oh the horror

i managed to dredge up the archives of my old law school blog that i ran with some of my classmates which gained some level of notoriety before other students found out about it and we shut it down. it made the new york times magazine. /pats self on back.

anyway.

after perusing the archives, it appears that i had a minor crush on someone who is now one of my best friends. i don't really remember having a crush on her, but those are my words. it's on record. i know my five year "secret crush" statute of limitations is up, but i am so not telling her! at this point, it would be like confessing a secret crush on your sister (although i just had a very graphic dream of a sexual nature involving a guy friend who is essentially my brother and i informed him about it just to see his reaction - yes i know... TMI TMI TMI. emily1, please don't throw up.)

fortunately for me in law school, i was having a simultaneous crush on another classmate, a crush that was much more debilitating and paralyzing, which effectively drowned out the crush i was harboring for the person who is now one of my BFFs. yes it was pretty horrible, but at least i didn't end up obsessing over my current friend. THANK CHRIST!

i am realizing that i have had crushes - to varying degrees - on pretty much every attractive lesbian who has crossed my path in the last eight years. [addendum: and on boys that become lesbians. tee hee.]

maybe i really am that easy.

ugh

relationshipFAIL

bad times

i don't like it when someone just pulls the carpet out from under my feet without warning. i can't concentrate at work, and i keep fantasizing about an alternate life that has no basis in reality and had no chance of coming to fruition anyway. sorry i can't go into detail. basically, the economy sucks and i have no business neglecting my job, my relationship is on the rocks, and my "plan b" is a golden unicorn (and requires time travel).

blech.

8 against 8

go to www.8against8.com - 8 famous lesbian bloggers - 8 days - $8,000 - to defeat proposition 8.

GO AND DONATE!!!!

life is good

i'm glad i got whatever i wrote previously on this post off my chest.

free at last! free at last! thank god almighty i am free at last!

that is all!

sarah palin on snl

Freefalling

Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves.

Andrew Jackson to a delegation of bankers in 1832

sexist?

From this article, someone from the McCain camp says about the SNL skit starring Tina Fey as Palin and Amy Poehler as Clinton (if you haven't seen it, you're way behind - just google it and watch it already):

“The portrait was very dismissive of the substance of Sarah Palin, and so in that sense, they were defining Hillary Clinton as very substantive, and Sarah Palin as totally superficial,” McCain advisor Carly Fiorina told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Monday. “I think that continues the line of argument that is disrespectful in the extreme, and yes I would say sexist.”

Hoo-kay. Implying that Hillary Clinton is substantive while Sarah Palin isn't is sexist. That's a new one.

holy shite

jesus christ, this thing is as big as the gulf of mexico.

remember this?

Back in March I predicted that Lehman Bros would fold.

Today, Lehman Bros' stock fell 45%. D'oh!

-----------

I also predicted that Britney Spears would win an MTV music award. And she took home three.

-----------

I also predict that I will need to use the bathroom in the next few hours.

uh, who the fuck cares?

what was elizabeth edwards supposed to do? blast it on her facebook status?

i can't read this shit, because it pisses me off

i really thought the chinese were over putting grannies in labor camps. that's so 1949. assholes.

i wuz sheltereded.

just had coffee with a high school friend who informed me that half of my friends in high school were queer and just didn't tell me. and that she had pursued a hot lesbian teacher while still a student and dated her. and then attempted to break up with her, which caused hottie teacher to write her notes telling her to go to the principal's office for "special assignments." then teacher would show up and attempt to discuss the relationship and hook up with her. she also made out with a friend of mine who was hot. and now another friend is in ny city, out and proud, and i had no idea in high school or now.

another friend of mine, about three years ago, told me that she had dated another girl while in high school and didn't tell me because she didn't think i could handle it. bull fucking shit. maybe i would have said... "hmm... what a good idea." of course, i probably would have run back in the closet during college, but that's another post that will never be written.

both of these people had been my best friend for long a period of time in my life.

i know this is like, twelve years after the fact, but come on... did i really seem that delicate to you people?! i was the features (arts and culture) editor for the school paper for crying out loud! (yeah, that basically means "not a square" in my high school. i guess you had to go there. bleh.)

