it does mean I'm driving a lot more...maybe I can fix that, though.

Anyway I was out last night until this morning at 5, when I finally got home. My friend Reva had a birthday party and I met lots of her crazy friends, who are pretty awesome.

We were in this fairly empty place called Vito's (that's why it was chosen) until last call, then we wandered over to IHOP, where I found that they have more vegan options than I thought (not that 3 makes it a vegan breakfast destination, but at least I got food from a sort of scummy restaurant).

Which reminds me, the character of such a place at 3 AM is MUCH different from the way it is at 10 AM when families might show up.

So many desperately made-up girls and short skirts I have not seen collected in one place (excepting the clubs and bars from which they undoubtedly migrated). Funny how that goes.

Anyway I met a lot of people and it was fun, so whoo hoo.

Then I woke up at noon and managed to get myself ready to meet my friend Frank, who was in physics with me in college. We had lunch (for me this was breakfast) at a pho place (I got some tofu teriyaki because I didn't trust the pho broth) and he showed me Issaquah a bit. Especially useful is the QFC he pointed out that is not far from me--looks like I can actually buy groceries without going down the huge hill that separates me and this segment of suburbs from civilization.

So it was a quiet but good day, also talked to lots of people and have generally been in a good mood, so it was nice.

Next on my menu is trying to figure out what I'm going to get family members for Christmas. I kind of hate that I feel any pressure to do so, and I really don't know what to do. I kind of want to avoid the typical mega consumer rush to buy buy buy before d-day arrives. What a bunch of shit.

But then I could have done some planning in advance, in spite of my fairly busy schedule...

Oh well. I'll think of something in the next week+

Now to change gears a a bit, I have to rave about how I like freegan food. That's mostly vegan food that is saved from going to waste by a hungry vegan.

This happens when microsoft people have meetings and leave behind food like Chipotle--I raid it for tortillas, beans and rice, as well as salsa sometimes.

And it's kind of cool to do that (last time I brought home enough to last a few meals), but it's also disgusting that people are so willing to abandon food.

None of them are willing to take responsibility for ensuring that its eaten, and how you can have that sort of mindset actually perplexes me. There are people who barely scrape by with enough food to survive, and here these rather well-tended people at MS (and surely at other companies) are leaving it to spoil in break rooms and even in conference rooms.

That was the motherlode for me, some leftovers in a conference room that nobody claimed even after our own 30 minute meeting was over.

It just really makes me wonder how much stuff is actually going to waste, not just in a corporate situation but for individuals as well.

My mom, for instance, is kind of a forgetful shopper (she accidentally buys stuff she already has, sometimes), and has the tendency to stock up even on fresh things that won't last. And I know people throw away lots of bread and things like cheese, spoilt milk, etc etc.

I really hate throwing food away, and am not ashamed to pick it out of the garbage if necessary. Provided it's hygienic, anyway, and not covered in mold.

People might think it's cheap. They might think it's gross.

Well, I think letting perfectly good food go to waste is disgusting and stupid.

It costs money, it costs resources, and it really irks me to see good food go to waste, especially when it's so easy to prevent.

But so it is with most things in this world: people either don't care, or are unwilling to do what it takes, regardless of how easy it is. And if I was asking people to actually think a bit, maybe even plan a bit, well that's just as good as impossible.

It's the conundrum of collective action. It's defined as the sum of its parts, but so many people group-think themselves into believing that collection action should be defining them.

This is what happens when people say, "how can one person make a difference?" instead of "how is what I'm doing causing the problem?". In some respect it's true that just one person makes almost no difference among millions, but if you base your decision on the apparent "fact" that nobody else will do anything, then guess what: nobody will do anything until somebody does something!

One thing is just as obvious as this faulty logic, and also has the added benefit of being true: One person doing nothing (to reduce pollution, to prevent suffering, whatever you care about or recognize as a problem!) is less effective than one person doing something.

I'm certainly no optimist when it comes to the fate of humanity (and much other life on this planet), and this is precisely why. People are also coming more to expect pills to fix their problems rather than preventing them. The same mentality seems to dominate with issues of population as well. We're not starving, there's lots of room in this country, etc, therefore there is no problem - and if the problem comes, it will be fixed then, with a solution from the top down rather than the ground up - a quick-fix pill.

This is exactly how modern medicine works, despite the old adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I would say an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure, at least.

We are in a population crisis, though it doesn't necessarily look that way. The reason is that the way civilization is doing things now is still working, but where it is going can only be changed if nipped in the bud early. When we start realizing we can't feed the rate of growth of population/industry etc, it will be far too late. People will suffer more than they do now, and they will have their predecessors to blame (remember that we have enough resources to go around for the moment, yet many places in the world still have trouble getting fed).

So yeah, condoms people. Condoms. And please stop throwing away food!

This all sounds kind of doomsday, but actually I think that given the tendency of millions of people to act like a statistical system rather than a collection of individuals, the blindness of genes (which care only about their own reproduction heedless of the consequences), and the tendency of people to be governed by their instincts, at least in some matters (as biology/evolution mandate) - given all of those facts - we're not likely to swerve to avoid any impending apocalypse brought about by our numbers.

So I sort of hope that - for the sake of all living creatures - some magic solution comes along, because it's the only thing short of utter human self-destruction that will avert catastrophe.

Maybe it's my sci-fi fandom speaking, but I'm holding out for wormholes and spaceships.

Um, did I mention I'm actually in a good mood today? :)

If it makes you feel any better, in a few billion years the sun will burn out. It won't have mattered, then, what the fate of earth and humanity was; the earth will probably be destroyed by the expanding red giant sun as it begins to run out of nuclear fuel.

Don't worry, that's a long time from now. Whatever crisis is coming more immediately could be well after my lifetime, but then it could be quite soon. And now I think I sound like a Christian: coming as a thief in the night and all that. Jesus might come back tomorrow (or maybe in a million years from now) and then you'd be in big trouble, mister.

