Today in Sociology our prof polled us about where we get our news. (It was a component of a really interesting lecture on mass media in our lives, and whether it is liberating or oppressive, and stuff about the public sphere that goes back to the Agora in Athens from 500 BCE. I am really loving this class.) She asked us to raise our hands when she said the category where we get most of our news. In a lecture with probably 200 attendees, 3 people said radio, 25 said major news networks, 25 said the Colbert Report and Daily Show, a whole lot said "the internet", and 2 people said the newspaper. When one girl asked if it included accessing the newspaper online a lot of people, probably 30, said newspapers or news aggregates. I raised my hand for the Daily Show and Colbert report, and the internet. I watch the Daily Show about 3 times a week, and it is more current than my bloglines feed so a lot of times I learn about American issues on it, and then go and see what the feminist bloggers and sociologist bloggers I read say about it, or what a google search comes up with.

We also talked about Wikipedia. Everyone in our class probably uses it every day, because it is easy to understand, and has lots of primary sources that would be harder to find slogging through google search results. Wow, that was a very long introduction for what I found today on wikipedia while looking up things about the Barack Obama natural born citizen controversy. (It is whether he is not one. As far as I could tell, a lot of the arguments, such as him living in Indonesia as a child, are not very valid, because I checked wikipedia for citizenship laws and it just says you have to be born here, or a variety of other situations, but that (and having a Kansan mother) are what apply to him.) The best argument for it is that Hawaii allowed foreign births to be registered in Hawaii, but the source is a petition to release his long form birth certificate. Not a primary source for that info.

Children born overseas out of wedlock

There is an asymmetry in the way children born overseas to unmarried parents, only one of whom is a U.S. citizen, are treated. Children born abroad to unmarried American mothers are automatically considered natural-born citizens, as long as the mother has lived in the US for a continuous period of at least one year, anytime prior to the birth. But children born to American fathers unmarried to the children's non-American mothers are not considered natural-born citizens (or citizens at all) unless the father takes several actions:

• Provide financial support to the child until he reaches 18,
• Establish paternity by clear and convincing blood evidence,
• Acknowledge his paternity formally before the child has reached his 18th birthday
  • This last element can be shown by acknowledging paternity under oath and in writing; having the issue adjudicated by a court; or having the child otherwise "legitimated" by law. USC § 1409(a).

Because of this rule, unusual cases have arisen whereby children have been born overseas to American men (and non-American women), brought back to the United States as babies without the mother, raised by the American father in the United States, and later held to be deportable as non-citizens in their 20s. The final element has taken an especially significant importance in these circumstances, as once the child has reached 18, the father is forever unable to establish paternity to deem his child a natural-born citizen.

This distinction between unwed fathers and mothers was constructed and reaffirmed by Congress in response to concerns that a flood of illegitimate Korean and Vietnamese children would later claim American citizenship as a result of their parentage by American servicemen overseas fighting wars in their countries. In many cases, American servicemen passing through in wartime may not have even realized they had fathered a child. The Supreme Court, by 5-4 majority in Tuan Anh Nguyen v. INS, established the constitutionality of this gender distinction.

"In many cases, American servicemen passing through in wartime may not have even realized they had fathered a child." I guess because they are soldiers, not biologists. I am with the 4 Supreme Court justices who think that is stupid. I am totally sure that is how they phrased it, too.

John McCain was born on August 29, 1936 at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone, Panama, to naval officer John S. McCain, Jr. (1911–1981) and Roberta (Wright) McCain^[2] At that time, the Panama Canal was under U.S. control. (b. 1912).

Barack Obama, the current President of the United States, was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, in the state of Hawaii^[1] to Barack Obama, Sr. (1936–1982) (born in Nyang’oma Kogelo, Siaya District, Nyanza Province,^[2] Kenya Colony, British Empire), and Ann DunhamFort Leavenworth, Kansas).
(1942–1995)

I don't know, there are only like 5 requirements.

The Boringest Blog Of All Time, or, Streamlining

Now, this entry is just like the transcript entry, in that I am working something out as I type, and thus it is not really for reading but for reference, and for directing people to to save my explaining it over because it is so tiresome. In this entry I use the words tiresome, tedium, mindless, inventoried, consumables, criteria, paring, and spreadsheet.*

I had basically a completely exhausting weekend. Now, I have an extremely exhausting schoolweek Tuesday->Thursday, so that is not good. I went to Hayward on Friday, which was lovely, and spent some time with an old friend. I monopolized her chinchilla and she fed me coke zero after coke zero, and we stayed awake catching up until 6 am.

