T3h Blog

I spent my New Year’s Eve Contra dancing in Sacramento.  At some point, I realized that I was being followed/stalked by a woman.  She first stood near me, and talked into space at no one in particular, I suppose hoping that I would listen and comment.  Since I didn’t hear what she was saying, I paid no heed.  Some time later, I got cornered near the snacks, coincidentally by the stack of progressive newspapers.  She made sure to shout this time, though no more in my direction than before.  I ignored her a couple of times, and started looking at the headlines of the newspapers.  She shouted something about gun control.  I finally realized she was trying to talk to me.  See, I had suspected as much before, but I’m not used to people talking to me.  Once she had my attention, she announced her status as a conservative lesbian.  I thought it was rather oxymoronic.  When I said as much, she said “What, have you been going to college?  Who tells you this stuff?”  Hmmm…  Prop 8, anyone?  It’s not news that conservatism and homosexuality do not go hand in hand these days (or ever have).  I asked her if she ever wanted equal civil rights to heterosexuals.  The conversation went nowhere.  Never mind that she’s been following me (a guy) around looking for a dance.  I dismissed her as confused, and went on my merry way, talking to other people so that she’d leave me alone.  She never got her dance.

Now that I’m home, I decided to search up this funny sounding term, “conservative lesbianism.”  There are at least a few things out there, but recent headlines are intermingled with stuff at least as far back as 2001.  Mostly it’s the idea that these lesbians adhere to conservatism in the true sense – minimal government, and certainly minimal government interference in personal life.  Since when, though, has the conservative element in this country actually adhered to those ideals?  Certainly not recently.  Why on earth would any lesbian or gay person currently identify with a party that is actively working to deny them civil rights, and whose religious core condemns them as hell-bound?  What’s more important to you – your guns, or your dignity?

These people must wake up and get their priorities straight.  The Republican party has no respect for them, and the Republicans have clearly shown no intention of minimizing government’s monitoring and control of people’s decisions.  Until there is true conservatism in government, without the interference of religion and corporate greed, any conservative gay person would do well to lose that identity and focus on preserving their rights as equals.

do people find it necessary to forcefully and loudly inform me that I look like a retard/nerd while riding my bicycle?  Honestly, there are better things to shout out your car window or from the driveway of your frat house – even if I really do look like a retarded nerd (which I doubt).

I’ve been reading Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” lately.  It’s a pretty biased book, but I think rightly so.  We are fed a ton of information growing up that gives us a ridiculously heroic, rosy view of anyone leading to the development of America, and only much later are we given a (cursory, wholly inadequate) treatment of how exploitive those founding fathers/settlers/whatever actually were.  I’m not entirely qualified to ponder these things, given that I’m not much of a historian, but it seems like throughout time, government has served little purpose other than to ensure the continued ability of the wealthy to remain wealthy or increase their wealth, while pacifying the poor just enough to keep them quiet.  Yes, there are success stories, but the American Dream is little more than an instrument of control (an anti-riot idea) to keep the poor from revolting against the upper class that has absolutely no intent of sharing its exorbitant wealth.  How is it in any way true that hard work will see you through, when single mothers are working 4 jobs just to get by, and investment bankers are driving Ferrari’s between multimillion dollar estates just for shuffling other people’s money around?  It’s a farce.  CEO’s in Fortune 500 companies make nearly 500 times the average worker in their company.  The wealthiest people in the nation probably do the least productive work of anyone in the nation.  Now Obama is promising hope and change.  I really want to believe him, but the evidence is strongly stacked against him.  This is a nation that belongs to the wealthy and their corporations, and I really think it’s beyond any president to change that.  The people of the nation must collectively refuse to continue to be manipulated and claim the fair existence that rightfully belongs to all humans.

A nightmare consists of a situation at school.  Namely, that your coworkers have been unable to access their data on the computer you built, so they intend to disassemble it.  Said computer is something you take pride in, and you don’t want to see your baby dismantled.

Yeah, that’s actually a dream that I had.

Last night I was (obviously from my last post) very drunk – and this is the best story I’ve had in quite a while.  I locked myself out of my dorm room!  I wandered around the building for a while, tried to force the door open, but ended up finding a stash of extra blankets and passing out on a couch in the lounge area.  Very funny, and a great introduction to a science meeting!

Driving to San Francisco with Sarah, we came across a sign for “Cutting Way” or something like that (may have been road or blvd). My comment: “That’s where all the depressed people live.” Sarah gave me 2 demerits: one for the joke, and another for laughing at it so much.  I can’t help it!  I’m just dark-humored.  Blame my parents, who gave me the Far Side comics pretty much as soon as I could read. 

It’s been a windy winter, and my laziness (to drive to school, rather than ride) almost cost my dear ship some major cosmetic damage.  I can’t help but wonder if the tree fell on him, and there was a mighty shivering of timbers, and Roger emerged victorious.  I hope that’s the way it worked.

As an aside, the picture comes from a new camera – a Canon SD870IS.  I bought it to mitigate some of my back problems from lugging around too much weight.  It is by no means a substitute for the 20D (8 bit color depth on the 870IS vs 16 bit color on the 20D- that’s a factor of 256^3 more possible colors in an image on the 20D), but it is good for things like this documentation of Roger’s victory over nature. 

While gathering data from my chem lab, which I’ve all but moved out of for anything except chemistry lab work, I needed a USB drive to pull some data from a computer.  Unfortunately, I left mine at home.  I figure no big deal, I’ll see if anyone else has one.  Nobody else is in lab.  I opened a couple of drawers, found one, and went to put the data on it.  The one I found happened to belong to the labmate that I get along with the least.  Of course it corrupted the damn thing.  It trashed the folder I had tried to copy, and then trashed an existing folder on the drive.  I managed to recover everything, but some of his files don’t have their names any more.  Just one more thing to add to the stress between us.  Thanks a lot, bastard-ass technology.

IMG 9802, originally uploaded by msarahan.

This one is probably sitting on Jim Hansen’s desk right now. He’s the NASA person who’s been publicizing global warming data for many years. My dad recognized the resemblance to Earth, and vaguely suggested giving it to Jim, since he was going to see him on Wed, 10/24. I thought it was a great idea, and that it would be an honor if Jim would accept it. I hear that Jim was touched, so I guess it went well.

So I’ve spent the summer volunteering 5 hours per week at the UC Davis Craft Center. It has probably been the most important find here in Davis for me. It’s a perfect escape from lab when things get absolutely ridiculously boring or stupid, as they often do. Check out some of the cool stuff I’ve made so far: