running book list 2010

Before it gets too late in the year to start this, here goes:

1. The Mismeasure of Man (and essays), by Stephen Jay Gould
2. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, by Richard Feynman
3. A House for Mr. Biswas, by V.S. Naipaul
4. A Stillness at Appomattox, by Bruce Catton (second or third time)
5. The Lost Books of the Odyssey, by Zachary Mason
6. Sleep, Memory, by Vladimir Nabokov
7. Applied Nutrition for Mixed Sports, by Lyle McDonald
8. Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, by Haruki Murakami

realization

I have lost the ability talk about some political issues. When someone brings up health care reform, or the Christian right, or the Democrats' most-recent fuckup or chickening-out, or the Supreme Court intellectually-dishonest and hypocritical disaster du jour, I will usually have a pretty solid idea what they're talking about and the impulse to start/join the conversation. That impulse will quickly and decisively be overwhelmed by lightheadedness and a need to sit down and breathe deeply. And talk about something less nauseating, like "Love Actually." (To be clear, I find "Love Actually" nauseating and painful to watch.)

I wonder if it would be different if I didn't hang around the choir so often. There's no argument, just one-upping each other with arguments we all agree on and anecdotes we all find sickening until we're (I'm) hysterical and upset. At this rate I'm either going to mellow out completely, tune out completely, or become a conservative just to keep the conversations joinable. Of those three, I'm sad to say the second is probably the most likely. Sad because that's exactly what the people doing the things that make me upset want. They want me crushed and out of the way. A fourth option would be to find some conservative friends.

need to read

Re-read 1984. "Red Riding" quartet, by David Peace.

books stacked on my floor to be read

1. The Mismeasure of Man, by Stephen Jay Gould
2. A House for Mr. Biswas, by VS Naipaul
3. The Tin Drum, by Gunter Grass
4. Speak, Memory, by Vladimir Nabokov
5. Shadow Country, by Peter Matthiessen

books i need to read now

Okay, new list. I'll keep adding to the previous one, slowly. These are books that need reading (in no particular order; bold indicates priority):

1. Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers
2. The Tin Drum, by Gunter Grass (new translation by Breon Mitchell)
3. The Bin Ladens, by Steve Coll
4. The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll, by Alvaro Mutis
5. Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex, by Alice Dreger
6. Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, by Wells Tower
7. Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
8. Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It, by Maile Meloy
8. The Age of Wonder, by Richard Holmes
9. Appointment in Samarra, by John O'Hara
10. Go Tell It on the Mountain, by James Baldwin
11. Pale Fire, by Vladimir Nabokov
12. Speak, Memory, by Vladimir Nabokov
13. A House for Mr. Biswas, by VS Naipaul
14. Sophie's Choice, by William Styron
15. The Lives of a Cell, by Lewis Thomas
16. The Nature and Destiny of Man, by Reinhold Niebhur
17. The Mismeasure of Man, by Stephen Jay Gould
18. The Autobiography of Malcolm X
19. Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy

That should be a good start.

i am going to try to list all the books i have read this year

Came across something called the 50 books project. Obvious goal was for the participants to read 50 books in 2009. I didn't get close, but here's a list of what I did read. There must be more that I'm forgetting and I'll add as I remember others. In no particular order:

1. The White Man's Burden, by William Easterly
2. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
3. The Death of Ivan Ilych, by Leo Tolstoy
4. The Mantle of the Prophet, by Roy Mottahedeh
5. Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushdie
6. Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee
7. Waiting for the Barbarians, by J.M. Coetzee
8. Slow Man, by J.M. Coetzee
9. 2666, by Roberto Bolano
10. Eichmann in Jerusalem, by Hannah Arendt
11. Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace
12. The Varieties of Scientific Experience, by Carl Sagan
13. Alphabet Juice, by Roy Blount
14. Open, by Andre Agassi
15. Ficciones, by Jorge Luis Borges (in translation)
16. Watchmen, by Alan Moore
17. Athletic Body in Balance, by Gray Cook
18. Athletic Development, by Vern Gambetta
19. Homicide, by David Simon
20. The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson
21. A Tranquil Star, by Primo Levi (again)
22. The Wheel on the School, by Meindert DeJong (again)
23. No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy
24. In the Land of Invented Languages, by Arika Okrent
25. A Spot of Bother, by Mark Haddon
26. A Wanderer in the Perfect City, by Lawrence Weschler
27. As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
28. The Razor's Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham (again)
29. Humboldt's Gift, by Saul Bellow
30. The Little Prince, by Antoine du Saint-Exupery
31. Logicomix, by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou
32. A Fan's Notes, by Frederick Exley

tight words/names/titles

Can't be bothered to go back through all my old posts and find the original list, so I'm just going to recreate and expand. Here will be an ongoing list of words, names and titles that I think are awesome and worth noting.

• D'Brickashaw Ferguson - football player
• Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters - by JD Salinger
• Go Tell it on the Mountain - by James Baldwin
• phenylalanine - amino acid
• Takeo Spikes - football player
• Let the Right One In - movie
• International Church of the Reign of God - church
• United House of Prayer for All People - church
• Wide Sargasso Sea - by John Steinbeck
• Malagasy - a person from Madagascar
• The Curve of Binding Energy - by John McPhee

michigan - ohio state 2009

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.

two things

First: Step Rideau! I was listening to Texas Fred yesterday and I just enjoy so much some of the music he plays. Specifically, the up-beat, party, can't-not-move zydeco. The slower, more ballad-y stuff I don't like at all. But the fun stuff rocks. So after a little research I finally went and got myself a starter album: Don't Ask Why, by Step Rideau and the Zydeco Outlaws. It's an A.

Second: Steven Pinker's review of Gladwell's new book is just spot-on. A particular gem: "In the spirit of Gladwell, who likes to give portentous names to his apercus, I will call this the Igon Value Problem: when a writer's education on a topic consists in interviewing an expert, he is apt to offer generalizations that are banal, obtuse or flat wrong." Money. Bad typo in there, though, a parenthetical remark has no close parenthesis. OOPS.

Because I'll think this is funny to look back on in six months, here's my starting lineup this week for the East Silver Spring Pandas:

QB Philip Rivers
RB Michael Turner
RB Joseph Addai
RB Ricky Williams
WR Braylon Edwards
WR Devery Henderson
TE Kellen Winslow
D/ST SAINTS
K Dan Carpenter

I should win in a walk, but that might just be the three-game win streak talking.

hee hee

hooks

I get a lot of pleasure from finding songs that form the hooks for other songs that I like. Of course, this is not a particularly special or unique trait; lots of people are trying to make a living making new music out of the old to begin with, let alone simply enjoying what others are doing. Anyway, it's fun to hear "Eye Know" and think, "Peg." This is on my mind because I went out last night for my friend Jake's birthday and the DJ at Saint Ex was playing a fun (if not particularly original or adventurous--but hey, it was Saint Ex) mix. And he was doing the real way, with records on a pair of turntables, messing with speed and blending songs into each other. He did the Sinnerman-to-Get-By transition and at another point played the source of the hook for Common's "The Light" and then obviously played "The Light" itself. Hadn't heard that hook before so I asked him what it was. He told me, well, this:

Just for fun, here's "The Light" (beat by one of the greatest ever at making new music from old, J Dilla):


And because I feel like it, here's Sinnerman and Get By, and Peg and Eye Know.



UMG sucks and won't allow embedding, but here's Get By





Hurray for music.

reading update

A few things I've been reading recently:

• Finished The White Man's Burden. Interesting and the guy certainly has good points to make, but in the end way too far off in the Friedman/Gladwell end of the pool. Cutesy, lots of fluff and lots of using anecdotes or clever framing to make things appear the way the author wants. But not so clever that it's comfortable to read and accept.
• Finished "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" and "Happy Ever After" and started "The Cossacks," all by Leo Tolstoy. Happy Ever After was good and such but "TDOII" was just spectacular. Tolstoy really didn't think too much of the bourgeoisie and petty upper class. Devastatingly incisive and observant without being sarcastic. Not that I read Russian, but I think the translation could probably have been a little more elegant. Not sure what to think of "The Cossacks" yet.
• Cool article about caloric restriction and longevity. Intermittent fasting is pretty interesting. Not really interested in it for myself at the moment but there seems to be a lot of anecdotal and experiential evidence that it has benefits all over the place.
• Another awesome article, this one about the potential of synthetic biology, and also somewhat about the issues and pitfalls that people are worried about.

I need a new book.

fantasy football is fun

The end. Time to get back to Staffing Time Allocation for Africa. Yaaayyyy.

pubmed!

Well, I can't believe it's taken me this long but I finally discovered PubMed. Free online journal articles about every medical-related subject imaginable. Wheeee!!!!

Gold mine

30 days

Well, it's been exactly one month since my last post. And I just got back from a week at Emerald Isle with the fam and Bill and the Herschkowitzes and (to a lesser extent than years past) the other house. We had a wonderful time (thanks again, M&D!), relaxing, swimming, playing tennis and scrabble and celebrity (an improvement on simple charades), kayaking, etc. Plus the weather was just killer until yesterday morning when we were packing and it drizzled/rained.

