One

So people have been blathering about the USDA's new dietary horoscope. I punched in my info and I'm a Grain with Beans Rising, with Mars in Vegetables and the Moon in Mac'n'Cheez. I must take care to eat extra grain-fed beef during the warm seasons to keep my Monsanto-ADM AgraVedic dosha from becoming aggravated. Since I was born in the Year of the Rooster, each week I will try to eat precisely three servings of purple-aura veggies (parsnips, swiss chard, eggplant, portobello mushrooms, seaweed).

I feel healthier already.

Two

Jeanne at Body and Soul has yet another post that hits you like a brick:

[I]n Joseph Ratzinger, standing by and watching people being herded into death camps without saying a word, I'm afraid I recognize myself. Very afraid. For me, it's essential to reiterate that this is wrong because I need to acknowledge that it would be as wrong for me as it was for Ratzinger. It's far more important, really, than my saying that it's wrong to take pleasure in other people's pain. That's a sin I have no inclination toward, so condemning it is more judgment of someone else's character than honesty about my own.

But this I also know about myself: If I had made the choice Ratzinger made, I would feel guilty about it for the rest of my life. I would ask myself over and over again how I could have done such a thing, and I would not accept easy answers. I would spend the rest of my life trying to atone for that. I know my conscience would not let me tell myself that everyone did the same thing and I had no real choice. It would be no comfort to me to know that other people had done worse things. And certainly if I later had the power to stop other people who were fighting oppression from doing so, I could not, in good conscience, use my power in that way.

For me to say that it's fine that Joseph Ratzinger co-operated with evil, because few did better and some did much worse, would be to grant myself dispensation, to say that as long as I don't personally torture anybody, for instance, I don't need to object when my country tortures people.

This was written in reference to discussion on an earlier post about the contrast between Joseph Ratzinger and Oscar Romero, which I also found resonant.

Many

My actual dietary guideline - "eat a fuckton of vegetables" - is working nicely now that I've discovered the yummiest salad dressing in the entire universe. If you've ever needed charts of domestic violence rates broken down by gender, Alas, A Blog is the place to go. Liberalism (with respect to domestic violence laws and funding) does indeed save lives.

Meanwhile back at Pharyngula, a discussion about ginormous trilobites probes the important issue of whether or not various extinct arthropods would've been delicious. To what extent can we generalize from yummy crustaceans? I was hoping for some professional insight on the matter, and maybe a cladogram color-coded for tastiness; alas, it looks like I'll have to pioneer the phylogenetics of tastiness all by my lonesome. If you've ever eaten weird bugs, you should go over there and add to the growing pool of anecdotes data. Also, trilobite cookies!

I should not have had that third cup of coffee. I feel a little ill. Why am I drinking a diet coke with lunch? I must secretly like the idea that my heart will explode and my veins will leak and my eyeballs will shoot out the back of my head at any moment. Not to mention my stomach oscillating around like an amœba.

• PZ Myers (and some French scientists writing in Nature) on public outreach in the sciences. Does Friday Rock Blogging count?
• RIP, awesome compost pile. Damn. [via]
• Even Microsoft fears the wingnuts. Bastards. Another reason to be glad I bought a Mac. [via, via I forget]
• Dr. Crazy and Dr. Schwyzer both weigh in on the lives of female grad students. Depressing! La Lubu offers practical advice:
  

  The best, most effective trick I had---the one I still recommend? Get "older". You can't increase your actual age, of course, but listen to the stories of the old timers, and become a minor historian of your Local. Talk freely about "when you were a kid". Get real "old school" on 'em. This was an effective strategy for me (I look young, so verbal "aging" techniques helped me gain that critical respect); I recommend that to young male apprentices that are having a hard time being taken seriously, too.

  I've also had some luck invoking Caltech's reputation to get people (drillers, etc.) to take me seriously as a smart person, but it's never done much to allay my worries about the kinds of sexualization problems Hugo and Crazy are talking about, and I don't expect it to work in grad school, either. I suppose one could always desexualize oneself by gaining a lot of weight, but I doubt it's a worthwhile tradeoff.

  Remind me sometime to write about Hoity-Toity School privilege vs. male privilege, it's a potentially interesting parallel.

• Awww, a kitten.

Who'd'a thunk I'd need to work so much overtime just to quit my stupid job? The money is nice but I'd really rather have the time. Blah.

One

Is not the loneliest number.

Two

Is also not the loneliest number.

Many

Is the loneliest number.

• Electromagneticistes will appreciate this one: instant physics problem solutions.
• Another old white man assumes power. Film at 11.

• Women and anger:
  

  Our culture has a huge problem with women who do not appear to be happy every hour of the day and night. I believe this is magnified with mothers, who are not only supposed to be Happy Smiling People constantly by virtue of their gender but also by virtue of their glorious state, the role of mother, which is supposed to be JOY. Right? Unhappy mother=bad mother.

