Need help from my fashionistas

Occasionally I take advantage of the good fashion sense of my community of readers. That occasion has again arisen, fair ones.

Here is the scenario: instead of purchasing graduation garb (which is really as frivolous as a prom dress or a wedding dress -- only to be worn once!), I have instead found myself a navy blue suit, pictured below:


I realize that one CAN wear black with navy. Personally, I don't like to. Might I wear these dark brown shoes instead? I wear them all the time with khaki. Unfortunately, my shoe size prohibits me from going out and buying a cute pair of neutral or bronze pumps at Nine West, because they only carry through 11s, and...I'm not an 11.



Thank you in advance for your expert opinions.

Web 2.0, or, all the stuff my master's degree was supposed to teach me in 5 minutes

Benedict and Capra, Or, Maybe I Like Italy after All

There are advantages to religious leaders having their own sovereign state. Like being able to criticize all the other sovereign states.

I've also been watching Frank Capra movies from the 1930s that I haven't seen before (I know, I know, don't I have better things to do?). I reached the point of saturation long ago with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's a Wonderful Life. Predictably, all the plots are about evil corporate moguls who are one-upped by the common man. I think I've about had it with the genre.

I must say, though, that You Can't Take It With You had some good bits. The movie was really about having a choice between mindlessly earning money, and making the choice to do what will make you happy. Fairly far-sighted, considering the recent emphasis on the economics of happiness. I particularly liked the encounter between Grandpa Vanderhof and the Tax Man:

Tax Man:"Now Mr Vanderhof, our records show that you've never paid an income tax."
Grandpa Vanderhof:"That's right."
Tax Man:"Why not?!"
Grandpa Vanderhof:"I don't believe in it."

[goes on to discount the need to pay for warships ("the last time we used those was in the Spanish-American War, and all that got us was Cuba, which we gave back"), and the salaries of the President, Supreme Court Justices, and Congress].

Tax Man:"Look Mr Vanderhof, all I know is you haven't paid an income tax, and you've got to pay it."
Grandpa Vanderhof:"Uhh what was that?"
Tax Man:"I said you've got to pay it!"
Grandpa Vanderhof:"Well you've got to show me!"
Tax Man:"We don't have to show you, I just told you! Whose going to pay for all those buildings down in Washington, and interstate commerce and the Constitution!"
Grandpa Vanderhof:"The Constitution's been paid for years ago, and as for interstate commerce... what is interstate commerce anyway?"
Tax Man:"There are 48 states see, and if it weren't for interstate commerce, nothing could go from one state to another, see."
Grandpa Vanderhof:"Well why not, have they got fences?"

(audio clips available here).

A reminder...

That we were having a pleasant spring in Ann Arbor until yesterday.

Introversion

I was listening to a psychology podcast this week on personality traits. I was intrigued when the prof. said that personalities don't really change. Introversion vs. extroversion is a basic personality differences, and I always assumed that I had become more extroverted over time. I don't duck and cover when people talk to me anymore -- I even choose to sit behind a desk and answer their questions! I think the distinction is more subtle than the popular definitions, though. I've become less shy, but not necessarily less introverted.

Introverts can be good at public speaking, while extr0verts can potentially be shy. The difference has to do with how you process information. Introverts process information internally, so outside stimuli are distractions. Extroverts need external interaction to process. The professor used the analogy of a glass. Autistic people, for example, have a very low overflow threshold for stimulation. Normal introverts have a higher overflow threshold, but they still have a point where they can take no more interaction. Extroverts don't have a threshold.

That's at least how the podcast described it. Wikipedia gives definitions from various theorists. All agree that introverts find a great deal of socializing draining, while extroverts find it energizing. I like the wording of Jung's "psychic energy flow" model. I think it's true that the difference is deeper than how we interact with other people -- it's how we react to any sort of barrage on our senses. (Here's another article about introversion). In the original Manchurian Candidate, Raymond says "there are two kinds of people in the world: those who walk into a room and turn the TV on, and those who walk into a room and turn it off."

The Atlantic has an insightful article about "Caring for Your Introvert." I really think somewhere near the center of the bell-curve -- almost an "ambivert." I'm not intently focused, I can work in groups (or I've been lying on my job applications), and I do blurt things out before I think about them. I also find myself in environments with a high concentration of introverts (the library, and academia in general), so I tend to be more extroverted than those around me. Yet I've certainly had the experience where I need some "alone time" and my highly-extroverted friends/siblings/parents simply don't understand.

Are all people who wake up crabby in the morning introverts?

And now for something completely anti-liberal

I really support the affirmative action statement at the end of most job postings, I really do:

"The University of [Blank] does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, color, religion, national origin, age, disability or veteran status in provision of educational programs and services or employment opportunities and benefits."

