It's Fixin Time

So, three days in DC at the NCSE did not leave me feeling all doom and gloom. I mean, it goes to reason that days and days of "hockey stick" graphs would leave you in a serious funk. A hockey stick graph is, if you haven't heard this clever lingo, is like the one below that shows global temperature cruising along steadily for hundreds or even thousands of years and then BANG shooting up over the last 200 or so. (The particular one I've shown via a paper by Micheal Mann, et al).

But I didn't leave feeling horrifically depressed.

And, yeah, I saw a hell of a lot of "yikes" figures. Like pictures of the appalling record arctic ice melt. Or stats like unchecked we could see 50% of the species on this planet become extinct. But as much as my feeling on climate change is now even more that we are at an incredibly crucial tipping point, I'm also full of hope. Because public opinion is changing incredibly rapidly on this issue. Because even though it will be incredibly hard work, we can have the strength. Because so many climate change solutions are win-win for our country and our economy.

I'd like everyone to gear up with me for Focus the Nation. Make a plan for 8PM on Jan 30 to watch the 2% solution. I'll add more on this later, but first I do want to say that it gives me hope that it's my generation who is tasked with this effort. I know that we are oft-maligned as the "me generation" or whathave you, but this is the generation that I know. And I trust my fellows to be the ones to rewire this nation and every city on the planet. Because I know us better than I could know any other generation, I do believe that we will fight free of the fossil fuel economy and work out a new food system.

Martin Luther King Day, for which I'm sad to say the SLAC did not release me from its clutches, is a day for hoping high and believing the the world we ought to have. It is a day for acknowledging the immense complexity of that which blights the ways we treat one another and because it is often so similar, the way we treat or environments.

The Schmooze

So, it turns out that meetings of this variety have substantial schmooze component!

Ok, I knew that, but somehow I imagine climate scientists and policy folks as largely unable to schmooze in the tradition of the socially capable non-nerds. Anyway, not only do these people schmooze, but they schmooze with delish wine, organic beer, organic vegetarian pizza, pumpkin ravioli etc, etc, etc! They do it while balancing these things in their hands and managing to shake each others. It's highly impressive. I suppose in an effort to initiate the young'ns, they organized a "social outing" for students and young professionals last night. It was, uh, dear. Some person from the NCSE escorted us to a pub and there we ate and mingled. It sort of smacked of a "children's" program, but I guess was nice.

Anyway, my lovely compatriots are more hardcore schmoozers than I expected. By which I mean to say that I'm exhausted. A true recap, I promise, for tomorrow.

Singing to the Scientists

Today was a whirlwind of climate scientist, policy geniuses and generally just loads of people who are out of my league.

But I just first want to tell you about one person. Right in the middle of a bunch of gray-haired white dudes giving wild climate change lectures, they had one presentation from a Caribou woman.

She talked about the history of her people and their beliefs. Their conviction that the creator gave them their little piece of Alaskan arctic to protect. She talked about sliding down snowy hills in a caribou skin snowsuit. And then she sang.

For about three seconds I watched the too-serious about some kinds of things audience not take her seriously. There were half smiles and averted eyes all over the place. But when she finished her prayer song for us the applause was more enthusiastic than for any lecture. Then she told us about the here and now first hand effects of climate change that her people are already feeling in incredibly tangible and painful ways.

My colleague, a librarian, turned to me afterwards and said, "you know, in five years, she's the one that I'll remember."

Going All Over the Country To Fight Global Warming

I'm fighting global warming again! Sort of. Actually, I'm at the annual conference of the National Committee on Science and the Environment (which could use a better website). In Washington DC. Me and a couple of gray-haired rockin women are representing the SLAC.

Since it's DC, the pub we had dinner in was blasting the Democratic debate in Nevada tonight. The candidates looked... tired. Really just that more than anything else. They just stumbled a lot more than I'm used to. Especially Obama. I think I've come to expect him to be calm and articulate all of the time. And man, Clinton needs a nap. And Edwards just looks bummed that he already lost this one. Again.

Also, I'm extremely jealous of Alison who is at Macworld. I want I want! Oops, I mean consumerism is BAD.

BMIzz No More!