Deep Thought

inhaling a cookie is not the proper way to consume it.

ooo!

geek girl takes on her old employer, google, with a new search engine. hot!

Homophobic Representative + Gun + State Capitol = WIN!

Props to fellow Quenchista Maudite Entendante, who noticed this tidbit in the news:

OKLAHOMA CITY -- An Oklahoma lawmaker who made headlines in March for her comments regarding homosexuals was stopped from bringing a gun into the state Capitol on Wednesday, troopers said.

Check out her scathing post here.

But Rep. "Homosexuals are a bigger threat than terrorists" Kern wants to reassure you that her inappropriate gun-toting "has nothing to do with the homosexual situation."

Seriously, I am so not surprised by this situation in the slightest.

This is pretty much what I've been attempting to articulate about the state of academia

Really, this guy continues to blow my mind. Although this was written over ten years ago, it is still relevant, as the trendy pomo left (as opposed to the rest of the left, who is unjustly lumped in with them) still continues to have a chokehold on academia. Posting in its entirely.

A Plea for Reason, Evidence and Logic
Alan Sokal
[from New Politics, vol. 6, no. 2 (new series), whole no. 22, Winter 1997]

[Editors' Note: As most of our readers probably know by now, Alan Sokal, a physicist at New York University, submitted a parody of postmodernist studies of natural science to Social Text, which published it as serious contribution in its "Science Wars" issue, Spring/Summer 1996. He then revealed the hoax in the pages of Lingua Franca, producing a wide-ranging debate on the politics of postmodernism and the nature of truth, reason and objectivity. What follows is a transcript of a talk given by Sokal at a forum on that subject held at New York University on October 30, 1996.]

Alan Sokal is a Professor of Physics at New York University. In the summers of 1986-88 he taught mathematics at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua. He is co-author with Roberto Fernández and Jürg Fröhlich of Random Walks, Critical Phenomena, and Triviality in Quantum Field Theory (Springer, 1992) and co-author with Jean Bricmont of the forthcoming Les impostures scientifiques des philosophes (postmodernes).

THIS AFFAIR HAS BROUGHT UP AN INCREDIBLE NUMBER OF ISSUES, and I can't dream of addressing them all in 10 minutes, so let me start by circumscribing my remarks. I don't want to belabor Social Text's failings either before or after the publication of my parody: Social Text is not my enemy, nor is it my main intellectual target. I won't go here into the ethical issues related to the propriety of hoaxing (although I'm glad to defend my ethics). I won't address the obscurantist prose and the uncritical celebrity-worship that have infected certain trendy sectors of the American academic humanities (though these are important questions that I hope other panelists will address). I won't enter into technical issues of the philosophy of science. I won't discuss the social role of science and technology (though these are important issues). Indeed, I want to emphasize that this affair, in my view, is not primarily about science -- though that was the excuse that I used in constructing my parody -- nor is it a disciplinary conflict between scientists and humanists, who are in fact represented on all sides of the debate. What I believe this debate is principally about -- and what I want to focus on here -- is the nature of truth, reason and objectivity: issues that I believe are crucial to the future of left politics.

I didn't write the parody for the reasons you might think at first. My aim was not to defend science from the barbarian hordes of lit crit or sociology. I know perfectly well that the main threats to science nowadays come from budget-cutting politicians and corporate executives, not from a handful of postmodernist academics. Rather, my goal is to defend what one might call a scientific worldview -- defined broadly as a respect for evidence and logic, and for the incessant confrontation of theories with the real world; in short, for reasoned argument over wishful thinking, superstition and demagoguery. And my motives for trying to defend these old-fashioned ideas are basically political. I am worried about trends in the American Left -- particularly in academia -- that, at a minimum, divert us from the task of formulating a progressive social critique, by leading smart and committed people into trendy but ultimately empty intellectual fashions. These fashions can, in fact, undermine the prospects for such a critique, by promoting subjectivist and relativist philosophies that are inconsistent with producing a realistic analysis of society that we and our fellow citizens will find compelling.

