Liz's Bloglet - Thursday 27 August 2009

I don't mean to be a jerk, but on what planet is cutting a durian in a bunch of sharedboffices a good idea? _
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03:36:18 PM, Thursday 27 August 2009

Post about Inglourious Basterds in the comments. If you haven't seen it, or think I'm a bad person for seeing it, I suggest you don't read the comments. _
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07:53:39 AM, Tuesday 25 August 2009

Hope everybody in Massachusetts and Maine is prepared for the storm and that you just get some rain and wind and then it's over. You have sympathy and concern from those of us who have these storms more frequently. _
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02:18:44 PM, Saturday 22 August 2009

"The Mugunga Internally Displaced Persons Camp sits in a land of volcanoes and great lakes on the edge of Goma, a provincial capital in the eastern Congo. The camp is now home to 18,000 people seeking refuge from a cycle of violent conflict that has left 5.4 million dead since 1998. … Women and girls in particular have been victimized on an unimaginable scale, as sexual and gender-based violence has become a tactic of war and has reached epidemic proportions. Some 1,100 rapes are reported each month, with an average of 36 women and girls raped every day. … I came to Goma to send a clear message: The United States condemns these attacks and all those who commit them and abet them. They are crimes against humanity. These acts don't just harm a single individual, or a single family, or village, or group. They shred the fabric that weaves us together as human beings. Such atrocities have no place in any society."—Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a piece for People magazine called "What I Saw in Goma." _
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09:04:51 AM, Saturday 22 August 2009

For those of us from east of the Mississippi, an explanation of that bizarre Western phenomenon: Hillside Letters _
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11:28:21 PM, Wednesday 19 August 2009

USGS study shows high mercury levels in fish throughout the US This is the legacy the previous generations left for us, that we will in turn leave to our descendants. Nobody's eating freshwater fish as a part of their regular diet for the foreseeable future. It's catch and release from here on out. _
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02:17:37 PM, Wednesday 19 August 2009

In "It's about time they used common sense" news: Democrats Seem Set to Go It Alone on a Health Bill _
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11:43:27 AM, Wednesday 19 August 2009

A great article from AAAS summarizing testimony about the status of women in science _
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03:59:22 PM, Tuesday 18 August 2009

If I could convince my friends and family to read only one thing on the internet, it would probably be The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck

I wrote a really long thing here, but I give up. Either you read it and you get it, or you don't get it, or you don't read it. And probably nothing I can write will change that. _
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07:38:38 PM, Friday 14 August 2009

This is mostly for Remi's linky goodness, but others of you might be interested in it as well. Our neighborhood bookstore is having a release party for Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, the Indie Label that Got Big and Stayed Small If you like The Magnetic Fields, Spoon, Arcade Fire among other bands featured on mix tapes, you might enjoy the tale of our little hometown record label. _
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06:36:09 PM, Wednesday 12 August 2009

Why we need healthcare reform: 12 year old's shouldn't die of a tooth abscess _
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11:32:36 AM, Wednesday 12 August 2009

We got take-out tonight from a new place in our neighborhood. In the ugly strip mall with the check cashing place with the big flashing signs, right between the Latino record store and Bonnie & Clyde's (they sell both scooters and guns), is a new curry place with really good food at cheap prices.

I think that last sentence tells you most of what you need to know about Durham. _
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08:57:36 PM, Tuesday 11 August 2009

An earnest, high-volume comic equally comfortable with semantic parsing and wanking motions, Sparks has two rules for his act: "Only make fun of people in a better position than you, and don't make fun of anything people can't change."

If more people followed those rules, both in comedy and in life, the world would suck a lot less. _
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01:17:40 PM, Monday 10 August 2009

Finally, a take on the murders in the gym in Pittsburgh that doesn't make it sound like it's totally understandable that a man who can't get women to have sex with him would do what he did.

We would become much more sane, much healthier, as a society if we could bring ourselves to acknowledge that misogyny is a serious and pervasive problem, and that the twisted way so many men feel about women, combined with the absurdly easy availability of guns, is a toxic mix of the most tragic proportions. _
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01:07:21 PM, Saturday 8 August 2009

You do not have health insurance
But we won’t get there as long as people remain convinced that health care reform is for poor people. It’s for everyone – everyone, that is, who isn’t independently wealthy or over the age of 65. Because all of us could lose our jobs. (Have I repeated that point enough?) _
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09:14:49 AM, Friday 7 August 2009

The Last Abortion Doctor A long, moving portrait of the last doctor in the US who runs a clinic strictly to help women whom no one else will help. Look at what the terrorists have done. Read about the women they would have die rather than get a simple, life-saving medical procedure performed by a caring person. _
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08:45:08 PM, Thursday 6 August 2009

What if health insurers ran the DMV? _
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12:32:32 PM, Wednesday 5 August 2009

Bosque del Apache is a pretty amazing place. It's one of the largest stops on the Rocky Mountain migration path and gets tons of cranes and geese and ducks in fall and winter. This time of year, there's not a whole lot of wildlife there, besides hummingbirds and mule deer. We rode around in a big ole bus with some researchers looking at their research which is primarily focused on how to manage the floodplain for the wildlife refuge purpose, while sharing water downstream with Texas, and yet still actually preserve the other parts of the ecosystem, including controlling the dread invasive tamarisk. We spent all day on the floodplain and never once actually saw the Rio Grande.

