Thoughts on singlehood- updated

I wrote about being single and its implications on life a little less than a year ago. I was a long time singleton, who assumed on a fundamental level that I would stay single. I am good at being single. I am well suited to having a well developed life and personhood as defined by me and me alone, but alas I find myself once again in a relationship.

So the plans would have to be altered if this were to become a permanent thing. I will have to compromise some level of autonomy in order to experience long term companionship.....and as I dip myself back into the flow of an intimate dynamic, I feel no clarity on the reference point question, middling confidence on having the capability of sustaining/creating a dynamic that mostly enriches, and real curiosity about what happens next.

Holy Crap, so cool!

Kid helps save the world!

"At that time, I didn't have a lot of knowledge about engines. I knew that there must be some problem with the engine's combustion [to have all that black smoke coming out] and I knew that an engine is about the combination of two elements: gas and air. I started looking into the gasoline side, but there had been lots of efforts to improve the gas - all sorts of additives - and none had really worked.

"So I started to think about the air side. I realized that if I wanted to change anything, I had to treat the air before it reached the combustion chamber."

From that initial brainstorm, after much trial and error, the Z5 emerged. In layman's terms, the device, built from a special alloy, improves the air flow into the engine in such a way that the combustion is much more efficient. By being more efficient, the car both uses less fuel and produces fewer emissions.

How does a teenager with a dream and lots of will power actually create a product? Trial and error, according to Badash.

"We had an old large generator in our house that used to put out lots of black smoke. I started trying to put different metals into the air filter. Then I would measure the amount of gas used and try and gauge whether less black smoke was coming out."

"It took a long time, with a lot of trial and error, until one day I realized that I was actually making a difference in the amount of smoke coming out," he recalled. "Well, I was very excited when I realized that I had discovered something which worked. It's not every day that a 16-year-old invents something.

"I went to my father and we took it to the next level. We spent two years perfecting it, finding the right metals. Now we've started to market it."

The next step for this budding inventor and entrepreneur is one familiar to most 18-year-olds here: Badash will soon be drafted into the IDF.

Asked whether he had any other ideas up his sleeve, Badash replied with a laugh, "We'll start with this right now and see where it goes."

Being Alpha

I am pretty sure that I have a naturally competitive personality. I have always wondered about the nature/nurture question as it impacts gender identity. Specifically, since there is anatomical proof of structural differences between male and female brains, what of it. Are there traits that are universally female or male?

An interesting study by Gneezy, Leonard, and List (2008) explored the role of culture in determining gender differences in competitive behaviour. They investigated two distinct societies, the Maasai tribe of Tanzania and the Khasi tribe in India. The former is patriarchal while the latter is matrilineal. In the patriarchal society, women were found to be less competitive than men, a result consistent with studies using data from Western cultures. But in the matrilineal society, women were more competitive than men. Indeed, the Khasi women were found to be as competitive as Maasai men. The authors interpret this as evidence that culture has an influence.

After watching the healthcare speech

I needed some good news. Here is what I found.

Blueprint for a better world

Meet the forgotten 90 percent of your brain: glial cells

Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.

oh shit!

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Seven young Chinese women suffered permanent lung damage and two of them later died after working for months without proper protection in a paint factory using nanoparticles, Chinese researchers reported.

Nanotechnology, or the science of the extremely tiny, is an important industry. One nanometer is one-billionth of a meter while nanoparticles measure between 1 to 100 nanometers.

Now can we jail him?

The documents show that staffers in Rove's office were actively seeking to have Iglesias removed after Republican figures in New Mexico complained that he was not pursuing voter fraud cases they wanted. In 2005, Rove aide Scott Jennings sent an e-mail to another Rove aide saying, "I would really like to move forward with getting rid of NM US ATTY."

time management

I used to be able to manage life. I used to be excellent at scheduling, being super punctual, etc. Now I'm like some crazy lady walking around dropping things and forgetting stuff and unclear on how anything is getting done. I prefer the old me and would like to re-create her asap.

thoughts

It is hard to know one's self. It is even harder to try to dicover the truth of one's identity while allowing new evidence to suggest that your current understanding is not whole. i.e. growing up well is hard.

Time

Scientists are reporting an advance toward a memory device capable of storing data for more than one billion years.

Alex Zettl and colleagues note in the new study that some of today’s highest-density experimental storage media can retain ultra-dense data for only a fraction of a second. They note that William the Conqueror’s Doomsday Book, written on vellum in 1086 AD, has survived 900 years. However, the medium used for a digital version of the book, encoded in 1986, failed within 20 years.