David Whiteis, in a recent article, said it well:

Too many academics, secure in their ivory towers and insulated from the real-world consequences of the ideas they espouse, seem blind to the fact that non-rationality has historically been among the most powerful weapons in the ideological arsenals of oppressors. The hypersubjectivity that characterizes postmodernism is a perfect case in point: far from being a legacy of leftist iconoclasm, as some of its advocates so disingenuously claim, it in fact ... plays perfectly into the anti-rationalist -- really, anti-thinking -- bias that currently infects "mainstream" U.S. culture.

Along similar lines, the philosopher of science, Larry Laudan, observed caustically that the displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is -- second only to American political campaigns -- the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time. (And these days, being nearly as anti-intellectual as political campaigns is really quite a feat.)

NOW OF COURSE, NO ONE WILL ADMIT TO BEING AGAINST REASON, evidence and logic -- that's like being against Motherhood and Apple Pie. Rather, our postmodernist and poststructuralist friends will claim to be in favor of some new and deeper kind of reason--such as the celebration of "local knowledges" and "alternative ways of knowing" as an antidote to the so-called "Eurocentric scientific methodology" (you know, things like systematic experiment, controls, replication, and so forth). You find this magic phrase "local knowledges" in, for example, the articles of Andrew Ross and Sandra Harding in the "Science Wars" issue of Social Text. But are "local knowledges" all that great? And when local knowledges conflict, which local knowledges should we believe? In many parts of the Midwest, the "local knowledges" say that you should spray more herbicides to get bigger crops. It is old-fashioned objective science that can tell us which herbicides are poisonous to farm workers and to people downstream. Here in New York City, lots of "local knowledges" hold that there's a wave of teenage motherhood that's destroying our moral fiber. It's those boring data that show that the birth rate to teenage mothers has been essentially constant since 1975 and is about half of what it was in the good old 1950s. Another word for "local knowledges" is prejudice.

I am sorry to say it, but under the influence of postmodernism some very intelligent people can fall into some incredibly sloppy thinking, and I want to give two examples. The first comes from a front-page article in the New York Times (10/22/96) about the conflict between archaeologists and some Native American creationists. I don't want to address here the ethical and legal aspects of this controversy -- who should control the use of 10,000-year-old human remains -- but only the epistemic issue. There are at least two competing views on where Native American populations come from. The scientific consensus, based on extensive archaeological evidence, is that humans first entered the Americas from Asia about 10,000-20,000 years ago, crossing the Bering Strait. Many Native American creation accounts hold, on the other hand, that native peoples have always lived in the Americas, ever since their ancestors emerged onto the surface of the earth from a subterranean world of spirits. And the Times article observed that many archaeologists, "pulled between their scientific temperaments and their appreciation for native culture, ... have been driven close to a postmodern relativism in which science is just one more belief system." For example, Roger Anyon, a British archaeologist who has worked for the Zuni people, was quoted as saying that "Science is just one of many ways of knowing the world. ... [The Zunis' world view is] just as valid as the archeological viewpoint of what prehistory is about."

Now, perhaps Dr. Anyon was misquoted, but we all have repeatedly heard assertions of this kind, and I'd like to ask what such assertions could possibly mean. We have here two mutually incompatible theories. They can't both be right; they can't both even be approximately right. They could, of course, both be wrong, but I don't imagine that that is what Dr. Anyon means by "just as valid." It seems to me that Anyon has quite simply allowed his political and cultural sympathies to cloud his reasoning. And there is no justification for that: we can perfectly well remember the victims of a horrible genocide, and support their descendants' valid political goals, without endorsing uncritically (or hypocritically) their societies' traditional creation myths. Moreover, the relativists' stance is extremely condescending: it treats a complex society as a monolith, obscures the conflicts within it, and takes its most obscurantist factions as spokespeople for the whole.