Then, at 10:30, off to Oakland to drop off everything in my car except my purse and my car emergency kit in order to free up space in the car. Then I brought Nick to SF to help another old friend, who Nick and I went to ACLC with and I went to DVC with, move house. My pelvis was all torqued from driving and so I did extremely light tasks and refused to climb the crooked stairs, while Nick and Josh managed the larger things. Now, Josh had nearly all the way moved already, and I was just helping him finish up. It took 2 trips in the car--- because I insisted on it not taking any more than that. It took about 5 hours, and it was a little fun. Looking back, I can't believe I did not think to bring a radio. Radios are very important when doing mindless physical work.

Then we went briefly to the San Francisco Ocean and it was very beautiful. However, I was dressed for a warm day, which it had been, and the beach at 8pm was terribly cold and windy. I had to go back to the car after perhaps 5 minutes.

I am boring myself, but so anyway I went home and had Mother's Day with everyone and then drove home and spent my Monday catching up in Art (I missed semi optional Saturday class) and reading for sociology. And with my weekend just absolutely packed I was very busy.

And what stuck with me was a slight terror of having to move my things. I have to move at the end of June.

What I am actually writing about: Streamlining
So there is a man, Chris Mcnaught, and he has streamlined and decluttered his life to an impressive degree. He knows how many things he owns, and it is fewer than 500. His blog is a little cluttered though, considering. I do not know if I want to own fewer than 500 things. I know that I cull my things when I move, and I move a lot. I know that I own many things than are neither immediately useful nor beautiful, which I think is a good standard for owning things. I know that I am horrified by hoarding. I know that I take very good care of my things that I love, and indifferent care of the things that I just have hanging around.

Already everything I own including furniture can fit in my car in two trips (I;m in a bit of an infinite loop thinking about my car in this scenario, but I am letting it go). So. I am toying with the idea. The advantage is that moving will be easier, and I theorize that I would have more mental energy if my things occupied a smaller part of my mind as they might if they were inventoried and decluttered. I have already begun my inventory, and have catalogued 268 things. And I have 12 lipglosses and 8 lipsticks. I have 12 unsharpened pencils, and 7 pencils in use, and 24 pens. So. Consumables. Not planning to toss them although there is a bit of a surplus.

So far I have inventoried my bed, bedclothes, and spare bedclothes, the things on one wall of my bedroom, and the contents of my ikea dresser. (I forgot until right now to count the dresser.) I am pacing myself on the inventory, and only spending an hour at a time on it. I am not totally sure what I will do once I know everything I own (at my SC house). Right now I think I will weed the things I use only occasionally and keep them in the closet (bc I wil have a perfect list when I do need them), give away the things I do not use, and then see how I feel about further or more extreme paring.

I have decided to exempt my art tools and food and emergency kit from the purge. I will streamline those using different criteria. I have not decided how to streamline my clothes. I have too many to fit in my half closet, but I wear all of them.

I think Chris McNaught, who began with 2,000 things, either had a different method of counting or was already rather a minimalist. Because he started as someone with a whole household with only 2,000 things. And I have more than 200 in my ikea dresser alone. In fact, I could probably toss out the entire dresser except my hairbrush and contact supplies, and barely know the difference to my standard of living. I am not going to post my inventory. I do not know the reason, except that I remember being so furious when my parents would go through my things-even when they had bought and had to clean up every single thing I owned, before I was even school age.

I will share some things from the inventory that catch my attention. Before I started the inventory, I considered my calculator collection reasonable.
2- graphing calculator
1- scientific calculator
2- basic calculator

See, I need the graphing calculator for classes, the scientific one to keep in my purse for grocery shopping (the display lets me manipulate things as much as I need without slogging through the menus on the graphing one. I have to be able to put tax on the taxables, delete items I put back, multiply by the quantity, and store it all as I wander the store and as I do other equations to work out which things are the best value to me. I am going to do a post about grocery shopping.), and a basic one to keep in the car and figure gas. I also use the scientific one as a backup for exams. Now, this only justifies 3 of the 5 calculators. And in fact, I always have my purse when I get gasoline, so I might as well eliminate another of them, and only have 2. Perhaps one can go into my emergency kit.



*Do you know what is not tedious?
Good.

Have I really not shared my best developed Conspiracy Theory?

It didn't come up on google when I looked it up.

Here is a chatting conversation that summarizes it.


9:38pmCaitlan
Got this from my Soc Prof:
Dear class,

I am very sorry to report that Prof. Nathaniel Deutsch has come down with laryngitis and may be unable to deliver his lecture tomorrow. I will send you an email by 9 am tomorrow to let you know what his status is, so please check your email. If he is still sick, I will cancel class.

I love my life!

