I revisited my blog recently to find a strange post. Something about Bill Clinton. Did I write that??
Apparently I did. And now that I think about it, I may have written that after drinking perhaps more wine than I should have.
In fact, Bill WAS inspiring during his speech at the BIO 2006 convention. Yet after reflecting a month later on his 45 minute eloquent, effortless delivery about how biotech can address two major crises - food shortages and the need for alternative energy sources - I realize now that Bill is interchangable with any person in power. He's just better at hiding his willingness to make the "hard trades" behind a pink tie and a well articulated but feigned interest in the wellbeing of the rest of the world. I was surprised, for example, that he would bring up during his speech the 1994 crisis in Rwanda. I would have chalked up the bloody deaths of some 800,000 people at least in part to the Clinton Administration's gross failure to act. After the killings started, Clinton spoke to the press and said the following:
"... I mention it only because there are a sizable number of Americans there and it is a very tense situation. And I just want to assure the families of those who are there that we are doing everything we possible can to be on top of the situation to take all the appropriate steps to try to assure the safety of our citizens there."
(according to a Frontline report, which can be found here): http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/evil/
Like most good politicians and people of power, Bill has an aptitude for saying what people want to hear anyway. And so in that way, he was and is perhaps better at articulating your pain than feeilng, and actually addressing, much of anything.
Thursday, May 11
Wednesday, April 12
Bill (fucking) Clinton, Baby
I believe I referred in an earlier post to my innate egalitarianism...
it still stands.
But today, I was in the presence of greatness, and for a moment there, I had a little chill run down my spine.
Bill Clinton. Talking in a seemingly offhand manner about biotech and how it could conceivably make our "integrated" world a better place.
Bill Clinton...
Someone, please, bring me a cigarette.
it still stands.
But today, I was in the presence of greatness, and for a moment there, I had a little chill run down my spine.
Bill Clinton. Talking in a seemingly offhand manner about biotech and how it could conceivably make our "integrated" world a better place.
Bill Clinton...
Someone, please, bring me a cigarette.
Tuesday, March 28
Counting on Solutions
In response to Seth Abramson's post on March 22. Check out his blog at http://sethabramson.blogspot.com/ I very much admire Seth for his expressive capabilities. He's as much an artist as a lawyer, but I often think his brand of politics may be facing extinction.
----------------------------------
Time and again, we find that numbers lie. They therefore neither adequately support nor undermine an argument in favor of one policy or another. And while mandatory sentencing is generally odious to me since it undermines the power of the judicial system, we must acknowledge on some level that we sometimes have to make decisions that aren't ideal, but at least approach our objectives. In this case, we find ourselves with a need to provide better protection for the population at large, and especially for those who are unable to defend themselves, by which, in this case, I mean children. We haven't done a good job. I can think of Jessica, Danielle, Samantha, and several others just in the past few years that have died horrible deaths at the hands of sex offenders who had a history. And truth be told, I'm much less inclined to care about the offenders, whatever their crime, than about their next victims. This is not to say they are completely undeserving of consideration, but instead that we can't practically institute a system that gives everyone an entirely fair shake - sex offenders, tax payers, kids etc. - without consequences. I'm happy to pay a little more and to punish more severely a few people than is necessary if it means better protection for even one or two children.
We find, unfortunately, that we are sometimes required to make sacrifices in order to meet our aims. One can't get around the sad fact that having your cake and eating it too is simply an impossibility.
And by way of extension, one of the biggest reasons for the unfortunate national lean to the right of late is that there is a type of overcorrection - a backlash - against the liberal MO wherein problems are defined less in pragmatic terms and more in theoretical or philosophical terms. We more liberally minded sorts have simply been too concerned with knocking down practical solutions to real problems because they aren't perfect, and not concerned enough with finding and implementing workable solutions.
----------------------------------
Time and again, we find that numbers lie. They therefore neither adequately support nor undermine an argument in favor of one policy or another. And while mandatory sentencing is generally odious to me since it undermines the power of the judicial system, we must acknowledge on some level that we sometimes have to make decisions that aren't ideal, but at least approach our objectives. In this case, we find ourselves with a need to provide better protection for the population at large, and especially for those who are unable to defend themselves, by which, in this case, I mean children. We haven't done a good job. I can think of Jessica, Danielle, Samantha, and several others just in the past few years that have died horrible deaths at the hands of sex offenders who had a history. And truth be told, I'm much less inclined to care about the offenders, whatever their crime, than about their next victims. This is not to say they are completely undeserving of consideration, but instead that we can't practically institute a system that gives everyone an entirely fair shake - sex offenders, tax payers, kids etc. - without consequences. I'm happy to pay a little more and to punish more severely a few people than is necessary if it means better protection for even one or two children.