But the point is: it's possible that it is about to happen.

I think most of what I've written is good news though. You can make a difference in the world because "you" could be any and every person out there. It encourages me to have some integrity, have some consistency and practice what I preach, but I know still that I am not doing nearly enough. There are always improvements to be made; one step at a time.

A lot of the consequences of what we're doing now will only be seen in the future, but the important thing is that, right now, we do things to help rather than exacerbating the problem. Here I am enjoying the fruits of technology and modern convenience, when it is part of the problem.

Maybe, some day, things will be different.

b

Hooray

2007-12-13T22:45:00.000-08:00

Yo hablo otra vez español.

I'm happy about that, but my skill in the language is not good.

I hope to spend more time studying it and reviewing grammar, hopefully this will markedly improve my speech - but practicar, practicar, practicar...that's where it's at.

Hopefully this doesn't mess up my German, that's all I can say. I don't think it will, but the opposite has already been happening.

I also just wrote a poem in which I used the word asses. I'm happy about that, too. I actually composed it on the freeway on the way to Seattle tonight. Guess what it's about!

Oh, I'm also once more energetic and happy. Right in time too, because the first two days of this week were a drag, and today I needed to be able to train one of the new guys at work. Phew.

Funny thing - sitting three cubes over from me is a girl I had art class with in high school. I wore this tall girl looked very familiar, so I found where she was sitting and it turns out that, yes, she was who I thought she was. Not that the art class in question was any great memory to recall (she said in college she had one art prof who was worse, just one), but that was cool to find someone from high school in my work place.

Anyway, time that I stop all this nonsense and turn in for the night.

I'm posting too much, but...

2007-12-09T21:59:00.000-08:00

I've noticed that I've allowed myself to become too much a creature of stimulation.

Having fun, being entertained, those are good things to do sometimes, but especially for me, it's bad to fill every moment with something to do.

When I begin to habitually seek stimulation to the exclusion of contemplation, it's not good.

I think a lot of people have this problem. A lot of people who have too much time to think still nevertheless pass up useful, peaceful contemplation, because their mind stimulates itself for one reason or another; it's the inability to shut off thought that leads so often to insomnia.

I haven't been doing enough introspection, or thinking about things after they've happened in a neutral light. So I have far too much tension.

I haven't been meditating outside of once-weekly yoga. It's been showing.

Riding the bus a lot provided opportunity for this, but now I'm going to have to carve out space for it in my non-commuting life.

It's time I got back to doing something about it =)

On a less whiny note...

2007-12-09T12:58:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I first went to a vegan meetup at Araya's in the U-district. Great little vegan Thai place. I talked to a few people, ate good g\food. Didn't meet many people, but a few. It's funny how many of us at my table are involved with software companies.

Then I went to a party at Joe's. Joe is a very friendly guy I know from a German language group that meets weekly in the U-district (despite having graduated, I still wind up over there a lot). He lives in a house in Wallingford which is very well lived-in, and has an interesting paint job. It's also highly decorated for Christmas (or whichever holiday it happens to be).

Yesterday it was pretty tame compared to the usual, but still fun enough, even if I was the youngest person there for the last several hours (everyone else similarly aged was gone before me). That doesn't phase me too much anymore though, I work and socialize with a pretty wide age-range nowadays. Apparently at Thanksgiving they had 80 people in that house (amazingly) and the other parties get similarly full. It was nowhere near that crowded, especially by the time it was dark.

And as noted, some girls my age did randomly show up.

They were walking with a dog and stopped to look at Joe's house, which had some decorations on the porch and these two big snow globes in the yard. It was really random, but that happens around Joe because he'll pretty much invite anyone in or talk to anyone for any (or no) reason.

Anyway that's what yesterday was all about, despite last night's post it was a good time. We drank some Glühwein (German mulled wine with spices + sweetener) and actually a bluegrass band randomly showed up and played for a little while. They're called Dysfunction Junction and they're pretty good; they have a website www.seattlebluegrass.com and they're doing a show for charity this upcoming Friday, I believe. If you like bluegrass, check it out.

Anyway, time to take off.

-B

post-social depression

2007-12-08T23:43:00.000-08:00

It's because you can spend a day talking to and being around people, many of them new, and still barely feel like you've met anyone.

Don't get me wrong, I have a good time and enjoy myself, but then after I leave, I feel like I've got nothing.

I suppose it's to be expected that most people you meet won't have any exceptional connection to you, and there are only a few people you will really click with. That's why most people have a few particularly close friends; it all makes a lot of sense.

Then there are always teases, like I seem to have a good repoire with someone, then suddenly all chances of establishing even a foothold - for the sake of seeing if anything more significant can come out of a random meeting, say - seem to evaporate.

What the hell is that? And to be clear, I am talking about a girl here. Eye contact, smiling, immediately introduced herself to me, there were some common interests and at least I *thought* mutual attraction. But then before I even got a chance to propose a pretty casual something else - in this case going to a language group - it was very suddenly an without warning rebuffed and I was left with zero.

It's like this weird coincidence leads me to something then changes it's mind. Hey here you go OH NO NEVERMIND, THIS WASN'T FOR YOU I JUST THOUGHT I'D DANGLE IT IN FRONT OF YOU SO YOU COULD SEE IT THEN I WAS GONNA PULL IT AWAY AGAIN.

But seriously, was it something I said?

I have begun to think this might be my fate. Thanks a lot, universe.

Anyway I'm complaining about nothing. I'm only pessimistic about any future chances of meeting her again - she interested me enough to make me curious if there was an anything else there - because that's how these encounters seem to work, for me. If I meet someone one time (and it must happen randomly) I will never see them again. Plain and simple.

Of course, if somehow I find them on a site like facebook, I'd feel weird about approaching them that way, in most cases. So, meh. Who knows, based on my track record it was probably nothing anyway. If nothing else, I saw why many vegans date non-vegans (which I determined not to do just yesterday)--you just sort of see something in someone, even if you just met them. It defies rationalization.

