ari's adventures

Rethinking development, an inspiring quote

2012-02-01T17:27:00.001-06:00

From a reading (specifically: http://web.idrc.ca/openebooks/470-3/) for a graduate level course on Gender Relations in International Development I'm currently taking.

"A speech given by Robert F. Kennedy on 4 January 1968, encapsulates the limitations of GDP as a measure of what makes life valuable:

The Gross National Product of the United States is the largest in the world, but that GNP, if we should judge our nation by that, counts air pollution and cigarette advertising and ambulances to clear the highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and jails that break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder and chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead and armoured cars that fight riots in our streets. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.

Myths of Corporate Personhood

2012-01-22T18:39:00.004-06:00

Here's the short version, for the longer (explained) version, click here.

Text of Belden Fields teach in "The Myth of Corporate Personhood"

THE DISEMPOWERING FOG CREATED BY 14 IDEOLOGICAL MYTHS

Prepared for Occupy the Quad at the University of Illinois, Urbana 1/19/12

by Belden Fields

1. The myth that the corporation is a person with the rights of individuals.

2. The myth that Supreme Court represents a higher interpretation of law that transcends partisan politics.

3. The myth that money is speech; therefore, money spent freely in elections is protected by the First Amendment right to speech.

4. The myth that the interests of large corporations is in the interest of workers because they create jobs and raise standards of living.

5. The myth that “right to work” laws really protect workers’ rights.

6. The myth that government is the only source of bureaucracy that disempowers people.

7. The myth that economics is above moral concerns and the market will always, by definition, result in the greatest good for society.

8. The myth that the United States is a democracy.

9. The myth that the only legitimate human economic human right is the right to private property.

10. The collateral myth that that social security, health care benefits, and pensions are unearned and unaffordable “entitlements."

11. The myth that privatization is always more “efficient” than public goods and services.

12. The myth that the “official” unemployment rate in the United States is accurate and comparable to the unemployment rates in other countries.

13. The myth that the U.S. offers the highest rates of upward mobility in the world.

14. The myth that there is no alternative to the capitalist system that manifests the above characteristics and treats the worker as a commodity.

Deconstructing Old Spice

2011-08-30T23:38:00.003-05:00

I live in a house with a lot of people, so there's never a shortage of discussion-generating diversity (of ideas, opinions, backgrounds, etc.) This week I was taking a shower and noticed someone's Old Spice body wash, and I really can't help but comment. Here's what I'm thinking:

"3X Clean Net:" I'm not even sure what this means. Was there some sort of "clean net" that was included in this package? Are they trying to say that you're 3 times cleaner, by net weight? This is just confusing. Or, perhaps "net" means "clean" in French. Looking at this a little closer, perhaps that's it, but I'm not sure.

Next: "Doesn't leave you feeling dry or rob you of your dignity." So, it moisturizes your skin and reassures you of your ineffable human goodness? I'm not quite sure exactly how these two go together. However, one might be able to take a few leaps to assume that a loss of dignity might come from a flowery/fruity scent, which this is clearly trying to avoid, nonetheless providing desirable moisturization...

"Like wearing an armor of man-scent" -- Is this a good thing? So this "man-scent" armor protects you from what, exactly? Also, hat tip to Luke for pointing out that this is slightly homo-erotic, suggesting that a man (presumably heterosexual) might not want to be covered in man-scent, or, at least, wouldn't want to be judged by this type of thing in a heteronormative society.

Finally, "Drop-kicks dirt, then slams odor with a folding chair" Even though I've never seen WWF/WWE, I sense that this may be a reference to it. So now even your body wash is a pro-(fake)wrestler in the epic battle between dirt/odor and...old spice?

Ok, I just had a few questions in response to these Old Spice sayings that showed up in my shower.

Also, I can't help but be reminded of Hyperbole and a Half's awesome segment on making showers exciting again, there are many more hilarious cartoons here.

academic subjectivity

2011-08-04T12:30:00.004-05:00

I'm currently in graduate school. I hope that this post will be one to start a theme of my struggles to find a perspective from which to write and understand what I learn. I inherently prefer writing with the word "I" and using it to organize narratives, however this, in many disciplines, goes against very explicitly stated traditions. For today, I'd like to quote an article whose author writes on his use of "I".

Before all of this, a note on my purposeful use of the active subject in this essay is warranted. Autoethnographers have noted the highly tactical enterprise of using the first person in academic writing (Peterson & Langellier,1997). Such tactics sometimes serve as confessionals, in efforts to render texts transparent (van Maanen, 1988). However, the “I” that this essay evokes, unlike the fully-formed modern subject, is a textual, constructed and strategic “I,” designed to underscore the partiality, contingence and temporal quality not only of such insight as “I” have to offer, but of knowledge claims in general. My efforts at generating such texts are relatively recent (Ganesh, 2008; Ganesh, in press), but in many ways, as I do so, the voice with which I speak to myself draws from oral practices that stem back to my childhood: for instance, this voice evokes memories of stories that my grandmother told me; stories told in a voice that are at odds with the realist trope in which most of us write. So, in personalizing this text, I hope to both problematise realist tropes, and actualize what Ellis and Bochner (1996) have called the therapeutic function of research and writing.

And here's the APA citation for ya:
Ganesh, S. (2009). OrganiZational communication and organiSational communication: Binaries and the fragments of a field. Communication Journal of New Zealand, 10(2), 6-17. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

gum navigation?

2011-07-04T12:54:00.004-05:00

Gum can be found everywhere, but a more attentive examination reveals that it reaches maximum density in the vicinity of the most frequented bars: the chewer who is headed there is forced to spit out to free his mouth. As a result, the stranger, not familiar with the city, could find these places following the direction of the more thickly massed gum blobs...

Reposted from here.

quote

2011-06-14T21:44:00.001-05:00

“It can’t be any more obvious that we live in a patriarchal society if ”feminist” is a bad word.”

Ellen Page (aka Juno)

privilege: a poem

2011-06-14T21:16:00.002-05:00

privilege
a poem for men who don't understand what we mean when we say they have it

D.A. Clarke

reprinted from Banshee, Peregrine Press

privilege is simple:
going for a pleasant stroll after dark,
not checking the back of your car as you get in, sleeping soundly,
speaking without interruption, and not remembering
dreams of rape, that follow you all day, that woke you crying, and
privilege
is not seeing your stripped, humiliated body
plastered in celebration across every magazine rack, privilege
is going to the movies and not seeing yourself
terrorized, defamed, battered, butchered
seeing something else

privilege is
riding your bicycle across town without being screamed at or
run off the road, not needing an abortion, taking off your shirt
on a hot day, in a crowd, not wishing you could type better
just in case, not shaving your legs, having a decent job and
expecting to keep it, not feeling the boss's hand up your crotch,
dozing off on late-night busses, privilege
is being the hero in the TV show not the dumb broad,
living where your genitals are totemized not denied,
knowing your doctor won't rape you

privilege is being
smiled at all day by nice helpful women, it is
the way you pass judgment on their appearance with magisterial authority,
the way you face a judge of your own sex in court and
are over-represented in Congress and are not strip searched for a traffic ticket
or used as a dart board by your friendly mechanic, privilege
is seeing your bearded face reflected through the history texts
not only of your high school days but all your life, not being
relegated to a paragraph
every other chapter, the way you occupy
entire volumes of poetry and more than your share of the couch unchallenged,
it is your mouthing smug, atrocious insults at women
who blink and change the subject -- politely -- privilege
is how seldom the rapist's name appears in the papers
and the way you smirk over your PLAYBOY

it's simple really, privilege
means someone else's pain, your wealth
is my terror, your uniform
is a woman raped to death here, or in Cambodia or wherever
wherever your obscene privilege
writes your name in my blood, it's that simple,
you've always had it, that's why it doesn't
seem to make you sick to your stomach,
you have it, we pay for it, now
do you understand

PS more like BS

2011-05-31T22:02:00.003-05:00

Was just toying around with this as a t-shirt idea...but not sure it'll come to fruition:

Polystyrene (PS) more like BS!

Letter to Subway Franchise World HQ

2011-05-24T16:34:00.001-05:00

Subway Franchise World Headquarters

325 Bic Drive

Milford, CT 06461-3059

May 24, 2011

To whom it may concern:

I recently purchased a sandwich in Champaign, Illinois and was happy to see a note on your Subway® napkins telling me to compost them after use. Had I been going home after my meal, I would have. However, I was in transit, as I assume many fast food customers are when they purchase such food.

I’m writing this letter with the hope to encourage franchises to provide compost bins in their stores as well as compost food waste generated on-site. I imagine franchises generate far more waste than consumers generate using napkins, and taking the steps necessary to process this on-site would mean a huge reduction in waste. Furthermore, providing napkins when people ask for them rather than handing 5 out each time would also cut down on waste, as would sourcing part of the napkins from post-consumer recycled paper.

It’s encouraging to me as an individual that Subway® acknowledges my part in addressing waste problems, but I’d also like to see this mirrored by the corporation/franchise itself. Composting food waste and allowing consumers to do so in-store would do this.

Thank you for your consideration and the steps that the franchise has already taken. I hope you and the franchise continue along this path.

Sincerely,

Ariann Sahagun

Letter to the Editor

2011-04-13T22:15:00.001-05:00

Land Grant Institution should use Renewable Energy

I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Psychology in 2008 and recently came back to the University for a Master’s program. When I was an undergrad, I worked with other students to urge the University to become more sustainable. We urged: build a wind turbine, create a strong Office of Sustainability, and include sustainability topics in classes. Unfortunately, since I’ve come back I’m not sure that the University has gained much ground on these fronts. U of I - as a land grant institution - should be striving to become a leader, to demonstrate to our state and local communities what sustainability means: using renewable energy, enacting policy changes, engaging students for educational advancement, among many other potential activities.

I am disappointed that our university has continually dragged its collective feet on building a wind turbine on campus. I started working on this project in 2005 and have spent countless hours with many other students. Students in the form of the Student Sustainability Committee as well as the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation have committed millions of dollars to the project and the University has shown little follow-through.

It is time now to move past coal-powered electricity plants and toward renewable energy. We know about climate change enough to commit to this. Given this knowledge and such inaction, what will we say to our children and grandchildren? Will we say we did all we could?

Ari Sahagun
Graduate student in Communication

Lecture: Race and Whiteness within Vegan Philosophy

2011-04-09T13:05:00.006-05:00

I attended two of Breeze Harper's talks as part of the Campus EcoFeminism Summit, an event I am glad to know will be continuing annually. I learned a lot from attending her keynote speech and her less formal vegan meet n' greet event earlier in the day. What it means to be a good environmentalist today is to buy more things: a hybrid car, organic veggies, expensive gadgets. Along these lines, I'll admit: never before had I explicitly considered where race and class belong in the discussion of veganism.

Breeze Harper was the summit's keynote speaker with speech called: “Race and Whiteness within Vegan Philosophy: Critical Race Feminist Reflections from the Sistah Vegan Project.” Breeze's main point was that mainstream veganism has been presented by and for a narrow segment of race and class (white middle-class); many authors don't acknowledge that they are white and middle to upper class. She suggested that many (white) people in the United States have a racial literacy from the '50s where racism = segregation and overt violence like lynching. The view of our society as “post-racial” (“we're not racist, we have a black president”) covertly encourages race- and class-neutral attitudes, and does more harm than good.