CELEBRATION! I have finished, finally, after months and months, the counting and tabulating of the BMIzz! If history is any indication of the future, it will only be about another three weeks before I stop seeing little creepy-crawlies every time I close my eyes. What an amazing improvement to my quality of life.

IN OTHER NEWS: It turns out to be an extremely bad idea to clean your keyboard with acetone. I was tidying in my chemistry lab today and spotted the charming red-topped acetone bottle. It reminded me that I have intended, ever since I started this job, to remove the grime on my office keyboard left by my predessor. Well, erm, under the grime there is apparently an acetone-soluble coating. Oops. I removed a large amount of that coating from several keys and actually smeared some of the characters. On the upside, the grime is now gone. My space bar seems to have suffered some drippage. It doesn't space quite like it did ten minutes ago.

D'you know?

My mom is going to love the movie Juno. Lion just took me to it as a surprise (as in I was forced to cover my eyes until we were actually inside the theater so I didn't even know what we were seeing). It totally rocked. Well, it mostly rocked. My mom is going to love it, I believe in part because she is a frequent deliverer of teen mom babies. Or at least it felt that way when I was in high school. I'm positive that she called me up to inform me (in a stern tone) of the types of unwanted struggles faced by the accidental mother every single time a pregnant teenager came within 1000 feet of her. This, and the relentless encouragement of birth control use, led her to the fear that such well hammered-in advice may have turned me gay. She swears it was a passing fear.

In any case, as attendee to the health and humor many a predicament laden high schooler, I'm positive she would love it. Plus it's set in Minnesota--though filmed way too much in Vancouver. Ellen Page is snappy and hilarious and fab. Imdb tells me that Kate Winslet is her favorite actress, a fact that I approve of completely. I hope this means she's going to make period movies that I can obsess over with my dad. And, on top of that, she's apparently making a lesbian werewolf move. Or at least there are "metaphorical" werewolves. Allison Janney totally rocks my party in this movie, as ever. And it's a non-tragic story about teenage pregnancy.

Here's what sucks: the women's health clinic is junky and they really really don't deal with abortion as an issue. It felt to me like they had decided to make this movie about an indie kind of girl who finds adoptive parents for her child, but didn't ever decide exactly why she was having the child in the first place. The make it sound both vaguely altruistic (she suggests she'll give it to "a couple of lesbos") and as though she's personifying her fetus (freaking out about its fingernails). Anyway, they really gloss over it. It's not horrible, but it's there. And the clinic scenario really reinforces the concept that women's health clinics are primarily abortion providers and that they aren't places that care thoughtfully for their patients. I think it's a pretty dangerous stereotype to reinforce in the current political climate is all.

Anyway, that pesky issue aside, it is a great movie as a movie, and does provide a pretty refreshing view of the teen pregnancy idea. It also does a pretty good job of staying away from calling Page a slut. Or, at least it makes you mad at the idea that other kids in school are probably calling her a skank. And it gets mad props for making fun of the term "sexually active." Also it made Lion and I cry. And want babies in that weird stereotypical lesbian way.

The Gay=Philosophy part II

And now, while I wait for some my stream monitoring probe readings to stabilize during calibration, I'll continue on last night's ill conceived metaphor.

Ok, my point about philosophy was not really a point. Plenty of philosophy majors don't become philosopers. They go to law school. Or so I hear. But this guy's mom's conception of philosophy that it was a self-contained field. Without the assumption that it was inherently worthwhile, in her view, it wouldn't exist.

This is true of the idea that being gay just ain't OK. I'm pretty sure that there isn't an argument for why one should not be the gay (or why society shouldn't recognize the gay as a-OK) that doesn't boil down to a fundamental assumption that it's just wrong.

Take the big one:
It's bad for kids to have gay parents. Well, no, that's not what the social scientists say.
And then there was this woman, who made the point pretty well at some fundy-type "family" conference.
And pretty much the rest of the parental-type "it makes your life harder" type arguments wouldn't exist if not for the fundamental homosexual menace assumption.

I guess this is pretty obvious to yee small crowd of GW readers. But I do keep coming back to it.

