Liz's Bloglet - Sunday 29 April 2007

Three best friends: one became an Orthodox rabbi, one became an Orthodox Muslim, and one became famous.
The stares surprised me. My brother Charlie, an Orthodox rabbi, wears a kippah, a Jewish head covering, and tallis fringes that hang out of his shirt. His friend Sedar, an Orthodox Muslim, wears a knitted skullcap and a qamis, a long tunic that touches his toes. Charlie is white; Sedar is black.

Though they’ve been friends for 23 years, I had never ventured out with them until last summer, when the three of us went to a restaurant in Rockville. Double takes from other diners turned into stares.

“It’s like we’re two sexy women walking down the street,” Sedar said. _
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08:13:46 AM, Sunday 29 April 2007

I had a pleasant morning rehearsal followed by afternoon spent at the local little science museum with my mentees. I came home to find that poor Tuxedo had rolled around in motor oil, again. Luckily, he is the most patient gentle cat ever, so I when this happens I put a couple inches of very hot water in the tub, then plop him in. I rub his head with one hand while splashing the dirty parts, soaping him up with extra mild soap (which also happens to be all my skin can tolerate),then splashing the dirty parts again until he's clean. Now he is sitting in the sun attempting to lick himself dry.

I have bathed other cats who have drawn blood, but Tux just sits there and waits for it to be over. I think it's because he is so fastidious anyway and he somehow knows that he comes out of this experience clean. _
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04:45:19 PM, Saturday 28 April 2007

Female Boss Walking Around Like She Owns The Place _
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06:38:10 PM, Friday 27 April 2007

_
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06:37:56 PM, Friday 27 April 2007

I have passed my prelims and I'm now a doctoral candidate! _
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01:27:38 PM, Friday 27 April 2007

Happy Birthday, Remi!

I love you and we really will celebrate when all this mess is over. _
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07:19:18 AM, Friday 27 April 2007

These endless days are finally ending in a blaze.

I wish I had an author more high-brow than Joss Whedon to quote, but my brain is just too full. _
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07:17:53 AM, Friday 27 April 2007

I don't remember enough Greek to know if this is a fair exegesis, but the reasoning here makes more sense of an odd story than any other I've seen: Jesus affirmed a gay couple. _
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09:16:12 PM, Tuesday 24 April 2007

It's that time of year again...

So I was finishing up my best run in years. I was running both faster and farther than I had in I don't know how long. I'm feeling good. Really, I'm not feeling anything at all. My legs, arms, breathing are all working together perfectly. Then, a car from New Jersey with Duke stickers slows down so several young men can tell me in less than eloquent language about how they don't want to have sex with me. As they drive off, I can feel how tired my legs are and how tight my breathing is. I finish that last quarter mile miserably. It's that time of year again... _
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05:58:04 PM, Sunday 22 April 2007

Personally, I do not know which procedure I had. At 22.5 weeks gestation (when my pregnancy ended--and that is based on my last menstrual period, remember, not the date of implantation, so the fetuses were really 20.5 week along) I was right on the line between trimesters. Plus the fact that there where two fetus (one barely alive, and one dead) could have impacted which surgery I had.

Other than having a medical termination, the options open to someone in my position are usually either a) emergency c-section, and b) induced delivery.

My doctor believed--given my particular circumstances--that it would be better for both my short term and long term health to not cut open my body if at all possible. My health was in a precarious state, and the option of a medical termination was the fastest, safest, and least complicated procedure to use. It also preserved the health of my uterus for future pregnancies.

Also, my doctor (you know, the man in the room with me, the one with a medical degree and my chart in hand? that guy) knew that inducing me, with my insanely high blood pressure, would be likely to cause me to have a stroke. _
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09:28:28 AM, Sunday 22 April 2007

This latest decision is indeed a victory for the “pro-life” movement, precisely because — like many positions taken by mainstream “pro-life” groups — it will not save any fetal lives, but it will compromise women’s health, and it will punish and harm women in order to score ideological points. As anti-choice organizations propose new legislation, notice how much of it embraces tried-and-true methods of decreasing the abortion rate (birth control, access to medical care, comprehensive sexual health education) and how much of it relies on long-failed punitive measures which have been proven time and again to do little to decrease abortion, but much to make it more dangerous, often at the expense of women’s lives (criminalization, blocking access to abortion, limiting contraception access and medical care). _
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10:50:30 AM, Saturday 21 April 2007

How could it have happened? We behave as if it was all so inexplicable.