Breeze talked a lot about privilege: it's like being born on second base when you think you started at bat. She argued that there isn't a good understanding of how whiteness and racism work in veganism, and many popular books are laden with unacknowledged privileges: don't be a cheapskate, buy all organic foods! (Well, what if there isn't a Whole Foods in your backyard, or you don't have a car to drive to one, or the money to afford their high prices?) Without knowing where we're at in terms of race, class and gender and the historical contexts of which we're a part, we can't see how these things shape our relationship to nature.

The path to addressing these issues will hold anti-racism as a central tenant and include reflection about our own privileges. To learn more about her work, visit the Sistah Vegan Blog. She also mentioned further reading: Lee & Lutz: Situating "race" and racisms in time, space, and theory and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's Racism Without Racists.

Hell yes, science!

2011-04-08T15:43:00.005-05:00

A scientific article:

The Interpersonal Power of Feminism: Is Feminism Good for Romantic Relationships?

Laurie A. Rudman & Julie E. Phelan (Click for full text)

Published online: 6 October 2007

Abstract Past research suggests that women and men alike perceive feminism and romance to be in conflict (Rudman and Fairchild, Psychol Women Q, 31:125–136, 2007). A survey of US undergraduates (N=242) and an online survey of older US adults (N=289) examined the accuracy of this perception. Using self-reported feminism and perceived partners’ feminism as predictors of relationship health, results revealed that having a feminist partner was linked to healthier relationships for women. Additionally, men with feminist partners reported greater relationship stability and sexual satisfaction in the online survey. Finally, there was no support for negative feminist stereotypes (i.e., that feminists are single, lesbians, or unattractive). In concert, the findings reveal that beliefs regarding the incompatibility of feminism and romance are inaccurate.

Keywords Feminism . Close relationships . Feminist stereotypes . Intergroup relations . Gender attitudes

Citation: Rudman LA & Phelan JE (2007). The interpersonal power of feminism: is feminism good for romantic relationships? SEX ROLES: Volume 57, Numbers 11-12, 787-799.

Lecture: Empathy Paradox – Increasing disconnection in the age of increasing connection

2011-04-07T13:28:00.003-05:00

by Sara Konrath – Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Univ of Michigan

Konrath began her talk with a quote about new media, as “vulgar,” “poison,” and a “national evil.” However, the quote was actually from 1749

with regard to the new media form of the novel. This perspective grounded the audience in the fact that, well, usually, we’re hesitant about new media and we may even go as far as to disdain it. Or, the older generations have long rejected or disapproved of younger generations’ use of particular forms of media (from books, to flapper culture, to facebook). These are not new things.

Her question is: is there an increase in disconnectness with today's new media(s)? As a psychologist, she examined several personality trait variables since 1979 in college student populations: narcissism, empathy, and attachment styles. (Nerdy psych note: Attachment styles are usually, or were originally, discussed in terms of child-caretaker relations, but have been since adapted to adult attachment.)

So, in a nutshell, her findings did suggest the worst cases, trends showing an increase in narcissism, decrease in empathy, and an increase in a dismissive(avoidant?) relationship styles since 1979. However: these are small numbers, not huge changes, and she noted that it doesn’t mean [we’re] unable to have healthy relationships, just less able, on average.

Next there was some discussion on potential causes, because psychologists always remind us: correlation is not causation. An important point is that these trends didn’t start with the internet, but perhaps could be exacerbated by its use/omnipresence. Her suggestions for future research are as follows:

-examine more closely the prosocial effects of new media (not just the bad stuff)

-methods for determining causal relations

-motives for media use

-assessment of media use and its effects (not just general use, but what are people doing?)

An interesting point was brought up in the ensuing Q&A session, in that facebook really blurs the circles of intimacy that we’re used to. Rather than keeping your family, best friends, acquaintances separate, on facebook (and on this blog) we just broadcast indiscriminately to everyone. Someone also asked if ther had been any assessment of behavioral measures (not just traits) and she suggested Robert Putnam (specifically, his book: Bowling Alone).

I'd be interested to discuss the implications of these findings. For example, do these trends in the traits of college students over time have impacts on, say, their attitudes toward the "environment?"

Lecture: Social Science Aspects of Sustainability and Climate Change

2011-04-04T14:33:00.003-05:00

As a grad student in Communication I also attend a lot of lectures on various topics including sustainability, climate change, gender, class and race awareness, and whatever else peaks my interest. I’m thinking that it would be a good idea to do a short write up after each one to help me digest the various topics and keep writing. So here begins a series of responses to lectures I attend.

Today’s lecture was given by Scott Butner who works at the Pacific NW National Lab, specifically in the Technosocial Predictive Analytics Initiative (TPAI). It was presented as part of the ISTC’s Seminar Series on Sustainability.

The motivating idea of the talk was that we (engineers?) should consider both group and individual behavior in modeling of climate change and energy use. Butner touched on the definition of sustainability noting that the Bruntland Commission’s usage has no inclusion of metrics, and that generally, engineers tend to think of the problem of sustainability as fundamentally rooted in material and energy constraints. I personally don’t this has people (society, individual behavior) integrated enough into the definition, nor do I think sustainability can be boiled down into one fundamental problem. It seems much more complex than that.

The group at TPAI through a grant from the EPA has used systems dynamic modeling (with STELLA) to combine technological systems (agriculture, climate change, smart grid) with social and individual behavior models. Apparently they’ve also use computer gaming to inform opinions. However, near the end of the talk he mentioned that these models are “pretty disposable” and are mainly used to spur critical thinking, not produce results.

Here are some of my thoughts:

I’m not very familiar with modeling in the social sciences. I’d like to learn more about/if there are endemic (i.e. rooted in social science) models of, say, behavioral change. Usually when I think of social scientists using the word “model” it’s mostly theory, not a sort of “black box” type of thinking including inputs and outputs which I assume most engineers/technically-minded people think of. I might be wrong here, but I think the social vs. “hard” sciences have different uses of the word ‘model.’
The speaker used a quote from the USDOE regarding the smart grid, noting it “will require cultural change.” How can the publishers so over-generalize and simplify cultural change, suggesting it might come from top-down government recommendations? Is this in line with folk knowledge (or scientific knowledge) about how cultural change actually occurs?
Another point that was mentioned a few times is that even with increases in energy efficiency, energy use is still on the rise. Or, there are “normative expectations” for energy use. He cited this article to back up the claim.
The team at TPAI used the Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) data for mapping variables like affluence and behavior – one of the most interesting slides in the presentation was the correlation tables between behavior and energy usage across several variables. Like: affluence is correlated with the number of windows in a house. (More affluent = more windows)
Also, and this may be slightly cynical, but I was struck by the sort of generalized nature of "social science" and discussions of "behavior." This is pretty much in line with many of the informal discussions I've had with engineering friends or groups. It made me wonder: who does critical social science? Do engineers who eventually recognize the importance of social science tend to have a less critical and more generalized understanding? Hopefully that's not horribly offensive, but there are open comments...

2011-03-13T15:58:00.003-05:00

only when the last tree is dead,

when the last river is poisoned,

and when the last fish is trapped,

then we will understand that we can't eat money

Charity

2011-02-26T11:12:00.003-06:00

A couple of points on charity:

"To me, charity is often just about giving because you're supposed to, or because it's what you've always done, or it's about giving until it hurts. I'm about providing the means for providing something that will grow and intensify its original investment, and not just require greater giving next year, not trying to feed the habit." - Majora Carter, from a TED talk

Also, see RSAnimate's version of Zizek's First as Tragedy, Then as Farce

TSA scanners and gender

2010-12-12T17:56:00.001-06:00

"After all, masculinity implies sexual privacy -- the privilege of moving through life unmolested. Or unnoticed. The most powerful, and to men, mostly invisible, sexual privilege of masculinity is the ability to remain unaware of oneself as a body."

I suppose I never included that in my concept of male privilege, but it seems dead on.

Quote from an interesting (and concise) take on the TSA scanners:
http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=screening_for_gender

Environmental Justice

2010-10-29T15:42:00.011-05:00

Every time I hear about the environmental justice movement I hear it contrasted to the environmental movement: while I was at Greenpeace, in some classes in college, and most recently at the US Social Forum. The environmental movement is mostly situated within middle-class white hegemony and seeks to reduce the problem by individualizing it - giving each individual the power to act, you know, like the good ol’ American Dream. Change your bulbs, save the world. Get a job, end poverty. Use birth control, reduce world population. That kind of thing.

The environmental justice (EJ) movement, on the other hand is grounded in the context of historical social injustice. EJ issues are generally also spatially grounded, and a generically recognized EJ issue is some sort of hazardous waste in the backyards of poor people of color. EJ points out that many of the problems of the environmental crisis lie in the roots of colonialism. So EJ is grounded both historically and socially, as well as spatially. In this context, the way to stop dumping hazardous waste is to stop having poor people.

This week I heard a lecture that talked specifically to the historical/spatial aspect, that of burying the past, of burying social inequity. The work of EJ then is to study the material wastes -- or “imperial debris” -- of the past, making visible social inequalities. EJ, then is the antidote to our “green consumption,” “greenwashing” rampage.

This new wave of “green” consumption is a response to a basic understanding that this treadmill of production and consumption is flawed. However, rather than making any significant changes, we make the superficial addition of “green” consumption, “green” production and continue on our way. Don’t worry that the whole system is flawed; at least it’s green now. Now you can feel good about driving.

Seriously. The slogan for Toyota's new Prius is: "Welcome to the 3rd generation Prius, where man’s wants and nature’s needs agree." (Source) And, "Harmony between man, nature, and machine" (Source) (Also, can't help but notice the repeated use of the gendered word "man.")

As for greenwashing, it’s usually used in this way - just paint the whole thing green. Greenwashing, says Wikipedia, is a portmanteau of "green" and "whitewash." So - make no structural changes, only superficial ones to change how people interpret it. “Green” cars, “green” coal, etc. However, it can also be looked at as a “whitening” of the movement, with regard to class participation. If to be green means to have the newest, greenest product, only those who can afford to buy it can be really green.

EJ provides a grounded antidote to greenwashing by unearthing historical inequities. Grounded in such a context, it becomes clearer that greenwashing is really just the same old symptomatic solution to the continuing problems.

I wonder, though, if it is possible that the environmental movement can provide any new tools to the continuing civil rights movements. Can the environmental movement make us more aware of the ecology of social movements? Or the cyclical nature of change? Can grounding ourselves in the natural world help us gain perspective and inform our work?

Books recommended at this week’s lecture: On Bullshit and There’s No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster

Pinkwashing

2010-10-14T23:32:00.002-05:00

Couldn't have said it better myself, so here's a quote:

I want to get serious about breast cancer. I want to raise awareness and find a cure. How will pink kleenex on my desk and pink toilet paper in my office cure breast cancer? How does wearing pink lipstick to work and adorning our suits with pink scarves and pink ribbons change the survival rates for women in our country?