9:38pmJoshua
lol

9:39pmCaitlan
dude, though!
my soc class is probably cancelled!
I just emailed her back "I once attended a lecture given by stephen hawking."
oooooooh nooooooooooooooo

9:41pmJoshua
uhh
why did you do that?
lol

9:42pmCaitlan
i was just going to type it because it came into my head
and then it sent itself
because, you know, if stephen hawking had laryngitis it would be the best day of his entire life.

9:42pmJoshua
xD

9:44pmCaitlan
oh god
that was in such bad taste
oh god.
i just insulted her guest lecturer, and i kind of made a joke about disabled people.
i bet she fails me for being ablist.
i am so embarrassed right now
my whole face and neck are doing that painful heat thing

9:46pmJoshua
ugh
well, umm, possibly you could apologize?

9:46pmCaitlan
no, maybe she won't get the email
she sometimes tells us she hasn't gotten them

9:47pmJoshua
lol

9:48pmCaitlan
oooooh
well, it's behind me now.
plus i really did see him one time
and it was awesome

9:49pmJoshua
wow, lucky

9:49pmCaitlan
he has lived ages longer than anyone else with his disease, and he doesn't move at all.
So, i immediately theorized that he is a wax model
with one eye that moves
and a voice box
and the best scientific minds of the world use him as a mouthpiece for their discoveries
so as to capitalize on the public appeal, the heroism, that he embodies.

9:51pmJoshua
lol
i think someone would notice he was not alive

9:54pmCaitlan
how?
he breathes, which could be simulated by inflating and deflating anything.
and he can move his cheek to control his voice box.

9:56pmJoshua
pulse?

9:56pmCaitlan
so, why couldn't his cheek move more or less randomly, or in response to what researcher/physicists typed for his voice simulator to say?
no one is taking his pulse at his appearances
i was a little surprised when i checked wiki just now that the conspiracy is not listed there.

9:58pmJoshua
xD

9:58pmCaitlan
see, here he is getting measured with calipers
http://portraitsculpture-online.com/Wax/Celebrities3.htm
10:00pmCaitlan
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9684919@N08/1808651077/
10:06pmCaitlan
Most people with ALS die from respiratory failure, usually within 3 to 5 years from the onset of symptoms. However, about 10 percent of those individuals with ALS survive for 10 or more years. Hawking's illness is markedly different from typical ALS in the fact that his form of ALS would make for the most protracted case ever documented
He got it in around 1963, and that was 46 years ago.

10:08pmJoshua
yes, but that is quite an elaborate hoax you suggest

10:08pmCaitlan
yes.
omg
i am a bad person
My earlier shame has made no impression on me.
his wiki says his dad wanted him to go into medicine, but he wanted to study math, but oxford only had physics so that is what he took.
should have gone into medicine.

10:09pmJoshua
lol

10:09pmCaitlan
:(
you don't have to believe my conspiracy theory.
i have my certainty.
Besides, you haven't seen him, and I have.
no, hawking is ridiculously amazing though, whether he is a man or a secret conclave of physicists.

Yes, most of my chats involve me blathering on and on, to 2 or 3 character responses.
No, they really don't.
But a lot of them have stretches like that.

Campus Exterior Views

I need a passing grade in all my classes and a B or better in art, and my other classes are easier, so I am devoting a lot of time to art. It is nice because I can see my work improving, but it is sad because I never feel like doing other art. Well, sometimes I do. Anyway, our next homework (there is one due each thurs and they are meant to take 4+ hours)is any tonal media on white or grey paper, and we are supposed to choose an urban or interior scene and use 2 point linear perspective. There are a few choices:
1. use an unexpected combination of light/shadow
2. intentionally deny and contradict western mathematical perspective with shifting, distorted, and compressed points of view
3. create a surrealist drawing using some real, observable setting, using perspective.

One part of the assignment page struck me as strange: "Views on campus are okay but try for the unusual vantage to move more into your own interpretation and away from the "picturesque" or predictable campus view." I don't know why this annoyed me so much. Our motto is the same as the whole UC, but our tagline is "creating knowledge. In a spectacular setting. For over 40 years." There are some very typical buildings on campus, but a lot of buildings are just fantastic. And maybe she is tired of looking at picturesque things but I really like them.

Our campus is just very beautiful. Very, very. We have loads of foot bridges, some more utilitarian and some more graceful. When I took Contemporary Architecture for art history, we learned lots about our college buildings, and about college buildings in general. A lot of very good architects get to design somewhat freely for college dorms, lecture halls, and libraries. I don't remember the whole reason but part of it is to draw students, and also if a building turns out badly it is not like a shopping center where everyone will avoid it, students will still go to the library. My college, Kresge, was designed by Charles Willard Moore (he did the Haas building at Berkeley as well) and it is a little ugly because it is not really to human scale, but it is still nice.

