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August 29th, 2008
01:06 pm - Obama + economics
Signal boost: an interesting NYT article on Barack Obama's economic policy (long, but worth the read).
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June 3rd, 2008
09:46 am - I endorse these strange injections
I have a super-power.
My super-power is, "Not Allergic To Cats".
I also seem to be halfway to getting a free bonus power: "Eat Tasty, Tasty Pineapple Without Itching Like A Fiend". (It comes along with "Autonomous Internal Pollen Destruction".)
This rocks.
Current Mood: yeah!
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May 25th, 2008
02:15 am - Well, that's good.
Thursday and Friday were both pretty great days. Strangely, though, I felt very down both nights in the hour or so before I went to bed. I'm not sure why - social energy crashes? ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) keshwyn's absence? Something else? I'm not sure, but I had a great day today, and I still feel happy, so that's good. :)
I biked home around 1:30 AM, and damn - I may be ten kajillion times more likely to be hit when it's dark, but the late-night biking was really pleasant. Many fewer cars; no glare from the sun; many fewer cars; nice cool night air; and did I mention many fewer cars?
(Earlier in the day, I found myself thinking, "Wow, Route 16 is so much more pleasant than all those other roads", which nearly caused my head to explode with the cognitive dissonance.)
So, I'm really pleased with the biking - it meant I could stay past the buses shutting down for the night, and I'm getting more used to dealing with traffic. Still not low-stress, but it's getting better every time I go out. It was kind of weird having to keep in mind how long it had been since I'd had booze, though; I'm not used to that affecting my transit.
[My chain did derail twice during the trip over. Between that and some (infrequent) problems with pedaling backwards, I'm wondering if there's something slightly screwy with one of the rear guide-wheel-pulley-things, or something.]
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May 8th, 2008
02:11 pm - -isms
Growing up, I learned the word "racist" as meaning (approximately) one of two things:
1. People treating other people differently/poorly because of a difference in race/skin color;
2. Laws or social institutions which oppressed/segregated people based on race/skin color.
It seemed like the battles to overturn the laws of #2 had been won decades ago... but as a part of being a basically decent human being, it was expected that you'd avoid doing anything that might rank you among the assholes of #1. Being Racist was a major social sin, somewhere between "throwing bricks through peoples' windows" and "torturing puppies for fun" on the asshat-dickery scale.
In high school and college, I ran into assertions that (paraphrased) "all white people are intrinsically, unavoidably racist". With the definition of "racism" I had, this seemed intellectually absurd; with the social taboo against Being Racist I'd grown up with, it was a viciously harsh judgement. In the end, I simply couldn't reconcile the statement with my experiences of the world.[1]
What I didn't realize at the time was that "racist" wasn't being used as I conceived of the word, but to mean something different - approximately, "US culture is white-centric in a way which makes many things easier/better for white people; even a white person with no personal prejudice/bias/bigotry has the intrinsic, unavoidable benefit of that cultural environment".
More recently in life, I've heard the same concept referred to as privilege, and it's that term (plus some well-thought-out essays) which really clicked everything into making sense. It's not only a racial thing: I first heard the word used in discussions of male privilege. (Unsurprisingly, my growing-up experiences with the word "sexism" and its associations were pretty close to the entire "racism" arc above.) I'm guessing there's some sort of privilege wherever there's a societally assumed norm.[2]
I bring this up partly to propagate the concept - it's a way-of-looking-at-things which gives one greater insight into social-dynamics both observed and participated in, as well as being useful vocabulary for talking about these sorts of issues. (It's damnably hard to do anything about an inequality that you don't perceive and can't properly talk about.) I also saw something earlier this week that I wanted to post about, but it would make no freakin' sense without this as background.
( those footnotes )
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April 30th, 2008
07:58 am - For y'all in the Boston area
A heads-up/reminder that Somerville Open Studios is this weekend.
It's pretty cool. I'd personally recommend limiting time spent at (or just avoiding entirely) the huge "ten bazillion artists have studios in this building" installations; they're fascinating, and there's some amazing art... but you can spend the whole day in them without realizing it - and to me, the really cool thing about SOS is seeing all the individual artists in their homes, learning about the cool stuff that's quietly going on all around every day.
Plus, if you spend the whole time in one building, you don't get to walk around outdoors. :)
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April 6th, 2008
03:48 pm - LJ rename
To avert potential confusion, I mention: I've swapped LJ usernames, from "jikharra" to "mindways".
Carry on.
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March 19th, 2008
10:37 pm - Tibet protests
About a week ago, I read something about protests in Tibet occuring on the anniversary of the failed 1959 uprising. It then slipped my mind.
Since then, I'd seen no mention of the ongoing events, so I was somewhat startled to read today about what's been happening.
I don't have a lot to say, other than pointing and saying, "go look / be aware that this is happening" - I don't feel like I have much action I could take (even indirect), nor any idea what action I'd support other than "try to find a diplomatic solution if possible"; while I've felt that China's hand on the region has been overheavy, it sounds like the protests are in part venting their ire on individuals who may (or may not, I honestly don't know) be blameless.