If we really believed in eliminating breast cancer — and all cancers — we would have radically overhauled our health care system in America. We would rethink the relationship between consumers/patients, hospitals, research centers, and pharmaceutical companies. And we wouldn’t try to sell pink clogs and pink candy to raise breast cancer awareness in our country.

From thecynicalgirl.com.

Yes, Bill McKibben, Yes.

2010-08-11T20:50:00.014-05:00

Bill McKibben, an outspoken activist and inspiration author (among other things) has recently written another though-but-more-importantly-action-provoking post over at Grist. Check it out. He says:

Mostly, we need to tell the truth, resolutely and constantly. Fossil fuel is wrecking the one earth we've got. It's not going to go away because we ask politely. If we want a world that works, we're going to have to raise our voices.

I recently read the book he mentions writing in 1989, called The End of Nature. It was scary and depressing, and what's worse, it was written 20 years ago and a lot of the issues are still around, as prevalent as ever. It led me to scrawl across my notebook:

HOW CAN PEOPLE NOT SEE THIS GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS AS THE BIGGEST ISSUE OF OUR TIME?

I'll share what I thought were a couple pivotal quotes, if you don't have the time to read the whole thing.
His premise is, I think encapsulated in this particular sentence:

"The invention of nuclear weapons may actually have marked the beginning of the end of nature: we possessed, finally, the capacity to overmaster nature, to leave an indelible imprint everywhere all at once."

To elaborate:

"If the waves crash up against the beach, eroding dunes and destroying homes, it is not the awesome power of Mother Nature. It is the awesome power of man, who has overpowered in a century the processes that have been slowly evolving and changing of their own accord since the earth was born."

And another:

"We live, all of a sudden, in an astroturf world, and though an astroturf world may have a God, he can't speak through the grass, or even be slient through it and let us hear."

I think this last one hits particularly home for anyone who is remotely spiritual. If your spirituality is even loosely connected with God as life, God as unity, or if there is any Nature in your God, it's a point worth considering.

To deal with guilt, we must take responsibility. We Americans alone are responsible for a huge percentage of global environmental harm (which continues as you read). Knowing this, as many do, we must address it. We must strive as individuals to use less energy, to produce less waste, and to educate our friends and family how (and why) to do these things as well. As consumers, we must demand better products, electric cars, organic foods, local products, sweat-free clothes. We must lead by example and show the world we recognize what we've done, take responsibility for it, and as a nation provide a better way of life as an example for the world.

We must reject products that lie about being "environmentally friendly," and seek to create criteria of our own for how we should treat our environment. What, by the way, is your "environment?" Have you thought about this? Is it something you're intimately familiar with or just catch a glimpse of on your commute? How does Organic Ranch Dressing help our environment?

We must become environmentally-informed consumers, and choose products wisely, not based on ads or alluring packaging.

We must examine and change our habits.

Oh, and I'm tired of this mediocre, middle-of-the-road, compromising bullshit. Let's get mad, let's get radical, and let's get some shit done. Right on Bill.

Write more!

2010-08-05T20:46:00.002-05:00

I know, I should write more. Got any ideas?

2010-07-11T11:17:00.001-05:00

Agricultural Complex

2010-06-29T17:15:00.002-05:00

What do bananas, Colombia, and Disney have in common?

I don't know, but this is what I found at my local food co-op.

Walruses??!

2010-06-17T08:12:00.005-05:00

And I QUOTE:

"How can Exxon Mobil have walruses in the response plan for the Gulf of Mexico?"

Story & video @ Huff Post.

1 in 5

2010-05-29T18:03:00.001-05:00

One in five American men between the ages of 18 and 29 believe having sex standing up prevents conception:

Reposted from here. I just found this site and I like it a lot!

"Change starts with your underwear."

2010-05-28T20:26:00.014-05:00

I haven't been posting much lately, but I have been buying underwear. Yep, that's right. I recently found a company that I like (so far). They produce organic cotton underwear AND support non-profits around the world. My first purchase was one that supported Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement in Kenya.

Anyway, if you're looking for a new pair of undies (for men and women), check out PACT!

Their ad's not bad either:

How to practice Spanish

2010-05-23T20:33:00.003-05:00

I've been learning Spanish for quite some time now. Here's how I practice:

here's an illustrated step by step how to:
except replace this: http://cityhouseblog.wordpress.com/feed/ with this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SpanishWordOfTheDay (or something)

use sharedtalk.com and chat with people in latin america (so fun!)
read spanish (children's) books and take the time to look up words you don't know
be extremely hopeful and grab a novel. i started '100 years of solitude' and tried to trudge through it. i only made it to like the 10th page because of all the odd vocab in it, but it's a way to sort of 'brunt force' your way into learning new words.
that newspaper REFLEJOS in the IL 'burbs is great, it's also online. they cover interesting stories that the mainstream papers don't. their crosswords are fun and super easy.
when i was in Costa Rica i got something similar to 'reader's digest' which was an easy-ish periodical to read, with less pressure to read it than a newspaper which gets obsolete in a few days
an awesome teacher i had showed me this website which has a lot of entertaining quizzes. her homepage also has tons of links, some of which may prove helpful (let me know if you find any)
diligently look up words when you see them and don't know them. write them down with their translations and go over the list routinely (daily/weekly/whenever you're bored)
read BBC news headlines or headlines from the papers in a specific country - look up words in the headlines you don't know. if you find a story interesting, read/skim it.
watch a spanish news channel or tv show (online or on tv), or short videos, better yet kid's shows or cartoons...
use a flash card program like mnemosyne to practice the words you've recently looked up
to take a step further, learn the basic structure of verbs, past, present, future and conditional/indicative/subjunctive so you have a framework into which to place these vocab words as you learn them (this is more advanced and requires more practice than the rest)
read something you're interested in -- i started reading some pablo neruda poetry which is so good in so many ways. he writes very well. i also like reading lyrics to songs i listen to. specifically, jarabe de palo (grooveshark!) is a spanish group that has pretty clear lyrics and worth translating for the poetics.
or SOME COMBINATION THEREOF...do what works and what you enjoy. depending on whatever else is happening in my life these different techniques have come in handy - a flashcard program is much more useful when i'm learning lots of vocab, or want to learn a lot fast. ...whereas mostly what i do now is read news to keep abreast of what's going on specifically in costa rica. la nacion (their newspaper) and a spanish word of the day page pop up every time i open my browser.
make things routine (like a homepage you always see, or doing 5-10 minutes of flash cards every day, or every Saturday)
this site seems to have a lot of videos

"Huge Eco-Possibilities"

2010-05-07T10:29:00.004-05:00

I like efficiently using small spaces, but this guy takes it to a whole new level. Check it out:

Why I’m a feminist, or THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE

2010-04-26T22:01:00.009-05:00

First and foremost, I call myself a feminist because my vision of the world includes men and women on equal ground. I reject those attempts to try and make “feminist” a dirty word, making it seem like braless, unshaved women who think men should be kept underground. To me the word feminist represents a vision of equality, one which women still are striving toward, regardless of what undergarments they wear, who they sleep with, and whether or not they shave. I’ve met some people lately who don’t seem to understand that this is still a struggle we women face daily. Here’s what I mean, and this is just off the top of my head, by no means an exhaustive list.

I’m a feminist because:

I (and all people) should be able to walk down the street not fearing rape. Most men have the privilege not to fear being forced against their will to have sex with someone else, and this may be an altogether unfathomable concept for many men. However, it is rare that I am able to walk down a street at night not aware about the lighting, the other people walking, and calculating the best, safest route home.
I (and all people) deserve reproductive rights: the right to choose what happens to my own body. I’m talking about the right to abortion (if that’s what I so choose), and I’m talking about the right to choose when and how (at least partially) I want to have sex.
I am a feminist because it is unacceptable that 1 in 3 women is sexually assaulted in her lifetime. If you think you don’t know these women, it’s because they aren’t talking, not because it didn’t happen. 1 in three: that’s either your grandma, your mom or your girlfriend. It’s your classmate, the women on the street, the woman next to you on the bus. It’s a third of us: the numbers are clear.
I (and all people) deserve equal pay for an equal job. I still can’t believe this is denied to women.
I (and all people) deserve to be respected and not have my perspectives discounted because of my gender.
I’m a feminist because “woman” is a dirty word in our culture. I watch “The L Word,” “Sex in the City,” and virtually any other pop culture movie and hear women -- ages 20 to 65 call themselves and be called “girls.” What is this? Are we so afraid of our womenhood that we can no longer freely use the word ‘woman’ to describe ourselves? That it feels weird to use it to describe myself is motivation for me to keep using it. Woman isn’t a ‘politically correct’ word: IT IS WHO I AM.
I’m a feminist because I’m tired of this bullshit standard of beauty that’s constantly being fed to me and that I am compared to. Belittling me will not make me buy your stupid product.
I’m a feminist because I’m fucking pissed off that men feel justified honking, whistling, yelling, and making kissing noises at me on the street.
I’m a feminist because it’s so hard to find a significant other that respects me. For not being a feminist, for not being outspoken, I am used and abused. I must speak up to be respected: this is what experience has taught me.
Also, I know that being a (passing-as-white) woman, and being a feminist in the United States is probably a whole lot easier to do than most of the rest of the world and probably a lot of women of color in my own country. I am also a feminist in solidarity with these women; though we have vastly different experiences, we share the common experiences of womanhood.

For if I do not call myself a feminist, that means I accept the current state of women, and I simply, utterly, and to my core do not. It should not be a struggle for half of the world population to achieve basic rights: of respect, of choice, and of equality. These rights are still being denied to us women, and we all must work together to bring them to all people. This is feminism.

Rape...fantasies?

2010-04-26T21:41:00.004-05:00

So I was reading Dan Savage's advice column, and recently a self-professed feminist man was asking about enacting a rape fantasy with his feminist girlfriend.

I don't understand this idea of "rape fantasies." It seems sort of like an oxymoron - a situation in which one consents to have their consent removed. Rape is sex (of any kind) without consent. And in the case of a "rape fantasy," people talk this over with their partner(s) beforehand? (Also, as a side note: what kind of feminist are you who would continue to perpetuate this culture of disrespect toward women?!)

It's a very tiny little bit like asking someone to "act surprised" after they already know what the surprise is.

Oftentimes I've heard the idea of "rape fantasies" being nested in the BDSM category. I'm not really sure why this is the case, except for our society's convolution of rape and violence (though this is certainly not the case for all rapes, probably not even the majority).

On the other hand, my first response is to associate "rape fantasies" with the "rape culture" in our society, not BDSM or other deviant sex acts. (Here's a great post on Rape Culture 101, for those unfamiliar with this term. Check it out!) To me, it signifies a misunderstanding of rape and an insensitivity to the experience of rape (to the experience of having one's consent ignored, disregarded, and/or forcefully prevented).

"Rape culture is pervasive narratives about rape that exist despite evidence to the contrary. Rape culture is pervasive imagery of stranger rape, even though women are three times more likely to be raped by someone they know than a stranger, and nine times more likely to be raped in their home, the home of someone they know, or anywhere else than being raped on the street, making what is commonly referred to as "date rape" by far the most prevalent type of rape."