The thing that makes me the most frustrated in talking about controversial issues (particularly queer issues and choice), is that people on different sides really forget that their co-arguers are also people. People forget that we all have common ground. Most of those arguments consist of this scary smoke-and-mirrors game where people skirt around their disagreement and never make it to the base assumptions that divide them. The blogosphere and internet in general seems to make this so much worse. People score these cheap, anonymous shots. They act inhuman and so easily treat others as inhuman.

If you know me, maybe you can tell that I've been reading the online message boards in the letters to the editor section of our regional paper again.

The Gay=Philosophy

Senior year of high school, my friend Lee, who was headed to the hallowed halls of Yale the next year, announced that he was going to be a philosophy major. We were out to dinner with another friend's mother. I shrugged at the idea, philosophy to me suggested little more than old, dead Greek dudes. Our other friend's mom, however, had a very clear concept of philosophy. "A PHILOSOPHY major at YALE!?" she cried, shaking her head, "what a waste." An awkward silenced was followed by some strange grunts on her part and than an explanation of how philosophy, like so many academic pursuits, was just useless.

"You know, she explained, you'll learn all this stuff [about old, dead, Greek dudes] and then go to graduate school and learn more and than just teach other people about it. Philosophy is only good for itself."

Which, of course, is not true. But Philosophy, as a discipline, is dependent, I think on the assumption that it is useful or valuable in some way.

Next, I will explain why I remembered this today and it struck me that the assumption that homosexuality is an evil menace functions in a similar kind of way.

Saved By Word Games

After usurping my buddy Turtle's TV for the Iowa caucus, and the state it put me into, I was definitely not suffering through that much Wolf Blitzer again. (Wolf Blitzer? I know, I know, the funny of his name was beat to death in 1991, but I'm not over it). My not watching of tonight's NH primaries got a little help-along by the fact that Tuesday is stone soup night at our house, the brainchild of my darlin' (who is also known as Lion, in some circles). Our family of friends comes on over (or we head to one of them sometimes), everyone armed with potential soup ingredients. The results have been, uh, varied since this tradition came into being, but overwhelmingly edible. Tonight brought us vegetable soup with beans. It was pronounced bland, but like pretty much everything, a little bit of added cheesed dressed it up nicely.

Hm, veggie-bean-cheese soup sounds kind of weird, I think.

Weird or not, soup and friends took my mind off of the primary. And there is little in my mind that feels more like contentment than the steamy air of a soup-in-progress kitchen.

I only thought to look at the results a few minutes ago. And so it looks like McCain and Clinton in this round. Ooh, I like very much that it's an across the board different result from that in Iowa. Now I guess it's ten more rounds of crazy campaigning before South Carolina and it looks like Obama and Clinton are neck in neck! It's like watching a rugby match.

And just for kicks- to bring it back to, uh, this blogs loosely connected themes, Healthline has a little sum-up of Obama's universal health coverage plan. It's interesting. And complicated. I'm definitely all for a single-payer system, myself. Simple! That means cheap! If you don't know how that stuff works, go watch the animation that Graham at Over My Med Body put together.

Whew

Well, this is really silly but I've made it to my goal of five med school interview invites.

The number five is not based on anything reasonable, like I read somewhere that five was a good number to do. It's just the number that the med student I met at a wedding in October had had. Seemed like a good number. Though it's a strange thing to have a goal about since it's not as if I really had any control. I'm more amused at this one than completely thrilled as I was with the others, I mean, I already got in. But I'm one for keeping my options open, so I'll head on up to MA again to see what they've got.

Old People! Hooray!

Well, I missed yesterday. Alas. I did, and I think this counts, considering posting on what I'm about to post on, but there were major distractions in trying to finish my darling's xmas etc. present before she got back from an extended stay with her parents in North Carolina. And then there was the distraction of her being home.

Yesterday something pretty amazing happened in my life. My mother, actually, did something amazing.

In the spirit of "It takes a village" my brother and I were raised by a bevy of folks outside my parents. Among them are Ethel and Lorraine. And they are as old and interesting as their names make them sound. They were our day care, our baby sitters, our nannies. It's been years, of course, since they carted us to piano lessons, but I see them when I'm home. I stop by as you would with any grandparent. And until yesterday I hadn't managed to come out to either of them. There are some excuses. I live on the other side of the country. They're old. And then there were those sideways whispers from intermediaries that "They won't understand." An 83-year-old, old-fashioned, mid-western farm girl is not going to get on board with your crazy lesbo thing, I mean, she calls "lunch," "dinner" for pete's sake!