  Unfortunately this does not reflect reality, as Bernadine P Healy says in the Journal of Women's Health, Vol 7(4), pp. 393-394: ".... studies have shown that within family life, women with or without children are actually angrier than men. As children arrive, and their numbers increase, women's anger increases even more.... Anger management strategies for women are suggested including biological and rational responses to anger stimuli and turning free-floating anger to constructive purposes."

  [via]

• Translating Wal-Martese into English:
  

  Dear Fornicating Harlot,

  Shut up about the birth control already. Your comments and concerns are so very important to us, that we responded to your questions about our policies with an uninformative form letter.

  To get a copy in the original Wal-Martese, sign this petition.

• Eco-poverty - one of these days Christy will convert me to Rhetorical Deism:
  

  In addition to being a profoundly beautiful story, I love the theological implications of God creating the earth. At every stage, God blessed it and hallowed it and said that it was good – all the plants and trees and birds and fish and animals. It was all growing and running and singing and swimming, and God liked it all. Then God played in the dirt and blew us full of the breath of God and thought that we were the best thing ever. The deepest truth is not that we are wounded. The deepest truth is that we’re good. We tend to forget that about ourselves – and each other.

• And finally, a kitten.

This year, I'm actually happy about Daylight Savings Time: I've been waking up half an hour before my alarm, due to the excessive sunlight, and it's time for that to stop. So this morning I woke up abruptly to loud beeps, instead of gradually to the dawn; cha-CHING! As a result, I'm feeling all linky today.

Music!

The Air Force Wind Ensembles have free mp3s, including Johan de Meij's Lord of the Rings symphony (which I've been chasing for quite some time) and a whole buncha other stuff I remember (fondly or not) from high school. Thus far I've only really heard this stuff performed by the kind of band that was willing to have me as a member, it's nice to hear it done by professionals. Via MeFi.

Unions!

They're in trouble again, says Henry Farrell. This time, from a set of regulations designed to make it difficult for them to operate as a political force and behave more transparently, where "transparent" will certainly be taken by the current administration to mean "smushed to ineffectiveness by any means necessary". I find myself in partial agreement with some commentators that unions should be subject to extra scrutiny iff membership is a condition for employment, and regulations to that effect could plausibly be a good idea... but (1) I don't know enough about such wonky shit to judge yet and more importantly (2) what kind of fool trusts the Bush administration to act in good faith when regulating a classic stronghold of the opposing party?

Henry argues that [i]f blogs can organize a boycott against Sinclair Communications, and can play an important role in pushing back against efforts to destroy Social Security, then they can certainly do something to help fight against this. - which is a pretty fuckin' ginormous "if". I don't expect blogs to do more for the labor movement than they did for Kerry's campaign. In fact, I expect less, because the big-name liberal bloggers are still too busy puffing up their place in Social Security wonkdom to give labor issues more than the briefest of occasional nods.

What have I read recently on labor issues that hasn't filled me with cynicism and ennui? The story of the Coalition of Immolakee Workers. Operating without federal recognition, they organized (and won!) a boycott against Taco Bell, to get tomato suppliers to increase tomato-pickers' pay. Rad Geek People's Daily has a good account of the effort (with special coverage for libertarianistes). If The Powers That Be want to render conventional labor organizations irrelevant and ineffective, well, it behooves us to start looking at unconventional organizations.

Friends with blogs!

Tiny Purple Elephant is now one such, and with super fabulosity!

It's time to play a game! Where are all the earth science bloggers? Are geologists genetically inclined to dislike the nontechnical nature of the blogosphere? Or are we being discriminated against by our colleagues in physics and biology?

I combed teh Intarnet and found these (in no particular order):

• Andrew Frederiksen - Seismology, earth science, and society
• Sabine's Garden
• Walter Kessinger - Industry Seismology and Stuff
• RealClimate
• John Vidale - SeismoJournal
• Brian Balta - Left Thinking in a Right Lateral Shear Zone
• Our Take - science of the natural environment, intersection of science and public health and development, what distinguishes the perfect croissant
• David Wininger - Yuccacentric (defunct?)
• Martian Soil
• Rock Blog
• Ron Schott
• Dave Schumaker - Geology News
• Revolving Duck
• My Sediments Exactly
• Yorrike
• Schmerles - auf deutsch
• Wolverine Tom
• Mike Zoldak - a geographer specializing in geoinformatics, who never posts on it
• Irene - a geographer's photoblog (auf deutsch)
• Beth Bartel - live from antarctica and points elsewhere
• Andrew Alden - at about.com
• Zoltán Sylvester - webnotes of a skeptical east european
• Cogdogblog - Was Geologist, Now Technologist
• Twinkling Radiance
• Elizabeth - plans to do something like Geology and Geophysics, or English, or... something.
• Ellery Frahm
• Juan Penalosa
• Tarka Wilcox
• The Oil Drum - Peak oil production and sustainable growth
• Joe Gilbert - Just Another Day

And now there's like a billion LiveJournallers to sort through! I always forget about LiveJournal. But it has geophysics! And geology and geodynamics and hydrogeology. And probably, y'know, all that trendy geobio blah-de-blah and other specialties I'm not so interested in.