So I'm pretty sure my negative reaction to this idea of "rape fantasies" doesn't come from a prejudice against deviant sex acts, but rather my understanding of it as a logical flaw. Oh and that it is insensitive to the experience of rape, yeah.

What do you think?

4 Rs, for eaRth day

2010-04-24T22:59:00.004-05:00

In a consumerist culture where forces act to keep us buying stuff we don't need, no wonder that the rest of this iceberg is left hidden from view. It pisses me off to see recycling touted as the way to 'save the earth,' to the neglect of these 3 other more important actions and lifestyles. Do it, or if you need to hear it again, here:
1) Reject those things you don't need. Don't buy shit that isn't sustainable. At least try not to. Don't buy into the idea that you 'need' to buy anything.
2) Reduce your consumption - buy less. Choose things with less packaging.
3) Reuse: think creatively about the waste that you do create. Compost. DIY.
4) Recycle: you know the drill.

But I don't really mean to be preachy at you. Just saying that this mass of actions below the surface is being hidden from us, as we're herded into doing as little as possible.

Meat (over)consumption

2010-04-23T19:56:00.007-05:00

Americans eat 10 billion,

10,000,000,000
animals each year!

Holy cow! Learn more: watch or read.

AmeriCorps going green

2010-04-05T10:09:00.002-05:00

I sent an email to my supervisors:

I'm writing in response to a call for "going green tips" for our individual lives. Though I think these changes are necessary, and I appreciate the opportunity to share, I feel that they should also be paired with the larger changes we must all work toward.
--

Our shorter showers, hybrid cars, and organic ranch dressing are far from useful if we don’t also work to change the larger systems of which they are a part. These important yet smaller changes are not nearly on the same magnitude of the problem they attempt to solve: shorter showers will not address the worlds’ water shortages, nor will driving a hybrid change a culture of car ownership, end greenhouse gas emissions, or prevent wars fought for oil security.

Now, if AmeriCorps committed to becoming a “greener” organization, we could enact real green business practices (read: sustainability!) to those (hundreds of?) thousands of non-profits we partner with. This would be change to get behind.

“Going green” doesn’t mean spending more money or expending a lot of effort; rather it is grounded in awareness of our use of resources and an acknowledgement of our relationship with the earth.

I see and appreciate the Forest Stewardship Council certification on the envelopes for the receipt of my direct deposits, but part of the reason I chose direct deposit was to reduce the amount of paper I get. We work for finding solutions to poverty but buy our AmeriCorps clothes from countries employing sweat-shop labor practices (read: exported American jobs).

If we as individuals commit to changing our lifestyles, part of that change should also be working toward “greening” the systems to which we belong, in which we work, and on which we depend.

Acting in Triplicate?

2010-04-05T09:15:00.006-05:00

Seeing triple?

Michael Bluth (aka Jason Bateman)

Malcolm Reynolds (aka Nathan Fillion)

Marty McFly (aka Michael J. Fox)

Also, all of the characters names start with 'M'. Coincidence? I think not.

Thoughts from No Impact Man

2010-04-03T15:47:00.003-05:00

Reblogged from here
Thoughts I come back to when thinking about environmentalism 2.0:
1. Happier planet = happier people.
2. You make a difference.
3. Our culture is broken.
4. The personal is political.
5. Economic growth ≠ Life satisfaction growth.
6. Jobs are paramount but we should work to make our planetary home better not worse.
7. The concept of zero sum game is for people with zero sum brains.
8. There is a better, happier system out there.
9. If thine eyes (or thine economic system) offends thee, pluck them (or it) out.
10. It’s not about having less. It’s about having more. The question is: more of what?
11. There is dis-ease in our culture. People yearn for something better.
12. People are trustworthy and altruistic and good and will do the right thing if you let them.
13. This does not deny the fact that normal people act abnormally in abnormal situations.
14. Love and good company, the chance to be of service and to matter, connection to something bigger, the use of our most prized talents—these things make most people happier than stuff.
15. Being responsible for the world is not a burden. It is freedom from victimhood!
16. My happiness cannot be complete unless you are happy, too.

Ants & Humans

2010-04-03T11:05:00.009-05:00

Another William McDonough quote:

"Consider this: all the ants on the planet, taken together, have a biomass greater than that of humans. Ants have been incredibly industrious for millions of years. Yet their productiveness nourishes plants, animals and the soil. Human industry has been in full swing for little over a century, yet it has brought about a decline in almost every ecosystem on the planet. Nature doesn't have a design problem. People do."

Come to the edge

2010-03-30T09:39:00.003-05:00

"Come to the edge."
"We might fall."
"Come to the edge."
"It's too high!"
"COME TO THE EDGE!"
And they came
And he pushed
And they flew.

Christopher Logue (commonly misattributed to Apollinaire)

Ingrained Music

2010-03-14T14:56:00.002-05:00

This video amazes me.

Bobby McFerrin plays pentatonic scale with an audience:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk

Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work!

2010-03-08T16:00:00.007-06:00

Stolen verbatim from GIRL W/ PEN.Love it.

1 Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.
2 When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!
3 If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!
4 NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.
5 If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!
6 Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.
7 USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.
8 Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.
9 Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!
10 Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident” you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.

And, ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you didn’t ask permission and then respect the answer the first time, you are committing a crime- no matter how “into it” others appear to be.

Oh, and HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY.

Partnership for Community Development

2010-03-03T10:45:00.003-06:00

PPG, Partnership for the Public Good, is a group in Buffalo, sort of a "think and do tank" which has also been described as a progressive alternative to a chamber of commerce. They create useful online resources, host fruitful workshops, and organize panel discussions on pertinent local, democratically-chosen topics. Check them out, they've got an interesting approach to community development.

rainstick

2010-02-22T12:03:00.005-06:00

I'm sitting next to a window working, but I wanted to write that the sleet falling outside hitting the metal screen and the roof next door sounds like a giant rainstick.

I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

2010-02-17T18:37:00.012-06:00

I read this today for the first time:
"I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees."
I love this!

It reminds me of another Neruda morsel I have written in my room:
Eres para mi suculenta | You are for me succulent
como una panaderia | like a bakery.

Here's the full poem including the title quote:

Every Day You Play

Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind. The wind.
I can contend only against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Cling to me as though you were frightened.
Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

Pablo Neruda

photo series: costa rican graffiti, part 6

2010-02-09T18:44:00.008-06:00

De pie C.R. NO AL TLC

On your feet, CR, no to the TLC

On a statue near La Sabana park in San Jose

Slow.

photo series: costa rican graffiti, part 5

2010-02-03T20:58:00.009-06:00

i really like the colors in this picture:
"el gobierno hace a los ricos mas ricos y a los pobres mas pobres."
english: the government makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.
(also all of the 'a's are anarchy symbols)

here's another one. i like the placement, someone rising up and shouting.
in the buffalo winter, i miss all the tropical plants, too.

mentira lo que dice | what's said is a lie
mentira lo que da | what's given is a lie
mentira lo que hace | what's done is a lie
mentira lo que va | what happens is a lie
. . .
todo es mentira en este mundo | everything is this world is a lie

just now i'm listing to manu chao's mentira (song). here are the lyrics. this doesn't include the news-like clips at the end that speak of the US emitting a quarter of the world's greenhouse gasses and not taking any action (like kyoto) to stop it. i don't understand the world we live in, nor the country i was born into.

Two month report: Americorps

2010-01-25T14:41:00.008-06:00

I chose to do Americorps so I could stay in my own country. Perhaps it was also slightly motivated by some underlying "white guilt," my struggles with the current re-definition of colonialism, or neo-colonialism. I want to make sure I'm not part of it, or at least to understand it more and then become a part of it intentionally.

However, I'm not sure I'm able to do that. I have felt like an "outsider" here, still, even in my own country. Also, ironically, one of my strong points for getting this job was my ability to speak Spanish, which I mostly gained from travelling to other countries, and, arguably, spreading ideas of American colonialism.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised though; I am working for the US Government. I am an agent of propaganda as much as I wear that identity, which, incidentally, is strongly encouraged. So far, I've received 5 items of clothing from VISTA with the Americorps logo. "You're our best advertisements," they told us during training. I don't doubt that. Here is where the articles of clothing are produced:

So much for not taking part in neocolonialism!

(Pakistan, Sri Lanka, China, Honduras, and Haiti)

I guess I could contextualize this journal entry a little better. I'm currently reading an article by Kim England called "Getting Personal: Reflexivity, Positionality, and Feminist Research." It's part of my work toward researching the feasibility of low-income car-sharing. There's a specific section of my research called 'research approach' so we can be more reflexive, and more intentional about our methods. England brings up several good, albiet challenging, points. In a nutshell: how can the researcher NOT bring a power struggle into the relationship of researcher-researched? She suggests "supplication", in which “the researcher explicitly acknowledges her/his reliance on the research subject to provide insight into the subtle nuances of meaning that structure and shape everyday lives.” (3) I'm really glad to be reading this kind of critical article.

Also, sort of on a side note (at this point, because I'm not sure how to integrate it), England quotes Stanley and Wise (1993): "treating people like objects – sex objects or research objects – is morally unjustifiable." I've honestly never thought of this, and it's quite an interesting wrench to throw in the gears of normal qualitative research methonds.

How does this boil down into the work I am and will be doing in Buffalo's lower-income neighborhoods? How will I continue to negotiate the boundaries between my status as a US citizen and an outsider to this city?

Stay tuned to learn the answers to these questions and many more!

Gendered TED

2010-01-12T09:21:00.005-06:00

'ingenious' - click for bigger version

check out the genders of the people on TEDs 'beautiful' and 'ingenious' tags. a friend and i were looking at the videos tagged 'ingenious' on TED and noticed that they're *all* men, and i jokingly said that 'beautiful' would be all women. unfortunately it was.

'beautiful' - click for bigger version

i'm not trying to place blame on TED or anything, because i'm pretty sure these are user-generated tags, just pointing out (because someone should) that it's a little sexist...

photo series: costa rican graffiti, part 4

2010-01-11T09:18:00.004-06:00

i know all 0 of you dedicated readers have been anxiously awaiting my next post, so here it is:

che has become a ubiquitous symbol on this continent. no wonder someone decided to graffiti on a soccer stadium. region brunca is the san isidro de general valley i think, the southern quarter of costa rica.

photo series: costa rican graffiti, part 3

2010-01-05T16:00:00.004-06:00

n o a l T L C
perez zeledon/san isidro de general
estadio futbol stadium

photo series: costa rican graffiti, part 2

2010-01-03T17:07:00.007-06:00

a lot of them refer to the TLC, which translates to tratado de libre comercio, or CAFTA in english. within the past few years, there had been a very close (nearly 50% split) vote on whether costa rica should pass the TLC. a common reason people we talked to said they voted for it was that they were scared of possible loss of trade resulting from not signing.

photo series: costa rican graffiti, part 1

2010-01-03T16:58:00.004-06:00

i took a bunch of pictures of graffiti when i was in costa rica this past summer, and i'll be posting them to my blog in the coming few days.

not god or love

What it feels like to be white...