But a close look at the patterns of murderous violence in the U.S. reveals some remarkable consistencies, wherever the individual atrocities may have occurred. In case after case, decade after decade, the killers have been shown to be young men riddled with shame and humiliation, often bitterly misogynistic and homophobic, who have decided that the way to assert their faltering sense of manhood and get the respect they have been denied is to go out and shoot somebody. _
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02:24:53 PM, Thursday 19 April 2007

Yesterday at my high school there was a gun incident followed by a suicide. There are so many kids on the edge everywhere. How many of them are going to go over this week? _
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06:52:28 AM, Thursday 19 April 2007

Jorge Cham captures the experience of sitting in a classroom after Monday _
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02:07:52 PM, Wednesday 18 April 2007

I'd like to think that any teacher would do what Liviu Librescu did, but really none of us can know what we would do, and he did it. _
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09:16:19 AM, Wednesday 18 April 2007

We have a prospective student visiting our lab today from VA Tech. He's been in meetings all morning. I have to go have lunch with him, take him his bag with his cellphone that's been ringing non-stop, and tell him about what's happened on his campus. _
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01:00:08 PM, Monday 16 April 2007

How not to be an asshole: a guide for men

Chris Clarke's blog Creek Running North is one of the consistently best nature/hiking/animal blogs. His posts on Pandagon have been the best pro-feminist-male snark. _
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04:51:33 PM, Friday 13 April 2007

I am drinking tea, in a little house on the side of a mountain, while the wind blows all around me. Then I will read for a very long time. Things are pretty good. _
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08:04:25 AM, Friday 13 April 2007

Amy has a blog _
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07:10:19 AM, Friday 13 April 2007

Shifting Baselines is new to ScienceBlogs and looks to be an interesting blog for people who are interested in the ocean and those of us who study systems where the baselines are shifting. _
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03:55:48 PM, Monday 9 April 2007

Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.
For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear upon the earth.
The time of singing of birds is come.
Arise my love, my fair one, and come away. _
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09:01:06 AM, Sunday 8 April 2007

Of all people, today I'm admiring Chris Dodd and wishing he was getting more attention as a presidential candidate. _
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09:31:09 AM, Saturday 7 April 2007

Jesus wept

Peter
What I'm saying, friend, may surprise you
Though I trust you will listen and hear
I'm not out to make you angry
We both know beneath our anger lies our fear
It sounds so simple and it's so complicated
Not gentle, not just a warm feeling
Many will die in the name of peace
But war will not lead us to healing

I meant what I said, Peter, put down your sword
Did you forget or did you think I was joking?
This is not why I'm here, Peter, not to destroy
The world is already so broken
Maybe you think I'm a fool
Maybe a fool's what I am
Maybe I will die for nothing
And nothing will change in the end

Yes, I am scared and I'm angry
That we live in this occupied land
Where the Romans can kill us at random
But the Romans do not rule my hands
There are so many lives on the line here
This is not some philosopher's game
And if you draw your sword Peter
You may not raise that sword in my name

I meant what I said, Peter, put down your sword
Did you forget or did you think I was joking?
This is not why I'm here, Peter, not to destroy
The world is already so broken
Maybe you think I'm a fool
Maybe a fool's what I am
Maybe I will die for nothing
If nothing will change in the end

God bless the children of Abraham
God bless the Romans who reign
God bless the peacemakers and warriors
Who each think the other insane

But I meant what I said, Peter, put down your sword
Did you forget or did you think I was joking?

_
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09:23:34 AM, Saturday 7 April 2007

Like Chris Clarke I am happy to find that I am not alone in thinking that snap preview sucks _
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03:49:17 PM, Friday 6 April 2007

A military prosecutor has refused to continue the prosecution of a Guantanamo detainee on the grounds that the evidence against him was obtained under torture.

