Thoughts from a jumbled mind: January 2012

Inequality

Okay, I have to admit, when I saw this picture, my first thought was that I agreed with whatever these women were saying. Cause they’re cute (especially the angry one on the right) and in the cold and topless.

But then I read on and it turns out that I do actually agree with what they’re saying.

If you’re not familiar with Davos, it’s the location of the annual World Economic Forum, where a bunch of incredibly wealthy and powerful smarty pants get together to talk about what they have identified as the most pressing issues in the world and how to address them.

From the Telegraph:

Police in the Swiss resort of Davos quickly arrested the three topless women demonstrators near the heavily guarded grounds of the World Economic Forum (WEF) as they repeatedly chanted, "Poor because of you!".

"In this building now there are a lot of men but only a few women, the same way as in each parliament and in each congress," protester Inna Shevchenko told reporters on her way to the venue where business and world leaders gathered for the 42nd annual WEF meeting.

She’s got a point. In the U.S., women are not only under-represented in the top 1%, but we’re also under-represented in government and the executive suites of corporations. I wonder how things might be different if there were more women driving these businesses and participating in making the decisions of government.

Of course, there are many different flavors and perspectives amongst women, ie: me and Sarah Palin. But I do think that we come to the table with some different perspectives and that’s always a good thing (although scary to those currently at the table).

Full video at the Telegraph site if you want to see them in action.

Education and Liberalism

Rick Santorum recently said that Obama wants to make it easier for more kids to go to university because the university system makes them into liberals. While I know that it is a fact that the majority of college professors are indeed to the left of the political spectrum (which seems to reinforce this study showing that less intelligent people tend to be more conservative), this letter from a professor to his students shows how far Americans have gotten away from the idea of learning how to think and challenge different beliefs:

(click to embiggen)

I really regret being in a place in my life where I wasn’t able to go to a good university and have the experience of being intellectually challenged – it’s probably the biggest regret of my life. From my outsider’s perspective, one of the big things that you learn in university is how to think. I’ve done my best to do so on my own and I think that I’ve been pretty successful, but I don’t think that university is about indoctrinating certain ideas, but rather to be able to look at things from different perspectives; to understand that there are many perspectives on issues and to be able to deal with complexity.

Love

Animals

Went to a private reserve today and saw a bunch of animals. Tired, but here’s a few pix I shot to keep you interested:

Apartheid and the U.S.

Yesterday, Ilda and I went to the District 6 Museum. District 6 is an area of Cape Town that was designated a “white” area in the 60s and all (primarily black) residents (35,000) were forced to move 16 miles away. Then they demolished the entire neighborhood. And never did anything with it. We drove around there after the museum and it’s just fields.

It started me thinking about what it would be like if all of Eastchester (where I grew up) was demolished. A whole community displaced and redistributed. It’s almost inconceivable.

The museum was largely focused on showing what an active and vibrant area District 6 was. It also focused on illustrating what life was like during apartheid. One of the items they had was a “Whites Only” bench. While taking a picture of it, I realized that we in the U.S. had plenty of “Whites Only” items until the 60s. And it got me thinking…

I kinda wanted to think about apartheid as this distant, terrible thing that happened in Africa. But in the U.S., we (or at least some/many Americans) treated black people in a very similar way:

We made intermarriage between black and white people illegal.

While we didn’t force them to live in separate areas officially via laws, unofficially, they were effectively forced to live separately from white people.

We treated black folks like they were a different, substandard species by doing things like conducting scientific and medical experiments on them, treating them like they were intellectually inferior, not allowing them to have the same rights and opportunities as white people.

And, we (along with the Brits), kidnapped black people, brought them here and enslaved them.

It’s kinda hard to feel superior to what the government of South Africa did under those circumstances. I found it really uncomfortable, actually. And, to boot, when much of the world was supporting the ANC in fighting against the government and the concept of apartheid, the U.S. did not help at all. So who ended up stepping up to support them? Communist and terrorist (Libya, etc) countries, which made it really easy for the U.S. to continue to do business here and claim that the commies would take over if the ANC was successful, thereby allowing apartheid to continue and effectively supporting the government that was imposing it.

Makes it a little hard to swallow being an American here. Makes me sad.

After the District 6 Museum, we went to the Jewish Museum. Among other things, it showed how many Jewish South Africans stood up to apartheid and were very influential in the fight against it. There was a newspaper article that talked about a trial of hundreds of people who had been arrested for anti-apartheid actions and it talked about the fact that over 1/3 of them were Jewish. Considering that Jews are a very small part of the population in Cape Town/S.A., that was very inspiring to see. This helped provide some balance for me and made me feel somewhat less guilty by association.

It’s a complicated, difficult world out there. I often am busy with my own thing, just worrying about what is happening in my life and how it makes me feel. Or I’m focused on U.S. politics and not very aware of what’s going on in the world. Something like this really slaps you in the face.

Everyone needs a good slap every now and then, I think.

Cape Town Thoughts

Today is my third-ish day here. I am not sure what I really expected but I am surprised. I think that I anticipated that it would be more ‘third world’-y but it’s definitely not. Other parts of South Africa may well be but this city is definitely first world – as a matter of fact, I keep getting mixed up about where I am and I keep reminding myself I’m in (friggin’) Africa!

I haven’t started messing with the pictures I’ve been taking, so any pix posted on this blog at this point are from other people…(thank you interwebs).