My second example of sloppy thinking comes from Social Text co-editor Bruce Robbins' article in the Sept./Oct. 1996 issue of Tikkun magazine, in which he tries to defend -- albeit half-heartedly -- the postmodernist/poststructuralist subversion of conventional notions of truth. "Is it in the interests of women, African Americans, and other super-exploited people," Robbins asks, "to insist that truth and identity are social constructions? Yes and no," he asserts. "No, you can't talk about exploitation without respect for empirical evidence" -- exactly my point. "But yes," Robbins continues, "truth can be another source of oppression." Huh??? How can truth oppress anyone? Well, Robbins' very next sentence explains what he means: "It was not so long ago," he says, "that scientists gave their full authority to explanations of why women and African Americans ... were inherently inferior." But is Robbins claiming that that is truth? I should hope not! Sure, lots of people say things about women and African Americans that are not true; and yes, those falsehoods have sometimes been asserted in the name of "science," "reason" and all the rest. But claiming something doesn't make it true, and the fact that people -- including scientists -- sometimes make false claims doesn't mean that we should reject or revise the concept of truth. Quite the contrary: it means that we should examine with the utmost care the evidence underlying people's truth claims, and we should reject assertions that in our best rational judgment are false.

This error is, unfortunately, repeated throughout Robbins' essay: he systematically confuses truth with claims of truth, fact with assertions of fact, and knowledge with pretensions to knowledge. These elisions underlie much of the sloppy thinking about "social construction" prevalent nowadays in the academy, and it is something that progressives ought to resist. Sure, let's show which economic, political and ideological interests are served by our opponents' accounts of "reality"; but first let's demonstrate, by marshalling evidence and logic, why those accounts are objectively false (or in some cases true but incomplete).

A bit later in his article, Robbins admits candidly that "those of us who do cultural politics sometimes act as if ... truth were always and everywhere a weapon of the right." Now, that's an astoundingly self-defeating attitude for an avowed leftist. If truth were on the side of the right, shouldn't we all -- at least the honest ones among us -- become right-wingers? For my own part, I am a leftist and a feminist because of evidence and logic (combined with elementary ethics), not in spite of it.

This plea of mine for reason, evidence and logic is hardly original; dozens of progressive humanists, social scientists and natural scientists have been saying the same thing for years. But if my parody in Social Text has helped just a little bit to amplify their voices and to provoke a much-needed debate on the American Left, then it will have served its purpose.

asians doing shameful things

queens sweatshop raided. i think, in addition to throwing them in jail for a very long time, the owners' mugshots should be sent to every person of chinese descent in the tri-state area. the word "criminal" should appear right below the mugshots. there is a concept called "losing face" is chinese culture, and this form of public humiliation would be quite delicious. :)

awooooogggaaa!!!!

over the course of the past four months - with the (1) 13 hours a day, 6 to 7 hours a week boiler-room atmosphere of my workplace where everyone became desperate and abusive and the (2) increased fighting between me and my girlfriend due to said job situation (which i've been trying unsuccessfully to get out of), i've become pretty unsettled and unhappy. timewise, the bulk of the deterioration of my sanity started around 10th year reunion and has pretty much gone downhill.

and the kicker came yesterday. my ex called me after 3 years of not contacting me and relayed some heavy stuff. i'm not going to get into it here, but it brought back a lot of memories that i thought i had erased permanently. i know she had to tell me this stuff, but wow, i was so not in the right frame of mind to hear it. of course, i handled it immaturely, because i couldn't deal with it emotionally. so now i just apologized, through e-mail of course, because calling was too difficult.

i wonder how my dad dealt with all the job stress and marital craziness and general awooga that was and continues to be his life and how he came out normal and successful. and he immigrated penniless from a different country, which i'm sure adds a whole mountain of uncertainty and stress.