Tamarisk control is made more complicated by the fact that the endangered Southwest Willow Flycatcher has decided it preferes tamarisk to willows. The entire floodplain is a series of canals, pipes, and locks which can manage water level in many different ways but can in no way simulate the all of effects of an actual flood. They have to raise grain to supplement the feeding of the waterfowl, which are actually too dense to be supported by the native vegetation. Etc.

Probably the most intensively and carefully managed ecosystem I have ever seen. And really beautiful. I will post pictures some time. _
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07:53:53 PM, Monday 3 August 2009

Looks like I'm TAing micro again in the Fall. I'm actually pretty happy about that. It's a really well organized class with well-written labs. I think I can do a better job the second time around, understanding how the class works better and what parts give students the most trouble. As a non-microbiologist, it's nice to feel competency outside of my tiny little science niche.

(see what I did there: niche is totally an ecologist word) _
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07:46:39 PM, Monday 3 August 2009

I made it to Albuquerque. The hotel is very nice, in the middle of the city. Gave me a warm chocolate chip cookie at check-in. Unfortunately their pool is postage stamp sized and full of flight attendants. There is going to be some sort of massive street festival this evening across the street, which will likely provide me with supper as well as entertainment. I had ambitions to go to the aquarium today, but decided to save my energy for my field trip to the Rio Grande tomorrow to see riparian restoration work. Oh, and I still haven't finished my talk, but I am infinitely closer. _
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07:13:09 PM, Saturday 1 August 2009

Coming from two different perspectives, Jessica Faye Carter and Stanley Fish make the connection between the arrest of Dr. Gates and the so-called birther movement against the President.

Dr. Fish's anecdotes about good ole Pseudo Ivy U surprise me not at all. I wish I could be surprised about the behavior of my fellow citizens in my beloved town, but I'm not. 20 years have changed a lot in Durham. _
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07:57:28 PM, Thursday 30 July 2009

For-profit medicine is a national sickness
All I can say is that I know there is someone driving a new car, paid for by my Mom’s suffering. And that others are living in big houses with obscene bank accounts, all paid for by the sick and dying. It is obscene and inhuman. _
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02:40:49 PM, Wednesday 29 July 2009

Away We Go is sweet, cute, and funny. Not for the cynical. I don't want to say more because there is a lot of joy in seeing a movie that hasn't been overhyped and just relaxing and enjoying it. _
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06:55:16 PM, Sunday 26 July 2009

Rewatching one of my favorite West Wing episodes, "Celestial Navigation", in which Edward James Olmos as Supreme Court nominee Roberto Mendoza gets arrested for "wreckless driving" in suburban Connecticut. One of the things it portrays, which has been largely absent from the Gates story, is the humiliation of a member of the elite being reminded that there are ways he will never belong. For Mendoza, it was having it happen in front of his little boy. For Gates, I think it's having it happen in his town, in a Harvard owned home.

I think that this can happen to white folks, too, in terms of class. Think of Bill Clinton--Ivy League, Rhodes Scholar, wildly successful by any measure--but the thing that always pissed certain people off about him was that he came from white trash and no matter what he did he would remain so in their eyes.

The difference for people of other ethnicities is that our society by and large doesn't recognize class differences for anyone but white people. No matter what a person of color accomplishes, it only takes one incident to remind them that in the eyes of the world they will never escape the class that their ethnicity places them into. _
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09:52:34 PM, Friday 24 July 2009

Healthcare bingo card. I've been listening to music with headphones in the lab lately so I don't have to hear the endless "reasonable" people on NPR explain healthcare to me. _
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07:34:17 PM, Friday 24 July 2009

Climate change deniers, creationists, and people who push pseudo-science as medicine all suck and are responsible for many of the problems in our country. _
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04:20:17 PM, Friday 24 July 2009

Feeling very unbloggable these days. Nobody wants to hear about the angst that is chronic illness + grad school. It is not interesting to me, let alone the rest of you.

Harry Potter and the HBP was very, very good. Made better, I think, by near omission of the HBP storyline, and the complete omission of the giant storyline. Leaving out subplots seems like a much better way to go than attempting to cram in absolutely every bit of story. Instead we got characters, scenery, and even a good bit of humor. I liked the 3rd movie a little better simply as a movie (it's hard to go wrong with anything Cuaron has ever touched), but this one came closest to the experience of reading one of the books.