We find, unfortunately, that we are sometimes required to make sacrifices in order to meet our aims. One can't get around the sad fact that having your cake and eating it too is simply an impossibility.
And by way of extension, one of the biggest reasons for the unfortunate national lean to the right of late is that there is a type of overcorrection - a backlash - against the liberal MO wherein problems are defined less in pragmatic terms and more in theoretical or philosophical terms. We more liberally minded sorts have simply been too concerned with knocking down practical solutions to real problems because they aren't perfect, and not concerned enough with finding and implementing workable solutions.
Saturday, March 11
Late Breaking Ad Lib
2:56 a.m. and can't sleep. Lightbulb: blog! Hey, I can't find time in my daily life to keep up with it, but I can find it in my night life!
Alright, fair warnings and legal disclaimers upfront, this blog is NOT, I repeat NOT a good place to come if you want the latest, most up to date info on trends (outside of fashion), gadgetry, etc. I'm the girl who writes on Brian Greene how long after he published The Elegant Universe after all. The one who discovers "new" shows after they've already gone to syndication (I watched every West Wing episode available on Bravo). The one who only just discovered itunes and ipods. But on this point, I must express public thanks for what a friend of mine refers to as 'our wonderful capitalist system.' My nano is the most amazing little thing - so much sound in such a tiny package. And the ability to browse music in a whole new, personally-directed, interactive way... to have immediate access to totally new sounds for under a buck... amazing. Actually, I discovered itunes first after being challenged by my Indian friend to create a CD for him and my other friends. He's a big music buff and seemed rather emphatic about the CD: had in fact made me three. I began creating a CD that is personally reflective of musical influences in my life, my name, where I live. But to find just those right songs... only online (all state songs and an ecletic but elegantly arranged mix of jazz, folk, country, rock and roll and blues.) It was my hubbie who thought if I was into itunes I could be into a nano. And he was, indeed right. An early birthday present of sorts, it has already brought big booming joy into my, well, ears.
And aren't nanos still cool?
At least I'm wearing my brand new Nannette Lepore pants - very hip cool designer I discovered at local boutique Twigs, and my gorgeous Burberry polo which was hugely sought after this season and unbelievably hard to find. So cute. Fashion I can do. My two year old takes after me in that way - it's been very important to her that everything "match" (and look out if it doesn't).
Books I can also do (forgive my late find on the Brian Greene Elegant Universe discussed in an earlier post. Did I ever share that I heard him speak thanks again to my hubbie? He seemed rather a polished speaker, and not so much the impassioned young physicist I took so much pleasure in listening to during his NPR video. That said, he can still hang out in my basement as my sexy human pet.) But all that aside, here's one you should try if interested in armchair physics: Parallel Worlds. An excellent compendium on the latest trends in physics and cosmolegy. (Sigh, I once wanted to be an astrophysicist and now it's all come to this.)
Alright, 3:17 now....
3:18...
3:20...
Snore.
Alright, fair warnings and legal disclaimers upfront, this blog is NOT, I repeat NOT a good place to come if you want the latest, most up to date info on trends (outside of fashion), gadgetry, etc. I'm the girl who writes on Brian Greene how long after he published The Elegant Universe after all. The one who discovers "new" shows after they've already gone to syndication (I watched every West Wing episode available on Bravo). The one who only just discovered itunes and ipods. But on this point, I must express public thanks for what a friend of mine refers to as 'our wonderful capitalist system.' My nano is the most amazing little thing - so much sound in such a tiny package. And the ability to browse music in a whole new, personally-directed, interactive way... to have immediate access to totally new sounds for under a buck... amazing. Actually, I discovered itunes first after being challenged by my Indian friend to create a CD for him and my other friends. He's a big music buff and seemed rather emphatic about the CD: had in fact made me three. I began creating a CD that is personally reflective of musical influences in my life, my name, where I live. But to find just those right songs... only online (all state songs and an ecletic but elegantly arranged mix of jazz, folk, country, rock and roll and blues.) It was my hubbie who thought if I was into itunes I could be into a nano. And he was, indeed right. An early birthday present of sorts, it has already brought big booming joy into my, well, ears.
And aren't nanos still cool?
At least I'm wearing my brand new Nannette Lepore pants - very hip cool designer I discovered at local boutique Twigs, and my gorgeous Burberry polo which was hugely sought after this season and unbelievably hard to find. So cute. Fashion I can do. My two year old takes after me in that way - it's been very important to her that everything "match" (and look out if it doesn't).