But the question of how the various non-mainstream Chinese-claimed areas will play out - Hong Kong, Tibet, Taiwan - is something I like to pay attention to, regardless.
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11:51 am - Darker's Boston Climate Guide
On a day that it's 35 degrees and "Light Rain Snow Ice Pellets Mist"ing (according to wunderground), it seems only apropos to publish my short Boston Climate Guide.
[This is, for the record, all goldenoak's fault. Not the notion of six seasons, but the act of writing them up and putting it on the web.]
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/charitycam/blackbox/crazy.gif) silly
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February 5th, 2008
02:17 pm - The fallacy of "Candidates and Issues"
Pertinent to the day, and to some of the commentary on an earlier post of mine: The fallacy of "Candidates and Issues".
I don't agree with his ending suggestion for "then what do you do about elections?" (unless, perhaps, you are a bona fide single-issue voter, a thing which I find faintly unsettling), and I suspect that there can be catalysts other than sympathetic victims - but the main thrust of the article is dead-on, and something that's worth reading.
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January 11th, 2008
12:48 pm - Information on dander allergies
A friend recently posted about cat dander allergies, with an eye towards informing people (both cat-owning and non-) who were curious and/or wanted to help out.
While I'm fortunate enough to be getting over my cat allergies, and to have cat-owning friends who know much of this stuff already, I think it's still worth disseminating the information for the sake of other allergic folks. The original author has given me permission to re-post the following. I've added a few comments of my own, clearly marked.
( Cat allergy myths and information )
Obviously, all the fine details of reaction/reaction time are specific to the original author, but the general data's broadly applicable. Dog dander behaves more or less the same way, too.
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September 11th, 2007
07:40 pm - gryph_status
I'm going to be one of the folks relaying status reports / news from the currently non-net-enabled z_gryphon.
Towards that end, I've created ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) gryph_status. If you're interested in reading updates, join the community.
(I've set it up to require approval to join, but only to avoid blogspam and to keep various information from being released to the 'net at large.)
Feel free to pass word of it along to friends of his who don't read this journal.
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August 18th, 2007
04:04 pm - Movie loans?
Anyone got any of the following movies (preferably on DVD) that they'd be willing to lend me for a while?
* The Dead (1987)
* The Departed (2006)
* Southie (1998)
* Far and Away (1992)
* The Sting (1973)
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July 17th, 2007
04:52 pm - For a friend
I know some folks looking for an apartment; if you know of a place that meets the criteria below, drop me a line?
* * *
- Somewhere between Harvard and Central Square (within walking distance of one of those T stops)
- Laundry in the unit itself (not just in the building)
- Two bedrooms
- $2200 or less per month.
We're slightly flexible on the price, but we'd really need to get our money's worth to spend more than $2200. Let us know if you hear of anything. We want to avoid realtor fees.
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April 20th, 2007
11:26 am - The Public Library as an Asylum for the Homeless
This article isn't what I'd call a fun read, but it's instructive, and probably worth knowing. The points it makes jibe with some other articles / books I've read on the topic.
Scroll down a few paragraphs to the embedded article entitled "What They Didn't Teach Us in Library School".
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April 2nd, 2007
10:10 pm - Hey, neat!
Noticed on Macintouch: EMI to offer DRM-free online song sales, via iTunes and elsewhere.
(I'm sure that many people will be all annoyed because the DRM-free versions are going to cost $0.30 more per track. I'm still pleased.)
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February 19th, 2007
10:27 pm - What manner of praise?
This article on praise and "smart kids" runs strongly counter to some pieces of modern "everybody-knows".
It had a startlingly strong resonance with my experiences growing up. Similarly for several friends, too.
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11:37 am - Learning from history?
I knew - as I'd hope everyone in this country knows - that slavery's end was not a panacea for black americans. I also knew that the post-Katrina reconstruction was kinda shaky at first, but I'd stopped hearing anything about it.
So I found this post kind of fascinating.
I'm not entirely sure I agree with the author's interpretation of current events. But the rest of it...there were a few things that I hadn't known about, but mostly, it just sewed together disconnected pieces that I'd already known about but never put into a larger context.
(Oh, and the reconstruction? Some recent articles:
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine)
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December 19th, 2006
12:14 am - You can't send *anything* through the mail...
...but a lot more than one might expect.
And according to paragraph 9.3.10 under Section 601 of the Postal Code, you're not allowed to ship live scorpions without plainly labelling the containers "LIVE SCORPIONS"!* Who would have thought...
* = And several other restrictions
Current Mood: amused/boggled
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December 18th, 2006
05:40 pm - Kiva: microcredit loans
Sometime earlier this year, I read about microfinance, and microcredit loans to people in third-world countries trying to bootstrap their way out of poverty. The concept sounded neat, but disappointingly, when I poked around a bit I didn't find many concrete ways individuals could get involved - there were some funds and some charities, but it was hard to tell what they were actually doing with the money, how they were trying to minimize fraud, etc.
This morning, I read about Kiva.org.
Lo, behold the power of the internet. I nearly cried.
(Yes, yes, I know - the "sponsor a child" charities have been using the power of individualization for a long time. That doesn't make this any less cool.)
Current Mood: Yes! Cool!
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October 18th, 2006
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