50th post on Feeling Elephants (a non-retrospective)!

Horray! 50 posts! I’ve decided that’s really not enough to do a retrospective, so I won’t. I would like to say a few things that I’ve gained from blogging here.

1) A way to communicate with loved ones. I originally thought of this blog as a way to update the people in my life on how I was doing at college without spending 3 hours on the phone a day (esp since I pay for my own phone bill now :-D)

2) A place to solidify my views. Thinking about how I would express my outrages and interests has been a maturing experience for me as a non-fiction writer.

3) Somewhere to send people I meet. I have put links to this on my Facebook, on my Resume and in countless apology emails. Before this blog I had purposefully maintained a limited profile online. This blog has shown me that it is possible to be safe and still interact meaningfully with the wired world.

4) How to make hyperlinks!

5) Most importantly, it has given me the right (in my own mind) to pry. Whether asking about CMU’s bomb threats, or posting my exploits with the TSA, knowing I can distribute information I want for myself has been, to use an overused word, empowering.

Whether you are a family member who checks this everyday or you accidentally found this because I used the phrase “How to make hyperlinks”, thank you for reading and I will be posting more on Monday!

Inspirational quote:

“The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret” ~ Terry Pratchett, The Truth

Looking forward to 7 hours on a train

There are many reasons why I am looking forward to this weekend. One of them that I discovered this week, is it will give me my first chance in a while to be alone and quiet. Don’t misunderstand me: I love my dorm. There’s fascinating people, interesting clubs, beautiful music and good food. One telling example of normal dorm life happened last Wednesday. I had pan-fried Ramen for dinner with a couple of friends. We had just finished cooking sugar cookies (with red sugar mixed in!) and cupcakes for a dormmate’s birthday. We decided we didn’t want to go out, and so I went back to my room to get my quick-cooking noodles. I borrowed one girl’s frying pan, used my knife to unfold the Ramen in the hot water, my fork to stir the egg before drizzling it over the nearly done noodles, and when it was done she held the pan while I tipped some into her bowl and some into mine. We finished it up and the third girl did the dishes (because she is wonderfully nice).

It was all very communal.

Which there is nothing wrong with. For $.1667 dollars we fed two people (the Ramen pack was on sale at Walgreens). We saved time and energy and DinExtra. We worked together as a team. Which I am fine with, most of the time.

The problem with college is that there are so many people, who are so interested in learning from each other, teaching each other, than sometimes it feels like trying to live in a teaching hospital; or maybe as a bug in a very popular zoo or laboratory.

So in looking forward to this weekend, I realize that there will be something truly wonderful about making myself a sandwich with my own bread, with my own knife, with my own pb&j and eating it without having a socialize or even stop reading my book. I love people and attention, but goodness I like the idea of being alone with my thoughts for a while without looking the loner. I will sit, read a book of poetry, write my own poetry, write my own prose, sleep and watch the scenery. And be quiet within myself.

Maybe I’ll read “A Room of One’s Own” while I’m at it (no guarantees I still have homework. :-D)

Inspirational quote:

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.“

Henry David Thoreau

Because Librarians rule the world

Hey all,

I have been doing a lot of working helping to found a Martial Arts club here at CMU (one of many) and I am sorry I haven’t posted much. But today I can make up for it!

I love librarians. They are some of the few people whose professions required them to provide unbiased information to everyone. They fought the Patriot Act (”Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism.”), keep our history and generally rock. Here are some of my favorite Librarian Quotes:

From The Mummy. Just because I love librarians in popular culture.

Evelyn: Look, I—I may not be an explorer, or an adventurer, or a treasure-seeker, or a gunfighter, Mr. O’Connell! But I am proud of what I am!
Rick O’Connell: And what is that?
Evelyn: I am . . . a librarian!

Here are some Buffy quotes. There are many reasons to love Buffy (women kicking butt, the longest-running lesbian relationship on tv, James Marsters…)

Ms Calendar: Honestly, what is it about [computers] that bothers you so much?
Giles: The smell.
Ms Calendar: Computers don’t smell, Rupert.
Giles: I know. Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower or a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell. Musty and, and, and, and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer, is, it … it has no texture, no context. It’s there and then it’s gone. If it’s to last, then the getting of knowledge should be tangible, it should be, um… smelly.

