Humanize the Earth!

hot dog sutra (or one with everything)

From Rob Brezsny in the Nov ‘05 Sun Magazine:

“Make me one with everything,” the Buddhist monk said to the hot-dog vendor who was hawking food near the temple.

The vendor made a frank with mustard, ketchup, relish, and onions.  The monk took it and handed over a twenty-dollar bill.

The vendor stashed the cash in his apron and turned his attention to the next customer.

“But where’s my change?” the monk inquired.

“Change must come from within, my friend,” said the vendor.

art and race

mousemusings (cool stuff even after after months and months in my drafts folder):

[…] At the black console on the second floor of the American Visionary Art Museum, he tries to align his face with a grid that stares back at him from behind the glass-enclosed front of the machine, which looks like a minimalist version of a mall photo booth.He clicks a mouse and a screen shows a grainy black-and-white picture of the 30-year-old student, who has olive skin, a long, rounded nose, large eyes and a full mouth.

Within seconds, the machine morphs his image, projecting color photos of how Hawthorne, who considers himself white, would look if he were Asian, black, Hispanic, East Indian and Middle Eastern. Hawthorne, a fine-arts major at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, W.Va., says he sees a bit of himself in each picture.

That’s exactly what SoHo artist Nancy Burson was going for. […]

The machine, the artist said, is based on one philosophy: that the similarities between people of various races far outweigh the differences. To Burson, who is white, there aren’t different races, just one — the human race, she said. The best way to show that, she thought, would be to give people the chance to manipulate their ethnicity and see themselves differently, even if only momentarily. […]

“Somebody [recently] said to me, ‘There’s no gene for race.’ And I said: ‘What? Why don’t we know that? Why isn’t this information out there?’ I thought the information was so huge and I still do, and I don’t think people understand that.” […]

impeachment heating up?

I rarely, if ever, touch on politics on this site. I have so much work to do internally (personal work) and with those closest to me, that it seems folly to spend a lot of energy on elections or political wrangling, actions that I have found do not lead me to more peace inside myself and better relationships.

That said, I live in Illinois and have just found out, via Wealth Bondage, that a bill in the Illinois House that would initiate impeachment proceedings against GWBush was yesterday referred to the Rules Committee and had 13 co-sponsors sign on (in addition to the 3 initial co-sponors). I understand a similar bill has been introduced in California as well.

What happened on September 11th, 2001?

Many of the explanations I’ve heard from the government for what happened on 9/11 don’t make sense to me. I find the questions interesting and don’t have any answers myself. Here’s an hour and twenty minute documentary that asks some of the questions: Loose Change. I do not find their conclusions compelling. They simply don’t have enough information to draw the kind of wide-ranging conspiricy theories that they do. What I do find compelling, however, is the idea that many, many questions have been swept under the rug, and we may never know the truth about what happened on Spetember 11th.

it’s me :-)

a civilized game

I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a cricket match. But I just read this at Wikipedia:

Test cricket is played between two teams over five days, with three two-hour sessions per day. (Sessions are usually interspersed with a 40-minute break for lunch and 20-minute break for afternoon tea.)

Five days. Breaks for lunch and tea. Amazing. Not so civilized are the matches where one team outscores the other by hundreds of runs. On the other hand, sometimes they come down to a difference of only one. Can someone who understands cricket explain it to someone like me from a non-cricket playing land?

geeky fun (have no fear!)

There are all kinds of geeks in this world. This from the University of Chicago:

PHYSICAL CONSTANT CHEER

Gimme the speed of light ……C
Gimme Planck’s constant………H
Gimme root negative one……….I
Gimme carbon………………….C
Gimme the Bohr radius…………..A
Gimme the gravitational constant….G
Gimme the additive identity of a non-trivial group…O
What’s that spell? ……………CHICAGO!

seek and you will find

I just discovered that I can see what phrases people were searching for when they came to my site from a search engine. They only gave me 30 of 99. Here they are:

• ted ernst
• humanize the earth
• humanize
• tedernst
• free geek chicago
• kameron hurley
• maaskva nashimi glazami
• ted ernst bicycle
• wplicense
• coastal starlight
• maj gabel
• johnny payphone
• adrienne arsenault
• the wooden camera
• earth man and life a meeting point
• miranda mcosker
• simpleinside.com
• president elect george w bush assured the nation in a televised address tuesday
• coastal starlight late
• opendistro
• failure
• blog rose vines
• sidebar restructured text css
• gabel weblog army
• adrienne arsenault email
• wordpress problems
• a gamma secretase independent mechanism of signal transduction
• girl throws three touchdowns
• wiki miranda mcosker
• how old is adrienne arsenault?

