Such Mind-Blowing Hubris from the Religious Set

This is what I have to say to those who claim God will smite down California for letting two women get married:

If your god is truly infinite, all-knowing and all-powerful, how can you ever presume to know His Will? To suggest that God will strike down California with a mighty earthquake is appalling hubris, claiming that you know what God wants, thinks, truly desires. How dare anyone claim to be humble before their Lord and God and also claim to know His Mind with this clarity? How can an imperfect creation contain His Perfection?

The two concepts cannot be reconciled, and thus I say unto you who try to wield God's wroth as your own weapon: you lie. You lie vilely, and you betray your faith in the process. I pity you for your smallness.

Bye 2010, and Good Riddance

I was just reading Wil Wheaton's end of 2010 post, and happy that 2010 was a good year for him. It's funny how you feel you know someone you've never met, but Wil has that gift of being real, only online, and yet maintaining his privacy, and it's something I've admired about him for a long time.

But I wish 2010 had been a good year for me; I believe, overall, it hasn't. I have a day job, that's good. I quit working as a librarian (job #2), which was good (tired...too tired) and bad (money) and continued working as a professor in the fall (job #3). I like professoring. You always learn when you teach.

Basically, I struggled a lot to keep my head above water and it doesn't seem to have made any difference. Like large chunks of America, I'm pretty fucking depressed about the whole thing. From the bottom of this deep hole, 2011 doesn't look like it'll be any better.

End of an Era

No, no, I don't mean the end of 2010, though I hear that's sometime around now. I mean sidra.vitale.net does not exist anymore, and this blog is maintained fully on blogspot.com now (see the URL above?). Why, you ask? Because this is and always has been a Blogger blog, and I used Blogger's FTP service to ftp the contents to sidra.vitale.net, which was a webhost with ftp access back-when and now keeps ftp access as some sort of legacy thing (Christ. FTP a 'legacy' thing. *shakes head* In Internet time, I'm fucking ancient.*) that's bound to die just like Blogger killed their FTP functionality last year or so, and no room/access to do something like install WordPress or MovableType. And so, there was no point to keeping it once it expired this year. And every dollar counts, you know.

I miss the innocent days of Internet's youth, I really do. Remember Gopher? Archie? Telnet? Remember Usenet? Building a computer from spare parts? (Dare I breathe the word...bboard?) Back in the halcyon days, http was one protocol among many. Wow.

Humans do tend to gravitate toward visual user interfaces, don't we? Although, texting has been giving the full-feature Internet a run for its money. It will be interesting to see what (new or existing) technology dominates in another 10-20 years.

The world has changed so much...but, *still* no flying cars. As I remarked in a recent Twitter post (speaking of the world changing), I can pretty much watch a movie anywhere in the world on a portable device of some kind, and yet, no flying car. The Future(tm) has its priorities wrong.

* Oh, don't look at me like that. If you're reading this post at all, you're most likely equally ancient in Internet time, or older. But we look *awesome* for our age, right?

Some Knob Decides to Boycott American Women

Idiot Starts Boycott of American Women.

Knock yourself out, kid. You just boycott away.

What I find interesting in his litany of complaints is essentially that American women are least likely to know that their place is to remain beauty-compliant, good cooks, and want to have (and presumably raise) gobs of kids. Because everything he's saying boils down to American Women (we are a monolithic group-mind entity, you know that, right?) acting like their needs and desires matter as much as his is offensive to his delicate masculine sensibilities. After all, to ol' Dougie here, it's not like women are real people or anything. So why do American women have to go around acting like it? What's the world coming to?!

Good luck on the boycott, Doug.

Today is the Intl Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

Today is International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.

It Just Blows My Obstreperal Lobe Every Time

That you, male person in a suit jacket in a court walking purposefully with papers, assume that I, female person in a suit jacket (and, admittedly, sneakers rather than heels) in a court walking purposefully with papers, am not also a member of the ever-so-cool Lawyer Club. Just. Like. You. Only with different gonads.