It's not the end of the world or anything though if I was way off base. I actually found that girl since typing the above, to send her the Spanish language group link, because I had a hard time finding it before (this time, too). Social sites like facebook weird me out. A first name and knowing which city someone's in, and you can track them down. Kinda scary, too. I think it displays too much info for people who are in your network.

That seems like a good policy: info visible for people you have a connection to. But it's not enough of a connection for that to be...comfortable.

Anyway I take the middle of this post as evidence that my mind is, in fact, falling apart. Maybe the alcohol was a poor idea (but Glühwein is tasty and it was only one beer). I've been sober for hours already, but I think alcohol leaves me mildly crazy for a little while, hence my rare imbibement these days.

Anyway I need to give my mind a chance to unwind. I wonder if anyone reads my other blog. I just looked at it, and it's been so long since I was writing poems, I noticed I'm actually pretty good. I need to get back on that. In fact I think I'm going to write a poem about today, just because I want to write something and it won't quite fit my story (which is indeed novella length already, btw).

So, enough of my blathering.

-B-

And then and then nevermind.

2007-12-07T19:37:00.000-08:00

Another week.

That was fast.

Here's the deal though: I need to write.

That means less time here, I've got work to do.

I think the previous four sentences just mean that I don't have anything of note to say to the internet, today.

Actually, after retrieving a batch of cookies from the oven, maybe I do have something to write here.

The more I reflect on it, the more I realize that my year in Germany was kind of rough on me.

Oh, I knew it was going to be a bit tough, striking out on my own, more or less, into a foreign country. There are certainly some things (like being a student) that made it easier, but there was no small degree of uncertainty and stress involved in it.

Of course, it was fun too. But some of my actions, in retrospect, seem desperate.

I didn't do anything I seriously regret, but I have to wonder why I was sometimes so uptight about a few things. I guess I've always had trouble relaxing, but that doesn't seem like the whole of it.

Maybe I just haven't been living much lately, but since I've been back, nothing seems like it's driven me to the same degree of either annoyance or senselessness. Not often, anyway.

I guess it's only natural to come to few temporary altered states of consciousness (like getting pissed off) as well as silly mistakes one makes when not realizing certain things. Forgetting how important certain things in life are, and how unimportant others are.

Et cetera.

This is all very abstract, but then that's the way my mind works. But I guess the thing that is bugging me: a sense of loneliness, which I was largely ignoring while abroad.

Not to say I didn't act on it - I became very interested in a certain young lady (and to a lesser degree, others) and got burned for it, especially for my own carelessness in failing to realize that it wasn't exactly the best time to be seeking a romantic relationship.

Though I still think that if I had been sufficiently motivated, I might have stayed in Germany. It wouldn't have been easy maybe, but I bet I could have found a job. I did try for a couple in the end there, but my travel plans caught up to me before I managed to do anything of any use.

Not to say that maybe it wasn't for the best that I'm here now with my current job (it's sure going to make my debts disappear faster being in this country and working this job). I might have had a worse time than I'm having now, emotionally, too.

But the point is, I think my desire to get involved with someone (apart from the fact that I'd never really run into someone with whom I clicked in the way we did)

And that sort of desperation showed through again after my largely self-inflicted heartache
when it came to another relationship with a friend of mine. Only now does it look like the more-than-friends aspect that came into play there was at least partially a result of my desperation.

She would probably tell me that it was just what we were both interested in, or something, but for some reason I feel kind of weird about that situation.

Now what's getting to me is the same thing, and now that I'm working, I don't seem to meet as many new people - particularly, women I'm interested in dating. I'm very very uninterested in pursuing a relationship with someone who's not, at the bare minimum, a vegetarian. And so far I've met only one new vegan since coming back to this country.

That will change tomorrow because I'm going to a meetup of vegans, but I'll come to that point in a moment.

So, the fact that I have a nonexistent dating pool and now live on my own - actually, in a house with two couples (if you count my room mate Erin's boyfriend as being "here"; he doesn't live here) - puts me in a similar position to the one I was in while in Germany.

Except I'm meeting far fewer people (just as many vegans though, up till now - pretty much zero), though that never did much to relieve me of loneliness. Sometimes worsened it.

Unfortunately my natural tendency is to pretend none of this is affecting me. I did it in Germany, always telling myself as much as anyone else that I was fine, when really I could've used some loosening up. But maybe I'm doing better now, I honestly don't know. I seem to have pick up a bit after ending my four hours of daily commute, but that's just a matter of having more energy.

I'm still not using all of that energy.

ANYWAY, once more - the point of all this is that for the first time, I actually feel pressured to find someone. Which is, of course, ridiculous.

I guess there's nothing wrong with being interested in meeting new people of the female persuasion, but then maybe I'll stop feeling any worry about this at all, soon.

That's kind of my plan, actually: get over it. That's partially what venting here is for.

Funny that it's only now I get some of this perspective on Germany, but in the words of Kurt Vonnegut (he's dead as a doornail, btw): so it goes.

really quickly...

2007-11-29T22:22:00.001-08:00

Something I thought was funny and responded to on the news site (comment amy not be posted--probably not).

Regarding: Silliness in the Sudan

She was using the bear to teach them about animals? I guess I could understand people taking offense to it being called Mohamat if it were used to discuss actual bears:

Muhamad (family Ursidae) is a large mammal in the order Carnivora. Mohammed is classified as a caniform, or doglike carnivoran, with the pinnipeds being his closest living relatives...

Characteristics of Mohamet include a large body with stocky legs, a long snout, shaggy hair, plantigrade paws with five nonretractile claws, and a short tail...

Mahomat has been hunted since prehistoric times for his meat and fur. To this day, he plays a prominent role in the arts, mythology, and other cultural aspects of various human societies. In modern times, Mohammed's existence has been pressured through the encroachment of his habitat and the illegal trade of Mohammed and Mohammed parts...

