My Day of Rest

Instead of my usual Sunday rant, I am going to be grateful today.

I feel like I have been chewed up and spit out after over 2500 hits in two days because I posted about something (again) that I believe in as an American and supporter of our president and the diversity in our country.

I had a lot of people try to shut me up this week. Got threats against my person, my [insert family member], my cat.

Come on, how fucking childish do you have to be to wish that someone's cat dies?

So here's what I am grateful for:

Tom: he has been unbelievably supportive. He wanted me to close shop after the attacks this week. He hated seeing me all worked up over people who were mean, violent, threatening and really just downright hateful.

He took me out on Friday for an awesome night. We had a great dinner at a local Korean place. Incredible.

Family: for those of you who know me, I have a great mom. She has been there with me through thick and thin. The best and worst times of my life. Not to say the rest of my large family isn't awesome, too, but she has really shown me what it means to be a good mother as well as a good person.

Friends: I have been honored to know so many people in my life that I call "friend". I am also immensely grateful for those whom I've met in the three months since I started blogging. You have given me a very tangible web of support here online that makes me a stronger and better person for knowing you. Thanks. I really can't say it often enough.

Our cat: she's alive and well and acting like a ten year old cat (instead of the 16 year old cat she is). She's gained weight, and the latest flare up of her CRF is stabilized. We still get a little more time with our little catter. We love her.

Health: I have to pause and remember how good my current health is, especially this time of year each year. I am a cancer survivor and was diagnosed 12 years ago next month. Still kickin' and still tickin' in complete remission.

Endurance: I am on the cusp of attaining a goal I set for myself eight years ago. I am about two months from my Ph.D. and cannot believe for the first time in those eight years... I'm not going to be a student anymore! I will always be a student in a certain sense, but the official schooling is coming to a great close.

Hope: Yeah, this one's a tough one. Because when I see the way the world it is, and how people choose to treat each other, this is a hard one. I hate my hope and fear the loss of it at the same time. But it has never left me, despite my many efforts to shake it off. It is a constant presence in my life whether it is just a whisper or a shout. It is always there. Telling me that change and time are gifts not to be squandered.

We only get this moment. Right now. And right now I am grateful for all of you.

Happy Sunday, all.

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Left to my own devices

Tom's off to Berkeley for the next few days to meet with his collaborator on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) project.

He's also getting ready to do a Beryllium-10 run on some ice core samples from Antarctica and is working on his application to go to our seventh and least visited continent next fall for the drilling of a new core.

I am enjoying my hiatus from the froth and spittle of my usual posts for now and taking a nice breather from pulse-pounding blog patrolling for conservative miscreants with lies to peddle.

I am hoping to have a meatier post for tomorrow, but still something on the lighter side, likely without nudity (apologies for this one below--- kind of :).

Hope you all have a great hump day.

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Warning: DO NOT drink a beverage while reading this

First, something serious.
If you want to do something about Flush Limberger, there's an online petition to sign here.


Tom sent me this link yesterday right before he had to teach. (We got loads of snow and I was hoping like a third grader they would cancel class so he'd get home before 10:30PM-- he's teaching Astronomy again this semester so they have to hold class at night. Stupid stars keeping my husband out so late :)

According to his email subject line (and I quote directly): "Funniest sh*t I've read in a while"

I love Tom.

Enjoy:

Council and housing association complaints

The following are real extracts from actual complaint letters sent to various councils and housing associations throughout the UK.

I want some repairs done to my cooker as it has backfired and burnt my knob off.

I wish to complain that my father hurt his ankle very badly when he put his foot in the hole in his back passage, and their 18 year old son is continually banging his balls against my fence.

I wish to report that tiles are missing from the outside toilet roof. I think it was bad wind the other night that blew them off.

My lavatory seat is cracked, where do I stand.

I am writing on behalf of my sink, which is coming away from the wall.

Will you please send someone to mend the garden path. My wife tripped and fell on it yesterday and now she is pregnant. We are getting married in September and we would like it in the garden before we move into the house.

I request permission to remove my drawers in the kitchen.

50% of the walls are damp, 50% have crumbling plaster and the rest are plain filthy.

I am still having problems with smoke in my new drawers.

The toilet is blocked and we cannot bath the children until it is cleared.

Will you please send a man to look at my water, it is a funny colour and not fit to drink.

Our lavatory seat is broken in half and is now in three pieces.

Would you please send a man to repair my spout. I am an old age pensioner and need it badly.

I want to complain about the farmer across the road; every morning at 6am his cock wakes me up, and its now getting too much for me.

The man next door has a large erection in the back garden, which is unsightly and dangerous.

Our kitchen floor is damp. We have two children and would like a third so please send someone round to do something about it.

I am a single woman living in a downstairs flat and would you please do something about the noise made by the man I have on top of me every night.

Please send a man with the right tool to finish the job and satisfy my wife.

I have had the clerk of the works down on the floor six times but I still have no satisfaction.

This is to let you know that our lavatory seat is broken and we can’t get BBC2.