Fine. I'm down with that for public institutions. Incidently, I really dislike the "consideration" given to the spawn of alumni.

Anyway...how does the above position jive with "diversity" job positions established for the express purpose of bringing in "underrepresented groups"? I'm white and female. Most librarians are white and female. Hence I am not an underrepresented demographic. Should I even bother to apply? Should I start eating arroz y habichuelas again and call myself Hispanic? Does the fact that there are not that many entry-level library fellowships, and that a good share of them are "diversity fellowships," constitute reverse discrimination? I'm just sayin'...

EWWWW...

I've been averse to toads ever since I was a little girl and used to be chased with them. They're revolting when alive, and even more so when flattened on the road. Reptiles and amphibians are repulsive in general. There's something innately wrong with people who like them. It takes feathers, fur, and hair to be cute and appealing. And THOSE are my deep views on biodiversity...

Anyway, FrogWatch just found a monster toad in Australia (don't ask me why an organization called FrogWatch monitors toads).

I'm Too Liberal for My Shirt

Friday I was sitting at the reference desk and watching the catalog with an eagle eye. I ran up and got Inconvenient Truth 12 minutes after one of the three copies was checked back into the system. After seeing it, I'm still convinced that it shouldn't have won any Oscars. Oscars are for filmmaking, and all the filmmakers inserted into Al Gore's slide show was some sappy biographical information and random still photo collages of the sort that are on the "History" channel.

The movie did, however, did convince me that global warming is happening, and we are probably causing it. I think it is the causal link that is still in question by (reasonable) people who don't agree. To me, the link makes sense because of the connection between CO2 and warming. Gore showed several charts (with source attribution and units) connecting changes in CO2 levels to changes in temperature. When CO2 goes up, so does the temperature. We can measure how much CO2 we put into the environment, so we can predict how much warmth this is likely to generate. The other thing that really interested me was the statistic (here in Science) that 75% of a random sample of peer-reviewed journal articles on climate change contained explict endorsement of the position that "the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue." 0% disagreed with this statement, while the other 25% fell in between. I'm not an objectivist -- I don't think we can have certain knowledge. But I do think that the scholarly review process is the best way to judge the validity of a scientific, measurable theory like global warming.

If you want to study this further, here are some places to start:

http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/

http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/tracer-bullets/globalwarmingtb.html

These are .gov sites because they tend to be the most reliable scientific sources freely available on the web. There are lots of non-governmental, peer-reviewed journals and databases, but most are subscription-based.

On another hot topic--presidential candidates--I kind of like Kucinich. Basically, he wants to turn the US into the Netherlands -- legalized drugs and prostitution, and anti-war. Radically logical -- he'll never get elected. I don't think I can really vote for him because of his economic stance, though. Call me naive, but I still kind of like capitalism.

The Oscars -- Belated and Outdated

Actually, this is an excuse to publicize some of my favorite movies that have come out this year -- what can I say? The Academy has good taste.

Emma made me watch the Oscars, but I actually had stronger reactions -- joy at the success of Pan's Labyrinth, Helen Miren, and Little Miss Sunshine, anger when Dreamgirls didn't win best original song, and also when Inconvenient Truth beat out Jesus Camp for best documentary.

Pan's Labyrinth and Little Miss Sunshine were both beautiful, coherent movies. PL was incredibly sad but also stunning from a visual perspective, while LMS was quirky in a Royal Tenenbaum-y way. I was initially upset that The Lives of Others won Best Foreign Film instead of PL. Since then I have seen TLO, and I understand. Both were historical, but PL was more like a fable that could have been about any little girl who lives in a sad and nonsensical world. TLO was a very grown-up movie much more saturated in its context -- Eastern Germany. Great acting and directing in both.

Now, about Inconvenient Truth. Let me first say that I fully support "being green." I'm glad the Oscars "went green," and I think it would be awesome if we cut down on our carbon emissions and all drove hybrid cars -- or better yet used mass transit -- in 20 years. Let me second say that I don't care if Melissa Ethelridge is gay, although it was kind of gross when she kissed her wife on the lips, just because normal people kissing, without soft camera lights and consideration of angles is, in general, gross.

I'm not really going to comment on why Jesus Camp should have won best documentary since I haven't seen Inconvenient Truth yet. Let's just say that unless IT exposed a complex and widespread sociological trend through sensitive filming and minimal commentary, Jesus Camp should have won. I get the impression that IT is more propaganda-y than that, but until I can get my hands on it at the media library, I can't be sure.

