| |
| as I wait for the steam cleaners to finish our downstairs, I am reading with some interest the Plaintiff/Appellee's response to SCOTUS on Utah's request for a stay on the 20 Dec 2013 ruling striking Utah's ban on same-sex marriages, which the District and Circuit courts have refused to stay. the filing is interesting, although not nearly as brilliant or entertaining as the Prop 8 filings and trial. one of the arguments in it is, basically, a stay at this point is silly, gay couple have been getting married in Utah for a good 2 weeks now: As an initial matter, it bears emphasis that the District Court’s Order has been in effect since December 20, 2013. Hundreds of same-sex couples in Utah have already married. Marissa Lang, Same-Sex Couples Shatter Marriage Records in Utah, Salt Lake Trib., Dec. 26, 2013, http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/57310957-78/sex-county-marriages-couples.html.csp?page=1. so. that's a copy/paste from an official legal filing to SCOTUS! and yes, that's a URL to the Salt Lake Tribune's web site, right there in the citation. a lot of news sites change their URLs after a time, they don't serve old news forever, that would get expensive really fast! (just try looking at some of my old posts, and see how many news URLs still work.) what is acceptable for that, I wonder, when the site wants to archive the story? file an amendment to this filing? does some SCOTUS clerk notify the URL owner of the citation? | |
|
| I've been trying to avoid posting about Jahi McMath, which is one of the more disturbing news stories in the Bay Area this month. But I really can't help it. (  wendelina2: this might be a bit too close to home so don't read if it bugs you.) Jahi McMath, through tragic circumstances we do not know, but which I suspect have much to do with a post-tonsillectomy consumption of a Popsicle, had profuse post-operative bleeding and is now brain dead. (the Popsicle appears in paragraph 12 in that link) like many states, California is guided by brain death and considers it the true death. however Jahi's parents clearly did not trust the medical doctors who (absent the fact of the Popsicle) were responsible for this result to decide to pull the plug on her ventilator. I can't say I blame them, actually. they went to court, and got a restraining order pending a court-ordered independent evaluation from other pediatricians. and guess what: the independent evaluators said she is brain dead. the news stories all seem to be slanted on the plight of the family as they struggle to get the hospital to cooperate in the care and feeding of their daughter. the authors I think are not really considering what this situation means. the girl is dead. nobody is home! the hospital has tried to explain, the life support is merely postponing "the normal post-mortem course of events." they explain, they do "...not believe that performing surgical procedures on the body of a deceased person is an appropriate medical practice." but nonetheless the body is on life support, breathing, heart beating... ...that's so very creepy. kudos to the hospital for trying to keep it civil. I would be so very weirded out to be in a room with this girl's dead, breathing body. when my mom passed away, they told me, they could not pull the vent until the death certificate was signed. there was her body, breathing... with flat monitors. I was out of that room so fast, so very creepy. and that was my mom. I can't imagine what the caretakers in the facility housing this girl's body are thinking. but it's got to be a trauma to them. and here the girl's family spent Christmas in her room, pretending it's normal. in her room. with a dead body, that's still breathing. sounds like something out of Hitchcock. CNN addresses some of the ethics involved here, but not the creepy factor. the family here, is so selfish. I grieve for them, that they lost their child in such an unexpected and sudden way. but the pain and creepiness they are inflicting on health care providers, to waste resources and time on maintaining a deceased person, is so selfish. if they really want to see for themselves, hook an EEG to the girl's head. run an MRI to see blood flow. and then.. let her go. I saw a commenter on one of the articles ask: what if the girl is standing at the gates of heaven, but they won't let her in because her body is still operating? the commenter is right. so creepy. here's some background reading on this sort of thing on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Schiavo_caseI thought that was creepy and wrong too. but for some reason I can't find my posts about that. anyhow it has an image of where her brain started to liquefy (that's what brain death does...) and how it looked on an MRI. | |
|
| sometimes the American class war problem - that the media, and often the left wing too, always tries to recast as race war - shines though loud and clear. in Queens on Thursday, it shone through in court loud and clear, as the defense lawyer for a man who strangled a transgender prostitute didn't pull out a tired gay panick defense, but instead blatantly said: "A sentence of 25 years to life is an incredibly long period of time judge, shouldn’t that be reserved for people who are guilty of killing certain classes of individuals? Who is the victim in this case? Is the victim a person in the higher end of the community?" ( source: opposing views and source: Gothamist and source: NY Post) the above would seem like an outlier - people don't really think that way, do they? - except that earlier this month there was an article about a guy who died in his cell in jail while awaiting trial. he was an ex-military type living in southern california who apparently suicided. but he was there on murder charges for killing homeless people, becuase per what he told police, he felt it was a public service since their presence was a "blight" on the community ( source: LA Times). that idea didn't just magically occur to him. {I'm not trying to say, that there's not a race problem either. too often, race and class issues overlap. or class divides are reinforced by racism. there's a great article from the Chronicle of Higher Education I found on digg about a woman's ethnographic fieldwork, The American Police State, which discusses some of that too. And this BI post I also found on Digg, superimposing NYC murders on income, illustrates the overlap; but when "considering the source" I'd go with the prior cited article.