Couch does not claim Slahi is innocent of all charges, but rather that the evidence is not believable because of the methods used to obtain it and the fact that it has not been independently corroborated. This is a critically important observation, because the defendant is one of the "high-value" prisoners, all of whom were presumably similarly treated, who provide our basic understanding of what happened on Sept. 11, 2001. _
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02:41:54 PM, Wednesday 4 April 2007

Also I took a bunch of Passover pictures on Monday, mostly of food and people.
_
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01:32:40 PM, Wednesday 4 April 2007

Playtime then:

Playtime now:

Suppertime then:

Suppertime now:

_
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07:41:36 PM, Tuesday 3 April 2007

Have you stopped beating your wife, yet? (OSX 10.3, if that helps.) _
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01:25:22 PM, Sunday 1 April 2007

Today is a FeelBetterMix kind of day. My current FeelBetterMix
She's An Angel--They Might Be Giants
Hold On--David Lamotte
Hard Earned Smile--David LaMotte
Put Your Records On--Corinne Bailey Rae
New Tricks--Mary Prankster
Add It Up--Violent Femmes
Punk Rock Heaven--Mary Prankster
Power Of Two--Indigo Girls
Polka On The Banjo--Bela Fleck
Good Feelings--Violent Femmes
The Reason I Quit (Dear Employer)--The Minus 5
When The Wind Blows--Dear Nora
Thin Line--Indigo Girls
Perfect World--Indigo Girls
Fall Stories--Girlyman
Superior--Girlyman
Go--Indigo Girls
Down To The River To Pray--Alison Krauss & Union Station _
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03:51:53 PM, Wednesday 28 March 2007

SisterMentors _
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01:16:48 PM, Tuesday 27 March 2007

A very nice article about some brave US bishops and the Episcopal church.

The bishops have acted with great love for the Church and with a greater love for the justice God requires of all of us. They have reiterated their desire to remain in the larger Anglican Communion, but not at the expense of their lesbian and gay sisters and brothers in Christ. They have not abandoned women as sacrifices on the altar of an idol called the unity of the Communion. They have not given up their democratic principles in order to keep a false peace. _
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10:53:12 AM, Monday 26 March 2007

I've decided to do a novel thing and actually train intentionally for the 5-K races at my professional society meetings instead of running randomly a couple of times a week then showing up sleep-deprived and barely finishing. I'm using the Runner's World Ultimate 5-K Plan. Since I've been pretty slack, I'm starting with the beginner's one, but plan to move up the the intermediate and do a couple of weeks of that before my first race (in Columbia, SC in early June at NABS) then continue with that through the summer until my second race (in San Jose, CA in early August at ESA). Some other great tools I've found are the Cool Running Log and the Gmaps Pedometer. Hopefully, but doubtfully, this will all go according to plan. _
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08:06:34 AM, Saturday 24 March 2007

Slate sucks as a general rule, but this Dalia Lithwick column does a great job of explaining a particular dishonest argument strategy being used the the Bush administration these days. It starts with the "we all agree" fallacy and goes from there. _
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07:46:44 AM, Saturday 24 March 2007

Runner's World looks into the myths of boosting your metabolism by building muscle. _
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08:55:16 AM, Thursday 22 March 2007

An excellent blog has been started, Finally, a Feminism 101 blog wherein the questions are answered that are asked roughly once every 15 minutes on feminist blogs (whether by clueless men or clueless women or people of either gender full of hate). So, never again will a feminist writing on her blog have to explain "why do women get pissed off when I open doors for them?" or "how can she be pissed off at being raped when she got drunk in public while wearing a short skirt?" or "why do women complain about men cheating when that's just their nature?" or, for that matter, "why are feminists always so pissed off?"

So, just as I now refer all anti-science folks to Talk Origins and Real Climate rather than debating them, I'm done explaining things for the two-thousandth time to folks who don't like women very much. _
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07:19:26 PM, Monday 19 March 2007

A cool article in Chronicle of Higher Education about what's good about Wikipedia. _
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02:20:02 PM, Monday 19 March 2007

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