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When Scott left for Germany, he left a thing or two for me. I mean, yeah, he gave me his bed (queen size!). And a torch lamp. And a desk lamp. And a skirt for the bed. And a phone and answering machine (not that I have a land line). And there’s a power strip and additional comforter waiting for me at his coop. But strangely, that’s not what I’m thinking about. I swear he didn’t mention it before he left. Really. I don’t remember it at all. I don’t think I forgot it. He left a card and a bar of (very nice, organic, vegan, fair trade) chocolate.

It took me a couple days to notice. It was underneath the condom baggie. The card was full of praise and thanks and expressions of endearment. (though noteworthily absent were praise for my memory and my keen attunement to my surroundings; he’s no fool. =)

I can’t bring myself to eat the chocolate. It’s kind of silly. I mean, it’s not the nutritional content or anything; I know that one bar of chocolate will neither make nor break me. I don’t feel like I deserve it. Or his effusive praise. Who am I to receive such generosity? The practical side of me can encompass the practical gifts, be thankful, and not dwell on it. But the chocolate is a little thing, a touch of pure thoughtfulness. And I can’t quite bring myself to eat it. Because then it’ll be gone.

I get blindsided by my emotions sometimes. And I think this is one of them. But I don’t want to forget and move on. It’s still silly. But it’s still there. I like to remember when things touch me more deeply than I expect.

So, I promised my soon to be advisor that I would make the process as painless for her as possible. She is a busy woman and she hasn’t got all day. So, I filled out the paperwork so that it requires only her signature, then we’re good to go. And we then sat down and ended up shooting the breeze for at least half an hour. We talked about my goals, my feelings about grad school, etc, etc. I was straight up with her and told her I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t necessary for a return to a job I’d very much enjoyed. She was straight up honest too, no sugar coating. When I said I didn’t want to be a full on prof in a research institution because I didn’t want the research pressure, she made frenzied faces and self strangling gestures, then said I was so lucky I wasn’t her husband. We talked about my interests, and how they’ve changed. I talked about my possible interest in a PhD program, and she asked me why, then picked apart my reasons. We talked for at least 15 minutes about homo stuff, and she didn’t even blink, just kept relating. I mentioned burning my notes for the introductory course in the field she got her PhD in. We both went to CMU. We’ve both lived in the Bay Area. And she was frank that UMN wasn’t a top notch institution and she talked about the culture differences between here and CMU. (They make you sweat for it at CMU.) I told her honestly that her class was the only one I really cared about or felt challenged in this semester. She said the other profs saw her reading list for the class and wanted to know if she was trying to kill her students and she told them “No, I want to make them feel it.”

She’s likely the prof I will have the most classes with during my time at UMN. 1 this semester and 2 next makes for three. I’ve had no prof for more than one class up to this point, and I expect that I will have at most one other duplicate next semester.

So, here’s to her, and here’s to making the best of an *enh* situation.

Two from Daniel:

Homophobia and Medicine lunch

Join the folks from District 202, the Twin Cities queer youth drop in center, is holding an event on 2nd Tuesdays. This month (tonight) it’ll be at JetSet from 5:30 to 7:30. This is not a fundraiser. More details on the link.

Thank you, .

Barry Commoner’s The Closing Circle points out the environmental damage attendant to a number of new technologies, citing them as a result of a linear model of thought and calling for the development of sustainable technology. He suggests that continued use of these technologies will lead to great challenges to human survival. The record on his predictions is somewhat spotty: many of the problems noted by Commoner have been reduced since his writing, many have not. On another note, there are categories of ecological damage that his evaluation glosses over or misses completely, particularly depletion of natural resources. Furthermore, his calls to develop more sustainable technology do not discuss incentives for encouraging this development.

Commoner’s central thesis was that humanity needed to “close the circle” by making sure that what we produce, whether for our own use or as a by product, would be reused or made into a form such that it would not be damaging to the ecosphere when we discard it. As such, he could be one of the first voices calling for recycling as an industry.

In his focus on the outputs of modern technology, he neglects other ecological problems. Humanity has just attempted to take himself out of closed ecological cycles. Humanity has damaged the environment in other ways. Resource depletion, including deforestation, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, and easily accessible fossil fuels seem like an obvious element to inspect more closely, which would be in keeping with his views on “closing the circle.” While he does mention this principle with respect to metals, which is somewhat ironic in light of the continuing improvements in the supply of metals, this is a small . He does not pay attention to concerns about resource scarity to nearly the same degree that he pays attention to ecologically damaging outputs.

