What I’ve Noticed
It doesn’t say anything good about our culture that sexual violence against women is eroticized and mainstream, but women choosing and enjoying sex is just too much for us.
A few songs are worth more than your life. A lot more. (via Michael Alan Miller) Oh, and Sweden took down pirate bay.
Well, this should change our lifestyles a bit. Have I mentioned that overpopulation is a problem?
California is sacrificing education to prevent taxing big oil. Wouldn’t it be awesome if our government thought just a little more long term? (via Edge of the American West)
Actually, money CAN buy happiness.
The Afghan elections weren’t fair.
Cultural differences in interpretations of facial expressions.
Really, vaccines do not contain aborted fetal tissue.
Russia has some series race issues.
Just because change scares people doesn’t mean it should be slow.
By the way, we're at war by bobster on flickr
Think health care reform makes Democrats equivalent to Nazis? Perhaps you need a quick history lesson.
Another reason to quit smoking: children pick the tobacco you smoke and it poisons them.
I really want to see this movie (via SublimeFemme):
An former health care executive comes clean. And yet another health care myth debunked.
We’re building a wall between Mexico and the US that doesn’t stop illegal immigrants, but is deadly to fragile wildlife populations.
The axolotl is about to go extinct in the wild
American citizens in danger from chemical weapons – and they’re ours.
Iran is not a good place to be right now.
What we killed Thursday
While I haven’t paid any attention to plant species in the last several weeks, this isn’t at all because they’ve stopped disappearing. This week’s plant is Firmiana major, a flowering tree from China. This is a beautiful tree and I imagine it’s even lovelier covered in flowers.
Firmiana major leaves from Arkive
The aesthetic appeal of this tree is why it didn’t go extinct when its habitat was converted to cropland – it was planted and tended around Chinese villages and temples. This tree is native to Yunnan and southwestern Sichuan, and the Guangzhou Botanical Garden has at least one of these trees if you’re in the region.
One of the things I loved about China was how loved and valued plants and gardens were. The apartment complex I lived in was surrounded by a sea of concrete, but there were raised gardens between the buildings that everyone in the complex tended, fussed over, and congregated around.
Chinese chess by the communal garden
I think growing your own garden, even if it is just in pots on your balcony or at a tiny plot in your community garden, is a good thing to do. I find it relaxing and satisfying. Growing vegetables in the summer is much cheaper than buying them in the store. Most importantly, gardening causes us to be more aware of the environment around us – the weather and climate, the soils, the plants we didn’t plant in our garden that end up there anyway… I think this lack of awareness (and subsequent appreciation) of our environment is part of why we’re having such a hard time convincing people that we need to do something about environmental degradation and climate change.
Berry Go Round!
A wonderfully silly 19th Berry Go Round is up at Quiche Moraine. My favorite featured post is about so called “natural” diets.
Classes
Classes started yesterday. I’m always so excited to start each semester. The amount of time I stay excited after they start, however, decreases every year – it’s just the second day of classes and I’m only a little excited.
I’m taking a plant ecology class and a “math stats” course that looks at the theory behind statistics. The plant ecology class has more reading than I know what to do with. I’ve heard math stats is difficult, but I haven’t been yet, so we’ll see.
Cultural relativism might be a bad idea
E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
Where cultural relativism had been initiated to negate belief in hereditary behavioral differences among ethnic groups – undeniably an unproven and ideologically dangerous conception – it was then turned against the idea of a unified human nature grounded in heredity. A great conundrum of the human condition was created: If neither culture nor a hereditary human nature, what unites humanity? The question cannot be just left hanging, for if ethical standards are molded by culture, and cultures are endlessly diverse and equivalent, what disqualifies theocracy, for example, or colonialism? Or child labor, torture, and slavery?
Better health care
We desperately need better health care in the US. As a queer woman with a chronic illness, it’s a very personal issue for me. Reforming health care in the US is complex and faces a lot of opposition from people concerned about personal freedom and insurance companies worried about profits. I certainly didn’t expect health care reform to be easy.
But what I didn’t expect (naively), was the nature of the debate. Many people aren’t interested at all in facts. They’re violent and more than a little crazy and don’t seem to recognize at all that they’re being manipulated.
We should be having a very vigorous debate about health care and working hard for a better system that serves more people more efficiently. Instead, we’re seeing people go completely unhinged and screaming about how health care reform is really a plan to kill old people. Too bad so few people seem to have actually read the bill…