Liz's Bloglet - Saturday 11 July 2009

We saw I Love You, Beth Cooper last night. Remi had read the book and from him I knew what to expect. It was fun and cute and Beth Cooper was actually a pretty good character in a lot of ways, and it must have been pretty fun for the actresses involved. I would recommend it for some of the same reasons I recommended Adventureland--sort of a flashback to a sucky time in life, which happens to be very entertaining, with some memorable very funny bits, and a good excuse to sit in air conditioning and share junk food with someone you like.

However, it is a pure adolescent male fantasy in many ways. One thing this means is that even as Beth Cooper is revealed to be quite a different person from who he always thought she was, she is still mostly seen from his eyes and there are aspects of the resolution with her that makes it clear "this is all happening in Dennis's head". Remi had mentioned that on the whole the book reads like a 30-something who still hasn't gotten over high school, and that's not a bad take on the movie, either. Maybe kind-hearted revenge fantasy is the best description.

The other thing that bothered me is that the two dorky girls who briefly appear, who are the parallels of the main character and his best friend, are depicted as some of the least sympathetic characters in the movie. One of them is the only person in the entire high school with acne (yes, this is better than many high school movies, in which no one has acne). They have greasy hair and bad make-up and are utterly desperate in the exact same way that the two main male characters are; but while Dennis and Rich's desperation is portrayed as cute, and oddly attractive to the cheerleaders, the two dorky girls are just pathetic. And so Dennis and Rich treat them badly and run away.

I know that it will be a long time before Hollywood makes a movie where the dorky, pathetic girl gets the handsome hero that everybody wants, and that's not necessarily a scenario I would applaud, either, because when they have approached that plotline it's always a Cinderella story where she's not actually dorky and pathetic deep down, just bad at personal grooming. I would settle for a movie about dorks who end up together. The movie that came closest to that was Juno, I think. _
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08:57:05 AM, Saturday 11 July 2009

So much love for Justice Ginsburg
Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don't know why this hasn't been said more often. _
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03:28:16 PM, Thursday 9 July 2009

I always forget that ideological vegans/vegetarians are way nuttier than the sustainability oriented vegans/vegetarians I work with. _
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07:30:37 AM, Tuesday 7 July 2009

Traditional Marriage _
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07:24:12 PM, Wednesday 1 July 2009

Local Tea! My life is complete. _
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03:29:30 PM, Monday 29 June 2009

I took a vacation from the internet (with the exception of the inevitable Wednesday afternoon "Mark Sanford did what?" news orgy). The biggest thing that seems to have happened is that Pseudo Ivy is closing down the gyms and pools and other common areas that are used by the summer camps as the H1N1 flu virus spreads among the kids. The week before I left our building was full of middle schoolers at camp (including the kids from the program I work with). This is not cool. _
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06:53:00 PM, Sunday 28 June 2009

Today my hero is, Sen Rockefeller
"We have a moral choice. This is a classic case of the good guys versus the bad guys. I know it is not political for me to say that," Rockefeller added.

"But do you want to be non-partisan and get nothing? Or do you want to be partisan and end up with a good health-care plan? That is the choice." _
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09:22:55 PM, Saturday 27 June 2009

This industry must be regulated, or just shut down. Under the current system I must be employed continuously at a job that provides health insurance for the rest of my life, or I will never be able to get insurance again. And even people who have done everything right can find the insurance rescinded because they had the audacity to need the service for which they had been paying for decades without using.

But an investigation by the subcommittee found widespread instances where the insurance companies rescind coverage even over discrepancies that are unintentional, unknown to the policyholder or immaterial to the more serious health conditions for which the policyholders are filing for benefits.

For profit health insurance is one of the biggest mistake our country has ever made. Let's start fixing that mistake. _
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09:45:17 AM, Thursday 18 June 2009

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06:21:19 PM, Wednesday 17 June 2009

A really fascinating account of the plans afoot to bring high-speed rail to California

(Also, we saw Terminator Salvation last night and, not to ruin anybody's fun, it does feature a digitized Schwarzenegger in his Mr. Universe prime) _
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12:16:48 PM, Monday 15 June 2009

I felt like having some candy, so I started my summer reading list with King of Lies. In the library, I was really curious why Pat Conroy's praise was featured so prominently and why Conroy was acknowledged for all of his help with the book. Conroy doesn't write mysteries.

But now I get it. King of Lies is the book Conroy would have written if he were to write a mystery (and was from NC rather than SC). Same daddy problems. Same messed up loser with a heart of gold narrator. Same conflict between the woman you love and the woman you ought to be with.

None of this is bad. I have always really enjoyed Conroy, in spite of and at times because of his tropes--as well as just that he's a really good writer. And John Hart is, too. I'm adding Down River to my request queue at the library. _
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07:45:27 PM, Sunday 14 June 2009

There is a risk we might need to layoff Andre _
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06:48:37 PM, Saturday 13 June 2009

This is good
What Gingrich and others decry in Judge Sotomayor should be applauded. Judge Sotomayor has the humility to recognize the difficulty of achieving true and pure impartiality. Instead, as she pointed out in her speech, "[t]he aspiration to impartiality is just that -- it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others."

