searching for the ineffable
What’s your favorite web resource for a decent, concise discussion of basic scientific facts and phenomena – like what a pulsar wind nebula is, what role specific chemical elements play in our life, how circulation works in octopi? Anything, as long as it’s interesting, diverse and fairly fast (30m or less) to read up on.
Wikipedia doesn’t count, for the purposes of this exercise.
It looks like I’ll be in Baltimore soon. I’ll be flying in on Sunday 11/16, and leaving Tuesday evening 11/18. On Sunday I can travel in the morning, or in the evening. If I get there in the morning (or around noon), I’ll have the rest of the day to kick around.
Worth it? What’s there to do in Baltimore? I don’t know that city at all.
If you’re reading on LJ, please to leave any comments on Words’ End and not on the LJ feed. Thanks in advance for any advice!
A Los Angeles residing person whose blog I read, and whose life I admire, writes:
I did not realize it was possible to be simultaneously deliriously happy and bitterly disappointed until tonight.
Why, California? Why do you hate some of your residents so much that you would take away the civil rights they were given enough time ago for you to have seen that marriage between two people who love each other doesn’t hurt you in any way?
…gods.
*giant sigh of relief and amazement*
Today, the U.S. presidential election has drawn a record number of voters. Ever since I got to this country and began thinking about civic engagement, I’ve been appalled by the voter turnout; and, gods help me, I am already proud of my fellow voting-eligible citizens this time around.
(Not that I voted yet; the line totally defeated me this morning, and laughed in my face too, what with being three blocks long. Going to cast my ballot after work, when it doesn’t matter how long I stand in line.)
Today, people are twittering and blogging and talking about hope, and I’m afraid to hope but so, so excited.
Today, like some others,, I’m feeling pragmatic – about the U.S., about the world in all its polluting, genocidal glory, about my own little life and where it’s leading me. It’s leading me in some scary-exciting directions.
I like today. It’s electric.
I have a faculty member here at work who wants to transfer the production of her center’s newsletter from an outside source to in-house. She’s sent me an example, and it’s a reasonably complex layout – definitely not something that should be done in Word – and she wants to keep the layout more or less the same.
We are strongly recommending that people here not use MS Publisher, for various reasons. Do you have a favorite desktop publishing application for Windows XP? Inexpensive is a huge bonus.
(Now, if only she were a Mac user… but no.)
Did you know today is Open Access Day? Wikipedia’s summary of what open access means is a good one: “free, immediate, permanent, full-text, online access, for any user, web-wide, to digital scientific and scholarly material, primarily research articles published in peer-reviewed journals.”
Why support open access? Won’t the people who need these resources already be associated with colleges or universities, and so have access to them? Well, first off, no; currently access to many important resources costs more than many institutions can afford. But consider also the full range of uses for open-access materials. Educators at all levels can use it to keep up to speed with their fields, and better teach children of all ages. (“Won’t somebody think of the children?!” actually applies here.) People who are dealing with diseases they know little about, whether it’s them or their relatives who are sick, can use scientific articles to educate themselves and get a better perspective on what’s going on with their bodies. Researchers can get their work done faster and ultimately more cheaply – less need for interlibrary loan! – which again increases equality in access to the knowledge we are so quickly amassing, regardless of a scholar’s or institution’s economic status.
Open access does nothing to address the problem of the digital divide; people without internet access still don’t get the benefit of this knowledge. But it’s a step. And when internet spreads further, like telephony, these resources will be waiting for people dealing with epidemics, people who need cheap renewable energy, people who can improve their own lives using knowledge we already have, without waiting for the Peace Corps to get to them.
Support open access. Talk to librarians about it. Talk to your scientist friends about it. Talk to anyone who’ll listen.
…at 6:30am on a Saturday morning. To make home fries, some with bacon grease, some without, then get picked up in a big truck and go move some boxes from south of here to west of here. All of this before brunch, a couple of hours after which I’ll be hanging with a toddler for a while, and then with another one of my dearest.
Life doesn’t suck! Though maybe a little more sleep would be good.
…why it is I go to Burning Man, I invite you to watch the two collage excerpts from a BM documentary that’s being screened tonight at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in NYC. I watch these, and cry with longing.
This is as much a message out as a message inward: perhaps, when I doubt whether all the mad resources it takes to get there are worth it next year, this will remind me why I go.
Next year perhaps I’ll spin poi and drum; these are my two learning projects for the year.
This will be redundant if you read any of my housemates’ journals, but: I love my household. Interviewing potential new housemate last night was full of giggling and conversation about EVERYthing and cake and blueberry wine. I have my issues with living here (mostly having to do with allergies, and we’re working on this). But the people, and the circus band in my living room (oh, you think I’m kidding, do you?), and the art and science and foodie quotients are all near optimal.
My job continues to delight me. I suspect it’ll be taking up more of my brain in the next couple of months, as I transition from being almost exclusively computing support to doing more of the balanced mish-mosh of support and digital library work I’m supposed to be doing. This transition is right on schedule; I’m glad for the increased variety, and also glad to have had a reasonably intense introduction to networking and other larger computing issues at BU.
Random students whom I don’t believe I’ve ever actually met grin at me and compliment the blue hair. So do some of the faculty and staff at the school. Nobody has made a huge deal out of it, and nobody seems too weirded out. Also, I may have finally found a community event at work I’d probably feel consistently good participating in: Sabbath space, a sanctuary of sorts on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, in a beautiful chapel space used for prayer, quiet conversation, meditation and… coloring mandalas. Clearly not entirely Christian, for which I’m thankful. It’s been a strange landscape to navigate, this School of Theology. Before I came there, I thought STH was, you know, like majoring in religion except on a graduate level: you learn about as many different religions as you can, and do anthropology and cultural studies and stuff. But no, this is a Methodist seminary, and though they’re all excellent people and extremely tolerant and clearly versed in many religions (several faculty members have artifacts from all over East Asia in their offices), it’s still a Methodist seminary. People learn how to preach, they practice ministry, they graduate and go work in churches and on missions. To me, this is all alien, and the more vociferous Christian contingent hasn’t exactly been sane in this country of late, or anywhere ever. But, you know, so it goes. I’m there to do computer stuff, and to help create digital resources that help people of vastly different backgrounds find out about each other. I work with good people who do good work for their fellow human beings. Ultimately, what they believe in looks like a cross between anthropology, social activism and mythology to me. And I’d be willing to bet that not a single one of them has ever contemplated harming a doctor who performs abortions.
Spiritually speaking, I tend to steer clear of monotheism, and don’t like it around me. But the people at work are fascinating and multifaceted and kind and compassionate and, most of the time, present. I like people who are fully there in the moment with me.
It’s oh-gods-late, and I must go to sleep. There is a seven-day candle burning in my room; every one of those that burns down will light the next one until the vernal Equinox. A continuous flame through the darkest part of the year; thanks to Molly for the idea. G’night.