Books I can also do (forgive my late find on the Brian Greene Elegant Universe discussed in an earlier post. Did I ever share that I heard him speak thanks again to my hubbie? He seemed rather a polished speaker, and not so much the impassioned young physicist I took so much pleasure in listening to during his NPR video. That said, he can still hang out in my basement as my sexy human pet.) But all that aside, here's one you should try if interested in armchair physics: Parallel Worlds. An excellent compendium on the latest trends in physics and cosmolegy. (Sigh, I once wanted to be an astrophysicist and now it's all come to this.)
Alright, 3:17 now....
3:18...
3:20...
Snore.
Tuesday, January 17
Get Gitanjali
Poet re-discovered this week: Rabindranath Tagore, India's only Poet Laureate.
Yeat's comment on Tagore/Indian poetry: "A tradition, where poetry and religion are the same thing, has passed through the centuries, gathering from learned and unlearned metaphor and emotion, and carried back again to the multitude the thought of the scholar and of the noble."
My older Indian friend concurs and comments that Indian poetry is a mirror-image of Hinduism, much more a way of life than a religion.
My comment on Tagore: He's been around a long while, but his work has something that is just so FRESH about it. Pick up Gitanjali again and see for yourself.
Yeat's comment on Tagore/Indian poetry: "A tradition, where poetry and religion are the same thing, has passed through the centuries, gathering from learned and unlearned metaphor and emotion, and carried back again to the multitude the thought of the scholar and of the noble."
My older Indian friend concurs and comments that Indian poetry is a mirror-image of Hinduism, much more a way of life than a religion.
My comment on Tagore: He's been around a long while, but his work has something that is just so FRESH about it. Pick up Gitanjali again and see for yourself.
Thursday, January 5
It's Just Stupid
Favorite quote of the week: “It’s like you’re throwing
darts, and the bullseye is just one part in 10^120
of the dart board,” says Leonard Susskind, a
string theorist based at Stanford University in
California. “It’s just stupid.”
From "Outrageous Fortune," published in Nature by Geoff Brumfiel, the beginnings of which is excerpted below.
Why are we here? It’s a question
that has troubled philosophers,
theologians and those who’ve
had one drink too many. But
theoretical physicists have a more essentialist
way of asking the question: why is there anything
here at all?
For two decades now, theorists in the thinkbig
field of cosmology have been stymied by a
mathematical quirk in their equations. If the
number controlling the growth of the Universe
since the Big Bang is just slightly too
high, the Universe expands so rapidly that protons
and neutrons never come close enough to
bond into atoms. If it is just ever-so-slightly
too small, it never expands enough, and everything
remains too hot for even a single nucleus
to form. Similar problems afflict the observed
masses of elementary particles and the
strengths of fundamental forces.
In other words, if you believe the equations
of the world’s leading cosmologists, the probability
that the Universe would turn out this
way by chance are infinitesimal — one in a
very large number. “It’s like you’re throwing
darts, and the bullseye is just one part in 10 to the 120
of the dart board,” says Leonard Susskind, a
string theorist based at Stanford University in
California. “It’s just stupid.”
One in a zillion
Physicists have historically approached this
predicament with the attitude that it’s not just
dumb luck. In their view, there must be something
underlying and yet-to-be-discovered
setting the value of these variables. “The idea is
that we have got to work harder because some
principle is missing,” says David Gross, a
Nobel-prizewinning theorist and director of
the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in
Santa Barbara, California.
But things have changed in the past few
years, says astronomer Bernard Carr of Queen
Mary, University of London, UK. String theorists
and cosmologists are increasingly turning
to dumb luck as an explanation. If their ideas
stand up, it would mean the constants of nature
are meaningless. “In the past, many people
were almost violently opposed to that idea
because it wasn’t seen as proper science,” Carr
says. “But there’s been a change of attitude.”
Much of that change stems from work
showing that our Universe may not be unique.
Since the early 1980s, some cosmologists have
argued that multiple universes could have
formed during a period of cosmic inflation
that preceded the Big Bang. More recently,
string theorists have calculated that there
could be 10 to the 500 universes, which is more than
the number of atoms in our observable Universe.
Under these circumstances, it becomes
more reasonable to assume that several would
turn out like ours. It’s like getting zillions and
zillions of darts to throw at the dart board,
Susskind says. “Surely, a large number of them
are going to wind up in the target zone.” And of
course, we exist in our particular Universe
because we couldn’t exist anywhere else.
darts, and the bullseye is just one part in 10^120
of the dart board,” says Leonard Susskind, a
string theorist based at Stanford University in
California. “It’s just stupid.”
From "Outrageous Fortune," published in Nature by Geoff Brumfiel, the beginnings of which is excerpted below.