} but nonetheless I think if we had a more open acknowledgement of class divides in the U.S. we'd be much further along to overcoming the problems. "class divides" comes across like a sound bite, but it translates into "unequal opportunity", from the cradle to the grave - Obama mentioned it in a recent speech, but I already knew about this effect from an opinion piece in the NY Times last spring - economic hardship affects childhood development, becuase the parents are (possibly) too tired to talk to their kids, who then have a language and vocabulary disadvantage in early learning, which persists as they get older. all the story links above, I would consider "fucked up news" | |
|
|
- my life, how I've somehow escaped many traps the world has laid for others
- my ESO, around whom my entire life orbits
- my friends, although I am not seeing them as much as I'd like
- my teammates at work, who are awesome and funny and smart and fun
- my doggies, who are also awesome and funny and smart and fun (just not in the same way)
- my cats, that I wouldn't have if it weren't for my friends
- my stereo, and music, becuase believe it or not that's always been important to me
- the Internet, which supplies me with income, diversion, and communication
- my job, having a job is good
- the planet, which in some way, brings me great joy every day
- my parents, who were more unusually closer to ideal nice people than I ever realized
- Location:home
- Mood:pensive
 - Music:"Face to Face" by Siouxsie & the Banshees
| |
|
| I've recently taken to using Digg as a jump page for interesting articles. one which caught my eye had the headline on Digg (they always change the headlines) "The Economic Differences Between Myers-Briggs Personality Types". curious, having gone through enough HR-sponsored workshops based on Meyers-Briggs, and taken enough "free online tests" linked through social media, I clicked through, to see that it had a graph showing ENTJ makes way more money. the article, on priceonomics blog, is actaully called " The Economic Dominance of ENTJs" which is also not really an accurate title. perhaps 3 paragraphs are dedicated to the graph, and the rest is about why we shouldn't care. it notes we that Meyers-Briggs results tend to be mood-based, and since the assessments are derived from a survey in which the taker is often asked to pick between two unpalatable choices, retests don't reproduce results reliably. the money quote is really the penultimate paragraph, though. no really, it's literally the money quote.
If Myers-Briggs's utility is oversold, its longevity has much to do with its appeal to Human Resources departments as a reassuringly scientific crutch - and its moneymaking potential. The exclusive distributor of Myers-Briggs materials, CPP, charges $1,695 for 3 day classes to become a Myers-Briggs type indicator certified practitioner, $119.50 a pop for 15 minute video introductions to the Myers-Briggs test, and $25 for each report on an application of Myers Briggs types for the workplace (ie for conflict resolution, decision-making, and leadership).
| |
|
| Dear Ms Speier - I watched with interest your "steak and vodka" speech on the House floor last month which dramatically juxtaposed Congressional per diem allowances vs the SNAP budget within which our poorer citizens are forced to live. I thought it was a very good illustration of the points you were trying to make, and which needed to be made. Yesterday, I read in the SF Gate ( http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Study-Fast-food-workers-rely-on-7-billion-in-aid-4898447.php) that a study had been released from UC Berkeley and UIUC, which showed that $7 Billion of state and federal assistance was used by employees in the "fast food" sector, who despite holding down jobs and contributing to our economy nonetheless do not earn enough to support themselves. The article definitely reminded me of your recent speech. It takes the tone of using the study results to argue for a living wage, but I'm not sure that tone "works" within the rhetoric of current political discourse. On the other hand, my main takeaway from reading the article was that $7 Billion in tax money, which no doubt could have more noble uses, are effectively being used to subsidize the low prices of fast food. I would say anyone who argues that driving up the minimum wage interferes with free market economics ought to agree, buttressing an unlivable wage with tax dollars is no less of an interference, and only serves to keep those prices artificially low. I know the SNAP funding will be part of upcoming budget and farm bill negotiations. Please keep in mind when they are up for debate, that a significant percentage of the program is supporting people who are participating in the workforce, and won't be able to fix it by simply "going out and getting a job." Respectfully, | |
|
| to all my friends from UCSC who told me I was paranoid and wrong when I posted to yam about how in the future the government would collect all your position data and the biggest fear was what some middling bureaucrat would do with it: I told you so.