In other news, I finally found the takedown of Paleo lifestyle people that I've been hoping to find since I first came across Conditioning Research and Mark's Daily Apple last year. It's here (an interesting read even if you don't know what I'm talking about): Paleofantasies of the perfect diet. Basically, I've always thought that the Paleo model was, well, not as well-thought-out as its fervent adherents might like. And that's putting it gently. There's something inherently appealing about the idea that if we could only return to our pre-agricultural roots we'd be healthy and strong again. But if you think about it for more than fifteen seconds, you start to find all kinds of holes in the logic.

Also, as I delve more and more into Lyle McDonald (of BodyRecomposition) and his forums (both the nice one on his main site, and the hidden and vastly more entertaining Monkey Island forums (the "mean" forums), I've begun to realize how deeply stupid a lot of the stuff online is, even stuff that on the surface looks legit. CrossFit, Paleo, T-Nation, most products from Eric Cressey, Mike Robertson, Alwyn Cosgrove, or whoever. Garbage, or, even if not garbage, vastly inferior and often much more expensive than whatever it's derived from. I've been reading Lyle's stuff for a few months now and from his style and forums always thought of him as kind of uptight and obsessed with keeping things clean and nice. However, the mean forums are pretty much completely uncensored. Much more awesome (and geeky).

I am a dork.

newspapers and a wedding video

The piece in the New York Review this issue about the rise of blogs and the decline of newspapers is really, really interesting, perhaps the most well-though-out and engaging thing I've read about how things are and they way they're going. Usually these things seem to take polemical form. Newspaper defenders say, "Blogs are parasites on all our hard work," and bloggers (at least the ones I read) go, "The MSM is out of touch and does nothing but defend the status quo," and everyone gets plugs their ears and says, "LALALALALALA," a la Stephen Colbert. Happens in many arenas, I suppose. But Michael Massing doesn't seem to have an axe to grind here, he's just curious about what's up. Very refreshing. Although I have to say, the article was ever so slightly harder to take seriously because of the inclusion of Ross "Douche Hat" Douthat. That nickname is just too funny.

On an unrelated note, awesome wedding video. These people are cool:

hum-te-tum

Finished Midnight's Children a while ago now. I liked it a lot but Booker of Bookers? It wasn't THAT good. Now, I'm about 150 pages into The Mantle of the Prophet and almost done with No Country for Old Men. TMOTP is pretty academic in structure and tone but it's engaging and the subject matter (Iranian and Eastern Islamic history) is so new to me that I'm really enjoying it. The author focuses on individuals as a way to examine the larger history, which, considering the apparently huge volume of interesting characters in Iranian history, was a pretty good choice on his part. NCFOM is pretty much exactly the same as the movie version. I mean exactly. Plot, characterization, tone. If it were a graphic novel the Coen brothers would have just made a frame-for-frame recreation. Entertaining but ultimately not that interesting. One difference: The book does more overt philosophizing (think monologues) than the movie.

In other news, I interviewed for a new job at CHF but don't think I'm going to get it. That's alright, though, it was worth it just to get myself out there in a positive way as a possible candidate for other job openings. And it got me to update my resume and get some more experience interviewing. Both valuable things.

In training news, I hurt my back a little over two weeks ago but it healed in a week. I did some lower-intensity workouts last week and played in my summer league games and with Joose on Sunday and then yesterday got back onto the plan I set up last month. With frisbee 3x/week I think that big gains in the gym will have to wait until the fall. After (hopefully) Regionals in early October. We got the final tournament schedule for Joose and it is as follows:
August 1/2: Summer Daze Disc Harvest in Worton, MD
August 15/16: Summer Glazed Daze in Winston-Salem, NC (won't be at this one because of the beach)
August 29: Horsetown Throwdown in Poolesville, MD (I guess the team came together too late to get a bid to the Chesapeake Open, which is a much bigger tournament)
September 19/20: Sectionals in Upperville, VA
October 3/4: Regionals in Upperville, VA (se espera)

Hurray for frisbee tournaments! Continuing the disjointed and rambling nature of this post, I just opened the 2008 UNDP Human Development Report and haven't even started reading it yet but noticed that at least half the credited staff (some of the names are of indeterminate gender to my ignorant self) and a majority of the leadership of the report are women. Cool.

some new books

I'm almost done with Midnight's Children, so I got to thinking about what I'd like to read next. Then once that ball was rolling it was hard to stop and I came up with this order from Amazon:

• Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran, by Roy Mottahedeh
• Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace - or War, by Mary Anderson
• Refugee Health: An Approach to Emergency Situations, by Medecins Sans Frontieres
• Millions Saved: Proven Successes in Global Health, by Ruth Levine
• The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, by William Easterly

Looking at it now this next bout of reading is awfully subtitle-heavy. Also soul-searchy. I guess I'm trying to figure out a bit more about the big picture of actual aid work. And read Lolita, finally.

walking

Via Maggie Hannapel, whom I have not seen or talked to in a long time, but whose screen name still pops up when I sign into gmail, a quote from Thomas Jefferson:

The object of walking is to relax the mind. You should therefore not permit yourself even to think while you walk; but divert yourself by the objects surrounding you. Walking is the best possible exercise.

The past couple of days have been frustrating exercise-wise. I hurt my back while doing front squats on Monday. The pain isn't as bad today as yesterday, but I'm still uncomfortable and won't be lifting heavy for a while. But that quote from Jefferson reminds me of two things. First, I can still exercise, I must still exercise. It doesn't have to be intense, but the discomfort I feel while twisting or bending doesn't excuse me to just sit around and mope. Second, that there is absolutely no greater joy in life for me than to surrender myself to simple curiosity. I haven't really explored the blocks around my new neighborhood yet. I've been driving through them for one reason or another since I was little but there are one-way side-streets and little circles and alleys that I've never been on. Today will not be a day for testing my limits but rather for getting rid of the limits I've imposed on myself by my rapidly-solidifying routine.

Time for a walk.

gladwell

I am not a fan of Blink or The Tipping Point, to put it mildly. I have ranted plenty about this before. But it's possible that one reason why this guy gets my dander up is that he's obviously a very smart guy (lazy word choice, I know). So why does he choose to squander his gifts writing dreck like Blink? For the money, I guess. His review in this week's New Yorker of a new book called Free, by Chris Anderson, is really, really interesting. Oh well.

more links

Found this website somehow or other (I forget whose blog I started at). Science-Based Medicine is full of articles about, well, the name should be pretty self-explanatory. They seem to be pretty anti-chiropractic/acupuncture/homeopathy. This is interesting to me because I just had acupuncture for the first time on Saturday morning, with mixed results. Jack has positively loved it, Dad was kind of indifferent to it, and I fell somewhere in between. The guy was quite enthusiastic about some of the same things I've become interested in over the past year (i.e. kinesiology and nutrition), but I'm not really sure the acupuncture helped my toe or ankle in a significant way. The toe actually does feel a little better, even today, than it has for quite some time, but the ankle is back to its stiff self. Not to mention the fact that he "missed" with one of the needles in my toe and I don't know what he hit but it HURT like nobody's business. So the rest of the session was not actually particularly relaxing. Even though the other needles felt fine, I was tense before each one he put in my feet.

Also, Mom has been trying to get her office on the blog bandwagon for a long time now, and just made her first post. Go Mom! It's here. Much bloggier than I expected. Plus it's pretty positive-minded instead of being droll and sarcastic, which is un-bloggy but actually refreshing. There are enough masters of snark out there.

micafone testing one two fee, in da pace to be

UPDATE: table now displays correctly. The HTML just looks hideous.

Wassup evybody my name is Tai Mai Shu, and I am going to wapping fo you today just a wi'w fweesty'w. Fus an fomos I like to thanking wody sty'w beyond compayw fo getting my bewt back an hewping me pomotion my skiws. An in retun I wiw teach them how to make on miyon dollus.

Whew, got a little carried away there. What a great song. I wish today was Sunday...

Anyhow, the themes of this post are testing and goals. I started a thread on JP Fitness Forums for my dearest goal of dunking. Because I currently have the vertical jump of a very athletic 12-year old, this will take a quite a lot of hard work on three major things: strength, power and elasticity. And because I've been working haphazardly on these things for several months, to some but not enough success, I'm going to start with a solid month-to-month plan for the final five months of the year.

So here's a table (the stupid piece of crap won't display right, even though it's unbelievably basic...please scroll down) with my current numbers and goal numbers:

	now	goal
height	5'11"	n/a
weight	165#	165#
dead lift	335#	400#
front squat	245#	300#
vertical jump	28"	36"
overhead press	115#	165#
bench press	185#	245#
pull ups	13	20
10-yard dash	1.68s	1.55s
20-yard dash	2.56s	2.4s
40-yard dash	4.69s	4.5s
dot drill	53s	45s

two unrelated and awesome videos

Saw two great videos this morning. The first is about the difference between running in shoes and running barefoot (or in this case, in socks). The girl in the video had no instructions except to run on the treadmill in shoes and then in socks. The difference is just amazing (slap slap slap...it just hurts to watch when I see people run like that) and I can tell you from personal experience that while I find it easy as pie to run on my forefoot when I'm in my Five Fingers, Vivo Barefoots or, well, just barefoot, it's nearly impossible to run that way in sneakers except at a dead sprint. And even then it just feels wrong: my feet are too heavy, I want to slap slap slap. I went to the track with Jack yesterday and ran a bunch of sprints barefoot and it just felt so good. Yet another article about the advantages of being barefoot (not just for running but for everything) are at iamgeekfit. (How did I not know about this website before!?!? I am geek fit, for crying out loud! It's in the links now, along with a couple of other geeky-ass fitness sites.) Anyhow, here's the video:

And now, for something completely different. H/t to my coworker Dan. Here's "Arlington: The Rap."

computer

Well, I finally sucked it up and bought a new computer and printer. You can see it here. I'll get a rebate for the printer so that part will end up being free. I've been getting by fine with Mom's at home, but I don't really want to be constantly borrowing my new roommate's laptop once I move out. Seems like the wrong foot to get started off on.