Why are we here? It’s a question
that has troubled philosophers,
theologians and those who’ve
had one drink too many. But
theoretical physicists have a more essentialist
way of asking the question: why is there anything
here at all?
For two decades now, theorists in the thinkbig
field of cosmology have been stymied by a
mathematical quirk in their equations. If the
number controlling the growth of the Universe
since the Big Bang is just slightly too
high, the Universe expands so rapidly that protons
and neutrons never come close enough to
bond into atoms. If it is just ever-so-slightly
too small, it never expands enough, and everything
remains too hot for even a single nucleus
to form. Similar problems afflict the observed
masses of elementary particles and the
strengths of fundamental forces.
In other words, if you believe the equations
of the world’s leading cosmologists, the probability
that the Universe would turn out this
way by chance are infinitesimal — one in a
very large number. “It’s like you’re throwing
darts, and the bullseye is just one part in 10 to the 120
of the dart board,” says Leonard Susskind, a
string theorist based at Stanford University in
California. “It’s just stupid.”
One in a zillion
Physicists have historically approached this
predicament with the attitude that it’s not just
dumb luck. In their view, there must be something
underlying and yet-to-be-discovered
setting the value of these variables. “The idea is
that we have got to work harder because some
principle is missing,” says David Gross, a
Nobel-prizewinning theorist and director of
the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in
Santa Barbara, California.
But things have changed in the past few
years, says astronomer Bernard Carr of Queen
Mary, University of London, UK. String theorists
and cosmologists are increasingly turning
to dumb luck as an explanation. If their ideas
stand up, it would mean the constants of nature
are meaningless. “In the past, many people
were almost violently opposed to that idea
because it wasn’t seen as proper science,” Carr
says. “But there’s been a change of attitude.”
Much of that change stems from work
showing that our Universe may not be unique.
Since the early 1980s, some cosmologists have
argued that multiple universes could have
formed during a period of cosmic inflation
that preceded the Big Bang. More recently,
string theorists have calculated that there
could be 10 to the 500 universes, which is more than
the number of atoms in our observable Universe.
Under these circumstances, it becomes
more reasonable to assume that several would
turn out like ours. It’s like getting zillions and
zillions of darts to throw at the dart board,
Susskind says. “Surely, a large number of them
are going to wind up in the target zone.” And of
course, we exist in our particular Universe
because we couldn’t exist anywhere else.
Bumpers Beware
Believe it or not, I've taken a six month hiatus from this page to start a "Stop the Snark" bumper sticker campaign aimed at all the too-cool-for-you, FOX-network watching, haven't-been-sincere-(at least publicly)-a-single-day-in-my-life, let's-poke-tongue-in-cheek-fun-at-pretty-much-anyone-who-actually-
CARES-about-anything types. Write me if you want one.
CARES-about-anything types. Write me if you want one.
Wednesday, July 27
How's the Weather Out By You Then?
After rejoicing over spring weather back in March, which quickly gave way not to summer but to shivery wind and miserable dampness, which then gave way to 90 plus with humidity, I am pleased to once again announce that it is 76 degrees today with sunshine and little humidity! SEVENTY SIX baby. SEVEN-SIX. It feels like a day on a San Diego beach (sans the crime, the traffic, the value devoid residents, and the exorbitant housing costs - yes, there are reasons we left).
And perhaps it's just the sunshine and balmy breezes, but I realize now that a trait I've long loathed in Midwesterners - a mindless affinity for endless discussions about weather conditions - is not only completely reasonable but totally inevitable. When a day like today is as unexpected as it is pleasant, it really does become life's collective high point and a headlining topic for discussion.
So stay warm, stay dry, enjoy the sun. And if you want to talk about the weather, feel free to call and chat.
And perhaps it's just the sunshine and balmy breezes, but I realize now that a trait I've long loathed in Midwesterners - a mindless affinity for endless discussions about weather conditions - is not only completely reasonable but totally inevitable. When a day like today is as unexpected as it is pleasant, it really does become life's collective high point and a headlining topic for discussion.
So stay warm, stay dry, enjoy the sun. And if you want to talk about the weather, feel free to call and chat.
Friday, June 17
Paradox in Paradise?
Guys out there, can someone explain to me the whole "what happens in vegas stays in vegas" boys club attitude that seems to be more, or perhaps equally yet paradoxically, cherished than significant others? Call it morbid curiosity.
Monday, June 13
Talk Nerdy to Me
I'm getting this t-shirt. OK, I'm not. But if I were in the market for an obnoxious t-shirt, this is the one I'd get.
http://www.tshirthell.com/images/contestpics/a42_007.jpg
http://www.tshirthell.com/images/contestpics/a42_007.jpg
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