The researchers describe development of an experimental memory device consisting of an iron nanoparticle (1/50,000 the width of a human hair) enclosed in a hollow carbon nanotube. In the presence of electricity, the nanoparticle can be shuttled back and forth with great precision. This creates a programmable memory system that, like a silicon chip, can record digital information and play it back using conventional computer hardware. In lab and theoretical studies, the researchers showed that the device had a storage capacity as high as 1 terabyte per square inch (a trillion bits of information) and temperature-stability in excess of one billion years.

http://www.physorg.com/news162061022.html

Practicing compassion

These last couple of days, it has been harder than normal to believe that there is goodness in everyone.

Quakers recommend that, in our relations with each other, we should strive to respond to "that of God within everyone." In my own thinking, I have always related this to a supreme principle of respect. At least part of respect includes believing that everyone is capable of goodness. And at least part of the recommendation to look for and respond to "that of God" within everyone is also to assume that everyone is capable of goodness.

Immanuel Kant proposes something similar in his moral theory. One formulation of his "categorical imperative" is "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means" (Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 429, trans. James W. Ellington, Hackett Publishing Company, [1785] 1981).

I have been reading the stories of the women who went to Dr. Tiller for care and they are nothing short of breathtaking in the level of trauma the women he helped were in.

From Joss Whedon's Angel:

we will never win.  not completely. that's not why we fight. we do it because there are things worth fighting for.

So I'll continue to fight without resorting to violence, in the belief that compassion is the right way to fight. sigh.

This is what fanaticism does

From Andrew Sullivan:

My wife and I spent a week in Dr. Tiller's care after we learned our 21 week fetus had a severe defect incompatible with life. The laws in our state prevented us from ending the pregnancy there, and Dr. Tiller was one of maybe three choices in the whole nation at that gestational age. My wife just called with the news of his murder, weeping. I can't really come up with some profound political statement just now, so let me just list some memories of Dr. Tiller.

I remember him firmly stating that he regarded the abortion debate in the US to be about the control of women's sexuality and reproduction.

I remember he spent over six hours in one-on-one care with my wife when there was concern she had an infection. We're talking about a physician here. Six hours.

He told the story of his previous shooting, where a woman shot him twice in both arms as he drove out of his clinic. At first he wanted to run her down with his Jeep, but then he thought "she shot you already George, she'll do it again!"

I remember being puzzled about a T-shirt he was wearing, which said "Happy Birthday Jennifer from team Tiller!" or something similar. Turns out it comemmorated the birthday of a fifteen year old girl who was raped, became pregnant, and came to Tiller for an abortion. As luck would have it, she was in the clinic the same week as her birthday. So the clinic threw her a party.

The walls of the clinic reception and waiting room are literally covered with letters from patients thanking him. Some were heartbreaking - obviously young and/or poorly educated people thanking Dr. Tiller for being there when they had no other options, explaining their family, church etc. had abandoned them.

I remember my wife, foggy with sedation after the final procedure, being helped from the exam table. He had her sit up and put her arms around his neck, and then he lifted her into a wheelchair. "You give good hugs" she whispered. He paused just for a moment. "You're just fine," he told her.

Pro "lifers" murder again

A lightning rod in the bitter culture war over abortion, George Tiller had already been picketed, bombed and shot in the arms.

He was shot to death just after 10 am (1500 GMT) in the lobby of Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas, police and city officials said.

Why is this not front page news in the US?

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.

Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.

I have to stop reading the news

From super creepy big brother things to financial chicanery and batshit crazy prosecutors, the news is making me nuts. Maybe if I take more walks along the Charles I'll chill out.

Hives

I get hive outbreaks from an unknown allergen that sometimes will go away with two benadryl and sometimes, will take me out and require IV steroids to stop the reaction. This happened to me last week.  I was walking home when the reaction started and by the time I got home and took the benadryl I knew it was going to be a bad one so I called a taxi to take me to the hospital. Now I am smart enough to know that I should have called an ambulance, but I didn't want to pay for it. As a result, the reaction increased, I passed out on the sidewalk and someone walking by called an ambulance.

Seriously. 

I have health insurance and am not in financial dire straits. I can afford the ambulance ride. But the last time this happened it took six months to setttle all the bills between the health insurance company, the doctors, the ambulance and the ER.  Six months of phone calls, faxes and e-mails with various parties trying to confirm who had paid what.

My friend just got back from Denmark and described their social system of free healthcare, daycare and subsidized vacations.  She got it right on. We do it wrong.  

We construct situations that needlessly add to the anxiety and administrative burden of life and call it freedom or free market. I want to have a conversation with someone who argues that health care should be a "market". I want them to explain how people who are sick and vulnerable should be required to make rational, informed decisions about their care.  It is ridiculous and there should be a way to force the conversation on healthcare to acknowledge that.