But them, my mama wanted to do something as yet unprecedented in our family. She wanted to give my darling a cameo in the annual february letter. (This is like a holiday letter for procrastinators). And of course, no one displays the grainy inkjet photos and winter cheer than Ethel and Lorraine. Just like that, it was time. Mom asked how I wanted to tell them, and I could feel that old fear of rejection lump bubble up out of my stomach. And that's when the first bit of amazing-ness happened. My mama stepped in just like you imagine a parent can and took the burden right off my shoulders. She suggested that she do it for me.

Really, it couldn't have been any other way. I'm not about to fly to Minnesota in the next couple of weeks just to go, "poof, I'm gay!" and the advent of hearing aids hasn't actually made it possible to have a conversation that consists of more than "Yes, we're coming by in ten minutes," with them. But I thought I might have to ask her to do it, and then coach her. It turns out that she's one of those cool moms who's gotten all hip to your world.

I'm glad that I trusted her because yesterday brought news of the go around with Lorraine. And you know, just like pretty much every coming-out I've been through, I should have trusted her. She wiped my snot as a kid and went to my soccer games and drilled good manners into me. Who knows you better than the people who know about the naughty things you did as a child? My 83-year old, old fashioned, mid-western farm girl of a nanny is a-ok with me being gay. And was, as reported by my mother, was quite dismissive of my worry that she'd be anything but. Mom showed her a picture of me with my darling, whom Lorraine pronounced to be "pretty." Hey, it's 2007, she might be old but it turns out that she already knows some kid-raising lesbian moms. Anyway, lesson learned.

Things I don't know how to fix

I was interested, though not shocked to read about this recent study published in JAMA which found that Blacks and Latinos are much less likely to be prescribed heavy pain meds in the ER. This is no slouch sample, either, they looked at 150,000 visits and found that only 23 percent of blacks and 24 percent of Latinos received opioids compared to 31 percent of whites.

Ok, not shocked, I'll repeat, but totally appalled. This is what sucks about modern racism. It's not your local neo-nazi making a scene, it's everyone either subconsciously or quietly treating people differently based on race. No, wait, that's making it nice, it's not treating people differently, it's treating people of color worse. The discrepancies found by this study are huge even for complaints such as kidney stones and long bone fractures.

Now, I understand that most ERs contend with a certain amount of drug seeking behavior in patients and that it's something to be wary of. I can only assume that there's a Doctor race auto-pilot that says Black=drugs. Here's the kicker: Blacks are actually the least likely group to suffer from opiate addiction.

All the while I'm reading about this and making this post, in some other tab an episode of House, MD is playing. And he makes asinine racist jokes all the time. The jokes seem to carry the assumption that he's a stand in for society when he makes them. But hell, half the show's success rests on the dark humor of House being a jerk to people. What's the impact of what he says on the viewing public? When House jokes about race, is he reinforcing stereotypes and helping us bright-eyed doctor hopefuls (who can still watch these shows only because we don't know a dern thing about doctoring yet, I'm told) become people who will only continue the problem? Or is it so deep down already that maybe he can bring it to the surface? Maybe, but I'm guessing that reports out of JAMA might do a better job of that. On the other hand, despite the numerous medical blogs I read, I picked this story up first while glancing through the news and the only blog I saw mention it was Pam's House Blend. Not exactly a medical blog, so who's paying attention?

So, I'm gonna be a doctor

It's true, dear reader, I have been accepted to medical school. The secretary, who made it feel as though she was one of my friends' moms by the end of my interview day, gave me a call last week as I was heading to my Grum's house for the holidays. Just like that, one day I was obsessively checking my email in hope of some kind of sign and the next it was decided, written. Needless to say I made quite a scene as soon as we hung up. I had pulled into a crowded gas station parking lot to take the call, so at least twenty pairs of confused eyes took in my party-of-one in the drivers seat as I whooped and banged on my Subaru's ceiling. I almost want to get a tattoo in celebration.

Apologies for not sharing the news sooner, but, you know, what with holidays and my former non-committed blogger status, it didn't dribble out until now.