didn't I? I said, soon the government would have it all. violent crime would start decreasing, becuase everyone would know where you were.
there was a second half to that prediction, too, which involved what would happen to individuals that didn't regularly walk around with a device on them that broadcast location in a trackable way. I said they would be shot on sight. y'all said I was paranoid for that too. do you still think so, now? I wonder when I get to say "I told you so" to that one.
so let's back up to why I said the above. it's been revealed, in the last 48 hours, that the US NSA has been apparently collecting all the metadata of phone communications for the last 7 years (this was in the UK Guardian). it has also been revealed that the US NSA has been gathering and storing apparently everything - email, audio & video chats, posts - from 9 different companies (this was in the Washington Post). people are all upset, apparently having totally blanked on the construction of giant data center for this purpose that the government contracted with AT&T (see my LJ posts from 2007 here (where I say again, really, people are upset now?!) and here (where I call out the datacenter construction)).
sorry about the second person tone in here, I normally don't like using "you" in my journal but since I'm referring to message board posts, there it is. | |
|
| I was all set to compose a post about my weird day, but now I am typing about it, I can't even put my finger on why it is so weird. well, I always think the first week in february is weird, but I don't think that's it this time.
I started by working on jabberwock - it has a dying disk, so I wanted to get all the data backed up before taking any other disruptive action. I did that, but then told it to reboot and fsck... and it hasn't come back. so I will have to deal with that tomorrow...
but then the day wasn't actually all that weird. I did some laundry and ironing and cleaned around the house, talked to friends online and in text messages. ate food, walked the dogs, ran errands. played some wow, talked to more friends.
and yet I've felt weird all day. maybe it's the let down after a pretty rough week at work. maybe it's finally having a day "off" where I wasn't actually supposed to be anywhere or do anything. well, other than fixing jabberwock. I don't know.
I ended up in conversations with 3 separate people who were really just needing to talk to someone supportive. I don't know why people talk to me in those cases, I'm not delicate when people have sensitive situations in their lives. but there it is. maybe this is why I am left feeling weird. one friend recently discovered metastases from a cancer she thought was beat. another is stuck in a mental trap. and another is finally doing something about his career in the military. it's an odd set of conversations to be juxtaposing. and in the end I'm left wondering who I'll talk to when I need that kind of conversation for myself. - Location:home
- Mood:weird
| |
|
| so my planning skills are even worse than normal, and silly me, I came down to Southern California hoping to go to Disneyland in the wintertime. it's 81 degrees there today and I don't really have such appropriate clothing.
but really, I was hoping to go with friends. on the 20th, and the 22nd, that is, today. the 20th I was going to go with Elena, for her birt'day, but she decided to have a party instead, since Sunday on a 3 day weekend with 80 degree weather doesn't really translate into a good time at Disneyland for anyone who grew up in California. and since it was for her birt'day I wasn't ging to argue too much. for the 22nd, today, we planned on going with another friend, who is soon going to take off for the Phillippines, although I am unclear on for-how-long. but he couldn't get the time off work. and it's 81 degrees, and the hours there are such that we are either stuck in traffic, or skipping dog meals, or there for fewer hours than the drive takes. since we lack appropriate clothing, this did not appeal either.
it's pretty frustrating, although not as much as I portray. Elena's little sister flew in for her birt'day. well, that and for the Kings' opening game. now, I hadn't really interacted with her much since she achieved her majority - she is much younger than us - and talking to her about her successes and woes was super interesting. we talked and talked, for what feels like most of the weekend! when she was a very young child I always thought she had great potential, and she has realized much of it. that's nice to see. and it's just awesome to refresh an interaction that was a big part of my life when I was in high school, except now as adults with more in common than I have with most people.
meanwhile I have to head back up tomorrow... it's cooling off in Anaheim then. it'll be raining by the weekend, which is my preferred Disneyland weather. tomorrow's when Elena is going, wise her! but I don't want to cram the Mouse and a drive back with the doggies all in one day. damn weather. | |
|
|