I'd be offended if I had a religious sensibility to offend, or if I was indeed easier to offend, and someone called my religious icon the cousin of a seal. Or at least his stuffed namesake. (Also kudos to wikipedians, from whom I just jacked my word-substituted sentences AND who just taught me the Giant Panda has, in fact, been reclassified as a bear.)

For the record, I only disrespect the aspects of Islam that encourage closed-mindedness, infliction of suffering upon others, etc. Same as Christianity or any other religion or belief ro behavior etc, really: it takes all kinds. Some good, some bad, some ugly. (In other words: please don't put a Jihad on me and also I'm not sucking up to Muslims or Moslems, transliteration of Arabic be damned.)

And I'm thinking of Tuco on this one, but that doesn't mean there aren't some Clint Eastwoods floating around in whatever sociocultural subdivision you might look at.

Well, well, well, then. Well then then well then

2007-11-29T21:27:00.000-08:00

It's been a lengthy period of time since I last updated this very website.

So my dearly esteemed nonexistent readers, I would firstly like to inform you that I am yet in good health and of life am still quite full.

The endeavors of each day leave me spent, however the changes in the midst of which I find myself are indeed of a most beneficent nature.

Or so I tell myself.

I can't sleep well and I'm still pretty tired at the end of the day even without my commute, but it's not bad.

Why, just today things looked up a little! I began the day by locking my keys out of the car and falling down, hurting my ankle a bit. Then I got to work late and stayed until 7 even though the tool I need to work was out of order almost all day! This is the second technical error this week that's keeping me from doing the work I need to do...

Um, so things started looking up when I started making lentil soup.

Oh, I also got an appointment to get a tire replacement put on for Saturday. I guess that's good.

And now I'm sitting in the living room of the house where I'm renting a room because my room is empty. Carpet's getting changed tomorrow so we had to get some of the work done now. Everything but my bed is either in the closet or the living room.

Including me and my computer desk.

Oh yeah, I moved.

From Everett to Issaquah. Everett has been called a suburb of Seattle, but really it's the "major" "city" (in quotes because by any common standard it's neither) of Snohomish county. There's a harbor, paper mills, Boeing, even a small airport.

Issaquah is, in contrast, suburbia in all its shameless, SUV-laden glory.

Says the owner of yet another SUV. I sold my Jeep Cherokee to my family when I was in Europe. Then when I came back, I drove their jeeps (my old one and my parents' newer one).

Then I bought a Kia Sportage. In my defense: I need something with high ground clearance because otherwise standing up would be an enormous pain in the kiester. Also it gets better gas mileage than bigger SUVs.

Anyway: Issaquah. I'm happy to be closer to work, if nothing else. I endured a 2-hour commute for 5 weeks too many, and now I need only drive ten minutes to arrive at my workplace in comfort. Less than ten minutes.

Aside from that, the Sammamish Plateau/Issaquah Highlands area is a sprawling suburb saturated with two-car garage two-story homes. I'm sure there are loads of soccer moms and commuters and nannies (no offense to my housemate who is a nanny)--you get the picture.

At least the whole white picket fence thing is not a feature of Issaquah (for computer-oriented people: if there were white picket fences, it'd be a bug, not a feature).

I like my housemates and the house, and I like my car. It's a nice blue color and I'm pleased with its performance and condition. It's a 2000, making it 10 years newer than the car I bought some 6 or 7 years ago--in relative and absolute measurements, its newer.

So today was hell on wheels, but I re-re-rediscovered caffeine again. The last time I had stayed up all night in Eindhoven (the Netherlands) after missing the last train to elsewhere by minutes. this was likely a good thing.

I nursed a couple of tasty Belgian beers--scratch that, one was an Amstel, the other was some crazy 'Jupiter' or something from Belgium. Yum--until 4 am, when the bar closed, then I waited two and one-half hours until they opened the train station. I had expected one half-hour, but it was Sunday (and no special hours were posted, grrr Holland, grrr). Homme domme, to borrow the made-up word of my ex and her friends (it means "damn", sort of).

Anyway I nabbed some coffee (first time I ever drank the stuff, I think) from a machine cuz it was warm and I was tired and I had been waiting in the coold and fallen asleep for half an hour sitting on the concrete outside the station. I was homicidally cold after that. I might have hollowed out a person and used them as a husk to stay warm, like that Taun-taun in The Empire Strikes Back.

So when I arrived (through miraculous acts of navigation and memory I took a bus straight there--it had been some time and I had always been driven there. I intuited the right way to go based on what I could remember of streets where my ex, Anouk, lived. Felt like I was in the woods...incidentally the city is called 'den Bosch', which is short for 's Hertogenbosch'--all of this is approximate spelling, but it means "duke's forest".)

To finish the sentence that I began the last paragraph with: when I arrived at Anouk's place, I was still awake and had some energy (not lots). This lasted the whole day, which is surprising considering how little I had slept in the previous two weeks.

Such is the power of coffee to one who does not regularly partake.

Today (finally I come to it) I harnessed that power because I have not slept well this week (despite the same mattress and pillow--what's changed!?) and I had a crummy morning.
But Ididn't even need coffee--just some nice strong (straight) Earl Grey. Nothing of great quality, just what they give us free at Microsoft.

Hopefully I've already gone into that job. I think I did. Anyway, I read some things in German, sometimes, when systems are up and running.

Unlike today.

At least I had an interesting little chat about the benefits of plasma vs. particle-beam weapons with a coworker who is designing a game for a user game creation deal for X-box (sounds pretty cool). He's got some comic books hanging up in his cube, so he's all right by me.

This was as we were leaving.

So I guess that's my day and week, and now I'm done with this because I have this weird interest in watching Stargate: SG-1. For better or worse, this addiction is nearly exhaused because I'm in season 8 of 10.

Anyway, enough for now.

-B-

Workin' man

2007-11-07T21:58:00.000-08:00

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Good thing for weekends!

B out.