Speaking of which, I'm planning to meet up with the guy I'm replacing tomorrow night. This will be kind of a packed weekend. Tomorrow my coworker who's going to Fletcher in the fall is having a good-bye happy hour after work. Following that, the above-mentioned meetup with Jonathan (also, by amazing coincidence, going to Fletcher...they even met at orientation there a month or so ago) and Eyal, my roommate-to-be. Friday there's some kind of post-work happy hour, the details of which I forget. Saturday morning Mom and Dad leave for SFO, I have frisbee from noon until sometime in the afternoon, who knows what Jack and I will do Saturday afternoon/night and then we head to Old Rag for a day of hiking on Sunday.

On a different note, it's been one week since I got back from Chile. I haven't really written about that trip at all, I realize. Don't really have it in me to start right now. Another time I will write about it. I wish I'd taken more pictures.

On still another note, I was having a hard time getting into Notes From Underground, so I'm switching to a book that I had a hard time getting into the first two times around, Midnight's Children. Maybe it's just getting to be hot and sticky, but I feel like Dostoevsky is a bit too old-fashioned and not zippy enough for my state of mind at the moment. I can see why people think Dostoevsky is an all-timer, but honestly I've been knee-deep in heavy stuff for a little while and it's time for a break. Rushdie is a bit better but really what I want is some Ellmore Leonard, some Peter Hoeg. Something less thoughtful, vaguely ridiculous...I don't know.

And on that note, I think I'll go to the library and get me some Ellmore Leonard.

eventful

It's been a busy little while since my last post. I finished 2666 on the way to Chile and started reading Eichmann in Jerusalem. I liked 2666 a lot in the end. It's pretty crazy and all over the place and I completely forgot about the third part by the time I'd finished the fifth (and final) part. The fourth part is extremely, almost soporifically repetitive but I somehow never got bogged down in it past the occasional, "Damn it, not this shit again." And the last part was pretty wonderful. In the end the book made a lot of sense, was full of some very beautiful writing (good job, translator whose name I forget). I will not forget the first and final parts, which are books unto themselves (actually, all the parts are), and the middle was good, too. How's that for repetitive?

Anyhow, a book I will most certainly NOT be forgetting any part of is Eichmann in Jerusalem. I would give just about anything for a few minutes of thinking as clear as Hannah Arendt's while she was writing this book. Who knows, maybe she could barely put her shoes on in the morning but when it came to thinking about ethics, justice and law she was operating on a whole different level from the rest of us. One of the most amazing insights she had was that there is a gigantic gap between ordinary murder and genocide not just in scale but also in kind. Eichmann was NOT a murderer. What he did, which was to participate actively and willingly in the attempted eradication of whole groups of people, was far worse than murder.

Murder is a crime against a person or small (relatively) set of people. There are laws on the books just about everywhere that say you can't just go out and kill someone. But genocide is a crime that takes place as a norm. That is, what Eichmann did was follow not only the law in the Reich, he followed the prevailing mores of his time and place. The fact of the killing is incomprehensibly horrible. But what's really, really scary about it is not that the Nazis killed so many people, it's that they managed to create an environment in which killing millions was all in a day's work for ordinary bureaucrats like Adolf Eichmann. A similar rule applies to the more recent genocides in Rwanda and the Balkans. Things weren't as clinically efficient in those places as in Nazi Germany, but there's no doubt that huge groups of people came to believe that killing off another group or groups wholesale was the thing to do. That conversion of murder into an acceptable act doesn't excuse the participants in the least, of course. It just makes their evilness that much more terrifying.

What a chilling and fascinating story and what a writer!

books

Well I'm about 200 pages from the end of 2666 and I'm not really sure what to think yet. It's very big in a lot of different ways, not just because it's 900 pages long, and there's just a huge amount to take in. This is the second very large book I've read in the past few months (along with Infinite Jest) and it's interesting to think about them both in terms of sheer volume. I like it a lot, is all I'll say for now.

The next two books on my list I bought myself last week after hemming and hawing for a while. First is Eichmann in Jerusalem, by Hannah Arendt. Professor Markovits talked a lot about Arendt and the whole fallout from the post-WW2 Nazi trials. Eichmann's trial came way after Nuremberg, but it's still a question of being tried in one country for crimes committed in another. Given present circumstances and the hope that, if our leaders are too weak to prosecute their predecessors for the war crimes that were obviously, unquestionably, committed, then maybe some other country will have the guts to demand extradition like Israel did. Not to say that Donald Rumsfeld is as bad as the Nazis, or even Slobodan Milosevic and Omar El Bashir, but it's a matter of degree. They're all war criminals, but Rummy's just weren't nearly as bad as theirs. Anyhow I can't wait to see what the whole Eichmann thing was about, and why everyone is STILL up in arms about Arendt's book.

The other is Notes from Underground, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I guess he's one of those guys that doesn't need his first name anymore, because I feel a bit silly or self-congratulatory or something putting it there. But I've been meaning for a while to start reading some more classics, and why not start with that? My sense of its context is a lot less developed than my sense of Eichmann, but I can't wait to read it, either.

But they both have to wait until I'm done with the last part of 2666.

this just in: steroids are technology, just like glasses -- UPDATE

H/t to Dad for sending me a link to this article in Salon about why steroids (and, by obvious extension, other performance enhancers) aren't cheating anymore than are wearing contact lenses or using some new training technology.

I feel pretty strongly about my view that taking performance-enhancing drugs is not cheating and have been making the arguments that the author of the above article makes for years. Not to say that they're original to me, obviously; I'm sure I read them somewhere else. But still, it's nice to have some validation from a highfalutin' philosophy professor at Berkeley that my own personal logic regarding this issue holds water.

Preach, Alva Noe. Preach.

UPDATE From an interview with Lyle McDonald, of Body Recomposition, well, not really fame, but whatever.

TTT: What is your opinion about steroids in general?

LM: In general, I think used in reasonable doses intelligently, they are exceedingly safe and provide an enormous amount of benefits under certain situations (such as muscle loss with aging and various wasting diseases). I think used in absurd doses unintelligently, they can cause problems but not nearly the types of problems that the scare-mongering media tends to ascribe to them.

I’d tend to say the same thing about almost any drug you care to name. People always want to blame a drug for something or other but it’s more about how a drug is used than the drug itself that is the issue. Used intelligently, many drugs are completely safe; used unintelligently they are not. Is it the drug or the use that’s at fault.

TTT: What is your opinion on steroids in professional sports?

LM: I think they are a reality of modern day sport and have been for a solid 30-40 years. I think that anybody who thinks we can ever clean up sport and get drugs out of the equation is naïve as hell. Humans are creatures of opportunity and people will always look for an advantage so even if you get 99 out of 100 people to stop using drugs, that 100th will just see it as a chance to get an advantage over the others.

Frankly, I think people should get over it, legalize everything, let the athletes get proper medical advice without having to source drugs from unreliable sources so that they can protect their health. I think that’s better than the current model where most use but have to lie about it. I know the public wants to believe that performances in modern day sport can be accomplished without drugs but, in general, that’s simply not the case.

Any time they have managed to ‘clean up’ a sport (Olympic weightlifting comes to mind), nobody can even get close to the old world records. Drugs simply provide too much of a benefit to performance (and in being able to handle the training loads required at that level) for anyone to come close doing it clean. So either people get used to mediocre, non-world record performances or they accept that drugs are here to stay.

Again, damn right.

vacation, back to work

Well, my vacation was amazing. Hard to know where to start, so I'll just start with the places I went: Barcelona, Montpellier, Nimes, Sete, Palavas, Limoux, unknown village hosting a wine festival. Saw Gabby and Jon, Cori, Sam Falik and Colleen Rozier (!). Met a bunch of cool people that I'll probably never see again. Took a ton of pictures (I'll upload some later).

Now I'm back at work, and it's same-old, same-old, pretty much. That's alright, but I'm reeeally hoping not to be in this job longer than a year. Mind-numbingly easy tasks are getting quite old, as is being at the absolute bottom of the organization. I've basically got to get promoted or go to grad school, I've decided, because otherwise I'm afraid I'll get stuck in an admin-only loop. No one will hire someone without prior development or program experience, of which I have (and can get) very little in my current job. No one, that is, except the organization you already work for. Come on, CHF!