While his call for the development of technology which does not exemplify the faults of this linear model of production are clear, how he plans to get there from here is not. He spends a chapter examining the economics of the situation, and concludes that economic decisions should play a secondary role to ecological decisions. He never examines the role that economics has to play in informing ecology or encouraging the development of more sustainable technology. This book primarily highlights a set of problems, particularly relating to pollution and the absorptive capacity of the environment, and says very little about the solution to the problems it highlights.

The Closing Circle provides insight into issues surrounding pollution and recycling. While these are useful underpinnings, the author seems to believe that these are the central issues of ecology. The book is an informative, but narrow view at a particular set of problems, that fails to clearly situate itself as such, and fails to develop usable guidance on how these problems might be addressed.

background on the Strengthening America’s Communities Initiative

What is Habari Xenu?
Habari Xenu is a News Aggregator that is built on top of the powerful Mozilla web platform. It runs on Mozilla and Firefox web browsers.

No, no in fact, Habari Xenu is not a News Aggregator. You want to know why? Because it doesn’t aggregate. For fuck’s sake people, this is simple. To aggregate, one must take from multiple sources and turn them into a single item. My lj “friends” list is a better rss aggregator than most of the ones available for mac. And if there are any it’s not better than, I’d have to pay to find out. Blow me. Why am I not running FreeBSD for real? Oh yeah, I like video games. *sigh*

I saw Serenity last night with Ross, ‘s officemate, and sorta with and . See, I ended up sticking around campus to hitch a ride with Ross. He had some stuff to take care of, so we rushed across town at the last minute in his SUV, and through a couple of errors I got in just in time to see the THX sound thing go across the screen as I walked in. I spotted Brian and James on the other side of the theater, but having been requested by Ross (who did give me a ride there after all) to grab a seat in the front row, I took a nearby seat and sat down to enjoy the movie.

It’s a good movie, and I haven’t seen Firefly, though it might be cool to now. I could also see watching the movie again in a month or so, though I doubt I will until it hits dvd. It’s mystery, action, tough little guys in a big dangerous world, character transformation, going from the struggle to survive into changing the rules of the game. It has commonalities with The Matrix (I) (which leaves me with a foreboding chill at the notion of sequels). It beats The Matrix hands down in several ways. It also has spectacular graphics and great dialogue. I likes it. I recommend it. Go forth and enjoy.

The overpopulation concerns mentioned in Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb” in 1959(?) (and by Malthus, to be fair) were repackaged in interesting popular forms in “The Mote in God’s Eye” by Niven and Pournell in 1974 and in “Tuf Voyaging” by George R R Martin in 1986, by which time Ehrlich’s predictions had been proven drastically wrong in timing if not in substance. Interestingly, the Green Revolution, which Ehrlich explicitly dismissed, and which has succeeded in feeding the growing population of the planet, may be represented, discussed and discredited in both these books. In both books, technology is seen as being in a race with the nature of the overbreeding populations: the amazingly technologically advanced aliens which developed independently from humanity in “The Mote in God’s Eye” and a particular planet’s human derived colonist population with a devout belief system that adheres centrally to their own right to breed in “Tuf Voyaging”. In neither case is technology ultimately sufficient to the task, even though both societies are presented as extremely technologically advanced. Thus reiterating the point from “The Tragedy of the Commons” by Hardin, a technological solution is insufficient to the problem of overpopulation.

One wonders if these novels extract the points purely for entertainment value, or if they are attempting to spread the beliefs to a different audience.

The Chicago Reader has put Hobbit Porn on its cover (porn is an overstatement, but there’s shirtlessness, cuddling and bare butts in soft focus). And on its pages. And the story that goes with it is also disturbing and yet weirdly uplifting. This lady who hits bottom on self-prescribed meds then pulls herself out of it through her Lord of the Rings fixation, and is now writing publishable fiction. But the other thing that struck me was that she saw Fellowship of the Ring 5 times per week for two months.

I feel much better about having seen Jurrasic Park 7 times (at the dollar theater, I was in high school. I really liked the Ian Malcolm character. I don’t have a problem, no I’m not obsessive, quit looking at me like that.)

[ETA: Oh yeah, that picture of Legolas, in the please-do-me-now pose straddling a log?] note, this may disturb the squeamish, hence the cut