April 2007 Archive
« March 2007 | Home | May 2007 »
April 29, 2007
Crazy Busy - blah blah blah
[Please insert standard rant about being too busy and/or grumpy to weblog properly.]I had a cross-country business trip this week. When I got back, my parents showed up for a weekend birthday visit literally 3 minutes after I walked into the house from the airport. (They were driving, so the timing was uncertain.) Nice visit - the work trip was scheduled after we'd planned their visit, so it was just an unfortunate coincidence. Oh look, I guess I can manage houseguests without my usual amount of preparation. Everybody ate, was warm, and clean. That's sufficient, right?
Work is still -- well, those of you who know, know. The rest of you, be glad that you're spared the details. (And to a couple of you, I'll fill you in soon.)
My birthday was nice. One of the things TheGuy got me was a PS2 poker game. I won the first tournament I tried to play with it. Surely it's rigged. Or maybe, as someone suggested, I'm just that good.. I fear trying it out again, though -- it was rather addicting. We have not had video games like that in any place we've lived since we were in middle school or so -- those things are compelling. We'd not seen any need for a fancy new large-screen television. But after about 20 minutes of playing that game, I was ready to go to Best Buy and get one. So silly.
I did consume some media while travelling -- cramped airplane seats just not conducive to productivity -- so sue me. I watched "The Holiday" and parts of Will Smith's "Happyness" movie on the plane. I didn't know anything about "The Holiday" in advance -- but I love Kate Winslet. And now I like Cameron Diaz and Jack Black much more than I did. Enjoyable movie. I love Will Smith, too, but I couldn't keep the headphones on for all of "Happyness" -- too stressful. Still, he was very good.
I also finally read Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. I'm always way late to the party on this stuff. Loved it. He's like a BOFH chef and writes very entertainingly. (brhine, genehack - you must read this book.) Not sure I want to read much more of his stuff any time soon, and I haven't told Tivo to go find me any of his tv shows, but KC was great. I will never look at line cooks in kitchens the same way again.
Back to the grind in the office tomorrow. Please, please, please let there not be any drama or crises this week. I'm still cleaning up the slop from the last several dramatic crises. I was double-dosing on vitamin C all week and slurping down some "Airborne" health pellet thingies that dissolve in water like Alka-Seltzer. So far, I seem to have avoided a cold *knock wood* -- that would just cap off everything had I gotten sick, too. Cross your fingers that the virii have been dissuaded.
<=> | in: Journalling
1 Comments --
April 18, 2007
Women Will Die
Women will die and children will be left motherless because of what the Supreme Court has done today.<=> | in: Civil Rights & Feminism
1 Comments --
As far as they're concerned, the only women who will die are murdering mothers who deserve to die.
Hard to reason with people like that. They see backalley abortions like they see AIDS -- it kills all the right people.
Posted by: Janis on April 18, 2007
April 17, 2007
VT
What happened a few hours down the road from here at Virginia Tech is tragic. I can't spend too much time thinking about it without feeling the tears at the back of my eyes.A friend of mine was on campus behind closed blinds and doors IM'ing me prior to the evacuation yesterday. I asked him to just keep IMing periodically.
There are a lot of words being written right now. I don't have much of anything to add. I'm reading all the same news reports everyone else is. I'm thinking a lot about my time on a large campus and the impossibility of any sort of "lockdown." The difficulty, even, of any kind of mass emergency broadcast. The numerous faculty I know and work with. The shattering of the usual vibrancy of campus life at VT, and echoes of it everywhere across the country. And I'm thinking about violence, senseless violence; here, and around the world.
Divinest Sense had some good words. Read hers.
I don’t pretend to have any answers here, especially since we don’t really know anything. But I do think we need to pay more attention to the people around us. Not in a suspicious, vigilante way, but in a compassionate way. A look or a word that says “I know that you are there.” Break open the unspoken tensions that you sense around you, and talk about them. Find out what people are angry about and afraid of. Maybe if we all did a little more of this, we could gain a little insight, learn something new, and deal with problems before they result in a massive and senseless loss of life.
<=> | in: General Musings / State & Local
1 Comments --
But I do think we need to pay more attention to the people around us. Not in a suspicious, vigilante way, but in a compassionate way.
This is so, so, so incredibly true. We are lonely, anxious, paranoid beasts without the safety and comfort of our tribe, and so many of us live and work far away from our tribes, or are only with them online, or have yet to find them.