Lots of other things going on: Jack is home; I'm looking to move out again (those two things are unrelated); frisbee is starting up again (Quick Decisions is now Huckin' Around, and I think we're 4-2); workouts are, well, going. On that last item, two addenda: Jack came with me to the gym last Saturday to do a session with Jim so that he could learn the basic lifts. Not sure whether he'll keep coming or not, but I hope he does. Also, I'm going to do a speed workout with Graham (one of the gym's owners) on Thursday so that I can learn what's the matter with my technique -while accelerating, decelerating, cutting and running at top speed- and how to make it better. Looking forward to that.

Okay, back to work. Powers of Attorney are calling my name.

rec ultimate

Had my first game yesterday with Team Eight, a.k.a. Quick Decisions (a name agreed on, appropriately, within a minute of starting to talk about possible team names). The theme for this year is Things I Hated About My Ex. Our opponents were either Whiskey Disks or Not Enough Hucking. They hadn't decided yet. At any rate, we won pretty easily, 15-7 or 15-8. I had forgotten how SLOPPY rec is with lots of newbies on the field. The best player on the other team was just a tall athletic dude that I could cover easily because he had no field sense and made terrible loopy cuts, and threw flicks off his thumb. (What's that throw called? Not a thumber but the one where you hold the disc on your wrist. It's not coming to me.) We have some people who can throw solid flicks and backhands and very athletic girls (especially our captain, Sarah) but I for sure had the best throwing/experience/athleticism combo of anyone on the team. That hasn't happened to me in a long time. It also shows me just how far I have to go. More laying out is needed, to begin with. This will become my mantra. Lay out...lay out...lay out...lay out...lay out...

In other news, I'm leaving for Barcelona on Friday and still don't really know what I'm going to be doing there! Or, more importantly, how and when I'm going to get to Montpellier. Gabby sent some info about the train and bus. I think I'm just going to have to suck it up and buy a train ticket, but maybe I'll wait until I get there to see if I can get a better rate. I know I have to see the Sagrada Familia, the Gaudi park and buildings and the Picasso and Miro museums. More research must be done, although what I'm kind of hoping is that there'll be some cool people in whatever hostel I end up in and we can just kind of go traipsing around for a couple of days. We'll see, I guess. And now that the morning has flown by and it's 12:15, I'm going to get some cheap calories and tally up people's brackets. Cheers.

writing reflection

All of a sudden I write. In short, choppy. Sentences.

What's up with that?

frisbee

Last Saturday I played in the inaugural St. Hatrick's Day (no typo) Tournament down in Occoquan. My team, Kiwi Green (team cheer: "Fuck Australia!"), won the tournament. We led pretty much the whole way in all three of our pool games, but had to come back from a significant deficit to prevail in the championship. It was cool in the morning and cold and rainy in the afternoon (very sad I didn't bring my Under Armour), but a ton of fun. Winning usually is, but the people on my team were great, too. Our best player, John Agan (who plays for Truck Stop), also happened to be a really nice guy. It's always kind of a surprise when someone who's really good also manages not to be a douche. I played okay, but I've got so much improving to do. Hopefully with Spring League starting up soon I can find some people out in Silver Spring who are willing to throw all the freaking time. Or barring that, willing to meet up in DC to throw on the days I'm already going to the gym. My throws are pretty much where they've always been: so-so. I don't make very many turns but my deep throws are uneven and I need to be more confident breaking the mark. The only way to get better at those things is to do them a lot. If I could get three or four people together to just throw, do marking drills, huck drills, pulling... Really I should stop with the wishful thinking and just make it happen.

Not to mention all the speed and quickness I need to make up on a lot of more athletic people. In other words, it was a good reminder of how much I love ultimate, after a pretty long layoff, and why I've been in the gym so much this winter. And also a good reminder of how far I have left to go before I get to be as good as I can be.

(Note to self: lay out more.)

Yoooooo

From Gary Kamiya's piece yesterday about John Yoo's rape of US law:

And yet the wreckage wrought by the Bush administration goes beyond Yoo. The just-released memos remind us of just how radical, secretive and destructive that administration was. Its misdeeds are so grave and far-reaching that they must be thoroughly investigated, and the perpetrators punished. Whether by a truth commission or criminal investigations, the dark history of the last eight years must be told.

So far, President Obama has been reluctant to call for such an investigation, saying he wants to focus on the future, not the past. But he's wrong. This is not about politics. This is about our American laws and values -- about our very identity. It would be easy to turn the page on the Bush administration, or to claim, as Yoo and his defenders try to do, that its sins should be forgiven because of 9/11. But it is precisely in a crisis when a nation shows its true mettle -- or lack thereof. To pretend that the last eight years never happened -- or to continue some of Bush's disastrous legal policies, as Obama shamefully appears to be doing -- would be to betray our nation's ideals, leave the door open to future misdeeds, and ultimately endanger our democracy itself.

We don't need revenge. We need truth.

Damn skippy.

okay, i am a muscle head

Just kidding. But I did set a new PR for my deadlift yesterday, at 315#. That means I've added 40# to my deadlift in three months. I'm still not especially strong, but that's not too bad as far as improvements go. I forgot to do the vertical jump test first, which was very stupid of me. I tried to do it after I'd tried and failed at 325# for the deadlift, but only got a little more than 26 inches. Needless to say, I did NOT feel fresh. Still, that's higher than my initial test in January, which gives me hope that when I do legitimately test the vertical, it will have gone up to about 29 or so. We'll see on Monday, I guess. I'm going to test front squat then, too. I need about 37 to dunk a volleyball or soccer ball (something I can hold easily). I also have no idea what my running vertical is. More like 40 to dunk a ball with two hands. I may never get there, but I think 37 is still possible. Not in the next couple of months, but I'll get there.

The past month and a half I've done two days a week of heavy lifting and one of plyometrics. No crossover (that is, no plyos on lifting days and vice versa). So my strength has gone up but I don't feel like I've gotten a whole lot more explosive. Maybe it'd be better to start doing a heavy lifting day (for deadlifts, probably, plus explosive squats and step-ups), a plyos day, and a combo day with heavy lifts (maybe just front squats and one-leg deadlifts) and plyos. For the upper body, I had been following the 100 pushups and 20 pullups programs, but they were frustrating and I wasn't seeing any improvement, so I think it makes sense to go back to overhead presses, bent rows, and other weighted upper body stuff. The bodyweight gymnastics skills are so awesome (check out Jim Bathurt's page for some of those), but it's too much. My upper body could stand to get stronger, but my real focus has got to be on my legs and hips. Especially because now I've got to start actually playing frisbee again and working on quickness and speed. I'm afraid I've gotten too gym-focused this winter. Oh well, I like the gym.

Mom and Dad have been in TN for the past couple of days, which means I haven't slept much because the dogs demand walking at ungodly hours of the morning. For example, this morning Izzie was pawing at the door at 5:45. Thbphbth. Maybe that had something to do with why I felt kind of out of whack yesterday. There's an interesting distinction. I'd definitely say "out of whack." But I'd never spell "that shit is wack" with the "h." That'd be wrong. I'm reading Alphabet Juice, by Roy Blount, right now. It's really a fun read, even if he sometimes reaches juuuust a tad with trying to claim words sound like what they mean. I'll give him "sinuous," and that lots of languages use the "m" sound for mother-related words. But what about "with?" Even within Western European languages you've got "con," "avec," "mit." Or "copyright?" Or "copy?" I don't know, maybe I'm overstating his case, which wouldn't be fair. Sonicky words are fun, but I don't think they're as prevalent as Mr. Blount seems to believe. Still, he's a good writer and takes such obvious pleasure in words (a characteristic I share with him) that it's a really enjoyable read.

Other recently read or in-the-process books:
1) The Varieties of Scientific Experience, by Carl Sagan. This guy could think with the best of them. Comes as close to articulating where I'd place myself on the God question as anyone I've read.
2) A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn. Speaking truth to power, even when it hurts. Maybe especially when it hurts. Should be required reading for everyone in this damn country.
3) Ficciones, by Jorge Luis Borges. Read this in Spanish, now reading it in English. Understanding some things I'd missed before.
4) Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace. I don't remember if I posted about this book already. Suffice it to say: holy shit.
5) Watchmen, by Alan Moore. Re-read in anticipation of seeing the movie tomorrow night with Jack.
6) Athletic Body in Balance, by Gray Cook. Learning learning learning. I need to take anatomy and physiology.
7) Athletic Development: The Art and Science of Sports Conditioning, by Vern Gambetta. Learning learning learning. I love this stuff.
6) A bunch of other books that aren't coming to mind at the moment.

Anyhow, I'm going to cut myself off for the time being. I was going to write some stuff about my upcoming trip(s), but I realized that I'd just get on a roll and not stop. See above paragraphs. Before I go, let me note the current temperature: 72 freaking degrees.

cabecita de musculos

Well, Vale has now officially warned me not to be a muscle head. This after she thought the protein shakes I was drinking after workouts (incidentally, I've decided to move to chocolate milk: cheaper and evidently just as good in most respects) were steroids! AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! GROSS! For the record, I am NOT a muscle head. What a negative label that is.

However, I do seem to get more interested in training every day. It'll be interesting to see how all this translates to frisbee when that starts up again in earnest. The St. Hatrick's Day tournament in Occoquan on 3/14 ought to be a good indicator. Speaking of which, I need to figure out how I'm getting down there.