Ruts

2007-10-28T20:26:00.000-07:00

I don't know why, but most of my non-work hours have remained dedicated to watching Stargate SG-1.

I guess the only reason is how amusing the show can be, though some things about it aren't perfect. Better than, say, Star Trek, but not quite on par with Firefly or anything. I suppose it's comparable to Farscape in terms of general coolness and general style, although there's no danger of the two shows being confused...even if two main actors from Farscape turned up in the last bits of SG-1.

It'll be some time before I come across those episodes though; I'm halfway through season 6 out of 10. I estimate it'll be a couple of months to finish the show at my current rate.

It's terrible, I'm like a junkie. And there's been lots in this show I haven't even liked. Weird.

I'm actually kind of afraid for my life right now.

For one, while my daily four hours of commuting is only temporary, I'm concerned about what will happen when I finally do move out. I'm thinking I want to have my own place, but that could get kind of lonely. Knowing myself, I'm likely to hole up and not get out enough for my own good.

So maybe this just means I should give a lot of thought to location. Shouldn't be the sort of place where I'll be isolated, I suppose.

It's hard to give much thought at all to finding a place when I have no time though. Before I was working, it was almost pointless to look because I had no money (it'll still be a bit before I get paid). Now that I'm working and earning money, I'm desperate to eliminate my four hours plus of commuting, but I have no time during the week for doing this.

Paradox.

Although I could probably take a bit of time out of work to try arranging for this. It's what I'll have to do, that and use the weekends.

I guess life feels stagnant right now, but I'm thinking moving will help as far as leaving me with some energy after work. The commute saps me.

So far I'm still in good shape. Went to a Halloween party last night with a friend, had sort of an undercover agent thing going on. The earpiece made it hard to hear and the sunglasses made it hard to see, but the costume was effortless to assemble, so no complaints here.

We actually checked out another party after that, but it was a kind of crazy house party in the U-district. We didn't hang out long.

Hopefully staying out so late won't impact my sleep schedule. Here's to sleeping tonight and starting the work-week off without sleep deprivation!

-ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

who do you really work for!?

2007-10-22T20:50:00.000-07:00

So, I work at Microsoft now. But I don't work *for* Microsoft, technically. Officially I'm an employee of the recruiting firm, Volt. for a year, that is.

Whatever.

Today was my first day, and I spent nearly the entirety of it reading about how to do the job I will be doing. It's kind of redundant, because the principle is simple, but the guides I'm reading provide many details of how I'm supposed to do things.

Oh, the sad life of a PFA. That's Product Feedback Analyst. I categorize reports from tech support calls--or I will. I'll be handling the German reports, which means that I have to learn about every category. Since English-speakers are easier to come by than German-speakers, English PFAs tend to focus on specific areas.

Enough about work.

What's really killing me now is the commute. I never planned to stay in Everett while working in Issaquah, but temporarily that's what I'll be doing. I'm taking the bus, but at 2 hours each way that doesn't make it much less brutal. It is nevertheless much better than driving myself, in terms of fatigue, stress, money, environmental impact, etc.

It might have been a good idea to talk to my brother about staying with him in Bothell until I find a place, because his wife mentioned it last week; I never asked seriously. Depending on where she works, a carpool might actually help the commute a lot

In any case, I wish I had more energy and time to find an apartment. It was my first day, but I also had about 4 hours of sleep last night. It's hard to go to bed early, even if I know how early I have to wake up. No, correction: it's hard to fall asleep early, after not having to wake up for anything for so long.

But if my three weeks of bouncing around Europe have shown me anything, it's that I manage to keep on even when I've got nothing left.

Well, this week is going to be easier than that since I actually have a definite place to sleep. That's worth something.

Another nice thing: today the sky was beautiful, I commuted during sunrise and sunset. It was dark when I left home, light while at work, then again dark when I came back home.

Whatever else I might have already said about today, I am sure of this: I'm sleeping well tonight.

aimless crap of life

2007-10-05T23:04:00.000-07:00

Greetings loyal readers!

I bet you tune in to this blog as often as I update it!

Who'm I kidding? I might as well be typing to myself.

Not lots happening lately, but I've heard from another place about a job. Sounds like I have a decent chance of getting it, but it's a 1-year contract position with Micro$oft in Issaquah. So I have to decide if I really want to be stuck for that long, the job sounds like it's mostly routine, although it would require me to use my knowledge of German, which is good. Then Issaquah is kind of a commute from Everett, and I don't know if I'd want to live near there. If nothing else, it's closer to Seattle than Everett.

Kind of a dilemma. And I would be loathed by mac lovers and unix/linux folk AND work for a company that bans i-pods from their campus (which is ridiculous).

I've been reading a lot. First Neil Gaiman's Stardust, then from Philip K. Dick I read Ubik, Dr. Futurity, and I'm working on Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said right now. As always, crazy stuff. People in false realities within false realities, dragged into strange futures that also have impacted the past, and a man waking up to find he's been utterly forgotten and doesn't exist in any records or memories.

I love this man, PKD, dead or not.

Not much else to say. I really feel like I need to start getting out more and visiting some companies to look into job opportunities, it's probably one of the best ways to go about it. I just don't seem to have the nerve, and sometimes no time, being stuck at home till 11:30 or so most days.

Oh well, hopefully I'll bust through and start getting out there. Applying online is just not effective enough.

Today I drove my brother to the airport - light rail construction is mucking with traffic, and Seattle traffic was nasty. I stopped off in Seattle for, uh, all day, got back an hour ago. Hung out with a friend, Josh, in a bar, watched a movie, then came home. I also porked out on pita and hummus, then got some broccoli for the score. Hel yes.

I guess I'll be going to a concert next week, but I'm too tired to go through the ticking-buying process now, hopefully it won't sell out by tomorrow.

And I'm tired of typing for now!

-B-

Blue moon (once in a)

2007-09-20T11:13:00.000-07:00

Well, apparently I'm so boring that I've had nothing to write about.