I CAN be sure, however, that the music in Dreamgirls was 10 times better than the beleaguered melody tacked onto Inconvenient Truth that won instead. "I Need to Wake Up" sounded a lot like a bad praise-and-worship song from the 1990s. There was even PowerPoint going in the background, I think. UGH! Dreamgirls was based on a broadway play about one of the most important musical trends of the 20th century. Hmm...could there have been a little POLITICS involved in that selection?? No . . . I'm sure the fact that the Academy was drooling all over Al Gore the entire show had nothing to do with that anemic ballad's success.

So that's my belated and outdated opinion on the movies of 2006. (and yeah...Marie Antoinette totally deserved to win best costume, although Kirsten Dunst is beginning to annoy me). Did anyone see Babel or Last King of Scotland?

What do PHC and Gitmo have in common?

Well, a lot probably, but in particular...

SYSCO!!!

Slate (again) has an enlightening article on Sysco's monopoly of the food service industry. Memories were stirred by this description of a chicken breast:

"While it looks natural, it consists of parts of other chicken breasts mashed together into a single, chicken-breastlike block."

And hamsters! Don't forget the hamsters! But, seriously, we all knew what we were getting in college cafeterias. The joke is on the people who pay $8 for a slice of cake we passed up in the dining hall.

Lady Chatterley's Lover: An Accident of History?

We didn't read D.H. Lawrence in college (No great surprise, really, considering the hullabaloo that was raised over Jonathan Swift). I was impelled to read Women in Love by Emma, because it was her favorite book. I completely agree with her assessment. The book is great because of its characters, and because of the dialog and interactions between them. There are multiple sympathetic characters. The main protagonists are two sisters, Ursula and Gudrun, and friends who fall in love with them, Birkin and Gerald. All four have different perspectives on love, philosophy, and human relationships, and all four discuss their ideas in sparkling, intelligent dialog (they are, in Brianna's phrase, "intellectual gladiators"). Even minor characters, such as the Pussum and Gerald's mother, have a certain appeal. The ending of the book is surprising, and no one narrative squelches the others. The book is a novel and not a manifesto.
Lady Chatterley's Lover, on the other hand, IS a manifesto. I perhaps like the book still less in that I disagree with the manifesto. Lawrence's philosophy, that people are only fulfilled in so much as they are sexually fulfilled, is hardly new or unique. Perhaps if I liked it, I would find it "powerful" or "compelling." Even those who agree, however, must admit that that the book is not multi-vocal. Constance Chatterley is portrayed essentially as a bitch in heat -- a needy womb - whose needs are met by the erect, masculine, and uncomplicated gamesman Mellors. These are the protagonists. The antagonists are, essentially, everyone else -- the "unnatural" modern man who has been deadened by industrial labor or the scholar who has been made effete by over-concentration on the mind. This latter type is given flesh in Chester Chatterley -- whose lower parts are debilitated by actual handicap as well as disinclination. There is little serious discussion between the pro- and anti-sensualists. One side is simply right and the other wrong, thus stymieing the potential for brilliant dialog that exists in WiL. The book also fails due to the play-by-play sexual activity between Constance and Mellors. A story consists of highlighting important events that together make a plot. As a reviewer recently said about Jane Smiley's new novel, extremely detailed accounts of other people's sex lives can, in fact, be boring. Finally, I found myself unsympathetic to the book because of its portrayal of women. WiL made me wonder why Lawrence was ever accused of sexism; LCL made me see why.

Yet LCL is undoubtedly Lawrence's best-known work. It appears on lists of "canonical" literature, and is discussed in history books. This is, of course, because it was banned for its four letter words and explicit sexuality until 1959. Since then, though, how many people have read LCL rather than WiL merely because it is the "canonical" Lawrence work? How many have read the Iliad rather than the Odyssey because it is first sequentially? How many works in the canon are there because of their length, the controversy they raised, or how well they fit into a freshman-level literature course? A good argument, I suppose, for reading multiple works to truly know an author.

Right of Passage

When the weather is beautiful, like it is now, I like to take a nice, brisk walk down the trail. Often, though, my pace is needlessly impeded. Certain groups of people fail to abide by Michaela's 2 Principles of Trail-Sharing:

1) Trails operate effectively like roads. There are people going two directions, and you should walk/bike/rollerblade close on the right side of the trail. Passing should occur on the left. Further meditation on this principle would preclude any lolligagging down the middle of the trail, weaving back and forth, or forcing people coming the other way into the mud because you are walking "with someone."

2) Not all people go the same speed. Some of us are gifted with longer legs, better muscle tone, and more competitive natures than others. The logical implication of this is that people should facilitate being passed by other people. Many people wish to progress at faster clip than that of an ambling fat man, pooping dog, or toddling infant. Still fewer people wish to come to a complete stop and have a conversation in the middle of the bike trail.