I'm feeling now, however, that I should turn sober and introspective. Here, let me consider the weight of my chosen career and all of the implications therein. I should... but maybe I'll save that post for the first day of actual medical school. Which I can say. Because I got in. So I'm going. Which is, uh, mad cool. It's funny how I'm not really nervous about all the work and pressure and how hard the actual school->residency->practice part will be. Mostly because that's on me, I can handle that, but man does it suck to have faceless admissions boards holding your future in their hands. I'd like to thank them, for giving it back. Actually, I almost sent them a card with my deposit check that said something along the lines of "Holy Crap, I'm So Excited!" but it wouldn't fit into the envelope.

Caucus, THIS

A couple of weeks after I turned four, my grandfather sent me a letter. I don't now remember the first time I read it, but I do remember finding it again a few years later. The letter is written on Dukakis/Bentsen Stationary, and dated Election Day, November 1988. Grampa's jagged scrawl filled the page with dark black ink.

Dear Granddaughter,
At the top of this page are the names of two good people who were just not elected to the offices of President and Vice President of the United States. As good Democrats, they advocated for strong education, affordable healthcare and programs to help the poor. Unfortunately, George Bush and Dan Quayle with their promise of no new taxes were able to sway the election. What this means is less healthcare, less education, and lots of people without jobs. I am writing to you because it is extremely important that as you grow up you pay close attention to the views of politicians and cast votes for those that care more about people than money. I hope you talk this over with your parents.
Love, Grampa
P.S. Kelley and Stephanie [two sheep I had named a year before] have not had their lambs yet, if it happens I will send you pictures.

While my mother assures me I was much more interested in the sheep at the time, I can't remember ever not caring about the political process. Though I frequently mixed up the words "liberal" and "conservative" and was unable to match them correctly with "left wing" and "right wing," I have always known where I stood when it came to Republicans and Democrats. I will never forget, and neither will my best friend from grade school, the conversation we had as eight-year-olds in which I demanded she choose a party loyalty. Her answer being not so satisfactory, I demanded, "You mean you would have voted for NIXON?! Don't you know that he resigned?!"

Keep your comments about brainwashing to yourselves.

Anyway, now I feel like some kind of politics junkie. I cover my local podunk journal, New York Times, BBC websites, a smattering of blogs and all of my car radio pre-sets are for the regional public radio station. Firefox's tabbed browsing is really a killer because as a member of the multi-tasking generation, I get twitchy if I don't have all of these sites open at once. Which brings me to the primaries.

I just got home from watching the coverage at Turtle's house (CNN, MSNBC for commercial breaks, peaks at Faux News for kicks) and I'm having trouble feeling any emotion at all. Well, ok, I'm pretty psyched about Huckabee because there's no way in heckles he can win, but if he does, I'm moving because then we really are a fallen nation beyond hope. But over on the democratic side, I never got around to really picking. It's like when my uncle finally put that inground pool, he agonized over what to choose for surrounding patio surfacing. Too much research lead him to an impasse because he was so thoroughly versed in the drawbacks of all of his options. The Hillary/Edwards/Obama trifecta is sort of the same deal. Heck, I like all of them better than the front runners last time around, but the excessive reading and comparing has left me in a funk. A few days ago I said I was rooting for Obama, but then felt as guilty as the time I lost my stuffed bunny "bunny" under my bed a didn't notice for days because Snowy the bear was my favorite. So I kind of like Edwards, but then I feel guilty for not wanting to be dedicated to breaking the white male stranglehold on the presidency. And gosh, that Hillary Clinton is trying so hard. It just kills my inner Nice Minnesota Girl to root against her.

I'm going to bed. We'll let those crazies up in New Hampshire decide.

Whatever Made Me Think?

New Year's resolutions have never gone well for me. Never. Except last year. Every year's thought of "I'll write a letter every month" "I'll call an old friend every week" and the absurd "I'll make huge biceps!!" failed miserably. But last year "no buying new things" and "no soda" went remarkably well. So well that I forgot that my keeping of New Year's resolutions is really about 4%. In any case. It is January Second, 2008. And I have already messed up this year. Because I didn't post in my blog yesterday. Alas.