Here are some training thoughts that I will now collect in one place:

1) Last night I took the beep test (see here for an explanation). I got 11 rounds and 3 beeps, which translates to a VO2 max (a measure of aerobic capacity) of about 51. That's above average for my age group but not very good. My new goal is to get to 13 rounds and 3 beeps, for a VO2 max of around 58. This will mean more dedication to interval training at least once a week. I found some really appropriate-looking workouts here.

2) I talked with Jean and Fred a little about diet when I saw them this past weekend because apparently Mom and Dad are telling people now that I'm on a health kick. I've reached a point with this interest now where I love talking about it because it's very interesting to me, but I realize that a lot of people aren't really that interested or don't care enough to change their current way of thinking. Take eggs, for example. There's a whole heck of a lot of evidence that eggs are very, very healthy and have little to no effect on the cholesterol levels in your blood. However, most people are stuck thinking that eggs raise your cholesterol. This is at best an exaggeration, but when it comes up, how hard should I push back? Do I tell people that they're flatly wrong? People don't like to hear that, I know I don't. Or going on a low-fat diet. I read somewhere yesterday a brilliant quote: "All diets are high-fat diets." To lose weight, you must consume fewer calories than you burn. This is simple math. The energy deficit - the rest of the fuel that your body needs to function that's now not coming from food - comes almost entirely from the fat that your body has stored. So if your body burns 2500 calories a day and you cut back to 2000 calories a day from food, fully one-fifth of your body's "diet" is from pure animal fat, even before you get to what's in your food! Your body - down to each individual cell - needs fat to survive and be healthy. Plus it tastes awesome. Don't cut it out! But then, when dieting comes up, how should I bring that up? It makes people feel awkward to find out that everything on TV is wrong. Jared might have lost a lot of weight on the Subway diet, but he's still flabby and out of shape. WHY DOESN'T EVERYONE WANT TO BE HEALTHY?!?!?! I don't get it.

3) This week is an unloading week. Next week I will retest the things I tested in December with Jimmy: deadlift, front squat, and vertical jump. Not in that order. My numbers in December were: DL 275#, FS 215#, VJ 25". I'm hoping for 315/245/29. We measured overhead press, too, but I have worked on that approximately twice since; I'm so much more concerned with lower body strength that I've mostly stuck to bodyweight stuff for my upper body (other than DL, obviously). This (the testing next week) makes me nervous. How am I coming along in my goals? Is all this training actually making me stronger and more powerful? It's hard to make this stuff up as I go along. I'm learning a lot but when it comes down to it nothing beats having a coach who knows his or her shit. But that's expensive.

4) It's lunch time.

barca?

Well, it seems I've decided to go to Barcelona. On the one hand, this is great and will be a wonderful trip. On the other hand, a big part of me really does want to go sit on the beach in Colombia or somewhere, really doesn't want to let Vale down. I talked to her today on gchat and I know she is. Let down. This is the first time I've decided to go on a trip for myself with money and vacation time that I've earned, and honestly I miss Cecilia and Rodrigo and Santiago, miss having not met Vale's brother and sisters. I miss Vale and still love her, friend or more. So why am I not going back there? Or at least going to the beach? I don't know. It's a weird feeling.

breakfast

Hello again, blog. My guess is that everyone has stopped reading you because I stopped writing you. That's fine. I'm just going to write some thoughts down.

First thought: I finally ate eggs for the first time a couple of weeks ago, albeit diluted by milk and smothered in cherry tomatoes, spinach, cheddar cheese and bacon. My ideal breakfast now consists of this omelet plus a smoothie made with strawberries, blueberries, a banana, two scoops of plain yogurt, half a scoop of protein powder and a tablespoon or two of flax meal.

Second thought: Barefoot=awesome. The (very nice) shoes I have on at the moment feel cramped and limiting. I finally heard back from the FeelMax people and it looks like it'd be around $130 to get a pair of Pankas (here), including shipping them here from Finland. Also I'm going to check out the Terra Plana store (here, Vivo Barefoot line here) in NYC when I go up this weekend.

Third thought: Nursing? MPH? MPH. Nursing? The fact is, I want to do something helpful without three layers of bureaucracy and 6500 miles between me and whoever it is I'm helping. Nursing sounds like a great way to do that. But I don't think I want to practice nursing forever; what I really want to do at the moment (and this could easily change by next month) is disaster relief and humanitarian response for refugees/IDPs. For that, this program at Hopkins looks effing sweet. I actually got little excited heart flutters looking at this program just now. Innnnteresting...

Fourth thought: I'm going to NYC this weekend! Jenny invited me to come see the Will Ferrell one-man show about Dubya. Hurray! Also, I'm hopefully going to see Alex, Jill and Johanna, Jean and Fred, Anita and Sam. A bit more planned, this weekend than the last time I was there (in September), but should be a lot of fun. Jill and Joho are having a no-pants party on Saturday night, which I will be attending.

Fifth thought: Travel at the end of March? Barcelona, Montpellier? Cartagena? I've got to stop dilly-dallying and decide if I'm going to do this or not.

Sixth thought: People at this [rest removed due to good advice].

also

Dad was right. Pete Seeger for Nobel Peace '09.

back

Well, after quite a long layoff, I've been inspired to return thanks to fantasizing at work about what I'd like Obama to get on TV and say w/r/t the Republicans taking a stand against the stimulus package. Here we go:

"Good evening. Today the US Senate passed a stimulus package very like the one my administration suggested to the Congress several weeks ago, and I signed it into law. Tomorrow we will begin the process of expanding health care to include all American children. We will start to rebuild our roads, bridges and ports along with schools and hospitals. We will cut taxes for the people who are most likely to spend it and stimulate GDP growth.

"In the bill, a sunset date has been firmly fixed on the Bush-era tax cuts that gave so much to so few, and took away so much from so many. At the conclusion of those cuts, the marginal tax rate will be raised to 50% for the richest among us, but kept at the same low rate set in the stimulus package for the vast majority of Americans.

"Every effort at bipartisan outreach was made in the bill, including cutting programs, such as family planning, that I know most Americans support. I met personally with Republican leadership from both houses of Congress and listened to their input with an open mind. The concessions that their colleagues in the House made in order to win some cooperation from the Right were to no avail. Instead, Republicans put their hopes for future electoral success ahead of the aid that we all know is desperately needed. Their actions were the true essence of partisanship: selfish and unpatriotic in the utmost.

"I promise to you tonight that I will continue to extend a hand to all who are willing to cooperate with me in rescuing our country from this dangerous downward spiral. But I will not compromise with anyone whose fist remains closed while they issue shrill and unreasonable demands, demands that have been shown over and over to harm America and Americans. I will not throw this country's future under the bus to appease the most extremely right-wing members of Congress. The partisan warfare of Gingrich, Rove, DeLay, McConnell and Hatch is over, and so is the era of gutless kowtowing on the part of Democrats. Our ability to work together despite differences is what makes this country great, but when a lunatic few manage to hijack the leadership of this country, everyone is harmed. As of January 20th, the leadership is back in the hands of the American people, and of their faithful servants."

Then he whips out a guitar and sings a rousing rendition of "Solidarity Forever."

Not much of a conclusion, and maybe a little redundant. Hopefully the song makes up for that. Maybe the happy little boob-squeezer can polish the rough edges and make it TV-ready.

new york

A weekend trip to New York, free of expectations other than to see friends, is bound to be relaxing no matter how active. I saw three separate friends or friend groups this weekend and had a terrific time with each. Recently, especially, I think, being at home, I've been less patient and more sarcastic, which is frustrating for me and can't be pleasant for Mom, Dad or Lincoln. It's not as much of a problem at work. But this weekend, starting really with yoga on Thursday, I could almost physically feel myself unwind and calm down. I didn't have any plans in New York, only bought my ticket on Thursday afternoon with the hope of seeing a few different groups of friends, and that meant that I was never anxious about anything, or in a rush to get somewhere or worried that I was holding someone up or pissed off that someone was holding me up.

On Saturday I woke up on Anita, Sam and Charlotte's couch in Brooklyn, did some yoga on the floor in their living room, went out for a bagel and coffee with Anita and then walked for hours with her in Brooklyn and then the Lower East Side, first helping her with some errands and then just exploring. It was pure pleasure to be able to mosey along, stopping into interesting-looking stores, stumbling on a park dominated by gorgeous, towering weeping willows and eating a slice of pizza there, before moving on and pausing on the way back to Brooklyn to sit in on a free jazz show in a garden between three tall apartment buildings. The band, it's worth mentioning, played a rendition of "In a Sentimental Mood" that hit me so hard I listened to the Coltrane-Ellington version three times in a row as soon as I got back to Jenna's apartment to pick up my stuff. Seeing her (on Friday night) was also great, I can't believe it had been over two years! And last night, helping Alex move and then going out with some of her friends for dinner and then to a couple of bars for her birthday was really fun. But I think the daytime on Saturday, with Anita, was the best of all just for the, word escaping me, maybe the easiness of it. We did lose our first game, at home, to Utah, which is awful. But we couldn't find anywhere with the game on and I'm glad of that. Even such a painful loss, at the beginning of what will likely be a very painful season, couldn't ruin my good mood. At any rate, these couple of days were just what the doctor ordered. To celebrate, and because I haven't put up any music in a good little while, here are the two songs that capture the weekend for me. The first is "In a Sentimental Mood" and the second is "Slip Slidin' Away," by Paul Simon.

emerald isle, nc

This past week at the beach was just about as good as it could have been. The weather was beautiful, the water was warm, everyone was in (mostly) good spirits, Dad and I JUMPED OUT OF A PLANE, we played mini-golf and cards and Bananagrams and Apples to Apples and watched the Olympics and read and swam and on and on. So relaxing. And tomorrow, back to work. Oh yay.