So that's the answer. All the earth science bloggers are on LiveJournal. But please do keep suggesting anomalies from the rest of the Internet...

One

From Emma Goldman at War on Error, Class, Part VIII on cultural signifiers and Sorting Hats:

So, really, the conundrum is that, on one hand, we want some kind of shorthand, some way of sorting people, and, arguably, some agreement on an assortment of dimensions of sorting. This isn't even necessarily a bad thing, although it certainly can be (e.g., when people who are hiring employees think of "someone who is like me" in terms of skin color or religion or genitalia, for example). On the other hand, restricting yourself to people who think and look and dress exactly like you is boring, tedious, and likely to lead to literal and figurative inbreeding of all sorts.

We can play the proffered Dichotomy Game and point out that between those two hands lies something entirely reasonable, but - oooh! Look! I've just burped up a piece of old cud!

I've long held a Goldilocks theory of difference: life (or any given aspect thereof) is best shared with people whose (relvant) views and experiences are not too similar, not too alien, but just the right amount of different. Though most Goldilocks statements pass without comment (they're practically tautologies, after all) this is one of the few that seems to provoke disagreement. Not on the cloistered end, but on the end where I feel conversation can degenerate into pointless conflict and talking past one another, disputes where neither party is ready to give up their side of the argument.

I don't think it's particularly respectful or honest of me to participate in a serious discussion if I'm unwilling to come out of it standing on one ear. Maybe in an ideal world we'd all be ready to give up our cherished beliefs at the drop of a hat, but... naw. I don't think that's how people do or should work. Does that make me close-minded?

Two

Rana on the historiography of the American frontier. Yeah, I was fed that line about the expansion of the West...

Many

Gah! Stupid futzy internet connection. A different selection of the Many than what was originally intended: ester on thigh high stockings, Steinn Sigurðsson with an acronym puzzle, and the new Get Your War On.

Without a radio for my morning drive, I can feel ignorance wrapping itself around my shoulders. It's very comforting.

However, not to be missed is that Mount St. Helens is at it again. Check the Volcano Cam, kids, and here are several pretty pictures from last night.

Additionally, there's a new Internet Crackpot of the Week, please get your shards of pottery rattling for Dan Winter and Sacred Geometry!

Only this wave music which makes self-similarity - (Golden Ratio) - allows compression to turn in to acceleration (Gravity). This explains the voltage called LIFE from gravity which fresh eggs, pine cones, and your HEART make. It also descibes for the first time WHY objects fall to the ground (charge has a way out thru light speed)- explaining for example why capacitors in a pine cone make gravity (eliminating for example the embarassing need to drive around in cars powered by dinosaurs farting).

Be sure to catch the Do You Have a Soul? Test - scroll down just below the scan from a German tabloid. I have two-elevenths of a soul.

Science says: I can't be expected to work in the afternoon, so there.

Part the First: Look at how I'm defined by the Infinite Teen Slang Generator!

yami
n. a female, particularly a nice one.
"Reggie, that yami is nice!"

Awwww.

Part the Second: How many times have I mentioned that I lived in a dorm with a coed naked hot tub? Clearly not enough to garner a significant audience, as is the way of the world - but surely once or twice. And the discussion of men and nipples in church made me think back on what made me comfortable, or not, as a potential ogle-ee.

It seems to me that there are four types:

1. Men who don't see women as full-fledged human beings.
2. Men who do manage to see women as human beings, but not as sexual beings, or have a classic virgin/whore dichotomy problem.
3. Men who see women as both human and sexual beings, but not at the same time. They're well-behaved, but sometimes shift from normal eye contact to a desperate staring contest. You can see the "oh shit I wasn't supposed to notice or feel anything now I'm stuck" whirling 'round - an admirable sentiment, perhaps, but still an awkward moment.
4. Men who are fun to be around in a coed naked hot tub.

Obviously you can cook the categories to apply to women, or same-sex ogling, or whatever other genders and sexualities you've been streaking campus with lately. The point is, I saw an awful lot of young men successfully move from category 3 to category 4; while I can't speak to their inner experiences, from the outside it just doesn't seem that difficult. Contrariwise, there was one notable instance of someone moving from utter misogyny, to at least a theoretical acceptance of women as both human and sexual (in practice it didn't always work out so well) - and clearly freaking the fuck out every step of the way.

Learning to accept the inevitable moments of sexual tension and let them pass, without getting all in a lather - it strikes me as the same thing that happens in meditation, letting your thoughts go and returning to your breath, again and again. Practice, isn't it?

Part the Third: I'm going to Seattle tonight. At this point I can safely say that I'll be leaving LA this summer/fall, driving north along the Pacific Coast until I hit grad school. How far north, exactly, I dunno - thus the going to Seattle - but if you're so inclined, now would be a good time to cast some pearls of grad-school-choosing wisdom.

Part the Fourth, while we're discussing my geography: I'm also planning a trip to Europe in July. The itinerary is Iceland - Norway with family, then Norway - Denmark - ??? - London? doing the backpacking thing with my sister. Any readers out there willing to show two delightful young tourists a good time?