To notice each other, in the world, is the first step to making the other "one of me", to building tribe-feeling, which also means building safety, security, and lower blood pressure.
Posted by: Sidra Vitale on April 17, 2007
April 14, 2007
Stress, Bullying, and Sexism
I wrote briefly about the Kathy Sierra situation earlier. I resent the hell out of the fact that these despicable behaviors are out there and must be addressed – not only is the harassment and threatening vile in and of itself, but the fact of it takes time and energy and spirit away from all of us who are compelled to speak out against it. It’s a double-win for the misogynists and hatemongers of the world.But, we must speak.
This kind of crap must not go unanswered. It’s why, if you scan my del.icio.us feed, I’m always ranting that MEN WHO DON’T HATE WOMEN MUST SPEAK against this crap as well. To that point, I salute Chris Clarke who explains How Not to be an Asshole: A Guide for Men. I quote liberally, since he indicated comfort with cross-posting:
I see there are some kind, helpful men who are taking pains to make sure emotion doesn’t run rampant in the discussion, that unfair accusations of misogyny or characterizations of harassment statistics get spread in an understandable emotional response to a few very upsetting instances of harassment by piglike men who fall far outside the norm. Surely, these men reason, we mustn’t let these nasty experiences color our judgment of the actual events involved. Surely it helps no one to make wild and baseless charges without looking, in uber-dispassionate detachment, at the actual statistics and methodology and margin of error of the studies that show women get harassed more than men. Come, let us reason together calmly, they say. References to Salem and the McMartin pre-school and such come unbidden to their lips.The discussion in comments to this post is instructive. I recommend it. I also recognize the apparent contradiction in my urgings to speak and Clark's exhortation to STFU. I think intelligent readers can sort this out, though.
I’m a big fan of dispassionate, rational, fact-based discussion of the issues myself, and it is in that spirit that I offer, to my brethren who’ve taken it upon themselves to be a shining light of dispassion on this topic, these fraternal words of guidance:
Shut the fuck up.
Here are a few of the actual facts that prompt the above sage counsel: — You are not saying anything the women you’re talking to haven’t heard a thousand times before. You are not saying anything the women you’re talking to haven’t told themselves a thousand times before. If you would actually stop your reflexive know-it-all yammering and pay attention to what women actually SAY about the offenses they suffer on the sexual harassment - rape continuum, you will note that almost to a woman they second-guess their own gut feelings about the putative offender far beyond the point where almost any man would.
— You are wrong. If you doubt that the nature of abuse and harassment women suffer, online or off, differs from that men experience, then you don’t know what you’re talking about. Oddly, the Internets offer a way for you to verify this fact for yourself.
[…] — If no woman in your life has ever talked to you about how she lives her life with an undercurrent of fear of men, consider the possibility that it may be because she sees you as one of those men she cannot really trust.
[…] But this situation is qualitatively different. When the topic at hand is men not taking an issue seriously, suggesting that the issue might not really be all that serious is not being dispassionate. It is, in fact, taking a side. And the people on the side you’re taking, incidentally, include the gropers, the rapists, the sexual-favor-demanding bosses.
In short, if you’re interested in quibbling with the data or suggesting alternate interpretations of what Kos really meant when he called Kathy Sierra a lying “crying blogger,” and your goal is not to be a flaming asshole, shut the fuck up.
By the way, I had an experience recently that fits into this constellation of issues. Details munged, but the gist of it was: I receive a nasty communication. I am offended/insulted. I, as Chris Clarke suggests above, apply the typical ‘self-doubt, it’s not that bad, let it go’ filter. And like the good professional and thick-skinned, Usenet-veteran geekgirl that I am, translate my state of offense into annoyance and rolled eyes. In the meantime, being told by other (well-meaning but non-female) parties, that it’s no big deal, not to be so sensitive, life’s stressful, deal with it and so on. Surprise, surprise, the behavior/communication escalates in its nastiness level. It becomes clear that I did not interpret the original communication incorrectly.
No, it wasn’t a death threat. And it wasn’t, on paper, sexual harassment. Do I think it was gender-based? Hell yes, but absent someone calling me a bitch, or worse, or propositioning me, I doubt most men would believe it. But, you know, I have been on the intertubes communicating-by-typing with other primates for seventeen years. I know damn well when I’m being insulted – even in ASCII – and I’m tired, so tired, of being told to ‘man up and put up with bullshit because life’s like that.’ No, it wasn’t a death threat. But yes, it took hours away from my life dealing with it, it raised my blood pressure (literally), and increased my anxiety levels a great deal. I guess I’m fortunate in that my anxiety is not with regard to personal safety concerns. I don’t think fortunate is really the right word, though.
