two new sites

A new blog, Science and Politics, and a new website, Public Library of Science. The former is a guy in Chapel Hill, Bora Zivkovic, who writes about puppy dogs and ice cream. I mean, science and politics. He's got a couple of other blogs, too, but that one seemed like the most interesting at the moment. He just interviewed John Edwards, whose office is in Chapel Hill (the whole damn world is against me, I hate Chapel Hill...sorry, Dad), about his positions on various science related topics. The interview is here if anyone wants to read it. The latter is the organization that Zivkovic works for, an open-access science research library, mostly consisting of peer-reviewed journals broken down by discipline (genetics, pathogens, computational biology, etc.). Mom, I'm not sure if you've heard of PloS, but if not it seems like it'd be right up your alley. Pretty cool stuff.

new blog: the last plantation

The Last Plantation, commentary about racism in the US right now. Really thoughtful, well-written stuff. Check it out. Also, in case you didn't notice, I alphabetized the links list. Thank you, blogger. And now, I've got about 6.5 pages of my final done and need to start extending that. Here goes.

visibility was 50 feet

Before anything else, I found a new really kickass blog that won the Koufax Award last year for basically "blog that should get more love." It's called Echidne of the Snakes. It's written by a self-styled "recovering economist" named J. Goodrich; formally a feminist-only blog, now merely feminism-focused but also full of links and interesting commentary about all kinds of modern social and political issues (she recently wrote a piece for The American Prospect. Also I'm finally adding Salon's "Broadsheet" after having read it for about a month now without comment here. It's kind of a feminist review; lots of summaries/commentaries about feminist issues as they come along, but it's full of links to more detailed blogs and it's a good way to keep aware of the countless and continuously evolving ways we still put women down as a society. Also the writers are good. I slipped a link to The American Prospect in there in case you didn't notice. That's going with the links, too.

Today's video is "Natty Dread" by Bob Marley and the Wailers, which has long been one of my favorite Marley songs.


To switch gears completely: Cori left for Bolivia last night, but spent the night before at Vale's and then today, after taking it verrry easy in the morning/early afternoon we took a walk ISO some presents for various people. Cori bought some stuff in Bellavista and then we got hungry and each ate an entire pizza at Amadeus (she had cheese, I had cheese with roquefort and salame). Then we headed up to El Mundo del Vino, where she bought cardboard boxes with wine in them for the various families she'll be staying with in Bolivia. It was great to pass the day with her, we had a good and very relaxing time. She got stressed about buying presents but not too much and the rest of the time was just beautiful day, nice walk, good pizza. Also I had a beer with lunch called Erdinger that I really liked. And it came with cacho de cabra, which is a kind of spicy dried pepper flakes! Strange but, well, mmmmmmm...

We said goodbye at around 6 so last night Vale and I were left to our own devices. Vale wanted to take a walk, so out we went. A short walk turned into a medium-long walk as we wound through streets over by Bellas Artes and Parque Forestal, past buildings I'd never seen or noticed before. It was a pretty night, if a little chilly. We ended up at a little bar called Navetierra, where we got a couple of really good pisco sours and some camembert with crackers and soaked in the ambience (very artsy/political with a slightly overwhelming dash of second-hand smoke). The conversations about me leaving are getting harder; we both know it's inevitable but neither of us wants to separate. And as the time draws closer we both get a little sadder. But we can't really do anything but try not to be sad and to enjoy the time we have left together.

Emily B gets in tomorrow from Sao Paolo around 1, which will be fun. But it means that I've gotta finish this blankety-blank Armed Conflict final today, pretty much. So off I go to do that. Citizens as targets in internal conflicts and the friction between the principle of imparciality/neutrality and needing to do the utmost to protect victims. Cheerful stuff.

some brief friday notes

My two desert-island albums, I have realized conclusively (by "conclusively" I mean "because they have remained an unchanged pair for several years") are London Calling by the Clash and, of course, as anyone who knows me knows, the greatest album of all time, Graceland, by Paul Simon. The one a furious, musically and lyrically brilliant assault against the establishment and the other the product of a songwriter grappling beautifully with the onset of middle age and a painful divorce. The first, of course, is Graceland, the second, London Calling. Just kidding.

The rain in Santiago is paradoxical and cruel, I think whatever god reigns over Santiago weather has Bush's Iraq planners advising on winter weather patterns. A cap of cold air traps smog in Santiago (our presence in Iraq, which provokes massive violence there), rain comes in every once in a while to briefly clean things up ("surges"), but that same rain makes the air colder, meaning more air gets trapped (surges repress violence for a couple of days and then people just get more pissed and more violent). Then again, if it didn't rain, the smog would keep getting worse with no relief. And here I see the problem in my metaphor: The surges don't actually provide any relief at all except to the demented, divorced-from-reality people in charge. The rain does. Also the rain dramatically improves the view: The Andes are gorgeous again. So, an imperfect metaphor. Still, the vicious-cycle parallels are interesting.

One thing that comes up a lot when meeting and talking to Chileans, especially those of the university variety, is about the domestic problems of the US. Here the greatest social problems are income equality and, more specifically but just as embarrassingly, centuries of abuse, repression and neglect of Chile's substantial Mapuche minority. The correlating deep, embarrassing and infuriating social problem in the US, I would (and do, frequently) argue, is racism. Recently I've started reading more about the immigration debate going on at home, and it's obvious to pretty much anyone with an ounce of sense that the underlying conflict is fear and hatred of "brown people." The xenophobia of everyone from Lou Dobbs to the "Minutemen" of Texas and Arizona to some of the residents of Hazletown, PA (h/t Orcinus, post "Hatin' on Immigrants") makes me shake with anger. I want to get on a roll here, but because I really should be working on my Electoral Systems final, I'm going to come full circle and end with the Clash's take on anger in "The Clampdown":

Let fury have the hour, anger can be power
Do you know that you can use it?

Amen.

P.S. A new blog is going up in the links: ImmigrationProf Blog, which is written by a trio of law professors at UC Davis. Represent.

P.P.S. ¡NINGÚN SER HUMANO ES ILEGAL!