2009-12-30T20:30:00.017-06:00

I'm starting to realize that if I'm going to write it's going to have to be intentional and sometimes forced if I want to write a lot (which I do). So here goes:

I've been dealing with a lot: trying to become part of a new culture, make new friends, create a new home, and learn the ways these things work around here. Before I moved to Buffalo I knew only a few things about it: that it snowed a lot and that it was a poor city. Being from the suburbs of Chicago, daughter of a upper-middle class white family, I didn't have very much interaction or experience with American poverty. Most of what I understand of poverty has come from international travel (mostly which has been service projects).

Buffalo is 1/3 poor, 1/2 black, and the office I work in is all men. As an upper-middle class white woman, that's a lot of difference, and I feel it every day.

My writing prompt for tonight is an essay I came across while reading the book Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti called White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh.

Facebook's default avatar

McIntosh approached the issue of race through her relationship with male privilege. "If men want to deny (or do not accept) their privilege, there might be a similar situation with race," seems to be her initial thinking on exploring this issue:

"I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious."

Eventually her 'untutored way' resulted in a list of 50 effects of white privilege such as:

" 6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented."

and

"7. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is."

and

"21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group."

These specific and relatable examples really bring it home for me. It's fairly commonplace for me to hear privilege being talked about abstractly, philosophically, but I think it's rare to be framed in a way that I can reflect on in my daily life.

McIntosh later suggests that we could take a next step and distinguish between positive and negative advantages of privilege and become "distressed" when those negative (i.e. "unearned") advantages are apparent. Though, "[d]isapproving of the system won't be enough to change them."

"To redesign social systems," she writes, "we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions."

Here is her conclusion:

"Although systemic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me and, I imagine, for some others like me if we raise our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light-skinned. What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base."

Perhaps we confused privileged whites can start by looking toward feminist men/allies who work daily to recognize unequal privilege among their peers.

For now, I'm at least getting used to feeling my race. When I'm the only white person on a bus half-full of people, I feel it. When I get looked at differently by police, I feel it. I'm starting to realize and break down judgments I have that arise in an unconscious/conditioned manner. Being underprivileged as part of my gender I feel that friction more and am more likely to speak out against it, and I will try to think about how to take these responses to dealing with racial and class privileges I experience here in Buffalo as well.

For the full article click here.

Other quotes I thought were good but I didn't integrate in the writing:

"I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence. My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture."
"The pressure to avoid it is great, for in facing it I must give up the myth of meritocracy."
"Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the United States think that racism doesn't affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see "whiteness" as a racial identity."

A bit of history we shouldn't forget

2009-12-14T10:43:00.004-06:00

Wikipedia's first paragraph:

The "giant sucking sound" was United States Presidential candidate Ross Perot's colorful phrase for what he believed would be the negative effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which he opposed. The phrase, coined during the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign, referred to the sound of U.S. jobs heading south for Mexico should the proposed free-trade agreement go into effect.

Preview

2009-11-19T06:57:00.002-06:00

Up next: How I find myself in the unlikely situation of being in Americorps...

Knit Mitten!

2009-10-27T17:37:00.001-05:00

I made this! It was my first mitten and first time I used double pointed needles. So I just finished the pair and I'm working on a second one for someone else. Getting ready for winter.

what's in your soap?

2009-10-09T12:15:00.001-05:00

this is interesting. wired breaks down palmolive dish soap into it's ingredients and discusses the purpose of each one. i'd like to see, also, from where or how each is synthesized.

Google Chrome

2009-10-07T20:50:00.004-05:00

I recently sent in my laptop to get fixed (only because HP cut me an awesome deal), so I'm back to using a computer I built almost 10 years ago. Since then, I've upgraded the motherboard and RAM, but it's still slow and running Window XP. Browsing the 'net with Firefox and a zillion tabs like I do has quite an effect on this computer, so I decided to try Chrome to see if performance would improve. I'm happy to say it has. However, Google seems to be taking control over more and more of my digital life...

AmeriCorps Motivational Statement

2009-10-07T18:50:00.004-05:00

So I'm not bragging about this mediocre statement, but I haven't written anything in a while, so here goes. What follows is my personal statement for a position I'm applying for with AmeriCorps. Let me know what you think.

When I went to New Orleans, I felt self-actualized for the first time in my life. As a psychology student, I had read about self-actualization in textbooks and heard of it in lectures; I understood the concept well. But it wasn’t until I chose to spend my spring break in New Orleans helping with Hurricane Katrina relief efforts that I actually knew what self-actualization felt like.
I had put myself in an unfamiliar situation; I found myself in a van full of people I had just met (except for one friend) and strapped in for the 14-hour drive south. I had no idea what to expect, and I had just decided to go on this trip because other plans fell through. I’d have to say, though, that it was the best last-minute choice I’ve made in my life.
The first morning in New Orleans I met Jeremiah. He was the volunteer coordinator: the top of the hierarchy of people in charge of the place I was staying – a makeshift shelter in an abandoned warehouse serving as lodging for about 120 college kids on spring break. Jeremiah was one of the first people in my life who I felt believed in me, someone who recognized my skills and valued them.
I worked alongside Jeremiah coordinating volunteers, contacting residents about rebuilding or gutting, and staffing the volunteer center. To say it was uncharted ground for me would be an understatement. I had never been in such a position of leadership, nor entrusted with as much responsibility. I wrote press releases and helped coordinate a large press conference to occur after I left, things I had never done before. But I like to get my hands dirty. I like challenges. So I wouldn’t say I was afraid.
That spring break in New Orleans was also the first time I realized that I like working with people, a lot. I had done other service projects in the past, but until then I don’t think I would’ve recognized myself as passionate about working with others. It was a great feeling to know that I was working with so many others who had taken the time to come down and help out. We had felt a similar draw to devote our time to, and this became an instant bond.
Some of us are called to action when we learn about what goes on in the world, as we become aware of the amount of suffering that occurs to other humans, other living beings, and the planet itself. Individually, though, I think we are very limited. In other words, there is very little we can do in isolation, by ourselves. But once we start talking to people about our ideas and our passions, that changes. Following my passion of self-actualization and surrounding myself with people who radiate their own passion have been my guiding forces since New Orleans. Only by putting our heads together, learning about each other’s skills, and harnessing our passions can we begin to make an impact.

The Story of Stuff

2009-09-14T14:55:00.003-05:00

I just received an email from a friend with this link in it: http://www.storyofstuff.com/ ...I watched it and I love the movie. If you want to bypass it and go directly to their action steps, click here. What follows is an excerpt from a 20 minute video, jam-packed with facts in a really easy to digest way. There's a lot we could talk about regarding this video, so if it gets you inspired, comment or email me!

I do have one suggestion for the website and movie makers, which I outline in an email I just sent:

Hi -

I just watched The Story of Stuff. I think it does an amazing job at explaining complex problems in an engaging and simple way. I've already sent the links to many of my friends and family and I'll probably end up blogging about it a little later.

But I have one question, why not mention the other 3 "R"s? Sure, recycling is great, but it's on the bottom of the hierarchy of the other R's. I was recently working on a project to network sustainability efforts in Costa Rica and learned about the 4th R, "rechazar" in Spanish, or "reject" in English. In this hierarchy, rejecting products comes first - never buying those which are toxic, disposable, or otherwise harmful. Next would come "reduce," then "reuse," and, finally, "recycle."

We seem to have become obsessed with only the last R, the lowest on the hierarchy, the one with the least potential to change the linear system Annie Leonard spoke of -- to the neglect of the other 3, more helpful Rs. These 4 "R"s can be guiding principles, in addition to the 10 steps you have already outlined on the website. I think your website, and the organization of people behind it, could surely use it in a productive and educational way.

So, though I was disappointed to hear Annie only speak of recycling, and forget about its counterparts, I really enjoyed the video. I appreciate the work you're doing to bring these kinds of facts, statistics, and big picture problems to the computer screens of so many people in such a well-done effort.

Thanks, and keep up the great work,
Ari Sahagun

This particular issue, the over-focus on recycling to the neglect of the counterparts, has been on my mind lately. Writing this email-letter makes me want to write to some of the local papers around here and tell them about it. I think I just might.

Eco Warrior

2009-09-12T22:24:00.003-05:00

Quoting likecool.com: If you see people littering on the street, not separating garbage..., transform to ECO WARRIOR!

Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five

2009-08-30T20:23:00.005-05:00

I just finished reading Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. I like his nonchalant way of describing situations, and the visual quotidian imagery he employs. Here are a few quotes that made impressions on me:

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

The time would not pass. Somebody was playing with the clocks, and not only with the electric clocks, but the wind-up kind, too. The second hand on my watch would twitch once, and a year would pass, and then it would twitch again.

The Germans and the dog were engaged in a military operation which had an amusingly self-explanatory name, a human enterprise which is seldom described in detail, whose name alone, when reported as news or history, gives many war enthusiasts a sort of post-coital satisfaction. It is, in the imagination of combat's fans, the divinely listless loveplay that follows the orgasm of victory. It is called "mopping up."

Every time he inhaled his lungs rattled like greasy paper bags.

...He came slightly unstuck in time, saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again. It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:
     American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.
     The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened the bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again and made everybody as good as new.
     When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did the work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them in the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody every again.
     The American fliers turned in their uniforms and became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.

...He had a tremendous wang, incidentally. You'll never know who'll get one.

...There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces.

...She applied her power brakes, and a Mercedes slammed into her from behind. Nobody was hurt, thank God, because both drivers were wearing seat belts. Thank God, thank God. The Mercedes lost only a headlight. But the rear end of the Cadillac was a body-and-fender man's wet dream. The truck and fenders were collapsed. The gaping trunk looked like the mouth of of village idiot who was explaining that he didn't know anything about anything. The fenders shrugged.

Letter to the Editor

2009-08-26T19:24:00.004-05:00

I'm trying to clean out my closet of random things I've pack-ratted away during 4 years at college. I ran across this:

Campus sexual assault should not be tolerated
April 24th, 2008

What kind of society do we live in when women are not allowed to walk home without being in fear?

I was walking home from a library after a few intense hours of paper-writing. Around midnight, I decided to take a well-lit street home. As I walked past a dorm, a young man yelled at me, threatening to anally rape me. I didn't dare flinch nor look in his direction. A few seconds later, another man demanded me to answer. I spent the next few blocks walking fast, my heart racing, looking over my shoulder.

This story is not rare, nor an exception to the rule. It is ludicrous that it continues.

We must no longer tolerate this kind of behavior. It is a direct violation of the University's policy on sexual harassment; perpetrators must be held accountable to provide the safe environment promised to students on campus. What is the state of our campus community when students feel so confident to publicly commit such acts of sexual assault? It is essential that this not be tolerated on any level. Individually, it could be as simple as telling people you know about your experiences, rather than silencing them. Speak out against this.

We must come together and address the issue of sexual harassment, assault and violence as a community and commit to taking measures to end it. We should develop and promote education efforts that can be taken seriously by all students.

We must start respecting each other. Only from a profound lack of respect for fellow community members can one verbally threaten strangers on the street, and we must meet this disrespect with a steadfast will to overcome it.

This is not acceptable; our campus should not condone its continuance, and we should cultivate respect for one another.

Ari Sahagun
Senior in LAS

Go outside!

2009-08-25T22:45:00.003-05:00

Awesome website to find outdoor events and spaces around you: http://www.nwf.org/naturefind/

Go outside and stop reading!

