Wednesday, November 30, 2005, 07:14 PM - Politics
CLEMENCY DENIED: Well, not a surprise after the tone of debate this weekend, but still a disappointment and a lost opportunity. Idealistic me thought clemency could still be about mercy or redemption not 'the facts of the case' and political calculus. The courts decided the facts; this should have been a moral decision, not a pragmatic one - not that I should expect much morality from our governor...read his denial of clemency here.
And, um, where were the Jesse and Joan and all those other protestors two weeks ago, when it might have made a difference?
Update: Mark Leno has introduced a bill (AB 1121) The California Moratorium on Executions Act that would halt Tookie's execution while the new bipartisan Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice consdiers problems in CA's death penalty system. Please do all you can to support the bill. More info at: ACLU Northern California Death Penalty Project
Saturday I went to San Quentin for a protest of the upcoming (mid-December) execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, founder of the Crips and now transformed into a peacemaking children's book author. Snoop showed up and spoke briefly about how meeting with Tookie had made him change the way he thought about his influence on young people - sadly I don't think they talked about feminism and his impact on young women, but even a little modulation of the gangster ethos from one of its most prolific hiphop practitioners could make some positive change...
Either way, we shouldn't be killing anyone in San Quentin. Check out the Save Tookie website and write to Arnold requesting clemency.
Wednesday, November 30, 2005, 02:52 PM - Sex
Innocent voluptuousness? It just sums me up, doesn't it? That was a comment on the Song of Songs on Forum this morning- it's not often that I consider the similarities between the bible and myself. Despite repeated romantic disappointments and dramas I seem to always float dreamily back up to the surface of the ocean of optimism. Must be the same mechanism that allows me to maintain some faith in the inherent goodness of people despite being painfully aware of the horrors that surround us. Why I still take rides from strangers in a world with white phosphorous is beyond me. A strong arguement for temperament and some hardwired brain functions, I fear. But to whom can a sunny atheist give thanks for her happy disposition?Thursday, November 24, 2005, 01:46 PM - Travels
On Monday I decided to indulge my more impulsive side; on Tuesday afternoon I was arriving at Puerto Vallarta, accepting a ride from a charming expat, and walking the beach in Sayulita for all of 20 minutes until I found Alice and crew. It's very fun to be the surprise guest at a Mexican birthday extravaganza. And I do appreciate the flexibility my life affords...and a good fish taco.;)
Monday, November 21, 2005, 04:42 PM
So after suspiciously loitering around the Trannyshack pageant waiting for Kiki's arrival, I ended up at STORM, a benefit for Katrina victims and the latest in a string of cocktail/ shopping/ hipster events. I'm really disturbed that shopping is becoming intrinsic to so much of our social interactions - it's starting to fulfill the function that social meals do in some circles - a means by which our interpersonal communication can be structured in a way that feels fun and supportive. Clearly this event was the best possible reason for such a drink-spilling, clothes-trying-on event - a good cause, local designers - lots of people who I seek out for my fashion fixes. But social communication is necessarily disjunct when conducted in between dollops of attention given to cute t-shirts, bad art, and runway models. I get worried that in 5 years we'll all have lost the ability to have a conversation on one subject that lasts for more than 5 minutes and doesn't include a popular culture reference or the exchange of a credit card. Friday, November 18, 2005, 06:46 PM - Technology
because I don't really like taking pictures. Now other people do it for me. Here's one of how the sunset looked the other night while I was running around Bernal Hill. Too bad no one was looking the other way to see the full moon emerging from the hot pink clouds. 
Friday, November 18, 2005, 06:41 PM - Politics, Technology
So yesterday I wrote a conference proposal for dotOrganize - a social change technology initiative that I've been helping to get off the ground (find out more about that here), and I was proud of myself for crafting something with actual measurable objectives - x # of new collaborative projects, x# of people connected for ongoing peer support. It made me wonder how I've gotten this far in life without attending more conferences that had a point. Can we justify the environmental costs of travel to these kinds of events, when they tend to be so limited in their usefulness? In all the roles I've played in conferences and events (organizer, presenter, attendee), the worthwhile outcomes are the connections between people, not the content of the workshops. I tried to write something that would require actual work to be done, with real results - no doubt just one more example of my rampant idealism. I mean, I know it's important to meet new hotties that one can both make out and talk shop with, but I'd rather find them closer to home. Hopefully if we get this event funded, we'll find out if we can raise the bar...on all fronts.