Life doesn’t have to be like that. But women cannot fight and win these battles on our own. When men tolerate other men treating women like shit, bullying, threatening, and generally being jackasses, eventually something like what happened to Kathy Sierra happens – or even much worse. I’ll “get over” the situation I had to deal with, I suppose. Its timing, though, in the face of the broader Internet discussion happening right now I found particularly poignant.
One other thing. I haven’t written much about this before either, but I note that as I’ve gotten older (I’ll be 35 later this month), I am seeing and/or dealing with increasing amounts of sexist bullshit. I think it’s a combination of my radar being ever-more-refined (there’s a difference between being over-sensitive, and having been around long enough to quickly assess when something is rooted in sexist bullshit rather than waiting for explicit confirmation) and, as my older women friends always told me (and I did and do believe them – I’m just confirming), once you move out of your 20s, the shit starts getting even worse. It’s true. I don’t write about it much here, and I try not to dwell on it too much. (This week was an extreme example, so I’m documenting it, in solidarity.) But, it’s true.
UPDATE: Oh, I know there's a whole lot of discussion about blogger codes of ethics and comment policies and such. Just to be clear, at this site it is very simple: my site, my rules; I reserve the right to delete any comment at any time for any reason I damn well please.
<=> | in: Civil Rights & Feminism / General Musings / Journalling / Weblogs & Citizen Writing
3 Comments --
When I joined Slashdot nearly ten years ago now, I very carefully picked a gender-neutral handle (the one I'm still using). Some people on the Dot know that I'm female; others don't. Just the fact alone that I put a great deal of consideration in picking a gender-neutral handle should tell you something, I think.
I definitely agree with you that the sexist bullshit ratio has gone through the roof in the last ten or fifteen years or so. Actually, I think the bigotry ratio has gone through the roof in general; why is it socially acceptable to be an ass in public these days?
I've decided I'd like to put some thought into ideas on developing a curriculum for elementary-school aged children, preferably early elementary school, that attempts to develop empathy. If I release it into the noosphere, maybe someone will pick it up and start using it.
Posted by: Interrobang on April 14, 2007
Trackback. Dunno if my new system will work, but it seems like a step in the right direction.
Posted by: Bill on April 14, 2007
I don't really have anything useful to say; all I've got is this sucks, sucks, sucks and you are right about speaking out.
Posted by: Katxena on April 17, 2007
April 7, 2007
Various Topics
Some of the things I'd like to be blogging extensively about, but am not - in no particular order:- The Kathy Sierra situation. Joan Walsh had a decent write-up about her reaction to it. Walsh wrote about men who hate women on the web. I've been on the Internet since 1990 -- I don't find any of this surprising. Almost every woman I know who writes online or speaks up anywhere, actually, has had to deal with this sort of foolish, sexist, and sometimes plain old hateful crap.
I've grown a thicker skin. I didn't want skin this thick. And what does it mean that women writers have to drag around this anchor every time they start to write -- that we reflexively compose our own hate mail, and sometimes type and retype to try to avoid it?
(See also Arthur Silber on not growing a thicker skin. I have been literally screamed at, in my life, for being too "cold" and "tough" and indifferent (or something.) I disagreed with those characterizations, but growing a thicker skin as a result of abusive or misogynistic behavior -- which I've done, and put to use countless times -- does have its disadvantages.) Back to Walsh's article, I think the even larger problem is men who hate women, period. And, as I've said before, men who don't hate women (on the web and otherwise) need to speak up loudly if we're to have any hope at all at tempering the hate. Sara over at Orcinus did an excellent job of putting this incident in its appropriate broader context of authoritarianism and eliminationist rhetoric.these guys no longer recognize the Web as a community, or the women they meet there as legitimate and equal members of that community. Instead, they see it as a battlefield, where violence is the expected norm. In this imaginary war zone, any woman who's out in public without male escort has already forfeited any claim to dignity or life.
