roundup, catchup

Well, I figure I haven’t posted here in long enough (due to an abundance of overwork) that it’s time for a little something, so here’s a roundup of things I’ve been thinking about/up to.

first of all, i got a car. woah. granted, i presume most 26 year olds in the US who have the means to own one have a car since it is near impossible to live here without one, but i have been fortunate enough to live in one of the few metropolitan areas where it is not even close to a necessity. it's been something i've been thinking of for about a year, planning out if i had the money and the initiative to drive all the time. last year i moved to a location a bit further from 'everything' and my friends have been consistently moving further from public transit (due to cost) and the cost of public transit has been going up up up, so that now it is not so much of a financial tradeoff to have a car versus using the train. which is sad.

but there you have it. to note, i got a little scion xA, which so far i like and it gets good gas mileage, as cars go.

I was among many others in my sadness to hear about the Pluto demotion.
I grew up with pluto as one of the nine, and in my heart it will always be a planet. I mean, who didn’t like plucky little pluto?

I’m on vacation this week, but not doing much besides relaxing and catching up on errands and household chores and duties. Plus hanging out with chaucer, who has been mommy deprived with all my working. We’re just about to celebrate his first birthday, and he got this as his present.

I also thought I’d start talking about what I’m reading.

Currently, I’m reading “collapse” by jared diamond. it's not as good as "guns, germs and steel", which i highly recommend, so it's taking me awhile to get through it. he basically looks as societies which have succeeded or failed in the past so as to apply those lessons to today's societies. i'm only about half way and he's covered all the polynesian islands, the 'american' southwest, and the vikings (greenland, iceland, etc). academically his reasoning seems good, but it's just not as compelling a read.

I'm also reading "reefer madness" by eric schlosser, the guy who wrote "fast food nation" (another really good one if you haven't read it). "reefer madness" is also really good but depressing. it's all about the black market and how it is a natural product of capitalism and it focuses on marijauna, strawberry harvesting (and thus "illegal" immigrant labor), and pornography. i've read the first two sections thus far which are really depressing because of how draconian our marijuana laws are and how miserable life is for people working to harvest the food that we all eat. i'm curious to read the final section because, while i am for the legalization of marijuana and against shutting people out of this country, i am also anti-porn which will be interesting.

i'm also reading "hungry planet", which is a beautiful book which profiles families all over the world focusing on what they eat. each family is presented with the food they eat for the week. it's very interesting and powerful to see how food intake varies across the world, considering food/water is probably the most important aspect of our life (closely tied with health and healthcare, imo, altho the two are obviously related in many ways).

finally, i'm reading the latest issue of bitch magazine. which is always great, and i just picked up bitchfest at my local bookstore to add to the queue. i encourage everyone to buy a copy to support this wonderful, feminist endeavor.

the allusion of safety

the things that aren't allowed on planes starting yesterday:

No liquids or gels of any kind are allowed in carry-on baggage until further notice. This includes all beverages, cologne, hair gel, suntan lotion, contact lens formula, toothpaste, shampoo, and all items of ``similar consistency." The only exceptions are baby formula and juice -- but just for those passengers traveling with children-- and medicines, which must have the traveler's name on the container.

so, they allow juice for kids as long as someone drinks it beforehand.

so why can't i have my bottle of water as long as i drink from it beforehand?

secondly, what about folks who are insulin dependent? they have a liquid medication that you can't verify is actually insulin--you can't force a diabetic to take a jolt of insulin just whenever, you know.

and okay, folks can still hide things on their person: small vials in underwear...or even vaginas.

at least one cnn article addresses some of these concerns:

Boyd sees the U.S. Transportation Security Administration's ban as a knee-jerk reaction that leaves Americans no safer than they were before the 9/11 attacks.

"Remember Richard Reid, the guy who tried to light up his shoe on the airplane? After that we had to take off our shoes. Imagine what would have happened if he had hid that bomb in his pants," Boyd said.

and not just pants: you could have a container within a container of baby formula that holds the thing you want. the padding liner of many women's bras. people could eat small wrapped pellets of things, like they do to carry drugs across borders.

the intention here is not to make things actually safer--but to make people FEEL safer.

"Standing there looking to make sure no one has a tube of toothpaste is patently ridiculous, because now we're looking for objects again -- we're not looking for threats" said Michael Boyd, president of the Boyd Group, an aviation consulting firm in Evergreen, Colorado.

and

Clark Kent Ervin, a former Department of Homeland Security inspector general, points to a recent Government Accountability Office report that revealed that congressional investigators were able to sneak bomb components past screeners at all 21 airports tested.

"And if bomb parts could get past then, obviously, things like liquid gel, which nobody would typically think of as a bomb component, could do so, too," Ervin told CNN.

but....

After Kristin Reinke of Champlin, Minnesota, dumped her bottle into a tub at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, she complained to her husband, Mike Reinke, "I just threw out $34 worth of hand lotion."

He was sympathetic, but accepted the Transportation Security Administration's reasons for the ban. "What are you going to do?" he said. "I guess you have to be safe."

(from a different article)

aww, look at the little sheeple, so accomodating. but where do you stop accomodating and say, enough is enough?
for some reason people have come to believe that inconvenience is equal to safety.

let's be clear: you can never be one hundred percent safe. there is no such thing.

and, as the famous ben franklin quotation goes:

"They that would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary saftey deserve neither liberty nor safety."

ssdd

i saw a snippet of a bush speech about the proposed peace-keeping 'force' for lebanon. he said something along the lines of: to protect the border with syria?

wtf? with syria? what about the border with israel?

which reminded me of this nice post by maia at capitalism bad; tree pretty:

They want to put a peace-keeping force in Southern Lebanon. What the fuck? If you actually want to keep the peace you don't put peace-keepers where the bombs are falling, you put peace-keepers in the place that is sending the bombs. That's where the peace is being broken.

recruitment to start younger

it's Army World!

a theme park where you get to be a soldier.

You can command the latest M-1 tank, feel the rush of a paratrooper freefall, fly a Cobra Gunship or defend your B-17 as a waist gunner

and kill loads of people! oh boy, i can't wait.

and i love that the towns' folk's objection to this was the traffic it would cause:

authorities in Fairfax County are objecting because of already traffic-clogged roads surrounding the proposed site.

getting older

People with lower socio-economic status appear to age faster than their better-off counterparts, British researchers said on Thursday.

i found this interesting. further,

"Not only does social class affect health and age-related diseases, it seems to have an impact on the aging process itself," said Dr Tim Spector of St Thomas's Hospital in London.

which isn't surprising, given that dlamming would tell you that aging itself is the disease.

the study was carried out on twins and corrected for other factors:

Even after adjusting for factors such as obesity, smoking and exercise, which can also influence aging....

The average difference was equivalent to about seven years ... which also could not be explained by education or income, according to the study.