Otherwise, MeFi meetup, Luau, and then a lab party last night have left me with no desire than to sit at home with a book and a cat (there will also be data and deadlines). _
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07:14:54 PM, Tuesday 21 July 2009

Fairly apprehensive about going to the thirty-first birthday party for a childhood friend in the general area where I grew up. I'm sure it will be fun. I'm sure I will see people I've missed seeing. I'm sure I will see people I hoped never to see again. I think I will take my camera. _
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10:38:24 AM, Saturday 18 July 2009

Somewhere Different Now--Ty Greenstein of Girlyman

I took a long drive by the church and the high dive
Past the riverbank hillside, where we looked at the clouds
I believe in the big god, and the multitude of love
And the fact that it's just us helping each other out

Now I've just been reeling, staring up at my ceiling
Wishing someone would reach out, come and bust up my hideout
I'm not quite lost, not quite found
Just somewhere different now

I went walking past the corner lot, teeming
With weeds and trailers abandoned, people wandering around
I've been dreaming of gardens, crops that grow without dusting
In the San Rafael highlands, where we listened to bugs sing

Now I don't mind saying, I believe in the waiting
In the visions of grandeur, and the random encounter
I'm not on fire, not burned out
Just somewhere different now

Woke up this morning with a familiar feeling
Like the angels were crying 'stead of their normal flying
When did you get so certain, boldly draw back your curtains
Lightning strikes in the tall place, water flows to the street grates

Now I look in the mirror, can't abide what I see there
Still I'll play you a strong hand, what remains of a good plan
It's not quite gone, but it's not around
Must be somewhere different now

Now I caught a red light past the coffeeshop Starlight
And plastic Christmas adornments someone left on the pavement
Just to drive feels like passion, just to let the wheels roll on
Engine light keeps on flashing, don't know what has gone wrong

Now I keep believing, don't know if there's a reason
I search under the pillow for the crumbs in the willow
Cause they got me here, and I'm not sure how
But I'm somewhere different now _
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12:26:00 PM, Friday 17 July 2009

Just dropped my MacBook off at the Apple Store because the cd drive stopped working. Sure am happy about that AppleCare.

Way you can tell that your complaint is a known problem: the guy didn't ask me any questions about the drive not working, or even try to do anything to it himself--he just wrote up work order to replace it.

After the Apple Store, we, as always went to the apple store for an Apple Pie Apple. If we have to enter Yuppie Hell to get my computer fixed, we should at least get Yuppie Treats. _
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02:57:22 PM, Thursday 16 July 2009

I can't quite believe that Coburn actually said to Sotomayor "You have some 'splaining to do". Post-racial American indeed. This is a man whose ethnic stereotypes were established in the first half of last century.

Of course I also can't believe the racist, sexist ass-hats who seem to be completely ignorant about the government, the Constitution, and the laws, who keep asking her patronizing questions as though they are somehow testing her knowledge.

Or that they're still suggesting she's a hot and spicy Latina stereotype considering she hasn't once jumped over the bar and punched any of them, which they so richly deserve. _
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08:15:39 AM, Thursday 16 July 2009

Fancy root beer taste test. Remi will be happy to see the results. _
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04:16:02 PM, Wednesday 15 July 2009

The ancient, borrowed, jury-rigged piece of equipment which I have been relying on for the bulk of my analysis this summer seems to be deceased. Yes, given the first the adjectives of that sentence, I probably should have had a back-up plan. But that doesn't really help right now. _
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02:41:40 PM, Tuesday 14 July 2009

President Obama has chosen a MacArthur Fellow, African-American woman who serves the rural poor of Gulf Coast Alabama as his Surgeon General nominee. Thank goodness Sanjay Gupta didn't work out.

This is not the Bush Whitehouse. _
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01:12:44 PM, Monday 13 July 2009

You may have heard Jeff Simmermon on This American Life this week, telling a story from his student teaching days of the unconventional punishment he chose when he caught his sister's boyfriend beating her up. Ira Glass mentioned that you can find more of the same on Jeff's Blog And I Am Not Lying. It is actually a treat. In addition his co-blogger's great story of sharing lunch with a fledgling hawk, I have come to find out that not all that long before having his story on This American Life, Jeff was diagnosed for testicular cancer. His writing on his illness are interesting and thoughtful, and it's cool that in the midst of all this he got a story on the radio. _
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02:10:26 PM, Saturday 11 July 2009

Origin of Species drinking game

I figured this is appropriate for a Blogmass of people who have all read Origin of Species and which seems to get the most search engine hits for a Harry Potter drinking game. _
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09:38:34 AM, Saturday 11 July 2009

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