[...] it seems possible that Kathy Sierra may have been collateral damage in the right wing's continuing escalation of hostilities, both in the real world and on the Web. Years of acrid bile form Coulter and Malkin and Rush have corroded the tenuous bonds that keep these people civil, and given overt sanction to outrages that any serious civilization would regard as barbaric. It's hardly surprising that all those years of misogynist hate speech from the right have congealed into eliminationist threats against a woman who did nothing more than show her face in virtual public. - The U.S. attorney scandal. What a disgrace. A total disgrace. Bush is populating this country's law enforcement mechanisms with unqualified religious freaks who studied at the likes of Pat Robertson's "university." And that's just the barest beginning of the horrible things that are going on with this. The authoritarian, anti-Constitutional creeps in control of the government are doing everything they can to undermine our system of laws. Keep an eye on Talking Points Memo for this -- it is all just so horribly, horribly awful.
- John Edwards -- I've had a variety of posts brewing about the '08 primary campaign. I don't expect to get particularly involved this time around. But, if I had to choose right now, I'm leaning Edwards and have been for quite some time.
- The Washington Nationals. We went to Opening Day and we were at RFK last night (brrrrr - mite chilly it was). Even though the team is expected to do very badly, it's still entertaining to have a major league team in town. Who knew? Of course, if the team owners/management keep screwing up the "fan experience" as they have been, that might change, but for now, it's alright. Last night, we found our cheap seats that our 20-game season tickets are for. But after the 4th inning we moved to much better seats. No one seemed to care. Since attendance is down and they're not playing very well, we may be able to do that all year!
- In consumer news, some stuff I bought recently that I'm enjoying:
- an iSkin keyboard cover for my G4 Powerbook.
- Napa Soap - got some of this when we stopped at Soak in Richmond on our way to Williamsburg about a month ago. I tend to buy nice soaps, but not use them up very quickly -- I'm trying to change that. This is beautifully wrapped and all the flavors Soak had smelled lovely - not too overpowering.
- Charred hardwood to use as charcoal instead of briquets. Seemed to work well in our first grilling attempt with the new grill.
- Oh, there's lots more -- the real estate situation around here, the fact that honeybees are dying all over the planet, the pet food contamination scandal and what it portends, the new Mac Pros, and so on and so forth... maybe someday I'll feel like blogging again.
<=> | in:
5 Comments --
Edwards is interesting. I still lean toward him, I think, but I was rather disappointed at the way he handled the Marcotte & Evan's affair (talk about the a lost opportunity for non-women-hating-men to speak up...
The honeybee issue simply makes me sick. At what point does it take to force commercial interests to sit up and look? "Oh gee, NOW we see our bees dying (and our companies going under...HELP!"
And I've been reading about africanized bees and other threats for what, 20 years? Arrrghh...
Posted by: BEG on April 8, 2007
At what point does it take to force commercial interests to sit up and look?
Honestly? The point where their CEOs can't bail, leave the company to flounder, and move on to another one. These guys are remorae, seriously. The contribute nothing and simply move from one cadre of rich guys who attach themselves to a corporation to another. They need to not be able to get their golden parachutes. The failure of Corporation A must be seen as a personal catastrophe for the guys on the board, not just an annoying bump in the road, or nothing will change.
Posted by: Janis on April 8, 2007
I've been using hardwood charcoal for a couple years and love it. I have yet to find a downside to it, although it does burn hotter, so it takes a little getting used to.
We need to get together one of these days and talk politics. I'm disgusted with the whole scene (again).
Posted by: Joni on April 8, 2007
(talk about the a lost opportunity for non-women-hating-men to speak up...
Yep - that and a few other things are keeping me from full-throated support pf Edwards. However, there are even more things keeping me from full-throated support of the rest of 'em...
And Edwards has a clue about class issues in this country, notwithstanding his personal financial success, and that's a big plus as far as I'm concerned.
Posted by: Medley on April 8, 2007
I also have to niggle over the definition of "men who don't hate women." This does not and shold not include "men who don't actually out and out rape but who don't really give a crap about it one way or another."
This category I think contains the largest group of men -- men who don't rape, but more out of laziness than any real, strong activist belief that women are actually human beings, despite all mental programming to the contrary.
I no longer consider men who hear about what happened to Kathy Sierra and who don't speak out against it -- TO MEN, and not just to feminists to show off how nice they are -- to be included in the "men who don't hate women" category. The bar's higher than that. It takes more than just the inability to pry your butt out of the recliner to give a damn one way or another for me to count a man as an ally.
they need to talk out loud, to other men, on their blogs, and to tolerate no garbage in return. They have to stick their necks out, the way we do every day of our lives if we just want to live in public without a burqa over our heads. Let them run a little risk on behalf of women's rights, too -- not counting the terrifying fear of being called "pussywhipped" if they call their wives to let them know they'll be home late from work.