"experts" announce that middle class is struggling

here.

gee, i'm no "expert," but that's a no-brainer.

tAstEe driNk

Okay, this looks like a seriously awesome recipe. I mean, just listen:

Blend cantaloupe, cardamom, honey, milk, and yogurt for about 3 minutes and voila you have a tasty treat!

Yummmmmmmm.

It's of East African origin - Horn of Africa.

treadmill, part 2

This seems to be a recurring theme on this blog.

So is the future implosion of the financial industry.

So, why do we continue to work ourselves to death? Are we going to reap the benefits of our labor?

This blows.

Something In The Wind

i think it's the scent of a full-scale banking panic.

i have that deer caught in the headlights thing going on. i keep on living my daily life by going to work, looking for a new apartment and dutifully saving 8 percent of my salary in my 401k and saving the rest of my disposable income in cash like it all still means something.

i don't wanna grow up!

ok, deleted the post that was here because i forgot that y'all had this site linked to your real names on various places on the internet. but i hope y'all were temporarily amused. =P

denial.

it's not just a river in egypt

suckage.

been at the office virtually every day since easter. girlfriend's birthday is coming up this weekend. was unsure if i could make festivities even before the following new development, but now a friend of ours has secured her parents' house in the hamptons for a house party for my girlfriend's 30th birthday. (just to let everyone know, having a free house in the hamptons for a party is NOT NORMAL for me. or for 99.9% of the population. it's something out of another dimension.) there is no way i can make it all the way out there, because i'm basically chained to my desk all weekend except for evenings.

seriously. how much does my life suck?

(yes, i know "wah wah i can't go to the hamptons" sounds like yuppie angst, but let's put this this way. let's say that you're in grade school, and instead of regular recess, the school is throwing a carnival that only happens once a year - with cotton candy and hot dogs. let's just say that you didn't do anything bad, but your teacher made you sit in the classroom and miss recess anyway. not just ANY recess, but THAT PARTICULAR recess. it just plain stinks.)

What A Bunch Of Whiny Ass Titty Babies

rich and well to do suburbanites think their 'solitude' is so much more important than addressing pressing needs for improved civic infrastructure. sudbury, ma residents are fighting the conversion of an old railroad into a bike trail. the bullshit-laden tantrums from grown adults is just hysterical:

Looking out at a lushly wooded area beyond a stone wall on her 100-acre estate, Carole Wolfe's face darkened. There, in the distance, she said, nervously pointing a finger, stretches a former rail corridor that, if some have their way, could bring trouble upon this town where her family's roots date to Colonial times.

"Instead of solitude," Wolfe said, "you'd be having people."

yes, my pretty. the worst thing in the world is the prospect of having lesser beings who can't afford a 100 acre estate in one of the most expensive states in the union saving money by using a bike trail near your home. your wealth and privilege totally entitle you to be free of people who aren't wealthy like you and your neighbors. the only members of lesser classes who should be permitted to enter your sanctified world are those worthy peons you hire to clean your palaces and care for all the non-native flora in your waterhog landscaped perfect lawns.

Opponents of the "rail trail" say the path would draw hundreds of thousands of bicyclists who would bring with them noise and other disruptions into what is now a pristine landscape. Hordes of bikers, walkers, and rollerbladers would scare away wildlife, they say, and invite crime from trespassing to vandalism and assault.

i presume then that the pampered, privileged, 100-acre-estate-owning twats of sudbury oppose the presence of roads near their homes. think of the noise of hundreds of thousands of motorists driving in their noisy cars along those giant four lane highways near those plush energy-hog homes that consume more power than a dozen tenements in the dirty city full of permanently suspect poor people who are dying for the chance to hop in a car and drive out to sudbury to smoke blunts, drink 40s, terrorize deer and tag the garden walls surrounding the estates of sudbury with eyesore graffiti.

so deep is the concern for wildlife and the environment that sudbury residents surely must travel everywhere by foot. who would want to damage the environment with a gas-guzzling luxury vehicle! surely, they don't want to damage the pristine and untouched wilderness dotted with naturally occurring horse stables, 5000 square foot homes, privacy hedges, mowed lawns, pools, private schools, golf courses and country clubs!