Unlike so many judges who by virtue of being white and male simply assume their impartiality, Judge Sotomayor recognizes that all judges are affected by their background and their life experiences. _
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01:06:42 PM, Friday 12 June 2009

Add to the list of things I love about our President _
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01:06:13 PM, Friday 12 June 2009

This is bad. Typos and html errors and impatience, oh my. _
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01:05:59 PM, Friday 12 June 2009

Just like when I bought my MacBook, switching completely away from the university webmail to Gmail has led to a subtle improvement in my overall sense of well-being. _
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11:33:59 AM, Friday 12 June 2009

I just downloaded the PDF of deadlines to graduate in May 2010. It feels doable. _
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03:07:46 PM, Thursday 11 June 2009

A meme going around, that's actually kind of fun: My Summer Reading List
Pig Candy, Lise Funderburg--My mom has become friends with the author, who tells the story of returning with her father to his (and my mom's) hometown. I missed the chance to see her read at the bookstore in our neighborhood, but picked up an autographed copy after the fact.
The Winds of the Marble Arch and other stories, Connie Willis--all of her Nebula and Hugo winning stories and novellas, plus a bunch of others that had never been in a collection before
The King of Lies, John Hart--new legal thriller guy. His Down River won the 2008 Edgar for Best Novel, but it was checked out of the library
Killer Heat, Linda Fairstein--Former NYC SVU prosecutor writes legal thrillers about an SVU prosecutor. Like a lot of prosecutors, I don't necessarily agree with her politics, but I do like her writing and its semi-autobiographic nature.
The Appeal, John Grisham--I gave up on him a number of years ago, but apparently in this book he depicted quite well the facts in the Caperton v Massey case, a case I've been following with a lot of interest since the same judges who were purchased by the coal companies are also obviously useful in mountain-top removal/valley fill cases.

I've also been meaning to do some re-reading. I've got a hankering towards Huckleberry Finn for some reason. I think it's probably about how I'd rather be floating down the Mississippi than working outside all day in NC in the summer. _
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05:54:40 PM, Wednesday 10 June 2009

How many more people does the US Right get to kill before we get to call it terrorism? _
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05:07:04 PM, Wednesday 10 June 2009

The Sims 3 will not run on my MacBook because of the video card. That sucks. _
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09:26:37 AM, Wednesday 10 June 2009

Migratory Canada Geese caused Hudson River plane crash Nice work by some forensic ecologists. It also is just a straightforward yet elegant explanation of the sort of things ecologists do. _
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04:50:41 PM, Monday 8 June 2009

We had a lovely 4th birthday party with my nephew today. It was very low-key because the whole family has been sick. His baby brother was in attendance but largely unparticipatory. But he his mom and dad, three grandparents, and Remi and I were pretty good company, I think, and there was an impressive bubble machine and a chocolate cake with a rocket on it. _
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08:09:31 PM, Saturday 6 June 2009

Don't know how I missed this study. My Vitamin D is a little low and apparently my TNF-a is way too high. And now they think there's a connection. Not a "Vitamin D will cure everything" connection, but a suggestion that whatever's doing this is messing things up in a lot of different ways. I'm an ecosystem ecologist, but I like mechanisms and hate blackboxes--way too much of human health is still a blackbox. _
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06:43:31 PM, Friday 5 June 2009

"When people fall in love with what seems to be a perfect theory, a set of rules, and they love those rules more than they love people or places. In fact they begin to see the messy reality of life as interfering with the beauty, the imagined beauty, that exists only in their text, only in the sacred texts, whether they're economic texts, or religious texts, or some dream of racial purity - I think we need to fear people who love systems more than people because the flip side of the love is the hatred for anything or anyone that interferes with the realization of that system, and this is the other thing about dangerous utopias, is that they can't coexist with other ideas. They need the whole stage"

Naomi Klein (from the commentary on The Children of Men) _
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06:18:43 PM, Thursday 4 June 2009

Terrorists murdered a true American hero today in a church

One first person account of Dr. Tiller's work _
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08:31:20 PM, Sunday 31 May 2009

Something I've been wondering about and here is as good a place as any:

If you were not raised Presbyterian, do you know Robert's Rules of Order?
If so where were you first exposed to them?
Do they weird you out or strike you as the most reasonable way of doing things?