I find the list itself interesting. If I think of it, I’ll come back and report on what I find out about the ones that I don’t recognize at all. Feel free to ask about any that interest you and I’ll link to my post(s) that could’ve caught a search engine.

New Year’s Day Puja Party

I’ll be at the Puja Party on New Years Day. Would love to see you there!

She’s Such a Geek

Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders are editing an anthology of essays titled She’s Such a Geek; below is a copy of the call for subs. Spread the word!

Note that this anthology is open only to female writers.

She’s Such a Geek An Anthology by and for Women Obsessed with Computers, Science, Comic Books, Gaming, Spaceships, and Revolution

Slated for Fall 2006

Geeks are taking over the world. They make the most popular movies and games, pioneer new ways to communicate using technology, and create new ideas that will change the future. But the stereotype is that only men can be geeks. So when are we going to hear from the triumphant female nerds whose stories of outer space battles will inspire generations, and whose inventions will change the future? Right now.

Female geeks are busting out of the labs and into the spotlight. They have the skills and knowledge that can inspire social progress, scientific breakthroughs, and change the world for the better, and they’re making their
voices heard, some for the first time, in Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders’ book She’s Such a Geek. This anthology will celebrate women who have flourished in the male-dominated realms of technical and cultural arcana. We’re looking for a wide range of personal essays about the meaning of female nerdhood by women who are in love with genomics, obsessed with blogging, learned about sex from Dungeons and Dragons, and aren’t afraid to match wits with men or computers. The essays in She’s Such a Geek will explain what it means to be passionately engaged with technical or obscure topics-and how to deal with it when people tell you that your interests are weird, especially for a girl. This book aims to bust stereotypes of what it means to be a geek, as well as what it means to be female.

More than anything, She’s Such a Geek is a celebration and call to arms: it’s a hopeful book which looks forward to a day when women will pilot spaceships, invent molecular motors, design the next ultra-tiny supercomputer, write epics, and run the government.

We want introspective essays that explain what being a geek has meant to you. Describe how you’ve fought stereotypes to be accepted among nerds. Explore why you are obsessed with topics and ideas that are supposed to be “for boys only.” Tell us how you felt the day you realized that you would be devoting the rest of your life to discovering algorithms or collecting comic books. We want strong, personal writing that is also smart and critical. We don’t mind if you use the word “fuck,” and we don’t mind if you use the word “telomerase.” Be celebratory, polemical, wistful, angry, and just plain dorky.

Possible topics include:

• what turned you into a geek
• your career in science, technology, or engineering
• growing up geeky
• being a geek in high school today
• battling geek stereotypes (i.e racial stereotypes and geekdom, cultural analysis of geek chic and the truth about nerds, the idea that women have to choose between being sexually desirable and smart, stereotypes about geek professions such as computer programmers)
• sex and dating among geeks
• science fiction fandom
• role-playing game or comic-book subcultures
• the joys of math
• blogging or videogames
• female geek bonding
• geek role models for women
• feminist commentary on geek culture
• women’s involvement in DIY science and technology groups
• stories from women involved in geek pop and underground cultures. These might include comic book writers, science fiction writers, electronic music musicians, and women interested in the gaming world.
• women’s web networks and web zine grrrl culture
• issues of sexism in any or all of the above themes

Editors: Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders are geeky women writers. Annalee is a contributing editor at Wired magazine and writes the syndicated column Techsploitation. Charlie is the author of Choir Boy (Soft Skull Press) and publisher of other magazine.

Publisher: Seal Press, an imprint of Avalon Publishing Group, publishes groundbreaking books by and for women in a variety of topics.

Deadline: January 15, 2006

Length: 3,000-6,000 words

Format: Essays must be typed, double-spaced, and paginated. Please include your address, phone number, email address, and a short bio on the last page. Essays will not be returned.

Submitting: Send essay electronically as a [MS Word] Document or Rich Text Format file to Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders at sheissuchageek@gmail.com

Payment: $100 plus two books

Reply: Please allow until February 15 for a response. If you haven’t received a response by then, please assume your essay has not been selected. It is not possible to reply to every submission personally.