I have mostly just been to the tourist sites so far, so it’s hard for me to judge what the city really is like. The first day I arrived, Ilda picked me up at the airport and took me to their wine area. We went to a farm that makes wine & cheese and also happens to have goats climbing a thingy (I don’t know how to describe it – one of those Rapunzel thingys) and a lovely restaurant. After 33 hours of traveling, it was so nice to be able to walk around and stretch. I felt pretty good when landing, but quickly faded. We had a great lunch and cheese platter and then she dropped me off at my hotel. I ended up passing out around 6pm, woke up at 8 for an hour or so and then slept through until 8am!?!?!

The good news about sleeping all that time is that I am over the whole jet lag thing.

The next day, we headed over to Robben Island, which is where Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners were held from the 1960s until the 1990's. I had really mixed feelings about going there as I expected it to be a very solemn and sad place. We took a little bus ride around the island at first and the tour guide was talking about people coming to the island to get married there and that they are building places for people to come and stay overnight. I just didn’t get it. I had a good conversation with Ilda about it and she said that the other perspective that I wasn’t seeing was that this was the place where the plans for post-apartheid South Africa were made. This was reinforced by the tour, led by a former political prisoner who had been imprisoned on the island. He talked about how they had committees and organized political discussions and how they passed around snippets from newspapers. It turned out to be incredibly inspiring. At the gift shop on the island, many of the items for sale included the phrase “Triumph in the face of adversity” which I thought was a great way to look at this horrible period.

We lightened things up with lunch on Long Street, which provided excellent people watching and I had a chance to meet one of Ilda’s sisters and her husband, who was very enthusiastic to talk about computer security.

That night, Ilda took me to a really great, artfully decorated restaurant named the Sidewalk Café which was in a neighborhood up on Table Mountain. The area reminds me a lot of southern California – I liked it a lot and the food was excellent – I told the waitress that it was my favorite restaurant in Cape Town – after my 2 days.

Yesterday, I went to a market and then took the cable car up to the top of Table Mountain. I took a nice walk around the top of the mountain, then had a snack and hung out there several hours waiting for sunset, which was around 8pm. You have incredible views of the city, the ocean and north of the city from on top there and it was a really pretty day. I can’t wait to post my pictures so you all can see.

Today is Ilda’s bridal shower. It’s at her favorite beach. I am not great with groups of people I don’t know, but I’m sure they’ll all be nice. After all, they’re Ilda’s friends. Also, this will make it somewhat easier at the wedding since I’ll have met these people today and therefore have a deep personal connection with them. They are having a traditional braai (barbecue) there, which means they’ll be cooking lamb. As I’m a fowl pescaterian, I’m going to be sticking with the veggies since lamb neither has wings or fins. Should be interesting and hopefully, will provide some good photo opps.

Sorry for spouting so much in this post. I’ll try to be better at writing shorter, more frequent updates now that I’m settled in here.

Seattle drivers in two inches of snow

This illustrates why it’s not safe to drive here when it snows (other drivers):

1) Big hills

2) It doesn’t snow very often, so people have no clue how to drive in the snow

3) Idiots (seriously – putting chains on in 2” of snow? And…on the rear tires of a front wheel drive car?)

Diving trick

I wish I thought to try this (they’re at about 100 feet below the surface):

According to geek.com:

The science behind the result is not too difficult to understand. Because of the weight of seawater, objects at considerable depth have much more pressure placed on them. The greater the depth, the higher the pressure. At 100 feet of water, the pressure felt is equal to about three times the our normal pressure on land (about 45 PSI). With all of that force pushing in on the egg, it can maintain the ovoid shape. The reason that the egg looks yellow is the fact that raw egg whites are nearly transparent, so it’s hard to make them out on video.

Getting excited

Rather than

Actual A hole

via whosay.com

Should have known this was from Demetri Martin.

Posted via email from amygeek's posterous

Kim Jung Un

Okay, so you’re 20-something-ish and you’ve just been named the dictator of a nuclear nation. Photos of you are rare. So you pose with military men…holding your hands?

Click on the pic to enbiggen & see better.

Caption: New North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (front row, center) posed early this month for photos with soldiers of the Seoul Ryu Kyong Su 105 Guards Tank Division of the Korean People's Army.

I’ve seen this picture floating around a bunch lately and thought that the guy on the left was holding Un’s hand but when I looked today, I saw that the guys on both sides of him are holding his hands.

Must be a cultural thing (I’m hoping).

Terrorist ID Chart

via gonzoville.deviantart.com

Click to enbiggen.

Posted via email from amygeek's posterous

It’s National Trivia Day

And the Mental Floss blog has pulled out 119 amazingly trivial facts. Here are some of my favs:

6. When he appeared on Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, Bill Clinton correctly answered three questions about My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

15. A 1913 New York Times article on portmanteaus includes the word “alcoholiday,” which describes leisure time spent drinking. <how did that fall out of favor?

35. That thing you use to dot your lowercase “i” is called a tittle.

44. Norwegian skier Odd-Bjoern Hjelmeset on why he didn’t win gold at the 2010 Olympics: “I think I have seen too much porn in the last 14 days.”

59. When the computer mouse was invented, it was called the “X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System.”

64. A milliHelen is the quantity of beauty required to launch just one ship.

79. Dr. Ruth was trained as a sniper by the Israeli military.

84. Judge Judy makes $45 million a year.

97. At an NOAA conference in 1972, Roxcy Bolton proposed naming hurricanes after Senators instead of women. She also preferred “him-i-canes.”

99. Horses can’t vomit.

Read the full list here.

Thoughts from a jumbled mind