I know I’ve shown this one before. But it is really, really good.

Over coffee one afternoon in the summer of 2001, Andras [a librarian and historian whose family fled the communist takeover in Hungary and who now works at Harvard] reminded me [Matthew Battles] of another way to burn books, explained to him by a colleague who survived the siege of Sarajevo. In the winter, the scholar and his wife ran out of firewood, and so began to turn to their books for heat and cooking. ‘This forces one to think critically,’ Andras remembered his friend saying. “One must prioritize. First, you burn old college textbooks, which you haven’t read in thirty years. Then there are the duplicates. But eventually, you’re forces to make tougher choices. Who burns today: Dostoevsky or Proust?’ I asked Andras if his friend had any books left when the war was over. ‘Oh yes’ he replied, his face lit by a flickering smile. ‘He still had many books. Sometimes, he told me, you look at the books and just choose to go hungry.’ ~ (Battles, Matthew. Library: an unquiet History“. WW Norton & Company. NY: 2003. 190-1

What is more important in a library than anything else - than everything else - is the fact that it exists.  ~Archibald MacLeish, “The Premise of Meaning,” American Scholar, 5 June 1972

Libraries:  The medicine chest of the soul.  ~Library at Thebes, inscription over the door

Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn’t rip off.
~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

Perhaps no place in any community is so totally democratic as the town library.  The only entrance requirement is interest.  ~Lady Bird Johnson

Here is where people,
One frequently finds,
Lower their voices
And raise their minds.
~Richard Armour, “Library”

The richest person in the world - in fact all the riches in the world - couldn’t provide you with anything like the endless, incredible loot available at your local library.  ~Malcolm Forbes

There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.  ~Andrew Carnegie

A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.  ~Jo Godwin

Yes!!

What a place to be in is an old library!  It seems as though all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labours to these Bodleians were reposing here as in some dormitory, or middle state.  I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets.  I could as soon dislodge a shade.  I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of the sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard.  ~Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia

Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark…. In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed.  ~Germaine Greer

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
~Jorge Luis Borges

Economist

I am an Economist addict. This week’s addition (wonderfully found in my mailbox Monday morning) had 3 wonderful surprises in it. 1) The Economist will be doing a series on whether civil liberties whether civil liberties have been irreparably set back in the past 6 years, 2) Alan Greenspan wrote a page-turner and 3) Monks are marching against the junta in Myanmar (Burma). What makes the Economist wonderful in that, like my favorite leaders and people, it changes its mind. It originally argued for both President Bush and the Iraq war but given new evidence has changed its stance on both. Much fun!

Inspirational Quote:

“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” — John M. Keynes

Just a little bit domestic

So today with my fabulous new meal plan (less blocks + more DinExtra = more choices) I bought bread and jam and plastic wrap to complement the peanut butter I already had. I had two options of bread in Entropy (our on campus convenience store). Weird doughy white squishy bread or whole wheat. Whole wheat was my obvious California choice. But what to do? There were 22 slices of bread in the package, more than I could possible eat by myself before it went yucky! Oh, no! Except….

I froze it! Not all of it, a girl needs her pb&j in the morning, but 18 of the 12 slices have been committed to the hilariously tiny freezer. But tiny can be cool:

As you can see by my mad stylin’ refrigerator magnetes. I looked up many websites to make sure I was packaging my bread in the right way. Though most artisan bakers devoted hardly a sentence to store-bought preservation, I found several very helpful websites on the subject.

My strategy? I double wrapped each 6 piece bread grouping in clear-plastic wrap and then placed them higglty-pigglty around the freezer (turning them periodically will prevent freezer burn = facilitate more even freezer burn). Being a serious logistical dork, I decided even groupings would allow me to defrost on a weekly cycle (assuming I don’t have mad pb&j cravings which cause me to eat more than 3 sandwiches in a week).

You know you need a more challenging Math class when…

Anyhoo, have a great day!