Design Feedback

2009-08-08T10:25:00.005-05:00

I guess I haven't thought very critically about web design within the context of American society. I'm in Costa Rica working to co-create (i.e. hopefully with the influence of others) a social network for non-gov'tal organizations. Recently I've been seeking feedback about the site in face to face meetings, because I haven't been getting any though digital means (email, chat, feedback forms). I'm realizing that I have culture googles on. So I'm learning that looking at the forefront Web 2.0 standard-creating designers in the States (or other Northern countries) is perhaps not the only inspiration I should seek to design here, in Costa Rica. A lot of NGOs that do have websites have sites that look pretty old, I'm talking Geocities-era. If these are my peers, and the audience I work with is used to navigating these kinds of sites, I better pay more attention to them, and see how I can emulate Geocities within a Web 2.0 framework.

It's an interesting issue. Here's an example, the default tabs created by Drupal and the Zen theme are pretty standard, at least from my perspective. (Take a look)However, recently a professor at a national university told me that if he sees these tabs, he thinks that the "Editar" section is grayed out because it's unavailable -- so he wouldn't bother to click it. I had never thought of it that way.

Another prominent example I've heard a few times is genearl unfamiliarity with the Google Maps. Being pretty tech saavy, I take this fluency for granted, and I know what happens if you scroll with your mouse placed over the map. I haven't seen anyone here use Google Maps as the American designers intended them to be used.

Not to mention that the idea of a "social network" is much different than navagating the web more like a book, with a linear lay out and table of contents you can reference. My advisor calls being able to navagate something like a social network "branching literacy". Apparently, this skill isn't very developed in Costa Rica.

Just some food for thought. If you have any tips to suggest, please do!

Soneto XVII

2009-07-27T18:20:00.004-05:00

This is one of my favorite poems. I have a thing for sonnets, probably because they're ridiculously romantic. I still would like to consider myself one of those too, hopeless or not. Anyway, without further ado, here is the original Spanish and translated English versions of Pablo Neruda's Sonnet 27.

Soneto XVII
No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio
o flecha de claveles que propagan el fuego:
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.
Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva
dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.
Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,
sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.

~

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Hey Latina!

2009-07-26T18:55:00.003-05:00

So, I ride a lot of buses in Costa Rica. Of course there are vendors who sell things to people on buses. From your seat, someone outside the bus will try and sell you anything from coke, to chips (potato, yucca, and banana), to sliced fresh fruit. People get on the bus and yell whatever products they're selling, and usually it's a good deal for we weary bus riders. One particularly alluring product on the hot days is something called 'gelatina,' basically frozen juice in a bag like a popsicle. I didn't think anything of it until Justin asked me, "Why are they yelling 'Hey Latina'?"...So now every time I see gelatina that's what I think of.

What is sustainability? What is "the environment"?

2009-07-26T18:51:00.005-05:00

I think our common, mainstream definitions of these words, and a lot of rhetoric around concern for these things is constructed in a way that doesn't get to the root of our problem. Here's what I mean:

I personally think a lot of the standard arguments for sustainability are shit. Fuck economics, fuck science, technology, etc. (In this case, as a basis for this argument.) I think the root of the problem lies in the fact that a lot of people no longer have the foundations to create relationships with non-human entities. I mean here, that this "inherent value" that the earth/environment/whatever you call it, should manifest itself as a respect and awe within us, unconsciously, and if you grow up in a grid full of concrete boxes, I don't know if that's possible*. I think this problem is at the root of so many other current psychological problems in our society and world. *Sorry, that's a little harsh. It may be possible, but I think it takes a conscious effort to remember it.

At least that's what I've been thinking lately.

All our urges toward "green" "eco-friendly" things that "help our environment" are just misplaced desires to reconnect to the natural world. We don't need a greener clorox product, an eco-lodge in the middle of the most biodiverse place on earth, or to give money to an NGO for it's administrative costs, we need to walk around in the grass, observe the differences in how a robin and hawk fly, and hear the sound of bugs crawling on the forest floor. Then, I think we can start thinking about what it could look like to live a life that is worth passing on to our children.

I very rarely hear this argument constructed in that way, especially in a classroom. It may be too simple for academia, even for psychologists who think they/try to understand people. I hope whatever I do next in my life will try to answer the questions this way...I'd like to understand more about it, and I think it has a lot of potential.

The little things

2009-07-13T19:21:00.001-05:00

--We were walking down the street passing some speakers blaring salsa from the supermarket. I looked inside and saw two of the employees dancing.
--We're on a bus from the middle of nowhere to the middle of nowhere, and after about 2 hours, someone sitting next to me whips out an ASUS netbook.
--When waitresses, vendors, or cashiers call me 'amor'.
--That there can be a normal-looking town that macaws or capuchin monkeys visit.
--That there can be 90 people on a bus at one time. Some of the buses get real crowded. But you can get anywhere on them.
--Reliably good, really cheap coffee. I can't stress this enough.

Homesick?

2009-07-02T19:35:00.001-05:00

What I miss:
--Claussen pickles. A big fat jar of them. The juicy crunchy tangyness of them.
--Oh, and friends and family, too. I miss being able to sit down and talk to someone without having to start from scratch. Relationships with history.
--Good dark chocolate. The smooth bitter kind.
--Not being afraid of tropical bugs/illnesses.
--Social deviance. I miss talking to people who are critical of normal social activities. Probably I'm spoiled after living in Urbana for 4 years.
--Shelves to put my shit on. I'm getting a little tired of living out of a backpack. We've been traveling since the lease ran out on June 15, and we will be until August. In the moist climate everything smells like Ben's dreadlocks and cramming it all into a backpack next to my laptop is less than desirable.
--Recycling. There's so much garbage here.
--Sidewalks.

What's better:
--Canned alcoholic drinks. Rock Ice is pretty good. Cuba libres in a can is pretty cool too.
--The pace of life. People are so nice here...and generally patient. I visited the states back in May (we talked) and I was struck at how impatient Americans are - especially with other people. I'm not looking forward to going back to that.
--Huge variety of tropical fruits. ...Every time I go to a market or store I find new fruits. There are these things called mamon chino (rambutan? in english, or is that a country somewhere...?) which are kind of like lychees. Today we found a wine made out of them and it's awesome.
--Public transportation! You can get anywhere on a bus, it'll take a while, but you can get there for cheap without owning a car.
--Hearing Latin music all the time. I like the animated beat and the corny romantic lyrics.
--Biodiversity in general. It's great to see so many plants and animals I've never heard of before. Crazy bugs birds plants mammals.

Leo Kottke: Rings

2009-06-30T23:20:00.006-05:00

One of my favorite songs!

news from the costa rican campo (countryside)

2009-06-30T15:22:00.003-05:00

here are some new pictures to accompany this update:
http://picasaweb.google.com/arisahagun/CostaRica2OutsideTheCentralValley

background / what we've been up to:
so our lease ran up in the "city" (metropolis of the central valley, specifically, heredia) and we've been traveling since then, the 15th. on the 14th, we came to san isidro for a permaculture workshop with a few other white people. the fact that so few non-white people practice permaculture is becoming more and more apparent to me, and i've been thinking about it a lot. i'm trying to figure out the backstory on that.

so after we moved out, we spent a few nights in Mastatal, a really rural town west of san jose. the bus had to stop at the top of a hill, and all the passengers got out and walked to the bottom of it because there was a small mudslide that wiped out the road. we eventually got to Marcos' little finca (farm). he made some really delicious food. here's one example: mashed potatoes, a little diced onion and cilantro, mixed with canned tuna, stuffed into cooked noodle tubes (i can't remember the italian name) about 4 inches long, then coated with "criollo" (creole, or, well, spicy ketchup) sauce, then deep fried. it was good. we slept basically out in the jungle. it was a 10 min hike into "la montaña" he called it, and we slept on a lofted structure under mosquito netting. when we woke up in the morning there were like tons of black/green-spotted frogs just chilling all over the ground (which he previously told us were poisonous if you touch them)...and at this point, we had only seen 1 frog in all of CR. ...so we were a little surprised by the amount there were.

we basically had to pack up and leave mastatal because the internet access was limited to 3 old computers in a hot cement-brick room with a slow connection. we couldn't start the beta test under those conditions. this was unfortunate because we both really enjoyed marcos' place.

so we hitched a ride with 2 irish hippies who worked at the chocolate place (la iguana chocolate) next door. they bought a $2,000 1950's land rover in san jose and drove it all the way out there. we rode with them to the coast and got off in quepos.

quepos is a hot destination because of manuel antonio, a huge national park nearby. the setting was beautiful, except for the rampant development going on. we found a hostel in the town of manuel antonio - well, i say 'town' loosely. it was basically a collection of hotels and over priced restaurants which had bottlenecked and corroded the entrance to the park. we've found that where ever there are tourists, there's wi-fi internet...and our hostel was no exception. mind blowing internet speed...best we've had. and in an otherwise rural area. so there are monkeys and parrots and bright blue butterflies and palm trees and epiphites and beach and tourists flying everywhere. and we finally launched the beta test. yay!

we stayed there for a week, and left on the day that the power had died for the entire town...we saw downed trees on the lines on the bus trip out of town.

now i'm sitting in noe's 'yoga dojo' (say it, it's kinda fun). back around the town of san isidro again. we've been here for a few days (since sunday) and i'm still trying to get used to the place. there are a LOT of contradictions and conflicts. crazyness and meditation, work and yoga, white and tico, native and foreign, really disruptive cattle farming in the jungle, permaculture, tourism, respect for the earth and destruction of it, paradise, paradise lost, objectification, sexism, racism, myopic over-focused anthropocentrism...so i'm a little confused here. i think i'll have more coherent thoughts of it after a few more days and some distance from it.

in the meantime, we're working to facilitate the beta test getting off the ground. michelle (our advisor at uiuc) recently made contact with a large costa rican organization which might be interested in funding/sustaining the network, so we're very excited about that prospect.

Permaculture

2009-06-15T13:44:00.005-05:00

Yesterday I went to a permaculture workshop. Permaculture is something I've been interested in for a while now.

Last week, I told a friend that I was going to this workshop and he asked, "What is permaculture?" My answer was, "Well I don't really know; that's why I'm going!" All I know is that most everything I've heard about it makes me like it, and makes me want to learn more.

The teacher yesterday (Sam) defined it as "ecological design science." Basically, it's a collection of principles for how to do lower-impact agricultural activity. Drawing on local resources, taking a lot of time to observe and plan, considering the entire ecosystem, and working as (our interpretations of) nature would are some of the foundations.

Sam said that for the first few years he was learning about it, he was unable to come up with an intelligible definition. So now I don't feel too bad about not knowing, and I've taken another step to learn more.

More info, of course, at Wikipedia, here and here. The picture is from the cover of the permaculture bible.

Good icebreaker

2009-06-08T00:53:00.001-05:00

Just ran across this browsing random design blogs...an icebreaker where everyone answers "I can teach you..."

Here's the flickr set.