My bush is really overgrown round the front and my back passage has fungus growing in it,

… and he’s got this huge tool that vibrates the whole house and I just can't take it anymore.

... that is his excuse for dogs mess that I find hard to swallow.

Happy, Happy Hump Day

PS: As if we needed another reason to be proud of our new prez, The Equal Pay for Equal Work bill will pass today. Tomorrow, it will be the first bill signed by our new president. It is indeed a new day in America!

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Dancing with Sheeple

Sheeple: People who follow along with a group think mentality without questioning--anything.

My husband surprised me yesterday evening by driving down to where I am house sitting. It was very sweet. We had a great dinner and watched Burn After Reading. Soooo not what I expected (the movie and, well, Tom, too), but good.

The title for this post was provided by Tom. He and I spent hours last night talking about the state of our country, the internet and how information and meaning are made and shared online. The technical term for it in my field is "epistemology" but the medium of the internet and the personnas people adopt when online has complicated things a bit.

See, I've come across quite a few people online lately that:

1. Think intellectualism=elitism.

2. Liberal=dirty, bad, evil, devil-worshippers

3. Science=Satan

The fact that so many people now have access to information online has changed people's perceptions of it. Notice, I used the word "information".

Information does not equal knowledge or truth.

Knowledge is not something that is locatable. It is sometimes found in books, or in online, peer-reviewed journals, but knowledge is a very personal process. And an active one at that.

Meaning has changed quite a bit, too.

But what Tom and I discussed until 2AM was how rigid some people are in their thinking, how LITERAL.

Point, skyewriter, get to the point. (Sorry, I'm on a bit of a tear today.)

Okay, so what it comes down to is this: I don't tend to hang out a lot with people who don't look at the world the way I do. I think people should have freedom of speech. They are entitled to own a gun (with proper licensing and background checks). People are allowed to believe/not believe in a higher being in whatever way they fancy. Everyone is created equal and therefore under our Constitution should be afforded each and every civil liberty regardless of faith, sexual orientation, gender, or race. If someone wants to have consensual, greased hog chasing in the privacy of their own home, they are allowed. If people want to have nekkid poker parties in the privacy of their own home, they are allowed. If someone wants to put their kitchen table in the living room instead of in their kitchen, by gum, they are allowed to do it. And in the last (almost) three months since I started this blog I have met many people who see the world very similarly to me.

However, I have also met many who see the world so differently I think they must be living on another planet. Academia is a space of debate and discussion. People are okay when they disagree.

Yet, my online experiences recently have confronted me with people with whom I cannot have a reasoned argument without them spouting scripture at me. In my mind, that's the cue, "Let's dance. It's on. You've been served."

And man, do they get pissed when you don't agree.

I find at times it's hard to be civil to folks who attack me; I'm learning, but it's a challenge when someone's every response is:

"It's in the Bible." ....................."It's in the Bible."................. "It's in the Bible."

Hey, guess what, there's lots of homosexuals in this country who live completely fulfilling and productive lives and nope; that's not in the Bible, but neither are the internet, cell phones, or x-ray machines. And the Earth is 4.5 billion years old. People have rocks and stuff like fossils to prove it.

I am very unused to this, because in most every field, the Bible is not taken as a reliable source for knowledge. I can point them to journal articles or books to verify my position, but time and time again I find sheeple retreating behind the Bible as if it is some mystical trump card over every other position in an argument.

Too, these folks aren't even OPEN to the notion that there is truth outside that book that really contradicts it. Empirically and everything.

So, what's so bad about this?

Well, there is a growing "movement" in this country where fundies and literalists are talking about HOLY WAR. Yes, you read that right. On blogs and websites using SOLELY the Bible as the means for their rationale, people are talking about gathering troops, joining the resistance, buying all the guns you can, and the organizations are looking more and more militant.

Staunch fundamentalists (Tom found a recent study and as soon as he emails the citation to me I'll post it here) are unable to think abstractly. They would rather be told what to do by someone who is like them, than to have to think for themselves (i.e., sheeple). This is what I think I've been witnessing on a scale I've never seen before. And frankly, it scares the crap out of me. I'm worried we have in our midst crackpots along the lines of Tim McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski, or David Koresh who are plotting terrible things against their fellow citizens and their country.

I don't think everyone has to have a college education to be smart. I don't think everyone with a degree in higher education is automatically a genius, either.

But I do think this is a secular society and it was founded on secular principles (Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11 for any RWFN who want to pick a fight; check out the Library of Congress American newspaper collection from that time, too. 100% governmental and social consensus).

Government is there to protect us in times of war, manage the common services and infrastructure (schools, roads, police stations, firehouses, etc.), and deliver our mail. That's it.

As far as everything else goes, the government needs to butt out.

To borrow a phrase from that gem, chocked full o' wisdom film, Dirty Dancing (yes, I'm gonna do it):

"This is my dance space.... this is your dance space."

If you don't like my dancing, don't dance with me. If you don't know how to dance stay the hell off the floor.

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