Also, I skydived.

One more thing: Skydiving provided me with a couple of seconds of absolute clarity. Not really fear, but about as pure a rush of adrenaline and awareness of the present moment as I have ever experienced. Nothing existed except for me, the plane, the wind and the 11,000 feet between me and the ground. And then I jumped. Whew.

from the department of boo-yah

Just check this out: Represent with respect

camp coddling

Interesting piece in the NYT sometime recently about uber-high-end summer camps that coddle kids and (especially) their parents. Even more interesting, a response in the Times' op-ed section (link here). Most interesting of all, the comment below. Still chewing over how much I buy into this, but my gut reaction is that the guy has a good point:

“The sense of entitlement which enables them to navigate adult institutions”? Or do you mean simply the habit of ordering serfs around? Like the rich patients recently mentionned in the Times who refuse treatment and boss their therapist around because they can?
The assumption that these children grow up to be harmless is a dangerous delusion.
After being admitted as legacy ( something inexistent in Canada) and then accepted immediately into business and political circles of power, they reveal themselves as irremediably incompetent in their annointed role of god-ordained manager.( Recent example anyone?)
The U.S. class system, the strictest and least mobile in the developped world is now approaching in its inefficiency that of Britain in the mid-19 th century.
The U.S. is nearing the point where Britain, after the charge of the Light Brigade, realised that hereditary officers were a sure way of losing wars and instituted proofessional training for their officer class.
Fun thing is, until recently, the U.S. was on top of the world because it refused such a way of behaving and bred the best managerial class in the world.

salon

Two interesting articles on Salon this morning, which is way over its average for a given day, not counting the blog posts, which are too numerous to read entirely and often have good stuff just by sheer force of volume. So much writing, some of it's got to be good. Anyhow, these are both full-fledged articles. Good start to your Thursday, Salon. One is by my former professor Juan Cole, about the reasons for Bush's about-face on Iran. The other is by a guy named Kurt Giberson, and it's a cogent, thoughtful and strong, critique of people who would take up science as a new religion. Check 'em out, if you've got a few minutes.

whoa!

Sam Cooke doing "Blowin' in the Wind"

books

The other day, I was trying to come up with a list of books I've read this summer (that is, since graduation) and couldn't quite do it. This irritated me. So, in case I forget later, here they are, in no particular order:

The Razor's Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham (second time)
Darkness Visible, by William Styron
A Tidewater Morning, by William Styron
Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters, by J.D. Salinger
The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, by Atul Gawande
The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
The Stone Raft, by Jose Saramago

Also, I started The Seven Storey Mountain, by Thomas Merton, and All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw, by Theodore Rosengarten, but couldn't get into either. Another time. Waiting in the wings, to be started tomorrow, because I just finished The Namesake, are Portnoy's Complaint, by Philip Roth and Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, by Kenzaburo Oe (there should be a long bar over the "O," but I can't figure out how to do that in Blogger). At the moment, I have wasted a good feeling of exhaustion that had me collapsed on the floor in the front hall with Sherlock, Izzie and similarly-exhausted Dad around nine. Instead, I got wrapped up in The Namesake. It's a lovely book; the word that overwhelms all others when I think about how to describe it is "compassionate." Lahiri treats each of her characters with empathy and respect, even those who exist in the book to be resented or hated by the protagonists, or simply to introduce strife into the plot. This is profoundly different from Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters, say, which is wonderful in its own way but whose peripheral characters are cartoons. None of the other authors I've read the past couple of months have come close to Lahiri's ability to make her characters so lively and intimate. (Gawande, obviously, is in a different category, because he's writing nonfiction. I loved Better almost as much as I loved Complications, but that's another story). I couldn't put the book down tonight, so I read most of it through, and I got that dreadful thrill at the end, when I knew, even as I feared to look to the right, that the facing page contained the last lines of the book. I didn't want it to be over. There's a lot to chew on in there, although Lahiri's themes are pretty basic - foreignness, sex, death, love, identity - and I'll be thinking about it for a long time. It didn't bowl me over the way "The Third and Final Continent" did, and I don't think I'll read it ten or twelve times, as I've done with that story. But still, it was a very good book and I'm glad I finally got around to reading it.

Now I think it's time for bed, sleepy-eyed or not. I was about to start writing tentative promises to write more updates, but I realized that things like that don't goad me into writing and only look silly in retrospect when, three weeks later, I sit down to write here again. Let me just say that I have the intention of writing again soon, with something a little more newsy. For now, good night.

a+

The Dark Knight. Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.

ningún ser humano es ilegal

Haven't written in a while, got shamed into doing so again last night. Won't write much now because I have to go to work, but it's been a crazy month and I should keep in practice with this blog because it helps, sometimes. Not to mention I've been getting chided for not writing enough. In any event, the theme of today's post is: No human being is illegal.

can't sleep

Three-twenty-one in the morning and I'm wide the fuck awake. Damn it.

food for thought

Man, I didn't realize how long it'd been since I last posted. Anyhow, things are good, it's beastly hot-and-humid (there should be different words for the heat here and the heat in, say, Las Vegas; they're completely different things), job is going well, family all seems to be doing very well, etc. etc. The reason I'm writing is because I've been reading a lot recently as I got ready to start working out again (IT band finally okay, joined a gym on Thursday and am ready to get this show on the road) about exercise and training. There's a blog I particularly like (cfrostyrun) about training for ultimate, by an elite-level club player in LA who's got a lot of good things to say about how to train in sports-specific ways, that is, for ultimate and not for cross-country or weight lifting. This morning he linked to a 2001 article by Malcolm Gladwell about steroid use and cheating in sports. Here's how he concluded:

Even as we assert this distinction [between achieving elevated performance through better training vs. through pharmaceuticals] on the playing field, though, we defy it in our own lives. We have come to prefer a world where the distractable take Ritalin, the depressed take Prozac, and the unattractive get cosmetic surgery to a world ruled, arbitrarily, by those fortunate few who were born focussed, happy, and beautiful. Cosmetic surgery is not "earned" beauty, but then natural beauty isn't earned, either. One of the principal contributions of the late twentieth century was the moral deregulation of social competition--the insistence that advantages derived from artificial and extraordinary intervention are no less legitimate than the advantages of nature. All that athletes want, for better or worse, is the chance to play by those same rules.

For a long time, I've been a defender of elite athletes who take PEDs, because those drugs are simply another way in which elite athletes can improve their performance, like Lasik surgery for Tiger Woods or phenomenally expensive coaching and equipment not accessible to the likes of you and me. But there's something wrong with the comparison that Gladwell makes between PEDs and Ritalin, Prozac and plastic surgery. I'm having a hard time articulating exactly what I mean, but here's a shot. Athletes who take PEDs are already freaks of nature, separated from the masses by extraordinary strength, endurance, speed, quickness and obsessive drive. It's not like Ben Johnson was some schlub who took HGH and a bunch of other stuff. He was already above and beyond, and people like him are not competing with normal people, they're competing with each other, in a highly formalized, regulated world. Leaving cosmetic surgery aside, because it's not pharmaceutical and thus the comparison fails right there, Ritalin and Prozac are not for the already-strong. They're designed to make up for perceived deficiencies in the people to whom they're prescribed. People close to me have been on versions of each of those drugs, and many others, with the aim of allowing them to function with some kind of stability in day-to-day life. If you want to get all fundamentalist about it, you could say that in times past those people would just have been weeded out; unable to compete with "normal" people, they'd have died or failed to reproduce. But that seems perverse to me. Big pharma sells us all a bill of goods in a lot of cases. But not always.

This bears more reflection, but at the moment I should check to make sure the dogs haven't devoured the mail. Oh, one more thing before I go. Dad and I went to see "The Fall" last night at Bethesda Row. My advice is: Go see this movie. It was absolutely magnificent. But don't take small children.

a primer

I came across this poem today in this week's New Yorker, and really liked it. Here it is, "A Primer" by Bob Hicok.