Also, if you know of any other methods for leading discussion/conducting meetings/making decisions, I'd love to hear about them. The only one I know of is the Quaker consensus method, and that's about all I know about it. _
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08:06:10 PM, Sunday 31 May 2009

This week, one of my mentees was inducted into Junior Honor Society and suspended for this final week of school. We're getting together this afternoon, and I'm hoping I can understand the story better, but basically she made a series of dumb mistakes, all of which were seem to have been trying to impress the people around her. She is a little socially awkward and still working out how to fit in in middle school. When things are going badly she tends to get very quiet and very stubborn, and I'm sure that reads badly to a teacher or administrator who doesn't know her well. The school has some kind of a points system and breaking too many rules in one day is worse that breaking one rule on multiple days. I have no doubt the things she did were disruptive, but it just breaks my heart to see this happen, and I worry that it will make her more socially isolated and more obstinate, which seems to me to be exactly opposite from the solution to what happened.

She loves our program because the kids there love science, really are nice to each other, and are always very engaged with the world around them, like her. For 1 week last summer and a few wonderful weekends throughout the year she's gotten to fit in and I've seen the good it's done for her. She actually is at a magnet school, but it's a magnet only because it's year-round, not for any special program. For her, I think it would be better to spend all summer at science camp, rather than having to go back to school in a month. She would benefit so much from a school of smart kids with small classrooms, great teachers, and engaging schoolwork that wasn't all sitting quietly at a desk. We don't have any of those here. _
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10:01:47 AM, Sunday 31 May 2009

When empathy and life experience were virtues in a Supreme Court nominee _
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12:39:19 PM, Saturday 30 May 2009

I'd forgotten about how awesome this is. I think I linked it before, but it deserves linking again, I think.
Talk about not having a sense of humor. These days you can't even sit down, rudely interrupt someone's conversation, insult them directly to their face, and then act like a complete and utter asshole without people getting super offended by it. It's like, Christ�lighten up, will you? All I did was show up and ruin everybody's evening.

Come on, people, relax. _
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06:07:11 PM, Friday 29 May 2009

Discovered today that a coworker has a very similar condition to mine. The fact that we've worked together for a year and each had no idea about the other says something about invisible illnesses and also about the stigma against physical weakness in ecology. It's okay to say "I broke my leg rock climbing" or even, "My leg still aches sometimes from where I broke it rock climbing 5 years ago" but to admit to pain that is not caused by being awesome and that at times hinders ones hardcoreness is a big no-no. _
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06:04:04 PM, Friday 29 May 2009

I expect better of my country and my president. If these photos inflame anti-American sentiment, maybe it's because we deserve it. _
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05:13:53 PM, Thursday 28 May 2009

Memorial Day is supposed to be about remembering those who died in war. But I think there is no more appropriate day to remember those who came home broken and can never be fixed. I was born just a few years after the Vietnam War ended and it seems like there have always been those men around who just were never the same again. Some of them managed to carry on with life, but others more damaged were failed by both our VA and social services and the dismantling of the mental health system; they still make up a large number of permanently homeless in our cities today. And I don't know for sure, but I think that WWII left some of the same scars on society which my parents grew up surrounded by. And now it's happening again. So today, I'm thinking about the dead who never got to come home, but also the living who came home, and are still coming home, but who will never be the same. And hoping that this time we will not fail them. And hoping that the generation after this one will not have to face the prospect of remembering either the dead or the damaged. _
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06:34:59 PM, Monday 25 May 2009

A design blog has posted a beautiful guide/love letter to our beloved city. _
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06:13:04 PM, Sunday 24 May 2009

I'm going to a Metafilter meetup in Carrboro tonight. I don't think any readers of this blog think of me as in anyway the sort of person who would go to a party full of people she has never met. In fact, I tend to avoid parties full of people I know very well. But I've gotten to know a couple of these people fairly well through the internet and it will be fun to meet them face to face.

And I love it here, and hope to stay here for the next few years if my post-doc plan works out, and so it is nice to keep meeting people and feeling like this is my home. I have managed to befriend a few of the sort of people who know everybody, through school and my church and the neighborhood, and it will be fun to see the weird connections that exist among these people who all like the same website. I won't even be that surprised if it turns out that some of the pseudonymous are actually folks I already know. _
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06:14:18 PM, Saturday 23 May 2009

I expect more. This is what I love about Shakesville. There are so many places on the internet where people dismiss idealism as naivete, or even stupidity. Cynicism really is the hallmark of our generation. So it's nice to have a place where there is a response to the rhetorical "What else did you expect?"

I expect more and better and I'm going to keep doing so. And for the first time in my life, I feel like we're actually occasionally getting more and better from our politicians, from Hollywood, and from each other. The world is better than it was when I was a kid. But I still expect more. _
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11:04:11 AM, Saturday 23 May 2009

Just logged on to discover that Pseudo Ivy has replaced their slightly fancier than PINE webmail (which is the ideal type of interface in my opinion) with an MS Outlook like system with obnoxious cutesy icons which utterly fail to communicate their purpose. Looks like it's finally time to breakdown and setup the forwarding to Gmail that most folks have been using for awhile. _
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07:49:19 AM, Monday 18 May 2009

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