One impression of rural Costa Rica

2009-06-03T22:38:00.006-05:00

The past week we've been traveling to some pretty rural towns. I noticed that men stare "deeper" there, with more penetration, as compared to what I normally experience around here, in the urban areas. In most of Latin America, men stare pretty often, and sometimes do more (whistle/beep/etc), but this was different. Like 90% of the men on the street stared at me and it made me feel physically, viscerally objectified. Made me feel like I was wearing a bikini, when I was wearing way more clothes than the climate allowed for (hardly any skin showing)...wishing I had a cloak to add on top. I can't find the right word for it, 'disgusting' keeps popping up, but that's not quite it. Completely devalued? Naked? I'm not sure. They were definitely not looking at what I felt was me. All of this was walking next to Justin - and a couple of times he said buenas dias/noches or hola to them and they didn't even acknowledge him, just stared right past him to me, through me. God, it was creepy and I hated being there. So unwelcome.

Soccer

2009-06-03T22:38:00.005-05:00

I've been at my computer during this game between the US and Costa Rica, the game to determine which team goes to the 2010 World Cup. Unfortunately the US is losing 3-0 with 15 minutes to go, but every goal, the entire town around me screams and dogs bark. Needless to say, Costa Ricans are kind of obsessed with soccer.

I have to admit, I'd like to be at a bar or at the game, but I was a little scared to see what would've happened if the US won.

a second for the environment

2009-06-03T20:51:00.001-05:00

weird we feel like we're "helping "the environment"" when we buy a car that still uses gas and is made from all kinds of unsustainable materials. yes, it's definitely less bad than most other cars on the market, i think, but it's still a weird thing to say. furthermore, i'm not comfortable, from a psychological standpoint, with our use of the term (and conception of the idea) "the environment". what exactly are we referring to in that sense? and what makes us feel like we're helping it when we buy a car or, say, change a lightbulb? i feel that term and the phrase serves to distance ourselves from nature - from something tangible, from creation/our mother earth. people who say "save/help the environment" aren't usually in touch with that. (in my opinion, which i know is pretty "radical")

2 quotes

2009-05-17T12:46:00.002-05:00

Two totally unrelated quotes:

From John Ruskin (1819-1900, British romantic environmentalist):

Whereas the mediaeval never painted a cloud, but with the purpose of placing an angel in it; and a Greek never entered a wood without expecting to meet a god in it; we should think the appearance of an angel in the cloud wholly unnatural, and should be seriously surprised by meeting a god anywhere. Our chief ideas about the wood are connected with poaching. We have no belief that the clouds contain more than so many inches of rain or hail, and from our ponds and ditches expect nothing more divine than ducks and watercresses.

I personally like his mourning about our loss of expectation. If nothing else I feel that this loss may be the greatest for humanity solely, as through an anthropogenic lens.

From Dan Savage (The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Get Pregnant)

The same impulse that drives grown gay men to walk around holding hands could be pushing us toward this [adopting a child]. For same-sex couples, taking a lover's hand is almost never an unself-conscious choice. You have to think about where you are, whether you're safe, and you have to look. By the time you determine you're safe, you're not even sure you want to hold hands anymore. The genuine moment has passed, but you've invested so much energy and angst that now you can't not take your lover's hand. You wind up holding and the only reason you take your lover's hand is to prove that you can.

Surely, this fascinates me because of my interest in psychology; I think he does a great job at explaining our relentless doubting/insecurity (whether this is socially or individually caused).

I just visited the US and picked up a few new books!

Costa Rica

2009-04-26T13:58:00.006-05:00

This and the next few posts are my personal experiences from being in Costa Rica. You can read the more professional blog from the project site: www.nvov.org/blog/. I've been here for about 2.5 months now and I'm still learning a lot!

Here are a few things I've noticed and want to remember:

People are happy here. They smile, they take their time, and are usually very friendly and helpful. Like a lot of other places in the world (Latin America and Europe for sure), people kiss on the cheek to say hello and goodbye.
Lots more waste. It's definitely harder to recycle here, and as someone living temporarily it's hard to compost, because I can't have a garden!
In certain roles, people are more patient. For example, take waiters/waitresses. Here, there's no harassing. They assist you when you feel like, and you are in control of the service (for the most part). Rather than constantly bugging you like in the US, you need to ask to get service here. I like it.
Kissing on the cheek! I like when cultures embrace physical contact. I think it's more inline with our psychologies as human beings than trying to deny it, as I sometimes feel we do in the U.S.
Cool new Spanish phrases. Pura vida, todo bien, etc. It's been interesting to see how my Spanish skills were geographically-based, and now to be able to incorporate some Costa Rican vocab into the mix.
The nickname "reinita." I was walking in the market and some guy was trying to convince me to buy his cheese (or meat or fruit or whatever) and called me "hey little queen." A little endearing?

Things I miss about the US:

Sidewalks. Flat, usable sidewalks, without lots of dog poo. Yes, I do miss that.
Friends and family, loved ones in general. I've made a few friends here, but it's hard to make good friends quickly. I miss knowing people.

Other things:
It feels weird to constantly be comparing "us" and "them". I find myself doing that pretty often - we do this, they do that - and I'm not sure that I like it.

This is just a start to what I hope will be an avenue for my reflections.

As for staring at my sister's ass

2009-02-20T14:42:00.002-06:00

First, why do guys think I give a shit about how hot my sister* is?? Or that it isn't offensive...I feel some mature part of myself suppressing the inevitable rant so I can actually tell you something coherent, and I've been trying to think how to word it. It goes something like this:

Privilege has a history that the privileged are often blind to. It would be one thing, let's say, in a vacuum society with a blank slate, for a man to look at a woman's ass. It's biological, sexual, evolutionary. Completely guilt-free, and, well, natural. Same with the reverse (woman checking out a man)(EDIT: or a woman checking out a woman or a man checking out a man).

However, in our society, that is not the case. The case is that for the past few hundred years (maybe even thousand), women have been constructed as objects in mens' minds. We have been forced to act according to man's will. We are told how to dress, how to walk, how to please him. We are fed a history of lies - of how we are made from him (Eve from Adam), of how we are not as holy as He (no female Priests, Rabbis (until lately), few deities), of how we are not as powerful (no presidents, political leaders, few CEOs), we are told we are weak, we are not artistic or creative (no major female artists, poets, writers, inventors until the past 2 centuries). We are dehumanized, demoralized, and thus dominated by the male psyche. So, when you stare at a woman's ass in our society, that's what you're reinforcing.

When you tell me about staring at my sister's ass, you ask me to justify that, and I cannot.

(* I use this word in the broadest sense possible.)

Costa Rica!

2009-02-20T12:56:00.003-06:00

Hey - I'm in Costa Rica working on a research project called Nuestra Voz ("our voice"). Check out the blog here: http://www.nvov.org/blog/

Another Rainbow Dessert

2009-02-09T00:21:00.004-06:00

I can't help myself. This looks delicious. Well not really, but it's pretty. I'm going to try and make it...with a slightly different recipe than the original. I already have chocolate frosting and I'm fine with using the standard box cake recipe rather than the diet soda (kinda weirds me out).

Knitting Updates: Felting!

2009-02-06T10:53:00.001-06:00

Since I had to scrap the awesome booties because of the Mobius strip (read last post), I'm going to go with something similar and more useful in a warmer climate. Here are some links I've used.

Here you can learn to felt by hand. Many people choose to felt wool in a washing machine, but I think it'd be cool to do the first one by hand to see the process in action, rather than let the machine do the magic. So I'll try that way and see how it goes.
I'm on to making this and this for a laptop and camera with matching yarn.

I'll let you know how they turn out!

Beginner's Knitting Lessons

2009-02-05T21:37:00.005-06:00

So it's the middle of winter and I'm bored so I decided to re-learn knitting. The possibilities are really endless and, contrary to cultural belief, knitting is not just for old women. Young women, men, basically anyone can knit if they choose to set their minds and hands to it. So, here are my tips for beginners, problems that I've run into in the past week, problems I write also so I don't run into them again!

First, here's an awesome, huge database of free knitting patterns (beginner-advanced): http://www.knittingpatterncentral.com/directory.php
Second, when switching from knitting to purling, you must switch the feed yarn from (in this case) back to front. The reverse is true also. If you don't, you'll screw up and have to start over. Or if you're really smart you'll figure out how to fix it...
Third, do not knit Mobius strips. If you knit on a circular needle, apparently this is a threat, and you must watch out for it. I did not know of this, figuring that that was a made up thing, but it happened and now I have to start over, half-way done with a project.

Good luck.

Flash Card Program

2009-01-15T11:11:00.003-06:00

I just returned from Mexico and want to work on my Spanish. Mnemosyne, an open source flash card program, has been really helpful.

Rainbow Jello!

2008-12-02T09:55:00.007-06:00

If you haven't noticed yet, I like rainbows. I'm not quite sure why I find them visually appealing...but they represent some cool things: inclusiveness and openness, and encompass the full spectrum of variety.

I just stumbled across this page where the author brilliantly created rainbow Jello. Genius.

Latin America + Shock Doctrine

2008-10-30T17:43:00.005-05:00

Naomi Klein has been at UIUC for the past few days. Today I had the privilege to attend a panel discussion with her and two academics (Prof. Fernando Coronil, Univ. of Michigan; Prof. Andrew Orta, UIUC) on "The rise of current social movements and protests in Latin America."

It was interesting, to say the least, and refreshingly reminded me that I am situated very close to a college campus. I'd been away from the academic air for a while.

Klein built upon arguments presented at her main lecture last night (I was unable to attend) and in her book, Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Her project is to promote a counter-narrative to the unquestioned neoliberal responses to disasters. Lately, see: 9/11, Katrina, and the bailout "plan." The government has responded to these catastrophes by capitalizing on public shock and fear to push an agenda (war in Iraq/Patriot Act, racism/commercialization of NOLA/overlooking of basic infrastructure problems, free reins with $700B). Additionally, we haven't done a good job at remembering history as it happened either. Thus, we're shocked at the shock...and during this our freedoms are stolen right out from under us, without question.

Klein says we Americans are "addicted to shock."

In the context of Latin America, she said that it is the most advanced site of resistance against this "shock doctrine" and neoliberalism. She cited a few reasons (and noted that it's an incomplete list):

It got neoliberalism first.
It was an extremely obvious un-democratic (violent and/or racist) overthrow of the status quo.
The left there wasn't discredited. Compared to the Soviet bloc, the left (socialist) side didn't fall; in Latin America, it was put down. People can't point to the left and say they screwed it up before.

She said we have a lot to learn from Latin American organizing during our own "reconstruction period."

I think she's got some good points, and I'll put her book on my "to read" list. ...Also, she was recently on Colbert Report if you'd like to see her in action.

This is also an interesting story.

2008-10-29T21:23:00.001-05:00

Don't forget!

Creativity+Design

2008-10-29T14:15:00.007-05:00

A few things I've recently ran across have really sparked my creative side:

A movie by Care.org called The Girl Effect. It's one of the better examples of good typography I've seen.
Twitter's introductory video. A very simple and low-budget video that introduces the concept of Twitter and provides motive to use it. The group (Common Craft) that did it has more similar movies on their website, but I think Twitter was the best.
A list of design RSS feeds. A lot of them are inspirational (in the design sense).
Plus, a personal favorite, rainbow-based designs.