I think I have worked out why the prompt bothers me. We are ranked 76th in the US academically (it depends which guide you use)(some departments are higher, but not the art department AFAIK) but I am sure our campus is in the top 10. I have only been to about 10 colleges, and they mostly have some nice stuff there, but ours is just really good. We have thousands of acres of redwoods, and a view of the pacific ocean. We have (as I mentioned) more than a dozen foot bridges spanning the tops of hills. Each residential college has a different architectural style. We have fountains, and concrete fortresses, and a very small number of bronze statues. There are miles and miles of trails. There are student created huts, hand painted murals, hand painted campers in the camper park, trees of all sorts... It is really nice. Almost everywhere manages the Monterey Bay view because we're on such a steep hill. We have a Village of portables down a hole, in the Quarry. We have an emerald glass tower on Science Hill. We have a squat shingled tower by college 8. (nothing is allowed to break the treeline but there are a lot of 2 and 3 story towers) We have deer, a sustainable Farm, caves, totem poles, and a tiny herd of glossy black cows. The old lime refinery buildings, made of stone, are visible just passed the entry kiosk. We have 2 (that I know of) outdoor stages. Here are a few (18) pictures that are just nice. Not surreal, not distorted, but I love them.

bike shed at Oakes
bikes at College 8
Camper Park Entrance
View from Oakes Field
View from stage at Oakes field
Some interesting pipes at Oakes
Oakes footbridge
Engineering 2
Central Kiosk
Ugliest footbridge; connects Family Student Housing and College 8
View of footpath, footbridge, and bike path converging
Barn Theater

Arboretum Greenhouse
Some building that has chimneys
some building I saw
same building
Porter Construction


Pretty much the worst picture of Kresge ever. It looked good on my tiny camera screen.
Porter

If you are wondering why these are somewhat poor photographs, it is because:
1. I just have a regular person camera, not a DSLRWhoa camera.
2. I have never taken a photography class, read a photography book,* or anything.
3. Sometimes there were trees in the way of where I wanted to stand for a good angle
4. It was the gorgeousest day this year, and the sun was in my eyes.
Here I am trying to hold them open.

*Right when I wrote that I realized as a child I did indeed have a book that came with a film camera, called My First Camera. It used illustrations of anthropomorphic stuffed bears to demonstrate important photographic concepts. I think it was two color printing, red and black. It included tips about where to stand relative to shadows which I have entirely forgotten, tips about how far to stand from your subjects which I have disregarded, and tips about how to point the camera right at what you are photographing and not put your fingers in front of the lens and which have served me well.

Hand Weights

Well, when I was 16-18 I rode my bike constantly, more than twice a day on weekdays. And my bike had the kind of... alignment? Construction materials? that made riding it require a lot of force compared to other bikes. So my legs, as now from hiking and unicycle, were in good condition and my arms were just sad. I bought some 5 lb weights at Ross for around $7. They looked like this:
I used them for several weeks, but very early on I noticed that I had to lift them millions and millions of times and my arms didn't get tired. Except the behind your head lifting thing that makes your..... ughhhh.... language.... well, it is the muscle that gets sore on a trampoline. I should really just find a diagram, but I am taking a tiny studying break*, and so I want to make this a quick post. So it is the muscle bordered by your shoulder, back, and elbow. But for other exercises they were not cutting it. So I went to Big 5 and for $12, or $15 or so, I bought some ghastly, ugly black ten lb weights. Now, those were heavy! (to me.) I actually never got to the point where I was doing exercises with them for millenia without getting tired, so I never upgraded again.

Then I moved, and since Nick really wanted the 10lb weights and also hated the 5lb weights, and since I had a free (well, mandatory part of the undergrad campus fee) gym membership and he had none, I left them home. So I just have 5lb weights, and they are not that fun to use. I prefer the 7lb weights at the school gym. Everyone else uses weights in the 25lb range, even ones who don't look like they are super fit, but I have always been the only girl using weights except once. Looking at it that way, I am not representing very well. Whatever, back to my sad weight story:

The dog got out of her playpen, and chewed a lot of stuff, including the foam covers of my weights. Ashley offered to replace the things, but since I got my weights 3 years ago on a good sale (online they are $25! And I bet shipping is a lot, too.) and they weren't in great condition, just usable condition, I thought that wouldn't be fair. So I peeled off the ruined foam, and the rest of the foam also, and now I have naked weights. They are cold and rough now, but that is pretty standard I think. What is more annoying is that now they weigh like 8.75 lbs.