Posted by: Janis on April 9, 2007
April 2, 2007
Monday Night Jibber-Jabber
So many, many interesting things to blog about -- such little, little energy or inclination to do so. Sigh. Journalling, instead -- it's easier.Back to the office tomorrow after my "spring break" -- I can feel my blood pressure rising already. Must cultivate some deep-breathing exercises or mid-day yoga classes or something, because opening one's work email with hands over eyes peering and squinting through one's fingers while the knots tighten in one's shoulders is no way to live.
There were a couple of large-ish projects I'd hoped to complete over this past week but didn't. So it goes -- my list was ambitious, after all. One of them is dealing with my backlog of personal email. Right now it stands at 362. I shall try to have that be a monotonically decreasing number for the next little while and see if I can whack away at it in pieces. Another was significant progress on the book purge. I made some tiny progress, but not significant progress. Oh well.
For all its apparent simplicity, and even though they can't make it scale very well, and IM is still broken, I'm finding Twitter a rather compelling little application. It has been fodder for several dinner conversations with TheGuy -- I think there's a lot of interesting stuff going on (socially, not necessarily technically) with that tool. The humor factor alone makes it worth keeping an eye on to me. My friends can be quite funny, and the occasional bon mot can be a nice little bright spot in the day. "Turf to the Minion!" will persist for years--years I say!--between me and Genehack, I predict. Now, don't you wish you know what I was talking about? ;-) Come twitter with us...
We've been sitting outside whenever time, weather, and ToDo lists permit now that the yard is finished -- so far my verdict is "Love, Love, Love It!" -- the apartment I had before I moved to DC had a little balcony to sit out on that I used quite frequently - I'd forgotten how much I like sitting in the fresh air. (I think this is another thing I like about baseball games, too... hours of outside air and light (during day games).)
Soooo... does anyone have any sangria recipes they want to share? I'm feeling inspired to make lots of summery drinks this summer (alcoholic and non-alcoholic). Anyone have any favorite iced tea recipes or methods? Tell tell!
I mostly avoided the April Fool's silliness (I really don't care for the holiday) and didn't go searching for many clevernesses online, but my favorite (of the few I saw) was this.
<=> | in: Journalling
6 Comments --
Iced Tea recipe:
1) go to store
2) buy gallon jug of Red Diamond Sweet Tea
3) take jug home
4) drinkPosted by: Neil on April 2, 2007
Recipe for ice tea:
1 pot 1.5 times normal strength tea.
A pitcher full of ice.
A small handful of mint from your yard.Combine ingredients. Refrigerate.
Posted by: dan on April 2, 2007
If you have any email sitting in your inbox from me, feel free to delete. I'm sure it's not important:)
For iced tea, I always wing it. I recently made a pitcher of Yogi chai tea. I think I used 5 or 6 tea bags and steeped them in my kettle for 10 minutes? Then I poured it over ice into a 1/2 gallon pitcher. Delicious. I was amazed at how good it was actually.
Posted by: Joni on April 3, 2007
if you're making iced tea to keep in the fridge (as opposed to needing it right away), I recommend using Constant Comment, which brings a hint of orange and spice to an otherwise nice tea -- I use 6 teabags for ten minutes, which is then about the right strength to drink straight (or, better yet, spiked with a little cranberry juice), without needing to be diluted with ice. it earns its name with guests...
Posted by: acm on April 3, 2007
my favorite "iced tea" recipe
1 part vodka
1 part tequila
1 part rum
1 part gin
1 part triple sec
1 1/2 parts sweet and sour mix
1 splash Coca-Cola®Posted by: d on April 3, 2007
Did someone say tea? Here's my iced tea method. Technically, it's cold tea, not iced tea.
Fill a 1-quart container with cold water. Add 2 tablespoons loose-leaf black tea or 3 tablespoons loose-leaf green. Shake. Refrigerate for at least 12 and up to 24 hours. Strain into a different 1-quart container.
This will make regular strength tea. It doesn't need to be diluted, and only needs ice if you like ice.Posted by: Katxena on April 3, 2007
Welcome home and happy birthday! Missed you. Hope you keep any potential sickness away.
Posted by: Staci on April 30, 2007