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”
–Aristotle

PS: don’t you love how the computer camera reverses everything? The magnates Left to Right read: “Grant me patience Lord, but hurry”, “Fortune love you” Edgar: King Lear, V, i, “We Can Do It!”, “I have bursts of being a lady but it doesn’t last long” Shelly Winters, and “My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance”)

GHC (Grace Hopper Conference)

Hey all!

So, fabulously, I get to go to the Grace Hopper Conference in sunny (we hope) Orlando Florida come mid-October. Katy Dickinson (I bet you can figure out the relationship :-D) and I are doing a panel called “Girl Geeks in High School – Technical Experiences of Future Inventors” with some accomplished an intelligent young Silicon Valley women. If you have never been to this conferance (I’ve only been vicariously through stories and tshatshkis), look it up. There are amazing looking panels and speakers and, on a totally young note, Disney World!

I have been selected to be an official blogger so I will be posting thoughts about panels I attend, so you can attend vicariously as well! Here are some of the panels that caught my eye to give you an idea of what might be coming up:

Promising Practices in CS1

(the links are to the description of that panel. Note: this one has a CMU person on it. Yay!)

An Introduction to Intrusion Detection

Maybe I can design a better TSA

Using technology to empower women in the developing world

This looks fascinating.

Business Innovation through accurate, high-volume data capture: Using RFID to shed light on the dark corners of the enterprise

RFIDs are always interesting. They have so much potential for organizing information when used on goods and so much potential for violating privacy when used on people. I can’t wait to learn more.

Mentoring Makes MAGIC for Middle and High School Girls

With friends coming up the pipeline it would be nice to know what might help them love technology more.

Making the Future Web Accessible to People with Disabilities

Web 2.0 is ______

Learning by Doing: Using Internships to Discover Where You Belong

While having tons of fun!

Wireless Security Best Practice Guidelines

Important for those of us who live on an open network.

Storytelling as Role Modeling: Collecting Oral Histories

What you don’t write down and don’t tell anyone won’t help anyone in the future

and, ahem,

Girl Geeks in High School – Technical Experiences of Future Inventors

And this is just an abbreviated list of things going on at a diverse and lively conferance. I hope everyone has an innovative day!

Inspirational Quote:

“A ship in port is safe, but that is not what ships are for. Sail out to sea and do new things.” Grace Hopper

Global Gag Rule

Most of my readers are in California, so I figure this is important to share. On September 17th I received an email from Senator Boxer (she has a pretty well done mailing list–try it out!) Here is the text:

Dear Friend:

The Global Gag Rule has stood in the way of effective family planning services since the first day of President George W. Bush’s administration. I am pleased to let you know that the Senate recently took a significant step in overturning this ill-advised policy.

The Global Gag Rule denies U.S. international family planning assistance to any organization that uses its own private funds to counsel women on the availability of abortion, provide abortion services, or advocate for changes in abortion laws.

Earlier this month, Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and I offered an amendment to the State-Foreign Operations Appropriations bill (H.R.2764) that would effectively end the Global Gag Rule by eliminating limitations placed on international family planning groups. Our amendment passed by a 53-41 vote, and H.R.2764 went on to pass the Senate by an overwhelming bipartisan majority.

Unfortunately, President Bush has threatened to veto any bill that would weaken this dangerous gag rule, which keeps thousands of women at risk. I sincerely hope he will rethink this threat. The Global Gag Rule a disgraceful policy for this country, and its repeal is long overdue. Additionally, H.R.2764 is an important appropriations bill containing vital funds for many international programs. It would be a mistake for the President to veto it.

Regardless of the President’s threat, I will continue working as hard as I can to ensure that the Global Gag Rule is finally overturned. I will also keep fighting to protect the right of all women to have access to safe family planning services.

Sincerely,

Barbara Boxer
United States Senator

 

And as an update, see this article.