I have further discovered that the main violators of Michaela's Principles are from certain demographic groups, namely Old People, Families, and Dogowners. Old people tend to be some of the worst lolligaggers. They always act genuinely surprised when one sloshes around them from the edge of the trail because they are in the middle of it. They also fail to see the virtue in going Single File. Or perhaps they do. Their pugnacious looks indicate a "those young whipper-snappers had better step off the trail or I'll hit them with my cane" attitude.

Families are the dominant trail hogs, though. They're really the dirty bomb of trail perils, as they are often composed of multiple hazards such as old people, children, and dogs. The father of the family usually walks slightly in front (though not far enough in front to form a vertical line), usually wearing a football fleece, and usually with a potbelly puffed out -- the bow of the familial vessel. Following behind is a weaving, arm-locked band of kiddie bikes, puppies, and wheelchairs, sure to throw any serious exerciser completely off rhythm.

Worst, really, are dogowners, because dogs aren't people. They're not even felines. Yet their owners obviously consider them worthy of taking up 10 times more trail than a person with their ridiculously long leashes. And then when they pass another dogowner, inevitably they stop and encourage the dogs to sniff each other, forming an impermeable barrier of rope and fur across the trail.

The demographics of trail violators indicate to me that they know they should be considerate and share the trail, and that they even know how. Rather, they consider themselves -- old people, families, and dogowners -- to be the embodiment of "America." Malevolent interest groups like Focus on the Family, AARP, and the American Kennel Club further reinforce these illusions of privilege. Young people, single people, and non-dog people can betake themselves down the wide road to you-know-where.

Great article from Slate...

...by Jacob Weisberg about politikspeak and Iraq:

"The disciplined [presidential candidates], like Hillary Clinton, carefully avoid acknowledging reality. The more candid, like John McCain and Barack Obama, sometimes blurt out the truth, but quickly apologize."

Not that almost all of Slate's articles aren't great.

I promise to stop riding my dual high horses - the idiocy of Iraq and social conservatism - in my next post, when I examine canonicity in light of two of D.H. Lawrence's novels - Women in Love and Lady Chatterley's Lover.

In other news, I had my last exam EVAH today! Congratulate me. And if anyone says anything about future advanced degrees right now, I'll smack them.

Under Construction: Parallel Conservative Universe

Why bother debating and compromising with the rest of humanity when we can assert our own body of knowledge??!!

Right-wingers have set up a conservative alternative to Wikipedia: Conservapedia! Conservapedia not only fights the anti-Christian bias evident in Wikipedia, but also the anti-American bias. One of the five main rules (called commandments, to honor the Bible) is that American spellings MUST be used. Conservapedia rightly points out that there are entirely too many articles about British royalty in Wikipedia, really tainting the entire pool of 1.5 million articles. In addition, C.E. and B.C.E. are absolutely forbidden, since Christians can't have meaningful discussions on anything with anyone who denies Christ's centrality to history.

The "About Conservapedia" page notes:

Wikipedia claims about 1.5 million articles, but what it does not say is that a large number of those articles have zero educational value. For example, Wikipedia has 1075 separate articles about "Moby" and "song".[14] Many hundreds of thousands of Wikipedia articles -- perhaps over half its website -- are about music, Hollywood, and other topics beneath a regular encyclopedia. This reflects a bias towards popular gossip rather than helpful or enlightening information.

Indeed, the authors are sadly correct. The general public may be more concerned about Pan's Labyrinth and Johann Sebastian Bach than historical facts like Franklin's conversion to Christianity at the end of his life. And I think we can all extract the larger principle from the sample search for "Moby" and "song", without being nitpicky and pointing out that keyword searches return many false positives that might not be considered "frivolous." Of course, it would be ludicrous to imply that there were 1075 separate articles about the songs of one artist.

Another excellent service the authors provide is to point out several heinous errors in Wikipedia. Whether or not the encyclopedia is an experiment in collaborative knowledge gathering, the (liberal) editors should be held responsible for all mistakes!

After all, as Conservapedia points out: "Robert McHenry, former Editor-in-Chief for the Encyclopedia Britannica, wrote about Wikipedia's bias and included this observation:

"One simple fact that must be accepted as the basis for any intellectual work is that truth – whatever definition of that word you may subscribe to – is not democratically determined."

Which is why, my good American and Christian brothers, this site is not an open, collaborative encyclopedia at all! We just thought "-pedia" was a cool ending. We've decided to ONE-UP the unfair liberal control at Wikipedia by creating an even MORE controlled site -- but this time WE control it! On Conservapedia, NOT JUST ANYONE can sign up and contribute material, thus keeping liberal biases from clouding our judgment, corrupting our children, and colouring (or should I say coloring) our facts.