Costa Rica Trip Thoughts

So I traveled by myself for a week in Costa Rica. There were several reasons for going by myself, but at a base level, mostly to see if I could do it. Well I did it. I nearly drowned (Thanks for the shitty signage J.W. Marriott Guanacaste) but I did it. I was able to clear my head a lot and think about some stuff that I have needed to think about. No grand conclusions, but I feel less harried. 

Bloodsuckers

Soros says U.S. faces lasting slowdown | Reuters:

"'What we have created now is a situation where the banks who will be able to earn their way out of a hole, but by doing that, they are going to weigh on the economy.

'Instead of stimulating the economy, they will draw the lifeblood, so to speak, of profits away from the real economy in order to keep themselves alive.'"

Bloodsuckers.

Thinking

I had thought that there were things I would know by now. Compassion would tell me to be patient with myself and the time it takes to understand those things....but timing is a bitch. This I know for sure. So there will be things I miss because I missed the opportunity to be in that moment and let that moment bring me somewhere else.

Invest immediately in Pitch Forks....just in case

Short version: New Fed program will rape you more than you are already being raped, like with bayonets.

TALF details suggest Obama doesn’t get it - Credit Writedowns: "Marshall Auerback here. As Ed lucidly suggested to me by e-mail:

“We see the Fed giving a loan for assets at the price as reported on the institutions’ books. Otherwise, you have to take a write-down just to get the loan. That’s a non-starter. So the Fed is going to take the asset as collateral at its reported value and will administer a haircut of 5-16%. This program is applicable only to certain AAA paper to diminish the possibility that more haircut would be needed (I am sceptical here).

If irrational despondency goes away, the loan is repaid. However, if the asset falls in value, the Fed has no-recourse. Given the fact that they have already mentioned the SPV, it suggests the investment company could then renege and have the collateral seized with no other penalty.”

But a lot of this is not “irrational despondency”. The reality is that large chunks of these toxic “assets” are not “impaired,” or “illiquid,” or “distressed”. They are worthless, now and forever – unless the peak real estate values of the bubble can miraculously be restored and a whole bunch of deceased LBOs can be raised from the tomb. The banks know this, investors know this, Geithner and Co. know"

Flying

It's work week 11 of 2009 and I am on my 7th trip this year. An amazing flight as far as the sky scenery goes, but after finding a certain level of calm last week, it's not enough to soothe me. I feel as if I am lurching through time and its only moments where I feel like I am in any sort of present tense.

Certain jokes I make feel as if I am pretending to be a me that is familiar to the people around me while inside I am almost totally disconnected. I had a conversation with someone who is struggling mightily in their life and the familiarity with that darkness almost felt like nostalgia. At least when I was swimming in chaos I knew I wanted to find my way to solid ground. There was an objective purpose to the expenditure of energies coupled with the uncontrollable onslaught of unpredictable emotions. I stood at the water's edge and for the first time there was no familiarity, no sense of coming home.

Now I am presumably 30,000 feet above the earth preparing for what I hope is another professional success and I feel different. I am different, but I don't understand how or why or what I am supposed to do about it. My friend who just recently became a mother can so eloquently articulate the way a baby alters your perspective and priorities and it clicked. Me too. But there is no baby, no reason for the switch.

At service this week, there was an attempt to describe the levels of the mind and how one can get beyond the voices in your head to the underlying mindful awareness. It was acknowledged that while in this space there exists incredible light, comfort and awareness, it is likely the same space as the darkness which is torture, confusion and absence. For awhile, again when I was struggling with the darkness, I sought out this level actively in order to calm the tumult. Now I look for it and it seems to look back at me expectantly. I fill my head with stimuli because the contemplation seems to demonstrate only absence, the horrible purposeless abyss.

It is quite possible that this is it. That this is the level that I am capable of existing at and interacting with the world. Maybe my limitations are far more severe than I imagined and the work I did to get out of the chaos has created a box so tightly fitted that it is not possible for really new things to penetrate.

Other people feel things far more than I do. It informs their existence in a way I don't seem to be able to really imagine. And then I think that maybe I was right at the beginning. The things that happen can permanently lessen you. In the same way that brain damage can rob you of your memory, traumatic events can permanently damage your capacity to feel wholly.

I think of all the times people told me to just wait and I would understand what they were talking about. I resented it when I was really young, but as I got older I changed my perspective to hoping that what they predicted would come true.

You will understand your mother when you are older.

You'll understand when you fall in love.

Everything happens for a reason.

If you have faith you will feel less afraid.

Nope, not so far as I can tell. Clearly I am doing this wrong.