I have always been embarrassed to be Represented by a President who instituted a censoring and withholding of information from aid agencies *on his first day in office*. I’m sure you know the statistics on the Gag rule’s effects on US family planning units but that’s all covered news. What I wanted to talk about is the personal feeling of relief when an agenda I agree with is pushed by my Representatives. I am anti-abortion but pro-choice. But I am also trying to be open to pro-life arguments because I realized, through no fault of my family, that I was speaking pro-choice rhetoric before I knew what it really meant. I was shocked to realize I hadn’t really examined my views. And so I have been, for about a year now. I read pro-life websites and try to understand other ways to deal with our society’s problems. It is an exercise in viewing the world from other people’s eyes. I hope you see something new today!

Inspirational Quote:

“No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the love of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other’s worth.” Robert Southey

“Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that’s where you renew your springs that never dry up.” Pearl S. Buck

Top ten things to bring to college

1) Hangers

No one else can lend them to you, and you will want nicely hung clothing.

2) Tape/push-pins

There’s nothing more uninspiring than blank, white walls. I brought tons of scarves and postcards to decorate my walls and bought posters here. They sell posters during orientations and I’ve also seen poster sales on campus in the last few weeks.

3) A Chequebook

I have used it to pay for music lessons, PlaidCash, pay a tip at hair cut place, tons of place. NOTE: implied here is that you have your own monies to draw from with cheques. Don’t write cheques for monies you don’t have!

4) Sticky-notes

I’ve organized my desk drawers, my recipes and my math homework using stickies. They are wonderful.

5) A non-school notebook (for to-do lists, random notes, free writing)

For all of those things you care about remembering (a funny quote in class, the number for the Career Counselor, notes on good singing technique) a non-school notebook is a must-have.

6) A cell phone

Everyone at college seems to have them. Your RAs use them to find you for late night eating; you friends to find you for activities; your college to tell you when there’s been a bomb threat. As email is to mass and semi-official communication, so have cell phones become for informal and instantaneous communication. Also, it is wonderful to put down my number and know I will be the one answering it.

7) A Laptop

CMU has an amazingly well organized cluster (see: computer lab) system with specific server space alloted to each student; a reasonable email interface for storing information; ftp (File Transfer Protocol) commands are taught in the basic computing (C@CM); but none of these will help you a bit if you’re disorganized or simple a non-hierarchical thinker.

On your own computer, you can institute a policy of security by obscurity, use you search function rather than organize files or simply fill you desktop with photos for a project you should have finished months ago. Bowls and cups

Do you want to eat off of a frisbee?

9) Pictures of family and friends

You will miss them. They will miss you. Get some nice pictures to remind yourself of who you and and who they know you to be.

10) Stationary

So for to write home! And those helpful notes to admins don’t stop once you’ve gotten to college.

And a final college Reminder: be nice to secretaries! They are mostly good people who have chosen to work with students. Think about that. They chose to deal with caffeinated, anti-establishment, n00b or snob Freshpersons. Be nice back.

Inspirational Quote:

“When a blind beetle crawls over the surface of a curved branch, it doesn’t notice that the track it has covered is indeed curved. I was lucky enough to notice what the beetle didn’t notice.” (Albert Einstein)

In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.
- Fran Lebowitz

5 rules for climbing trees

I climbed a tree today. It was at the top of a hill in Shenley and it was a big tree. Since coming to High School I have had little opportunity to climb trees. You see, I went to a middle school with lots of trees and while there I learned the rules of tree climbing.

I had not properly thought of them in years, but as I reached for a branch (thicker than my waist) I remembered the rule born of stings and stickiness: 1) always pat the top of a branch for caterpillars and spikes. Cherry trees often have spikes, and at a certain time of year at my old school, fuzzy caterpillars could make ones life icky if one was not careful.

Having ascertained there were no caterpillars I felt the bark. And another rule came to me: 2) the best trees for climbing are those with rough varied bark. Smooth trees let you slips, but those with sturdy bark and texture will hold you when they shouldn’t.

I hoisted myself onto the first branch, remember another important rule: 3) never put your weight on a branch thinner than between you wrist and ankle. Now, weighing more than I did when I learned this in nursery school, I think I will aim for branches a little thicker, but only because my analytical mind won’t let me trust memory.

As I pulled myself up, I began to remember why I had climbed trees. It was fun to stretch my muscles, to hear my joints pop (They do that. They’re supposed to, really.) Feel myself lifting a weight for a reason. And then I looked out. I was on the edge of a great golf green, really hills which happened to have golfers on them. The difference in perspective of a few feet was awesome.