Enjoy!

Sex Education?

2008-10-23T22:37:00.002-05:00

So...this is a follow up to the discussion I posted with regard to The Price of Pleasure movie, (the Two Intense Movies post)...

If anyone reads this, what do you think about the following:
How can we learn about sex? How can we get a good education on it? How do we learn what is "right" in a relationship?

Or, more seriously: how can we learn about what constitutes violence or rape in a relationship?

I think we've got some issues as a society when (as I learned from Vagina Monologues) 1 in 3 American women experiences sexual violence in her lifetime. What's our plan to solve this? (Even as individuals?)

I truely believe that...

2008-10-22T17:15:00.001-05:00

...everyone should watch this:

It's from youtube's early days...and has 5,000,000+ views. That's crazy.

Fall!

2008-10-22T15:47:00.001-05:00

The sugar maple leaves around here are beautiful!

Resurrecting the old blog

2008-10-22T13:42:00.002-05:00

I just added a bunch of old posts from my original blog.

Two Intense Movies

2008-10-22T12:18:00.004-05:00

The past two nights I've watched two movies: The Price of Pleasure and The Constant Gardener. They were both pretty depressing but at the same time thought provoking. Here are some of my thoughts:

The price of pleasure was about pornography and it's impacts. The aim of the documentary was not to provide a bias or be preachy, but rather its aim is just to get people talking about it, something we usually do not do, no more than the "porn is bad" or "I like/watch porn." The movie included a lot of quotes from porn "users," producers, and actresses. It described a study done to analyze some of the top rented flicks - from the violence in it to racial content. I wouldn't have guessed this but about 90% of the films they analyzed had violent content. (Though I don't know their working definition of violence.) The movie included several porn clips as well, and nothing out of the ordinary, as far as I can tell. It was certainly interesting to see it removed from its normal context.

Seeing the clips out of context, it was even more clear how big a role male dominance is in the scenarios of standard porn. The movie pointed out that when sex is attached to these socially unacceptable (politically incorrect) ideas they can be extremely overt and we don't seem to care as much or at all. The male dominance is one facet, but race (gendered) is also a factor. Extremely over-sexualized black men, docile Asian women, demanding white men, etc., the standard racial stereotypes, but on steroids and very obviously tied to gender. These politically incorrect ideas are overlooked and more acceptable in porn. Why is that?

To me the most interesting phenomenon is how the concept of "normal" is completely altered by watching pornography. For many men*, porn (videos and magazines) is one of the first and perhaps only source for information on sex and relationships. (*I say men here because they are the overwhelming majority of porn consumers.) How then will they ever develop a frame of reference on sex outside of that? In other words, their views on sex are created by the world of porn, and these ideas are too often brought into the world of the bedroom. With no anchor on normality outside of porn, this fundamentally changes what will register as violence, or as rape, in a man's mind.

I do not blame the men who watch porn. Though I think there are healthy alternatives to using porn (like not using it), I find it hard to place blame on the individual men. How so? I think it has something to do with how the concept of normal is altered - it's not conscious. They're not thinking "I'd like to see violent porn and change my perception of violence and then act violently toward my significant other." Furthermore, demonizing or shaming men for doing this would tend to make them more resistant to change. So, though I do not think these individuals are to blame, I do think they are the ones who need to change. Once they realize that their views of sex and relationships are affected by porn, they should question that. It is their responsibility as a part of an intimate relationship to be aware of their ideas of sex and what they bring to that relationship.

And in a free market system where we are not allowed to blame a company for producing porn, I believe we shouldn't put the responsibility on them either, i.e. ask them to censor themselves. I do think it is the responsibility of individuals to have control over themselves. Men need to find a masculinity that is not derived from a dominance over women, and their free market demand should thus requisite less supply.

OH, and HERE'S the bibliography. (It's a PDF file from the Price of Pleasure website.) (There's a lot else at the website, including a trailer and interview w/ Noam Chomsky.)

Ok, well I've been rambling a bit more than I thought I would so I'll come back to the other movie another time. Let me know what you think.

MySQL on Windows Vista

2008-09-24T15:49:00.001-05:00

P.S. If you have vista and you're trying to run MySQL, do not use 5.0. You must use 5.1. 5.0 doesn't work with vista.

Web Dev Tips

2008-09-08T12:24:00.001-05:00

I'm just figuring out how to become a freelance web designer. If you're in the same boat, I want to share some resources with you:

Firebug - a Firefox plug in to modify HTML and CSS (plus a few others) live in the browser
CSSVista / Litmus - CSSVista is the desktop version of Litmus - which both let you view HTML and CSS in multiple browsers. Yes, this really is what you've been longing for.
http://lynda.com/ - Lynda.com offers tutorials on just about anything you can imagine that's related to web development.
idealist.org - I'm personally interested in working with non-profits or non-governmentals to develop their websites. Idealist.org can be a good place to find jobs in that arena.
Web Developer toolbar - this toolbar adds tons of functionality to Firefox related to web development - anything from CSS to forms to resizing the window, etc etc.
ColorCop - a program with an eyedropper tool to grab colors from anywhere! (RGB and Hex values)
Inkscape - opensource vector graphics program

That's all off the top of my head right now. (Thanks to Kate for most of them.) Good luck.

Implicit Associations and Blink

2008-08-08T12:15:00.001-05:00

As a psychology nerd (at least for some types of psych.), I find the following project interesting. For non-nerds and nerds alike, it's kind of fun to play with and see your results:
http://implicit.harvard.edu/

Project Implicit, based at Harvard, but well-connected across the country, is conducting research on implicit associations. To break it down for non-nerds: implicit is sort of analogous to automatic. So, in other words, they study the associations you make semi-automatically. Stereotyping is an example of this.

I just finished Blink by Malcolm Gladwell which was about the ramifications of these judgments - when they go wrong, when they're avoided, etc. For example, the conclusion of the book tells the story of how women began getting accepted into prestegious orchestras...by auditioning behind a screen so judges couldn't stereotype their abilities based on gender.

I egotistically think this is a good reason that my name can be read androgynously.

Anyway, there's some food for thought if you're interested in that kind of thing or have some time to waste and want to help out cool research.

P.S. I now have more BS.

2008-05-26T19:53:00.000-05:00

I did graduate! I wasn't sure until just yesterday whether I've got a BS or a BA in Psychology, but I'm proud to announce that I do now have a BS. Or, just more BS, depending on how you look at it. Hopefully as I get my life on the track I want it to be on (or, you know, start finding tracks) I'll be posting more and interacting more with the blogosphere in general. Thanks for reading.

final finals EVER

2008-04-27T21:04:00.000-05:00

[...yep, still trying to graduate...]

here's what that looks like:

14(ish) page paper draft due tonight (well actually like 2 weeks ago, but hey)
6 pages due on tuesday
1 page due on tuesday
final on tuesday
3,000 words (10 pages) due on wednesday
draft of LONG paper due on saturday
that paper due on next wednesday
organize coalition
make people come to meeting
wrap up ties to international impact as treasurer
pass over all info from vice presidency
try not to pass out or ignore everyone i care about

i suppose that's not too bad, right?
thought i'd blog about it to procrastinate/take a break.

just now

2008-04-17T00:26:00.000-05:00

i am walking home from studying at a library.

it's late at night, so i chose to take the brightest lit road home. a conscious decision.

i'm walking at a brisk pace past a dorm, and i am the only one walking within a few blocks.

"wanna double bed?" a male voice calls from the dorm, "because i'll double penetrate your asshole."

i keep walking. i don't even flinch, nor dare to look in the direction of his voice. i walk about 10 more steps.

"answer the motherfucker." yells a second voice.

i keep on walking. trying not to too obviously look around me in fear that someone is following.

3 and a half blocks home, and my heart is still racing when i get to the door.

i quit

2008-04-16T16:07:00.001-05:00

graduating college is stressful. i do not need the added stress of a part-time job demanding me to sit behind a computer for 10 hours a week. receiving disrespectful emails and hearing from my co-workers that my boss is pissed at me is not something i'd like to have in my life right now.

i feel ashamed for quitting, but i feel that this is only nominal. i have been detached and disinterested in this job for a while; it has not asked me to be creative, and when i have been, this has not been honored, or even accepted.

i no longer feel compelled to integrate this environment into my schedule, perhaps the busiest time of my life thus far.

so i quit.

new orleans, part 5

2008-04-16T15:26:00.001-05:00

being in New Orleans (NOLA) again has reminded me to not be normalized. i love how that city and the spaces it provides allow me to express my true, more radical sides, rather than my institutionalized, academic, more rigid personality. school is making me less radical and i hate it. in that way, i'm glad this era is ending.

the city is still plagued, but is healing, too. V to the 10th helped me see that in a really powerful way. focusing on ending violence against women and spotlighting post-katrina new orleans, in the superdome was emotional. hearing people talk, rap, slam, cry, and share about their experiences was a healing for me, one that i've rarely had the opportunity to be a part of. the superdome, reclaimed as superLOVE for the weekend was transformed into a welcoming, art filled, female filled place -- a womb for birth and growth, if you will. :)

i'm so glad i was able to go. getting this respite, change of pace, and challenge to normativity is a good perspective to have as i'm getting ready to graduate.

here are some important things i wrote down that i want to remember:

-see NOLA as a "canary in the coalmine" -- in terms of government, capitalism, misuse of public trust, etc. we should make sure that this doesn't continue to happen on a national level.
-eve ensler: "the struggle is the change." eve rocks.
-jane fonda spoke about art and activism -- art opens the heart, activism creates the change. i hadn't previously connected the two, but i'd like to start integrating that into my life and perspective.
-slam poetry is HOT.

i suppose i viscerally FELT a lot of things i 'knew' about rape and violence against women. rape isn't necessarily violent or forceful, in the way we generally understand those words. it doesn't have to involve guns, blood, or physical force. it seems that media/popculture/etc have claimed and defined this discourse -- INCORRECTLY. the framing of these issues as such (on a societal AND individual level) lead us to incorrect solutions. the discourse and solutions should revolve around respect, consent, and the sacred-ness of sexuality. our society has violated that, and continues to do so even as it claims to restore it. women may not know, i did not know that "no" MEANS no. this space, this gift is mine, and maybe i will -share- it with someone else. how many times did you say no, did you feel 'no' or 'stop' or 'i don't want to' but you did anyway? how many more times will it take for you to speak up? how many more before you empower yourself and claim yourself? none. no more will i silence myself, no more will i let this continue. i will respect that choice and honor it. this is the beginning of something sacred.

if you want more information on this movement, visit the vday website: http://www.vday.org
if you'd like to talk to me about it, comment on the blog or send me an email; i'd like to hear what you have to say.

rereading past posts of mine on this blog, it's interesting to see these themes woven throughout. from aug.08.2006, almost two years ago, i posted a list of quotes from thich nhat hanh. here's one that i've finally come to understand this weekend:

"when we hold back our feelings and ignore our pain, we are committing violence against ourselves. the practice of nonviolence is to be here, to be present, and to recognize our own pain or despair."

again as i've expressed on this blog before, i hope this is the beginning of a string of related posts. hopefully finishing school will give me more free time to devote to this.

thanks for reading.