3 Links and a *Sigh* makes a blog post on the gulf spill, right?

Gulf oil spill could result in biggest environmental and maritime litigation case in U.S.

Scientists: Large oil plumes detected in Gulf may pose new threat

8 probes into Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill

So, here's the sigh: *sigh*.

And here's the closing: Now is a great opportunity for oil companies to get into the green-energy business. Cuz you're bad at your current jobs. I suggest you seek employment...elsewhere.

Why Yes, I Am Awesome

There's a meme of sorts (not a meme. a movement.) going about the Internet that women should not be afraid to Own Our Awesome

And here's why:

Because I’m a woman, and I have accordingly been taught my entire life to view myself as lesser-than, to devalue my own accomplishments, to accept it when other people treat me as lesser-than and devalue me, which they (if they are men, especially) have been taught to do.

Well, my turn: I am awesome. I. Am. Awesome.

In 1993 I spent my summer teaching myself FORTRAN as a research assistant to the high-energy astrophysics department at UC Irvine and debugging a piece of computer code used to process data from black hole candidates. Figured out the iterative solution required, and implemented it properly. I rocked.

In 1996, I and 5 other women founded Web, by Women, for Women, a feminist anti-censorship website in direct response to the Communications Decency Act, and, a few years later, founded The 3rd WWWave of Feminism, another even more overtly feminist site talking about our experience as wired feminists. We got invited to speak at the Journalism and Women Symposium in 1998. We got mentioned in A Woman's Guide to Sex on the Web. We rocked the 'Net before most of the rest of the world got on board, and we still rock as individuals.

I write. I write well. I teach legal research and writing and am a published fiction author. Winner of the Writers of the Future contest. Know what? That fucking rocks. I fucking rock.

Last summer, in Alaska, I sang for the first time in about 25 years for my family, and the first time ever for some of the younger members of my extended family. And rocked 'em *back*, baby. (For the record, I sing every day, just not publicly. Any more. It just happened that way. People in Alaska cannot hear me singing in Boston.) 'Walking After Midnight' is my signature piece, and I killed 'em.

After being sworn in as an attorney, I represented, with my co-counsel, 26 residents of two towns south of Boston in fighting a proposed power plant in their area before the state licensing board that almost never says no...and obtained a critical 'no' to one aspect of the permitting request that may ultimately defeat the project entirely. GO US! GO ME!

The list goes on and I expect it to continue to go on.

So, Kate Harding asked, what's your power? What makes you Firstname Fucking Lastname?

I'll tell you.

You know, one time I was chatting with a friend about...something...oh, I forget, presumably some new thing I was learning or planning to, and she looked at me for a second and said, "Sidra, is there anything you *can't* do?"

And I thought about it, because it seemed like a serious question warranting a thoughtful answer, and answered, "No." There is nothing I cannot do. I may lack the talent or interest to develop genuine artistry at something, like line drawing, but anything that requires study and practice to accumulate a competency in, well, yes, yes I can. I can do that. Because I learn things, and then I build things using that knowledge. At my most fundamental, I analyse and build systems, it's a metapower, and I'm fucking good at it.

I am Sidra Fucking Vitale, and I can do anything.

For The Record - Not All Men Are Like That! - Yeah, We Know

Dear Men,

If you ever feel like saying to a woman, "not all men are like that!", I suggest you reflect on the fact that women, being well accustomed to resisting a world that insists all women be part of a monolithic bloc of pink, perfumed femininity in an attempt to express our own selves as individual human beings, we really, really, know that already.

It would be far more productive for you to instead say, in response to whatever it is you feel the driving need to distance yourself as a man from, "what a [sexist] asshole!" and actually criticize the behavior of another man instead of being so damned namby-pamby that you can't stand up to another man. Until you do, you condone men who are "like that", you demand we consume valuable time and attention soothing your ego saying "yes, yes, we know", and, in the process, you make yourself precious little better than being "like that" yourself.

HT: The Pursuit of Harpyness (awesome blog title), "Don't Tell Us."

Just a Note to Say I Love Alluringly Short

Just a quick rec for those of you who love words: Alluringly Short, by E. Mena, is an oasis. Drink deep and be refreshed, with links to work like Love Call, by Croatian poet Dubravko Deton (trans. by Miloš Djurdjevic):

I will clothe myself in your voice, in your voice, and invisibly I will go out into the street. I will stand there with your voice, with your voice inside me, and houses will pass me by like tired, half-sunken steamships. And it will last a hundred years, a hundred years, until birds take over your voice, your voice, to remind me I have to move on.

Marvelous words.

Don't Ask Me To Vote For You, Then

I just read this at mysouthend.com, "Senator doesn’t agree with Leon de Judah church’s rhetoric, but supports its social services efforts" and I call bullshit.

Go read it, I'll wait. (Yes, that's my boss Mr. Ross being quoted, from my firm.)

Ready? Now then, lets address the argument:

If, as MassEquality posits, Senator Chang-Diaz's appearance at the church was an opportunity to "provid[] a witness to Leon de Judah that a progressive way of thinking about the world, and especially towards the LGBT community is ... right and just," then she needed to actually witness to Leon de Judah in order to pull that off. And there's nothing indicating that she did that, that she took advantage of the opportunity to witness and proclaim her alleged belief that you can be religious and gay-positive. (And obviously, you can, since many churches embrace their LGBT members.) So, bullshit. Because you witness by your actions, people, and her actions by attending this event without saying anything were simply "I support you", not "I love you but hate your sin of preaching against gay people."