After sitting and watching for a while, I saw another branch I wanted to try for. The wind blew and a fat squirrel ambushed me out of nowhere. And faster than my muscles could react I remembered another rule: 4) don’t move fast in trees. And I held still. The squirrel ran off in a skitter of leaves and nuts.

Now I looked for that branch again. But as I reached for it, I found myself shaky and unsure. I had not climbed in years and the branch was out of my reach. I finally remembered the great rule of tree climbing: 5) if you’re scared, don’t do it.

The view was beautiful, the wind soothing and the run back down the hill (I had gone up there to find a path to run on and got sidetracked) peaceful. I hope everyone has a great day!

Inspirational Poem:
Birches

WHEN I see birches bend to left and right
Across the line of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them 5
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells 10
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed 15
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. 20
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
(Now am I free to be poetical?)
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows— 25
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again 30
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away 35
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, 40
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches;
And so I dream of going back to be.
It’s when I’m weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood 45
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig’s having lashed across it open.
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over. 50
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree, 55
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. 60

Robert Frost

Inspirations from 1943

I think I am in love with a Supreme Court. I am very affectionate towards the Supreme Court in general, but the Court in 1943 wins by truer feelings. I recently read

WEST VIRGINIA STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION ET AL. v. BARNETTE ET AL.

No. 591

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

319 U.S. 624; 63 S. Ct. 1178; 87 L. Ed. 1628; 1943 U.S. LEXIS 490; 147 A.L.R. 674

[this is only for law geeks who want to go and look this up]

March 11, 1943, Argued; June 14, 1943, Decided.

In my First Amendment Law class we’re covering Establishment clause stuff where most of the dissents feel the same (Lemon test is invalid; the God of monotheism is permissible in public places; the majority is being too broad) and truth to tell a lot of the argumentation reads the same because it is written by the same people.

However reading the above case from the early 40s, I discovered a different tone, a different way of approaching Supreme Court Opinions. I found the writing here to be more libertarian, more lyrical, more polite, more mindful of Constitutional literacy in the US population and less focused on strict adherence to historical norms. The majority opinion is almost all narrative and there are fewer references to previous case law (maybe access to Lexis/Nexis, FindLaw and Oyez makes more citations feasible. Who knows?). Anyway, even the dissent was beautiful and quietly convincing.

So being a law geek, here are my favorite quotes. Having given the citation for the case I will leave it up to you and Control F to figure out where in the Opinion these quotes are from. :-D.

First, brief run-down on the case. It is about some children in the West Virginia Public School system (below high school) whom were expelled and their parents charged with allowing delinquency because the children would not salute the flag while saying the Pledge of Allegiance because, as Jehovah’s Witnesses, they felt it would be worshiping an idol. The case was about whether the state could compel children to salute to flag.

One of the beauties of this opinion is the historical perspective it gives. For example, here is the pledge the children refused to say:

“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands; one Nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”

Supporting the argument that any national credo will be offensive to some citizens the Majority writes in a footnote:

For example: Use of “Republic,” if rendered to distinguish our government from a “democracy,” or the words “one Nation,” if intended to distinguish it from a “federation,” open up old and bitter controversies in our political history; “liberty and justice for all,” if it must be accepted as descriptive of the present order rather than an ideal, might to some seem an overstatement.

In this case, the Supreme Court is essentially reversing its decade old decision in Gobitis. Here is a criticism of that opinion.

Cushman, Constitutional Law in 1939-40, 35 American Political Science Review 250, 271, observes: “All of the eloquence by which the majority extol the ceremony of flag saluting as a free expression of patriotism turns sour when used to describe the brutal compulsion which requires a sensitive and conscientious child to stultify himself in public.”

This must be my favorite quote. It nearly perfectly encapsulates why majoritarian elections cannot determine whether prayers will be said in schools or what speech should be acceptable.

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted [**1186] to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.

Anyhoo, I hope you enjoyed reading this!

Inspirational Quote:

Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.