I went sort of nuts with some books. It's a series of books about a wizard named Harry. No, not that Harry: it's called The Dresden Files (by Jim Butcher), the Harry in question is Harry Dresden, a wizard for hire in Chicago.

The premise alone sounds pretty bad-ass, but I've really enjoyed wolfing down all nine books. Only took me two weeks. It does a good job of mixing the fantasy elements with both the modern world and private investigator type stories (I realized last night I may enjoy this due to the unhealthy number of Hardy Boys books I read when I was a kid - I blame my older brother, who owned most of those books).

For most people this isn't a big deal, but I've been thinking about writing a story for a long tme now, and even made a 30 page attempt at it, but called it off because I realized there were things I needed to read and things I needed to figure out before I set about writing it. This idea also involves intersecting many mythical elements into the modern world.

Another book that does this is Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which I just finished last night. Gaiman is a pretty awesome dude, though the shift in styles from Dresden to American Gods was a bit of a shock. The latter felt too stiff for me after so much Dresden, but eventually I adjusted. I'm still going to avoid that in my own writing, where I can.

Nevertheless, it's an amazing book, and has a remarkable number of similarities to my own story idea as I had previously conceived it. Funny how that happens. Even some treatment of characters was a bit like I would have done. But I figured out what will set my ideas apart from that, and even have a clearer idea of the story now. I've (re)written 2 1/2 pages so far.

We'll see what that comes to. I just finished writing a ten-page ten-chapter short story I started ages ago, too, and soon it will be revised and made more seamless, because things change when you take 6 months to write a very short story. Maybe I'll post that online when I'm done.

I've also got another idea which is good for posting in blog format: Letters from the Future is the project's name, and I hope to get around to working on it, on occasion. It's not as ambitious as the other story, which promises to grow into a book, but it's more fun, and it's easier to do it in small pieces. That's all the detail I'll give though.

I've also found a German Stammtisch, that is sort of a meeting of German speakers, right in Seattle's U-District. I managed to miss the thing last Tuesday beause I had the day all wrong. I'd know it was Monday the previous day, and probably that the next was Wednesday, but for some reason it didn't dawn on me that it was Tuesday.

I've also been cooking and baking lots. Chicago-style pizza, apple pancakes (which I just ate for breakfast), blackberry bread, this other weird bread with ground almonds, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds...the list goes on.

And I suppose the most important thing I'm doing right now is looking for jobs. I've gotten a call from ZDC, a small company in Bellevue that makes an optics design program, ZEMAX. We'll see if I hear from them again, but I don't have my hopes up. I could do the job, but I'm sure someone else could do it with less of a learning curve.

I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel it feels like, but still always finding new places to look. What I really need is to decide exactly what I want to do. I was thinking renewable energy would be a great field to get into, but then I don't know overly much about it, and there aren't many such jobs.

I'll just have to keep looking and see what turns up.

That's all for now.

-B-

Funny...

2007-08-25T11:01:00.000-07:00

It's funny to see a familiar place with fresh eyes.

It really feels new, but at the same time I already know where everything is and how everything should work, how to get to a certain place, etc.

I have the feeling of being in a new country, but at the same time most things are familiar, and this is kind of relaxing. I know more or less what I can get away with, even if I've acquired habits based on what's okay in other countries as a visiting foreigner.

It's sort of the opposite kind of familiarity to what I found in England: it was just nice there that the language is the same (with some minor differences), since I new nothing about getting around there at first.

Veganism is already easier as well, just because English is so much easier. It's not that I was uncomfortable speaking in German, but some things were just harder to be sure about. I am keener to subtler meanings and certain assumptions that are made. In other words: being a native speaker is nice.

It's also a matter of comparison--I'm good at German, but it's so much harder to express new things in a foreign language, that English is a breeze by comparison. Which speaking to people wasn't always for me. But now it's pretty effortless.

Another thing I can't believe is the size of Mt. Ranier. My brain doesn't seem to accept it as real, this was especially so when I was closer to it on Thursday. The poem Tacoma in the other blog is about this.

Last night I drove my brother to Seattle for PAX (Penny Arcade Expo), and oddly enough all of my friends and my other brother who lives in the area seems to have become busy for at least this weekend. Except of course the friends with whom I planned to meet on Thursday, who are also leaving for grad school in different parts of the country.

Funny how that works, but I guess I've got all the time in the world now. A friend of mine back in Germany just reminded me about some stories I'd been working on, so that gives me something to do this weekend, since I'm taking it easy through the weekend, to recover before I start searching for a job and such.

So enough of blogging for now.

-B-

Epilogue

2007-08-24T10:09:00.000-07:00

Since my last post, I've been through 6 countries, but only one of them was new.

I moved on to England and spent a few days there. Didn't see that much really, but it was nice. Managed Stonehenge, but it took me a whole day to get there and back again. There I got to see people heckling us tourists, and I made some cynical pictures of rocks, sheep and tourists.

Then my friend Ed came to Leicester that night and I stayed out way too late. Finally I went to London and swung by a vegan festival, but on account of the previous late night, didn't have much time there - I was going to Harwich to catch an overnight ferry to Holland so I could get back to Germany in a decent amount of time. That was expensive but nice (I didn't ask about going without a cabin, but that was only the third time on my whole three-week trip that I paid for a bed). And I was back in Deutschland by the next evening.

It was nice to be back in Giessen, but I barely had time to take care of everything, pack, and leave. But there was no trouble with my flight although I missed the train back from Vancouver. This left me a bus, which got me home A-okay.

Then the next day I woke up fairly early to go visit friends of mine, Patty and Shannon, who are leaving for grad school soon, then I came home last night and slept. We went to the Glass Museum in Tacoma, which was neat, and I was impressed by the fact that there are drinking fountains there, because I don't believe I've seen one in Europe. We also had lunch and later a nice dinner, it was good to see those two.

Then we had dinner, I came home again, slept. For once in a long time it was pretty good sleep, and a lot of it.