I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go
to be in Michigan. The right hand of America
waving from maps or the left
pressing into a clay mold to take home
from kindergarten to Mother. I lived in Michigan
forty-three years. The state bird
is a chained factory gate. The state flower
is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical
though it is merely cold and deep as truth.
A Midwesterner can use the word "truth,"
can sincerely use the word "sincere."
In truth the Midwest is not mid or west.
When I go back to Michigan I drive through Ohio.
There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life
goes corn corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam,
which we're not getting along with
on account of the Towers as I pass.
Then Ohio goes corn corn corn
billboard, goodbye, Islam. You never forget
how to be from Michigan when you're from Michigan.
It's like riding a bike of ice and fly fishing.
The Upper Peninsula is a spare state
in case Michigan goes flat. I live now
in Virginia, which has no backup plan
but is named the same as my mother,
I live in my mother again, which is creepy
but so is what the skin under my chin is doing,
suddenly there's a pouch like marsupials
are needed. The state joy is spring.
"Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball"
is how we might sound were we Egyptian in April,
when February hasn't ended. February
is thirteen months long in Michigan.
We are a people who by February
want to kill the sky for being so gray
and angry at us. "What did we do?"
is the state motto. There's a day in May
when we're all tumblers, gymnastics
is everywhere, and daffodils are asked
by young men to be their wives. When a man elopes
with a daffodil, you know where he's from.
In this way I have given you a primer.
Let us all be from somewhere.
Let us tell each other everything we can.

i got a job!

Today I talked to Lucy, the woman in HR at CHF International, for the thirty billionth time, and the upshot was, they want to hire me! Mom reminded me to make sure I'll be able to take a week off in August to go to the beach, so I need to email Lucy again to ask, but, well, damn! Barely more than a week after graduation, I got a job. Sweet.

i got straight a's!

Well, almost. Only an A- in stupid Ecological Issues. But still, good enough for a 3.92, my highest GPA since I don't know when. And it's enough to bring my cumulative GPA to 3.52. Hurray!

springtime

Beware the lack of segues. Well, I finally finished all my exams and graduation business: got my tickets, cap and gown (colossal rip-off, I might add), poli sci honors rope and medal, confirmed dinner reservations, and got my plane ticket home for April 30. Sectionals were really fun, if a little disappointing in the end, and the weather has been non-stop gorgeous for the past week. Everyone is checking weather.com obsessively for the weekend forecast and hoping beyond hope that it doesn't rain during the ceremony. Even, it turns out, Mary Sue Coleman. I went to Bar Louie for dollar burgers last night with Anita and Jacob and apparently Jacob had run into Mary Sue on the steps of the union and talked to her for about half an hour about a bunch of different things. She sounded like a nice lady. My knee is finally starting to feel good again. I ran about two miles yesterday and jumped rope today and it feels fine. Today I ran to the CCRB and back and jumped rope and lifted a bit for upper body. Still not ready for lower-body stuff. But whatever, it just feels great to be active again after two weeks of rest and ice. I'm pretty out of shape.

Speaking of ice, I'm a complete convert to ice baths now. I took one on Saturday and another on Sunday after two hot days of frisbee, and definitely felt the difference in the morning on the following days, especially in my lower legs and hips. On an unrelated note, my interviews with CHF continued: I talked to Barbara Jones, the director program support, on Monday afternoon and then emailed back and forth with Lucy about coming into the office to meet her and Barbara and at least one of the regional directors for whom I'd be working (if they hired me) on May 2 and 9 in the morning.

Tonight a big group is going to the Tigers game against Texas. Anita got something like 20 people together so we got half-price tickets. It should be pretty fun. I've never been to a Tigers game, and it's been a good while since I went to any baseball game. Mom and Dad get in on Thursday night and then everyone else pours in throughout the day Friday. It's all very exciting but right now I actually feel kind of out of it and scattered. Oh well, maybe a shower will make me feel better. And some Primo Levi. I bought A Tranquil Star on Monday and have been reading the stories one at a time. That's all for now, hopefully I'll be in a better mindset the next time I write something.

finals and interview and sectionals

Well, finals are officially upon us. Some of my friends are already finished! I'm not, by a long shot, although I did just turn in my first paper. Modernity and nationalism in Latin America. Good bye, History 348! I won't miss you for a second! Now, on to the next: Polisci 497. I'm about halfway through my final for that class. It's a take-home affair: Four identifications of things we studied this year (for example, the conference of Catholic bishops at Aparecida in 2007); a 2000-word essay on how changes in religion have influenced political change; and a second essay, also of 2000 words or so, on a topic of our choosing. I've finished the first two parts. For the third, I think I'm going to write about gender issues and religion in Latin America. We read a whole book about gender issues, a lot of which has to do with the role of churches as interest groups, so this shouldn't be too hard. The whole shebang is due on Friday; I'd like to get it done today. Also due on Friday is my final for Polisci 389. Here's the prompt:

Huang argues that the Chinese state thinks of local capitalists as an adversary. That is why it gives preference to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs). (a) Is Huang right? (b) Under what conditions might one envisage the state in China treating local capitalists on the same footing as SOEs and FIEs?

Fun, right? Politics and economic development of Asia has been an awesome class.

In other news, this morning I finally had a job interview in which I felt like I had a chance. I think it went okay, although she seemed disappointed that I have no professional correspondence-writing experience. Also, I wish I'd given a better response to the question, "Why are you interested in international development?" Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom! Talking and thinking about ID gets my motor running, now I want to help DO some! I'm fascinated by every aspect of it! Hopefully I'm just being overly self-critical, but I don't know. Lucy (the interviewer) did say she was going to set up an interview, either by phone or in person after I get home, with the director of administration and program support. She also elaborated a bit on the position, which was helpful. It's apparently pretty fast-paced: a lot of phone time, a lot of writing, a lot of juggling the needs of different people. Not really office administration, more like logistical and technical support for people in the field. It would be such a cool way to learn the nuts and bolts of how an organization like CHF works. She also seemed enthusiastic about my desire to go to grad school in a couple of years, which is good. Guess they don't expect people to have this job for too long at a stretch.

Sectionals is this weekend. Forecast calls for showers and temperatures in the mid-60s, which sounds just peachy to me. Way better than last weekend. However, I jogged through some drills yesterday at practice and my knee is definitely hurting today. Ibuprofen and ice for the rest of the week. I hope it holds up, at least through Saturday! It would be so disappointing to get all the way through the year and spend the last tournament of my college career taking stats and yelling on the sidelines. Being hurt sucks. Either way, I'm going to have to hustle home on Saturday night so I get back in time for the Bobby McFerrin-Chick Corea-Jack DeJohnette show!

Last bit, and then I'm going to grab some lunch before digging into this gender issues paper: At noon on Monday, at the conclusion of my Ecological Issues exam, I will be done with my undergraduate career.

a quick note about "red-baiting"

A piece on Salon today really pissed me off. Apparently, Bill Kristol has been comparing Obama's statement about depressed rural people clinging to guns or intolerance to Marx's statement about religion being the opiate of the masses. Leaving aside the sheer ridiculousness of that comparison, which whoever the Salon writer was did a good job of, I'd like to point out one little detail. THE COLD WAR ENDED TWENTY YEARS AGO! COMMUNISM IS NOT A THREAT! SOCIALISM IS NOT A THREAT! THERE IS NO RED SCARE! GET OVER IT!

religion and politics

To take a break from the papers I'm writing on this subject (two of them, plus some IDs, make up my final exam for Religion and Politics in Latin America), I came across the Critic at Large article in this week's New Yorker about the history of religion and politics in the United States. It's a great article, not much of a book-by-book review (can't really tell whether the books reviewed are worthwhile or not), but a terrific and concise overview of the history of religious freedom in this country. Check it out.

Okay, back to work.

an update

Well, I just wrote a letter to Jack updating him a little on what's been going on in my life this year. It turned out to be a pretty decent blow-by-blow of the things that have been important to me this year outside the family. So, since I haven't written here in a while, I'm just going to post part of it.

Classes have been pretty good, particularly my poli sci ones. I had two really, really great professors last semester, and I'm taking another class with one of them now, about politics and economic development in Asia. Partially because of that class, and partially because of how freaking sick I am of US politics, I've come to be more and more interested in economic development in the rest of the world. It's so complicated and so difficult to do fairly and well, and I think I'd like to join the ranks of people who are trying to make sure that the people "over whom the wave of progress is about to roll" don't get screwed in the process. That'd be a quote from Barrington Moore, Jr., in case you're interested. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. No, I did not have to look it up. As you might be able to tell, I'm still a giant geek.

No real transition to this, but it's important: Having Vale here for a month over winter break and then into January was really wonderful. I love her a lot and even though we're far away from each other now, and even though we broke up, it's still nice to know that I can be in love with someone as great as she is and have her love me back just as much. We still talk every week or ten days, on Skype.

I've gotten more and more serious about ultimate frisbee this year. I love playing for magnUM Reserve (the new, improved Tenacious B), going to tournaments and bonding with the guys on the team, losing and winning and getting dirty and hurt and having fun anyway. And I've finally found the motivation I always needed to get me off my butt and training hard. I love running and lifting and doing plyometrics and throwing and even doing drills. The most important tournament of the year for us, Michigan Sectionals, is coming up next weekend, and I can't wait to see if we can qualify for Great Lakes Regionals. We
don't have a prayer of qualifying for nationals, but that's okay. It'd be great just to make it out of our section. I'll be done with magnUM at the end of the year, obviously, but I'm going to try out for some club teams back in DC. Not elite-level open (men's), because I'm not good enough (yet), but maybe a regionals-level team, or maybe, just maybe, an elite-level mixed (coed) club. That last would be pretty sweet.