How does foam even weigh more than a pound? That is amazing. (My scale is about accurate to the gym scale but I am not sure it is spot on for really low weights like 8.75 lbs.) Also, you will note that I now have ~4lb weights, which are probably only produced for children and people overcoming serious, atrophying incidents, like a long term coma or debilitating surgery. Or people whose arms offer a lot of resistance already.

While finding the "before" picture, I noticed there are some really nice weights.
And then I was going to say you can make perfectly good weights from waterbottles full of water or sand, or milk jugs if your arms are too strong, and I found this picture of shoes fashioned from water bottles:
And now I feel like never, ever buying anything, particularly nice weights.

*Oh, man, I was just going to have lunch, but I put on history channel while I was making lunch and then it was the show Mega Disasters and I had to find out how vulnerable NY is to a hurricane, so after I finished eating lunch I painted a grey plesiosaur on the couch, and then I had to make a wet paint sign, and then I found my weights, and oh man I am going to take myself to the Science and Engineering Library because this is absurd.

I am going to McDonalds!

EPL aside, I do not eat fast food very much.
I do not know the reason, except that it tastes bad to me and I am not very good at digesting things. I have been using the blender every day to have breakfast and lunch smoothies and shakes, yay! Actually that is probably why I want to get some french fries- it is really cold here, and I am accustomed to eating solid food. And smoothies, they are cold and liquid. I make really, really good fries, actually, but I would have to buy potatoes and canola oil. (I used up most of our canola oil making mayonnaise, which is absolutely delicious on sandwiches but those, too, are cold.) So. McDonalds. It is fast, and not very expensive.*

But, smoothies! I don't know why I had a hard time drinking them when Dad made them. I think he went really heavy on the protein powder. I do that too, but I buy the kashi vanilla kind which is amazing. I also have a hard time drinking them from Robeks and Jamba Juice, because the flavors are so strong. I want a nice banana and milk and vanilla protein powder smoothie. Or a nice chocolate syrup and rice milk and vanilla protein powder shake. Not some lemony raspberry thing, or something with blueberries. No.

Nate has a used blender from the Bargain Barn. It is so awesome, because the base is green plastic and the pitcher is heavy glass. It has like 10 settings that are not in the order I would put them. (I can't even remember the order, but there is whip, liquefy, blend, puree, and all that. I always put it on the rightmost setting to blend the powder, and then turn it off, put in the syrup, and turn it on the leftmost setting so it doesn't get too blended.) My parents have one that can blend frozen fruit though, and that is nice. Nate's does not blend frozen fruit. I managed to blend a small frozen strawberry but not a large one. (see, you just need 2 strawberries, or even one, to make it strawberry flavor. I am maybe a supertaster.) So, when I move, I am going to look for an awesome blender like Nate's. Actually maybe I can buy Nate's one because he is moving home when he graduates, and I bet his parents have a blender.

*I think fries cost $1 or so, which can certainly be considered cheap, but OTOH you have to consider what a poor quality product it is. I have made french fries at a fast food restaraunt, so I am very clear on this. They arrive pre sliced and frozen, and you take them out of their little plastic one serving baggies (2 baggies for a large fries) and drop them in the old constantly heated oil, and that is all very gross. Oh, man, I am going to freeze to death before I get back from Safeway with canola oil and a bag of potatoes.

I fixed my jacket!

There is a jacket that I have had since sophomore or junior year of highschool, and I have never really liked it. It is a fitted corduroy jacket, and it is a beautiful dusty olive color. It just didn't look very good on. I wore it very rarely for this reason. Last year I took off the puffy gathered pockets and that made it more wearable, but it still had a kind of ugly collar. I found that flipping the collar up looked nice, so I took off the buttons, planning to get a zipper, and then I never got a zipper. I still think a zipper would look good, but instead I gave it little yellow ties made of bamboo silk.
Here are the ties, untied.

Here is one way to wear the ties, which is probably how I will do it, because it takes about 1 minute to tie this way.

I think the ties look a lot better all tied one by one. This takes longer, possibly 3-4 minutes (the bamboo silk is slippery and I have to do square knots so I can get them out.) It is not the tying that I mind so much, as knowing I am 100% stuck in this jacket. It can also be a really cute shrug, but I am laced in already and I don't want to deal with it. To reveal how wimpy I am: bamboo silk kind of hurts my fingers. It is silky, but has no stretch. That is why I have the silk- I bought it for a knitting project and had to stop doing it because of the pain.

Unfortunately I have to go to the library and it is too cold out to wear this jacket alone. It is almost too cold in my room to do without a sweatshirt.