Frankly, I'm pretty down on MassEquality for the offering this lame, after-the-fact justification for the Senator to try to use. And I'll be remembering this come donation time.

Well, what if we blame lying hypocritical men for earthquakes!

how do you like that?

Iranian cleric blames quakes on promiscuous women

For surely, lying, also being a sin, could be as much a cause of earthquakes as adultery. So, too, is slandering chaste women who are believers but indiscreet, considered a noxious thing to Muslims. Not to mention judging unjustly.

Haiku of the Day

I salute the sun
Face to the waking street. The
Cat sleeps in my way.


-- Sidra Vitale, 3/20/2010.

China as Company Town

Have just had sudden epiphany: China is the biggest company town in the world.

Iditarod Day!

It's been years since I've seen mushers start on their way or been on a dog sled myself, but no matter how far this girl goes from Alaska, you'll never take the Alaska out of the girl.

http://www.iditarod.com/ is the official site - ignore the blithering amoral twit former governor in the video.

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Blogger Dropping FTP service

Blogger is dropping FTP service. I'm tempted to let this website fall by the wayside, because I use Blogger/FTP to update this site. We'll see.

Climate != Weather

It’s Cold and My Car is Buried in Snow. How Can Global Warming be Happening?

Easily, because climate is not the weather.

A few snow storms, cold snaps or even heat waves do not prove anything about climate change, because there is a significant difference between weather and climate. Weather is what we experience on any given day or even over a couple weeks. Climate describes a region's prevailing conditions—including such things as temperature, rainfall, wind, humidity and atmospheric pressure—over long periods of time. Climate is a good indicator of what to expect. For example, in the Midwest, one would expect cold winters. Whereas, in a Mediterranean climate, one would expect a generally milder winter.

Climate change refers to shifts in prevailing conditions observed over decades. One such shift is a long-term rise in global average temperatures. The current cold spells are occurring against this backdrop.

Gendered Language and Positions of Responsibility, or, "Yes, Prime Ministress"

GENDER/LANGUAGE: Rejecting the Derogatory 'Feminine' By Miren Gutierrez and Oriana Boselli

"ROME, Dec 26 (IPS) - What happens to language and the way women are addressed when they start to occupy positions of responsibility? Well, it depends on the language."

Spanish leans to the feminine form of the word, while Italian simply applies the masculine form regardless of the person's actual testosterone levels - 'il ministro' to minister Mara Cafagna, who is a woman. Hm.

Some interesting notes on the "dynamic of the exception" in the sidebar article, so be sure to read that. My male readers, I trust, will be able to take it seriously because it is espoused by fellow men. So it can't just be radical man-haters, right?!

(Oh, how I long for the Revolution, when all obstreperal lobes will be free from patriarchy-induced explosions and we spinster aunts can lounge about with our margaritas in total comfort. In the meantime I console myself with I Blame the Patriarchy. I mean, shit, people, these languages's NOUNS have GENDER. Girl nouns! Boy nouns! On the one hand, ew. On the other hand, maybe it's more honest, you know?)

This is Just a Great Description of Someone

The Mexicans of Mexico On "Wab."

"The final word on 'wab' goes to Dr. Armin Schwegler, a professor in UC Irvine's Department of Spanish and Portuguese who specializes in dialectology and Spanish in the United States. He's taught at the school for 20 years and drops language trivia like some people default on their house payments."

It's just that this particular simile is unique to the current economic situation. It makes me wonder what someone 15 years from now might think reading it. (Hopefully, they won't understand the comparison but will still get it from context...)

Oil Spill - one of worst on the North Slope

Spill is one of worst on the North Slope

"Officials have found a 24-inch jagged rupture in a pipeline that began pouring oil and water Nov. 29, creating one of the biggest North Slope crude oil spills ever."

One ice plug was more than a quarter of a mile long. Shit howdy.

Note, by the way, the following:

"They've used Bobcats to scoop up the mess and vehicles called Rolligons with huge, low-pressure tires to haul it away. They're building an ice road for trucks, though the weather at times has been too warm for the ice road work."

Ice roads are a common concept in this kind of environment...and now the weather ON THE NORTH FUCKING SLOPE has been "too warm" for an ice road. I have varying pairs of words to state at this point: Global Warming. Climate Change. We're Fucked.

And it ain't just about ice plugs, neighbors. It's about permafrost melting. It's about ice roads. It's about subsistence living that depends on ice and permafrost and pipeline maintenance and spill cleanup that depends on ice and permafrost. It's about the rules changing dramatically.

Check this out:

US National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change Educational Resources Regional Paper: Alaska With regards to oil pipelines: "The pipeline's support structures are designed for specific ranges of ground temperatures, and are subject to heaving or collapse if the permafrost thaws. Replacing them, if required, would cost about $2 million per mile."

Because of climate change, "the hard-frozen conditions needed to support ice roads around the North Slope oil fields now exist for only about 100 days a year. . . . Thirty years ago, oil companies could use ice roads for about 200 days of the year." Global warming devastating native Alaskans. See also, Warmer climate creates engineering challenges, Kenai Peninsula Online.

Can't fix it if you can't get to it.