Another thing I really can't believe is Mt. Ranier. It can't possibly exist, right? I never had a fresh perspective before having grown up in its shadow, but now I realize how impossibly high for a stand-alone mountain it is.

Unglaublich.

It's different here, and I notice many many things now, especially on my little Everett-to-Tacoma bus tour. The people are so much different it's kind of hard to adjust to - but I certainly like it, and feel much more comfortable dealing with people here. It's not just that it's my native tongue, it's also the fact that Germans are typically a bit stiffer and less relaxed. Guess I'll see how I react to this in the long run, but it really does make explaining and practicing veganism a bit easier (even if I have to re-learn the things I can and can't buy here).

I also have to re-learn Fahrenheit temperatures, because Centigrade makes more sense to me right now. And I have no concept of prices in American dollars, so I have to figure that out as well.

They talk sometimes about reverse culture shock, but I've been hit by so many cultures in the last month, several of which had languages which we nearly incomprehensible to me, that it barely phases me. Just makes me feel like a tourist.

Everything is new but familiar. Even my parents' house has changed a lot, things being rearranged, remodelled etc.

I think I'm giving myself through this weekend to relax and recuperate, then I'll have to get to work finding a job and taking care of bureaucracy and such for uni.

That's it for now, I'm sure I'll have plenty more to add though, including some more stories from Europe. I'll update the artsy blog as well.

-B-

From Holland

2007-08-13T03:23:00.000-07:00

I've been in 9 new countries now. I didn't spend much time in most of them, just a couple hours of sleep in Czechia (I hate saying "Czech Republic"all the time. There's Slovakia in English, so why not Czechia?). A day in Austria, a day in Switzerland, but in both of those countries the rail tour through the alps was kind of the point.

I visited Dijon, France for a bit, slept in their train station, then spent the next day getting out of the country. I succeeded, but got stuck south of here Saturday night, in Eindhoven, so I just idn't sleep (unless you count the half hour I fell asleep while sitting on the ground, that was much too cold!).

But yesterday I got to Anouk's place here in den Bosch, and even managed to find my way riht to her house. Which is kind of a feat of memory and deduction, since I hadn't been here that many times and never needed to know the way myself.

I think this means I've gotten good at travelling.

I chilled out yesterday, then slept 11 hours. Anouk's housemates also came back last night from a reggae festival, and Anouk had taken her parents to the airport early, so everyone was basically in the same boat.

Getting here was interesting, I saw some nice, unexpected scenery in Belgium, strange cliff formations. If you know what these countries are like, the areas of Flanders, Holland, northern Germany and France are like (if not, I'll tell you in a word: flat) you can imagine my surprise.

Belgium was a breeze, only had to change trains there once.

After I decided to go to Holland (while in Dijon and trying to figure out how to deal with all of the fully booked trains), I jumped on a train to Paris, which had been my plan in any case. Then I jumped a train that took me to some very small town, which turned out to be a mistake, since although it was on the border, there were scarcely any trains there and I had to wait for two hours.

I met a couple Germans who were in the same boat, although they had to wait for yet another train. The trains were heading back to a significant border city, Lille. The Germans were skeptical, but I found there a train to Liége, which is in Belgium, almost on the border. So I sat in that train all day, still dealing with French-speaking conductors.

It's not difficult though, if you know the drill well enough. The closest I've had to problems were in Poland, where they often hadn't seen a ticket like mine (because who goes to Poland?). They always accepted it though, despite stamping it a couple of times like a regular ticket. It might have been cool if I got everyone to stamp it, but it would also be very very full of stamps. Anyway: railroad conductors speak their own language of confused looks and uncertain acceptance, when it comes to Interrail passes.

I think I'm going to start posting some things I've written while underway. I especially like some poems about the Alps and being under Paris in the tubes (it was about any town though, really).

This stuff will be in my non-blog here.

More on this later...after it's done happening. Really I don't know who reads this, but I'm sure I'll have plenty of occasion to tell my stories in person when I am back home!

-B

P.S., in case it's not clear, I am basically living like a hobo, and it really is a lot of fun for me. This is anti-tourism. It has been my anti-vacation. Not about comfort, not about doing what I want, it has been about getting by, making interesing rail connections, meeting random people.

I find it an arduous but worthwhile experience, and I think it's really changed me, short as the time's been. It's the final layer on the finish I've been acquiring in Germany.

In simpler terms: Rock on =)

It's hot in here...

2007-08-08T08:20:00.000-07:00

Really, underground net cafes are not a good idea. No ventilation.

And a dozen computers generate a lot of heat.

Well, I had a very relaxing time at my friend's (parents') house, Polish hospitality mandated that I was fed constantly. Too much to be sustainable, but it was a nice contrast to the usual, for me. It was also very nice to get clean.

I've practically been living like a hobo, sometimes not even bothering to find lodgings. My night in Warsaw was amazing though. First time in a long time I diddn't stay up late because I was hanging out with a bunch of drunken bastards.

Instead I walked around looking for a place to stay (just missed the one vacancy in the whole damn town!), and talking about the meaning of life with a newly made friend. Reminded me of some important things I haven't been thinking about enough lately.

At about 2, after checking a half dozen hotels/hostels, we gave up and just hung out for a bit, then I went and waited at the train station.

Ill-advised? Yes.
Stressful? Only a bit.
Worth it? Absolutely.

Not that I'm going to stop learning, and continue to plan things so poorly (especially in the heavy season), but I'm glad for the experiences that have come out of this. With the exception of Ostersund in Sweden, because that was a non-interesting night of no lodgings.

After Warsaw I actually went up to my friend Agnieska's town too early, but I played billiards with her brother and cousin while she was busy with a hair appointment. It was fun, we were all about the same skill level despite the big age differences.