"We don't have neighbors nearby," said Marianne Maurer, whose family's tree farm is bisected by the proposed bike trail. "If something happened, no one would hear us yelling."

competitive cyclists, and average bike commuters are a scary lot. they wear all those funny-looking neon spandex outfits and enormous bike helmets. this attire is beloved by burglars everywhere for their unique value as camouflage while they surreptitiously break into expensive homes before making a quick and sure getaway by bike.

Some opponents have gone so far as to make unusual threats. If the trail is built, some said, they will sell their land to developers who want to build dense clusters of affordable units.

the residents of sudbury astonish me with their enduring capacity for mature and adult behavior. when you want to impress others with your capacity for respectable and dignified behavior when you face the awful prospect of not getting your way, fall to the ground, kick and scream at the top of your lungs until the shade of your face approaches the hue of a well-ripened tomato. show your concern for preserving wilderness and open space by selling to all those developers who are dying to build dense, clustered homes for people who don't have as much money as you do! especially during this horrific credit cisis and tanking housing market.

"This is not some little footpath," said Nigrelli, a statistician who works in the healthcare industry. "This is a large, state-undertaken project."

He pointed out that the trail would probably be paved and measure at least 10 to 12 feet in width.

my god! 10 to 12 feet. that's like.... almost half of a two lane road for motorized transport, none of which exist anywhere in sudbury!

As far as Maurer is concerned, a better solution is for bikers to get their exercise indoors.

"My whole theory is: Go to the gym that you got the membership for and that you know you are not using," she said.

this open space and wilderness is mine godammit! mine! all mine!!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

4th o' july!

have fun at your bbqs and your day off in general!

(oh and bye.)

Horror Movie Lesson: Stupidity Is All It Takes

i watched the original the amityville horror last night. to summarize: a man murders his parents and four siblings. a year later, the price of the house is in the pits because no one wants to buy it. except for the family which is the subject of the movie.

the family discovers a gateway to hell in their basement less than a month after moving in, yet they continue to stay in the house for two more days. then, when the house goes apeshit and blood seeps from the walls, they decide to flee in the middle of the night. the father of the family decides to halt their flight to safety long enough to retrieve the family dog.

advice from a bitter 30-something who used to be stupid

there has been a discussion on a few other blogs about this article about ivy league grads being tempted by high salary jobs. *yawn* as predicted, some people are bothered by its "implications." so what are the implications? the only "implication" i see is that a higher salary will pull you out of debt faster than a lower salary.

see, the 22 year old me would really hate the 32 year old me. the 22 year old me used to call people who went into i-banking "brainwashed" and "herd followers." and now the 32 year old me is embarrassed that she was ever the 22 year old me.

at some point, little ol' me decided to be idealistic and quit her "soulless" job a little too early and went into a risky profession that was artsy and exciting, then went severely into debt intending to come out of law school to do a low-paying but "not-soulless" subfield. there is nothing like the sound of uncle sam's jack boots to make you understand how the world really works. there is nothing like seeing people who took these "soulless" jobs and kept at it for a few years living happily out of debt and sitting on a small pile of money, pursuing what they truly love in their second career as a film maker, restauranteur or non-profit director to make you realize that you were a real douchebag at 22.

if there are any college seniors or recent college grads reading this, please don't let anyone make you feel guilty about going into investment banking or some other high paying job. you're doing the right thing. let me say it again. YOU'RE. DOING. THE. RIGHT. THING.

and honestly, it bugs me when others get all indignant when their contemporaries go into high paying jobs. it's getting to the point that i boil with rage (or at least take time out of my day to rant on this blog, which rarely happens nowadays). (the 22 year old me better not come within 100 feet of me.)

there, i said it. i had to get that off my chest.

life doesn't end at 22. but what you choose to do at age 22 can sure affect the rest of your life.