Last Semester!

SO, no post for awhile now but it's time to bring this back with the start of the spring semester - my LAST here at Smith !! Here's a top-ten catch-up on the past two months:


1. The writers' strike is still on. For Jon Stewart's sake I hope it ends soon.

2. The primary season is in full swing. Go Obama! Except, Hillary seems to have engaged him in a battle of words said and misconstrued... C'mon, Barack, you're running as the un-politician. Act like one !! Wo0t South Carolina primary. (I hope.)

3. I am obsessed with cats.

4.Philip Pullman is very imaginative - I enjoyed re-reading the His Dark Materials trilogy. But how come daemons show up in some worlds and not others for humans from Will's world and ALL worlds for humans and witches from Lyra's world? Why do the dead dissolve into Dust in the mulefa world but not in Lord Asriel's heretofore empty world? Why was the last book so much a) longer and b) slower than the first two? And WHY does Pullman refuse to come to the Kahn Institute this spring and explain himself?

5. The Packers missed the Superbowl, but at least Ryan Grant had his day in the sun. LOVE THAT BEAUTIFUL MAN.

6. Still no word from the Peace Corps. BLEH.

7. I thought if I wrote a nice email to my internship boss from two summers ago mentioning I'm in the job market for this summer, she'd email me back with news about a grant she needs someone to work, another $25/hr translating job she needs me to take care of, etc. Instead, she has offered me an "internship" - so UNpaid - writing and performing bi-lingual local-history PUPPET SHOWS for children at the weekly farmer's market.

8. My parents STILL did not book a hotel room for Smith graduation. It goes without saying that they do not have plane tickets. My sister may or may not be coming, because she may or may not have soccer, because she may or may not go out for soccer, because she may or may not rather spend her time hanging with her boyfriend (of one YEAR!!).

9. I am ALSO obsessed with Anthony Bourdain, thanks to Shana and Iris.

10. Writing is exhausting (during finals, I wrote thirty pages to finish my short, or LONG, story, one day, then wrote seventeen pages reflecting on US-Latin America relations the next day), reading is exhausting, and after this semester I'll be ready for some manual labor and some outdoors time. Yay for summer in Wisconsin (probably) where we swim, tan, and do yardwork all day long. And then grill and eat outside every evening. If I'm thinking a lot about summer its because we're in the deep freeze right now and there's no end in sight. Ah well. This is the one semester that will go faster than ever, even as we all hope it never ends. Or something.


YAY FOR CATCH-UP!!!

OLPC

Check out One Laptop Per Child, and their awesome new program - Give One Get One - which (for now) runs through November 26th.


These computers - XO laptops - are specially designed for use by kids in developing countries; they are easily programmable, using open source software and Linux OS, so that kids can get their computers to work how they want them to work. They are also a few notches above your standard notebook in several areas, including screen quality (in broad daylight, these screens can be read as easily as a newspaper - many of the kids who will receive them learn in outdoor classrooms) and wireless capabilites (detects from a range a few times longer than your average laptop). They can also withstand extreme temperatures, high humidity levels, and far more extended periods of usage than machines with batts of a lesser design.

Donations can be made to OLPC anytime, but the Give One Get One program allows people in the U.S. to pay $399 for TWO XO computers - 1 for a child in Afghanistan, Cambodia, or Rwanda, and 1 for a child (or themselves?) at home.


P.S. Also, new internal dilemma: Which innovative product - XO computers or Plumpy'nuts - is the bestest new appropriate technology for kids?

Gertrude Stein's...

Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas:



Reading it for class. The one I missed because the professor (who's actually a journalist) re-scheduled our class meeting for a Monday night and I thought it was on Tuesday.

Asia Trail

The Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C. opened its Asia Trail last October, which includes incredible habitats for a family of three sloth bears and three giant pandas. Two red pandas are actually neither pandas nor bears: originally classified in the Ursidae family, they have since been designated the only species in a separate family, Ailuridae.



The Asia Trail features animal habitats alternated with exhibits dedicated to human efforts to protect the animals in their natural habitats. You can explore the trail here.

If we must continue to keep animals in zoos, they should all be required to look (and teach) like this one!