OK, I lied, maybe it is sexy if Danah Boyd (who is clearly some sort of blog sage compared to my toddler status) is also writing about the challenges of making a good conference- especially in terms of limiting/ expanding social networks. Nice ideas about diversity of audience, and some support for my ideas about having attendees from multiple sectors at our planned event. I knew having all those great parties full of random people was preparing me for something...
Wednesday, November 16, 2005, 02:19 PM - Sex, Politics
So the NYT put the Plan B ridiculousness on the front page yesterday, but this is just the latest example of the blatant disregard for public health within this administration. It's pathetically ironic that they could actually REDUCE the number of abortions that happen by actively promoting the morning-after pill, yet they're so thoroughly anti-sex that they're unwilling to do so. The CDC's domestic and USAID's international HIV prevention efforts are less egregiously but still seriously stifled - where is the public support for needle exchange? Where is the honest acknowledgement of the complexity of sexual health? I'm terrified of what this means for our bioterrorism preparations - will we start giving purity tests before we hand out bird flu vaccine? Apparently there is a "Plan B for Plan B Act for 2005" being introduced in congress by CT's Chris Shays among others, but I can't find much in print on it - maybe just a clever pun? The article on it seems to have disappeared from Broadsheet...Monday, November 14, 2005, 07:51 PM - Politics
Still no results, of course, but we do seem to have been able to knock on enough doors with white non-local volunteers in Trenton to get some decent statistical power. We may have mucked up the validity by flukily recruiting a bunch of high school kids of color through their teacher - which meant the non-local same-race volunteer slots were also filled, just not by the groups that were in charge of them. This experiment could show the relative value of local vs. nonlocal volunteers of different race than the intervention community...although it also once again exposes the dreadful lack of coordination on the ground and the mess that volunteers usually walk into. Another argument for more training and coordinated efforts (and I think for giving volunteers themselves more authority in planning activities)I am verging on the militaristic in my organizational/logistical perspective on these things...or at least losing my patience with disorganization.Monday, November 14, 2005, 06:24 PM - Politics, Technology
The World Summit on the Information Society is happening this week in Tunis. Tunisia apparently has 10% of its population online, undoubtedly on the high end of the range for Africa (I would imagine South Africa must be higher?). I am fascinated by the MIT proposal for very low-cost hand-cranked laptops for distribution to students in developing countries - and clearly wireless solutions (whether through phones or laptops) are the right answer...the last thing we need is more cable strewn across the earth. Tensions over the control of the internet infrastructure by the U.S. are bubbling up again, unsurprisingly. At what point do technological underpinnings become an international public asset, and not a national prerogative? Kind of snarky piece in Foreign Affairs on the issue here.
Update: apparently there is a compromise document that leaves most of the structural control of things to the U.S., but creates some international advisory stuff...Here's the dreamy summit doc if you get off on bureaucracy porn.
Saturday, November 12, 2005, 08:03 PM - Politics
Saw Stephen Hawking speak today. It's been a long time since I wondered about the not-taken life path as an astrophysicist. I was Adam's faux date for Cambridge in America Day 2005 - interesting presentations on history of philosophy but I admit I was more engaged in a psych presentation on the science of well-being. Some discussion on indices being developed to measure community well-being, movements to include those indices along with economic indicators as measure of overall progress of societies. As one would expect, democracies result in more happiness for their constituents, but I doubt that the Swiss experiment Prof. Huppert mentioned holds here - they found that more referenda resulted in greater happiness...IO can't imagine that's the case in California politics. Brings me back to my ongoing low-level interest in how mental health indicators and particularly psychiatric medication impacts political engagement; I'd love to study how our polity is being changed by all those antidepressants....Back Next