Things have gone really well with our apartment. It's big and comfortable and I really like all my roommates. That was pretty much a given with Gabby, but I've gotten to know Jon and Andrew really well over the course of the year, too, and now they're friends that I'll have for a long time. One big influence all my roommates have had on me has been in the music department: I listen to a lot bigger a range than I used to, including some electronic stuff that I probably would have scoffed at before this year. And a lot of afrobeat and soul, that I probably would have loved before this year but had never really heard. I can't wait to listen to some of it with you.

The prospect of all my friends splitting up is one of the hardest things to imagine and stomach about graduating in less than three weeks (!!!!). It's funny how friendships change just based on who you're around; I've spent a lot of time this year with kids I barely knew before, just because they're close by. It'll be interesting to see who I remain closest with after I leave Ann Arbor.

Speaking of leaving, and going back to Silver Spring, one thing that's given me a lot of anxiety this semester is looking for jobs. It's pretty rough trying to get hired, without a master's degree, in the fields that interest me (see above). I've applied at a bunch of places and no dice, but over the past couple of weeks I've started to calm down about that. My boss is going to keep giving me work through May, and I'll be able to look for jobs once I'm back on the street in DC. Might end up just bartending or working at a restaurant for a while, and that's okay. More time for frisbee! And running! Well, after my knee heals up. (I got me some iliotibial band syndrome: runner's knee. It sucks.) And more time for finishing the strange book I've been reading in my (limited) free time. It's called The Third Policeman, and well, let me put it like this: Some of the characters refer to a really hard problem as a "pancake" and believe that over a person's lifetime, that person become more and more like their bicycle, just as that person's bicycle becomes more and more like them, to the point that the person can't stand still without leaning on something, and the bicycle starts to tool around of its own volition.

And, speaking of reading, I'd better get back to mine. I'm doing well in all my classes at the moment, but the home stretch is upon me and work is starting to pile up, including about a bajillion pages on nationalism in Latin America and China's economic boom to do for this week. Woohoo!

There you have it. And now, home to ice the knee and read until I fall asleep. Good night.

mercedes sosa

I came to this song via Echidne of the Snakes. "Gracias a la vida," by Violeta Parra, sung by Mercedes Sosa. It gave me wave upon wave of goosebumps. I hope it gives the same to you.

some things to think about

Hunger precludes me from writing much of a post at the moment, but there are a few articles that I've read in the past couple of weeks that are fascinating, and to which I'd like to link here. The first is from the New York Review of Books: an article by David Bromwich called "Euphemism and American Violence". In a beautifully crafted way, it makes an extremely important about the centrality of language to our tolerance and even acceptance of violence as a country. The second is also from the NYR, and also deals with the importance of words in shaping the way we perceive and think about issues: "The 'Problem of Evil' in Postwar Europe". I might have posted a link to this a couple of weeks ago, but it's so interesting that I thought I'd go to it again.

The third and fourth are not print articles, but clips from Saturday Night Live: Tina Fey's defense of Hillary, from a few weeks ago, and Tracy Morgan's pro-Obama rebuttal from last weekend. Both are freaking great.

The fifth, is an article in the New Yorker by James Surowiecki about the shortcomings of microfinance. I'm not ashamed to say that I've jumped on the microfinance bandwagon a little bit; if one of them would hire me I'd go to work for a microlending firm next month. But Surowiecki's article points out something important and kind of lost on people like me and Natalie Portman, which is that while microloans are undoubtedly helpful to a lot of individuals, they don't do much about systemic poverty. A large proportion of people in developing countries already technically own their own business, but typically they have a staff of one or two or five. In order to solve chronic underemployment, medium-sized businesses, which have staffs beyond the owner and her family, must be encouraged to a greater extent. Not as sexy as personal loans; nothing like Kiva exists for medium-sized businesses yet. But just as if not more important.

The sixth article is from the New York Times: David Berreby's review of Dan Ariely's new book Predictably Irrational. Turning conventional microeconomics on its head, how fun! There are a couple of other articles that I've liked recently, but unfortunately they've been for class and from sources that aren't available for free (tuition covers them, as it damn well should), so I'll refrain. Plus, six is enough for the time being.

It's time for lunch now. I've been ruminating about some things, and plan to post on them in the next couple of days. Maybe if I say that it'll actually come true.

immigration cartoon

I really liked this one. Brings the point home pretty hard, doesn't it? (h/t Slate)

tournament cancelled

This could not have been more last minute, but Boogie Nights, at Miami of Ohio, got cancelled just now because they're going to get a foot of snow down there. I knew about the snow and thought it was a bit odd that the thing was still on; we've played and practiced in snow before but never more than 3 or 4 inches. Well, that opens up my weekend a lot but it sucks that we won't get to play. There'll be practice tomorrow and Sunday instead. And there's a tourney next weekend at Bowling Green.

So now, instead of rushing around trying to get my errands done (paying dues for Pi Sigma Alpha so I can get my special Poli Sci honors tassel at graduation, turning in my time sheet, buying a book that I need to finish reading by next week) before yet another 4-hour slog down to southern Ohio, I can relax a bit, and get some work done. Good news. Hope you all enjoyed Sharon Jones the other day; I'm really enjoying her stuff with the Dap-Kings. What a crazy story, too: She sang with James Brown and Lee Fields back in the day but never got signed to a record deal, so she worked as a corrections officer for years, only a few years ago did she start to come back. Now she's got three albums with the Dap-Kings and, at 51, is kicking it (literally--check her out on YouTube) all over the world. If they weren't in Australia and New Zealand for the foreseeable future, I'd be making plans to see them ASAP. Okay, time to go eat some lunch and then work a bit.

A final bonus for the tournament's cancellation: The girls across the street are having a "Whiskey and Whiskers" party tonight. I'm not a big whiskey fan, but I've got the whiskers part down; it would have been sad to miss it but now I can go! Maybe this tournament got cancelled at just the right time.

song of the week

I realize I'm a little behind the curve on this Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings business, but I finally got one of their albums, "Naturally," last night, and it absolutely kicks ass. This is my personal favorite, "How Long Do I Have to Wait for You?" So so so good. And now, the moment of truth on my Enviro exam.

a hopeful note

Spring Break was wonderful; I couldn't have imagined it going any better. I'm not going to get into any specifics now because that would take too long and I have to go get some lunch or my stomach is going to eat itself. However, I just read a piece in Salon about the candidates' brands. It's a bit fluffy at the beginning (okay, a lot fluffy), but it ends with a really good point: The president is our most important citizen when it comes to how we're seen abroad. His or her image is extremely important in the way we're perceived by people around the world, and really only one candidate in this election fits the bill as someone who can revive our image. I don't much like Obama or Hillary, but you gotta admit, Barack's got the kind of image that we badly, badly need to project and Hillary just doesn't. McCain, it goes without saying, doesn't either. Here's how the article concludes.

"In Germany, they're fascinated with him, they call him 'Der schwarze Kennedy,' the 'black Kennedy,'" says Dick Martin. "They feel he has the same aura about him." In fact, just a few weeks ago, Germany's leading newsmagazine Der Spiegel ran a cover feature on Obama, illustrated by a paired set of images -- Barack on the left, JFK on the right -- and asking whether America will "finally have the chance to be loved again." The issue's cover line raised the stakes to a new level: It read, simply, "The Messiah Factor."

That's because, in Europe, and in Asia, Latin America and Africa as well, the perception is that an Obama presidency represents the potential for catharsis after nearly a decade of frustration with the U.S. "Our brand has been hammered recently, but beneath the anger, there's this underlying hope among people around the world that we can do better," says Patricia Martin. "And we can. We reinvent ourselves. It's what we're known for: We've had more comebacks than Frank Sinatra. I think that's why you have people in every country eating up every little turn in this election's story. This election, the whole world is watching."

Boy do I want to believe that.

very sad

Tonight, this is how I feel. Vale and I just had a really hard conversation about what we're doing and where we're going and I just miss her a whole lot. We decided to try and be "just friends," but the idea of giving up hope of seeing her again for a long time really hurts. I'm glad I found a little corner of the fishbowl because I really don't like the prospect of a bunch of strangers watching me cry to myself. I was going to do more work but I think I'll just go home instead. Do check out that link, though. Good night.

my concession to valentine's day

thumbs up!

This morning I got an email from Terry Provance, of Oikocredit, saying he'd like to interview me for the job opening there! He suggested that we talk by phone next week and then hopefully in person when I'm back in DC over spring break. Hurray! I mean, nothing's settled yet, but that job looks really cool. Plus I just figured out that Terry Provance is a UCC minister, which is what Dad's going for right now. Cool! The place is maybe a little more ecumenical than I first thought (well, okay, a lot more), but that's okay. It's based in the Netherlands and has branch offices in Costa Rica, Peru and Uruguay, not to mention Germany, several places in Africa, and India and the Philippines. So it's a widespread organization, although the US office appears to be, well, Mr. Provance's house.

On an unrelated note, the teaser for this opinion piece by Condi Rice and Robert Gates in the Post today is "On Iraq, Trust Us." Are they freaking kidding? Those fucking people have SO abused my trust that they will never, ever be able to earn it back and I will assume that they are either lying, wrong, just trying to cover their own asses, or a combination of the three, for the rest of time. I'd be laughing right now if I wasn't so disgusted. Okay, class time.