More About Bears

This chart shows current conservation efforts directed towards five of the world's six endangered bear populations. Polar bears are also endangered, but they are classified separately as a "marine" as opposed to "terrestrial" species. North American black bears (Canada, U.S., Mexico) and brown bears (formerly abundant throughout the northern hemisphere - Europe, Asia, North America; currently endangered in many areas including Europe, Eastern Siberia and Himalayan Regions, and the Southern Rockies; extirpated in Northern Mexico and the American Great Plains). Those famous grizzlies are a subspecies of brown bear.

Table 1. Bear species at greatest risk. Species Distribution areas Status Threats Conservation efforts Giant panda China Endangered Small numbers; fragmented populations Intensive Asiatic black bear Asia Threatened to Endangered Highly fragmented; virtually unknown in the wild; ongoing killing for parts trade None Sun bear Southeast Asia Threatened or Endangered but basically unknown Highly fragmented; unknown in the wild; habitat conversion None Sloth bear Indian subcontinent Threatened Highly fragmented; intensive human pressures Few Spectacled bear South America Threatened Habitat loss; illegal hunting; lack of sustainable resource use by local people Few

Sun Bear

My trusty BBC ticker just alerted me to the fact that this bear is endangered (and that it exists at all!). Bears are by far my favorite animals. They are intelligent and do what they want (just like my favorite humans).

Cheney is Very Scary

My fiction prof was telling us about last
week's New Yorker cover the other day.


Subtle.
Satisfying.

For Eliza (and All of Us)

Hungry Girl

I found this site in June.

Wired Science Part 1

Check out this video.

Photosynth
(developed by Microsoft Live Labs)

This is some seriously amazing software that has the ability to compile all of the digital photos taken at any given location, on any given day (and at any given time), from any of the major photo collection websites (ie Flikr) and "map" them to create a fully 3-Dimensional picture. You know how hard it is to make those panorama-type successions of photos - like how the edges never line quite up? This software will do it for you - and the 3,000 other people who snapped a photo of the Statue of Liberty on the same day you did.

I can't wait 'til they perfect this :)

State of Emergency

President Musharraf just declared a state of emergency in Pakistan. This means that the constitutional rights of all citizens are suspended indefinitely, and that opposition leaders are already facing arrests. READ ABOUT IT HERE. And HERE (--> Reader responses)

This follows the assassination attempt on former PM Benazir Bhutto as she returned from exile to Karachi last month. While the attempt failed, 136 members of the crowd lining the streets to catch a glimpse of her motorcade were killed in the suicide bombing blasts.

What is going on in Pakistan?????

B2 <3

This post is dedicated to my housemate loves, because I just sent them the link to the blog and I hope they are gonna read this! *MUAH* and *DOUBLE MUAH*

My Favorite Thing About Tibetan Language

The word " kahr - ma "

means both minute and star.

What the Hell I'm Doing with my Life, Part 1

...An anthropology seminar on ethnographic film. The professor has not read the reading she assigned us, so we don't discuss it much in class. (She also lost my ten-page paper and stalled for a month before she finally asked for another copy.) We've seen some good films so far: Shoot for the Contents (directed by Trinh T. Minh-ha), Bontoc Eulogy (directed by Marlon Fuentes); some of the "classics" are good, too. Grass, by Merian Cooper (who later made King Kong) is one of the most exciting films I've seen, despite the fact that it was made back in 1925. (Track it down, and pay attention to the intertitles: great wry humor.) I'll keep you updated on the films I like.

...A fiction-writing class at Amherst College. The professor hates most of my writing, but I'm learning a lot about getting inspired and creating a writing regiment to get stuff done. Um, so who's read Deborah Eisenberg? Aimee Bender? Joanna Scott? READ THEM READ THEM READ THEM.

...A non-fiction-writing class, too, with Hilton Als, the New Yorker theater critic. We read predominantly non-fiction "new journalism" -type icons like Truman Capote, James Baldwin, Tom Wolfe, Jamaica Kincaid... with occasional Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein memoirs thrown in for good measure. The books are amazing. Als is AMAZING. Anecdotes to follow.

...Colloquial Tibetan language. From a first-year student here at Smith! She is a sweetheart, and I'm reviewing a lot of what I learned this summer with Tsetan and learning some new words and grammar.

First...

I need a place to organize my thoughts and amuse myself. We'll see how long this lasts.