Enough about details though. I'm enjoying myself. Although computers are insisting that it's Tuesday? I can't figure out why Google thinks so. Odd. Anyway I guess that's it for now. Next stop is Vienna, but I won't stay there. Hopefully I can visit my friend in Budapest, it depends on if I can stay there. Else I'll be heading to France after a brief visit in Vienna! It'll be a long train ride, but I'll be seeing lots of nice areas, the Alps and all...hopefully with good views in places.

Anyway, time to get back to working on the problem of where I'm going to be sleeping in the forseeable future!

from Poland

2007-08-07T13:02:00.001-07:00

Oh the stories I have to tell...

Poland was stressful to start, but now quite nice.

No desire for a real entry...but I am alive!

so little time

2007-08-03T03:49:00.000-07:00

Under 11 minutes of my 90 left. No time to explain much!

Good thing no one reads this ;)

Here I am in Östersund, Sweden. Didn't plan to come here.

It feels like ages since I was in Giessen. That reminds me, note the name change of the blog, it fits much better now, since I'm no longer a student.

I went to Flensburg from Giessen, took all day. Hung out a bit there. Overnighted with some people I found on couchsurfing.com, awesome website.

Then I went to Trondheim, took 24 hours. Visited a friend I've known online for some time, it was fun. Spent as much time seeing the place - not a very big city - as I did watching a movie and playing halo, but it was nice that I got enough sleep.

Ah, then I came here. I wish I missed the train now, because now itäs going to take me longer to get to Copenhagen than it would have had I missed the train.

Whoops. I should have planned better, or adapted the plan instead of listening to the ticket booth guy. Unfortunately this town closes up shop so early, so I couldn't make a reservation (although I donät know if there was even space).

So I stayed here, didn't really sleep, but waited outside in the cold behind a couple of wooden palettes and sandy-gravel for when it snows. You can't stay inside this train station.

Apart from all that though, it's been a great trip, I just can't wait to get on the train in a few hours, where I will fall asleep with almost guaranteed 100% certainty. As for now, I guess I will hang out. No sense in buying more internet time.

I think my travel is done being planned though. I know basically when I'm goin where, which should help me to avoid repeating the mistake that left me in this sleep-deprived state!

Östersund is really not bad, but bars closed at midnight, so there was no place to just hang out all night, hence my sitting outside until this place opened again at 5. Got some beautiful pics of the sunrise though - the sun doesn't actually vanish entirely, the northern sky stays fairly bright, and the night is short.

Too bad I can't go see the midnight sun, but my path lies to the south! So many places to go, so little time, I just wonder how I'll be doing in a week from now. Probably about the same, I think!

Anyway 30 seconds left, time to sign out and post.

-B-

Finally...

2007-07-24T03:02:00.001-07:00

I guess I could stand to update here, I didn't realize it had been so long.

Whats happened since the last update? Exams, for one. And the last exams. The last exams of my college career. I am (unofficially) done with school! Forever!

Unless I do further degrees in the future--but for now, done.

I also have a lot to do in the next partial week that I'm here in Giessen. I've moved a lot of my things into my friend's old room, where it will stay in August as I rail around Europe for three weeks. A lot of other stuff must be gotten rid of or shipped home, so I can actually manage to carry my bags on the plane.

Unfortunately, I paid for the room before I made my travel plans, but at least it is useful.

My trip though! It will take me through Scandinavia, Poland, across the Alps then into France and Britain. It's a large undertaking and I'm hoping to visit a lot of people along the way. Should be fun.

I took a bit of a practice trip on the weekend to visit my friend Sagar in Stuttgart. We saw the city, which isn't all that nice, then came home the next day. We was me and Kevin; Sagar stayed there, as he is doing an internship there at IBM for some months.

I still have things to do, particularly today, since I forgot a few things yesterday--I slept late to recover from the trip, and the 5 hours I spent outside after I got back to Giessen. That also involved walking around this park for a time, trying to find some people.

That's all for now, time to get moving for the day.

-B-

All Quiet on the Western Front

2007-07-02T09:20:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm kind of surprised myself but I haven't had much time for writing--in this blog or on other creative projects--since my last entry.

I've changed the name of the blog minorly, but only because I learned the difference between the two plurals of the word "Wort" (which means word, perhaps unsurprisingly). Wörter is one--means words in the sense of individual words that you can count (for instance, a 500 word essay). Worte is the other--it means words in a more abstract way, as in words in general. Not necessarily the 23 Wörter you may have just said, just words in a non-countable way.

You'd think I would have learned this sooner, but maybe I did, and merely forgot.

Things are a little quiet, I was preoccupied with homework on the weekend, and I need to start working on exam preparations soon. I'm thinking I can get my exams down to a manageable number, by virtue of not having any requirements to fulfill whatsoever.

There's not much to report, really. The weather looks like it might be improving soon, which would be a nice change. It'd be great if it was nice about three weeks from now, when I'm done with exams.

Speaking of three weeks from now, I need to decide my travel plans for July and the end of August. I've begun tossing around ideas, but I think I'll have to solidify them quickly if I want travel to be affordable...or to happen at all.

Money isn't what's holding me back though, it's more the economy of my health that concerns me. Travel is rough, and it can hit me pretty hard if I'm not careful. I'd happily wander into whatever city I wanted to visit with whatever means of transport and walk all around without too much planning, were it not for the fact that I get tired so easily.

But I've managed so far, even Dublin, which was poorly planned AND at peak time (being St. Patrick's day, see the entry here.

In other news I invented a very fast, easy and healthy way to make a good meal.

All you need is bread/tortillas/pitas. To make a sandwich filling, you can basically dice up whatever vegetables (cucumber, carrot, tomatoes, cauliflower, etc) you want, mix them with vinegar, mustard, hot sauce, and maybe a handful of spices (possibly included minced, fresh garlic). I also add nutritional yeast to make it a bit more solid, but things like oat flakes (and whatever else will absorb liquids) also help with that.

I eat it typically on a tortilla (I've been making them myself lately) with
some fresh, whole lettuce leaves--without bothering to cook it. It's delicious!

That's it for now, I'm sure this entry is already long enough!

-B-