This is supposed to be the twenty-first century.

To My 4th-Grade Teacher Mr. O'Mary

Thank you, sir, for the moment when you called me aside and told me that I had very high test scores and asked me if I understood what that meant, and when I said 'no', told me the most important thing anyone in my life ever told me:

That means you can be anything you want when you grow up. You can do anything you put your mind to, that's what this means.

I say thank you, sir, for telling me that before anyone ever got to me and tried to tell me that girls can't do math. I say thank you, sir, because you believed what you said, and I believed what you said, far, far more than I believed strangers who looked at me funny for liking 'boy stuff.' I say thank you, sir, because I believe that statement circumvented a great deal of the stereotype gap for me so that I never doubted I could be a scientist if I wanted to. Not only did I believe I was as good as if not better than every man I ever met in the physics program at UC Irvine - I had my 4th-grade teacher to prove it.

I have never, in my life, questioned my ability to learn something, or be something, if I put my mind to it. Now, I *am* an INTJ, and learning things is what we do, but your simple statement codified my belief system for me at a young age, too young for me to even realize it. Well timed, sir, and well put. Thank you, sir, for helping clear my way.

Here's to Friends

Here's to friends.

And now for something completely different:

I shocked the hell out of the Tortoiseshell of Gondor the other day. Poor kitty. It all started (hey, wait, don't leave, everyone on the Internet likes cat stories, right?) while I was in the shower and I heard an odd noise, so I pulled back the curtain and the ToG was in the hall outside the bathroom, so I called her name to make sure she was OK, and when she trotted over, all "Mom's talking to me!" and reared up to put her front paws on the edge of the tub as I bent down to make eye contact with her (I'm nearsighted) she got this utterly HORRIFIED look on her face. I mean, her little kitty jaw dropped and her eyes got like saucers when she realized there was WATER coming from a THING in THE WALL. OH GOD, THE HORROR.

Needless to say, the ToG left the field of valor with some alacrity. Discretion, you know, being the better part, and all that.

"Stop Being Such a Scientist!" - No, Stop Being Jackasses

On Living on Earth (NPR) this morning there was an interview with Randy Olson, who has written "Stop Being Such a Scientist", a book that, I understand from the interview, urges scientists to hone their communication skills and start telling stories because that's what you need to get people to understand and engage with whatever the scientific idea is.

Now, OK. Excellent idea. Scientists do need to do this. But, one of the questions asked of Olson at one point implies isn't this a condescending book, telling scientists (!) to learn how to talk down to dumb schlubs properly because the lay audience is simply that fucking stupid? Well, yeah. But here's the problem (Olson evaded this implication of the question pretty well): as long as we live in an American society that devalues and insults intelligence, you bet your ass scientists need a book to teach them how to sneak scientific knowledge into cool stories, and that such an approach is necessary. The problem isn't scientists learning how to tell cool stories, which is a skill of great value in any society because humans relate and learn through stories, but that America has raised generations of people to make fun of anyone who cares about shit enough to learn something complicated and be passionately engaged with their work, and to marginalize and ignore what they have to say.

Bitch, Esq.

Given how much time I spend lamenting things, legal, feministical (that's a word, I just made it up is all) in addition to providing color commentary on life, the universe, and everything, should I change the name of this blog from ...Parenthetically Speaking to Bitch, Esq.?

Conundrums, conundrums.

Women, STRIDE!

I hate it when people shuffle, and especially that it's almost always women. It's a form of body language conveying infirmity, weakness, that the walker is unsure of their footing metaphorically as well as literally. Why do so many women do it? Because we don't know we're doing it, like so many other pieces of body language exhibited by women in this sexist society we've grown up in. We hold our arms in on the subway, too. We don't take up the bench. Because we're 'nice'. Because we're taught to defer to others, to wit, men. Because we're unsure of our position in society, so don't take up too much room, you know, or you might get slapped down by the mighty hand of the patriarchy. It's all part of the same thing, and if I see another woman shuffle down the street so fucking timidly today I may just have to kill her to put her out of my misery.

So much patriarchy to fight, so little time.

Little Things I Twitter/Plurk About Instead of Posting

Really, so much of my life gets compressed into 140 characters or less, leaving me circumscribed by an arbitrary limit (that isn't even 42, dammit) derived from text messages, which I hate *anyway*.

And so.

Point the first:

1. I have a barrelful of apples, since a half-peck of MacIntoshes were on sale at the Super 88 store the day after buying a giant bag of Galas from the Russian store on the corner, three days after buying a bag (only of 5) Braeburns from the organic farmer's market at Government Center. Yes, for a really good crisp apple, I will make a client wait on our way back to the office. I will even ask him to hold my umbrella. I have learned that lawyers must be thieves of our lives in between our lawyering, and if that means talking to my brother on the phone while waiting to go before a judge, such is life. And, oh, yes, children, I will eat these apples. For the apple is my favorite fruit, crisp and juicy with that sublime flavor of knowledge of good and evil. I may also cook some kind of apple sauce (not applesauce apple sauce, but some kind of liquidy entity with chunks of apples in it, and spices) and freeze it for those long months devoid of apples, or make a relish and pickle the heck out of some of them. Or...make an apple *curry*. Oh, small symbol of the loss of innocence, how sublimely delicious you are!
2. Fabric origami boxes! What a neat idea! fabricorigami.com. How clever. I wish I'd thought of it.
3. Funniest Thing I've Read in Weeks: translations from the feline: the flying mouse affair. Hysterical.
4. Speaking of things I wish I'd thought of, or things I wish I'd written (see #3), there's been a remarkable dearth of creativity on my part these past two years because I've been killing myself in the vain attempt to have more money. By working 2.33 jobs, also known as 2 jobs normally, 3 in the fall semester. This has now reduced to 1.33 jobs, known as 1 job normally, 2 in the fall semester. I expected my creative juices would start flowing again and make their presence known sometime after the end of the fall semester, with perhaps a lag for actual, you know, recuperation. What I have not expected is the sudden desire to do photographic projects. That's just weird. I hate taking pictures. I hate having my picture taken. I like photography, at least, in principle. Sometimes, when done by other people (Jeremy Wheaton, for one). And yet. Sudden desire to take pictures of people. And things. In very specific combinations. It's so odd.
5. Also, there have been small amounts of yoga.


Note that I have not restricted myself to 140 characters in discussing these topics. You lucky ducks.

Judge orders military to stop enforcing 'don't ask, don't tell'

Judge orders military to stop enforcing 'don't ask, don't tell'.

FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC, that's all I have to say. Along with "high time."

The Number of Things About Which I am Displeased Keeps Growing

It includes things ranging from too many Dems without spines, oil creeping around in the gulf, toxic sludge elsewhere, land-based marine pollution, the need for all my income to be spent on paying off loans and credit cards when I also need it to continue working in some semblance of lawyerly attire, journalists that don't practice journalism, our broken immigration system, various other broken systems, the cat puking in areas difficult to reach to clean up (well, done, Tortoiseshell of Gondor), and today's rip in my skirt.

I am now 40, so my first post-40-birthday post should be cranky, yes? Good start.

Rape Culture

I read a discussion by Christian men about how women should adjust their dress so as not to provoke their lustful desires. Now, as you can imagine, this lies with me about as well as the complementary application of the concept that if a woman dresses in a revealing fashion, she's asking to be raped. Which is, just to clarify, bull.

What I find repeatedly mind-blowing on a semi-annual basis is the idea that men are such sexual kleptomaniacs that they will, because of being overwhelmed by their lustful urges due to my wearing jeans that have stitching on the back pockets, commit a crime, and yet not be held responsible for it because we live in a world established by the Global Accords Governing Fair Use of Women. And a woman is public property, at least in the West.