Happy Pride Week!


Today was the Pride Rally for Spring Pride 2009, and it was marvelous! The speakers included Steph Parrish, Salt Lines, Jeff Sheng, and Ralph Williams.

I will update this with pictures as soon as I have them, but until then imagine the diag cool and open. It was sunny and music was blaring through the speakers. There were rainbows everywhere: big flags, a huge banner being carried by two people, on shirts, buttons, and ribbons. Then Chris Armstrong, Mical DeGraaff, and Amy Dickinson walked up the steps to the grad library to the spot where the microphones stood. They welcomed everyone to the Spring Pride 09 Rally, and the crowd responded with cheers and applause. They proceeded to invite the first speakers, Salt Lines, to the mic. Salt Lines performed one piece as a group, Tara Hardy performed solo, followed by another solo performance by Andrea Gibson. I have separated these three performances for your listening pleasure. (Note: There was a bible thumper on the diag with us, you can here him at the begining of the group performance. I do not know why his chants of, "a man, and a woman, get married," faded away, but I am glad that they did. It is a foreshadowing of our future as a nation.)

Salt Lines

Tara Hardy

Andrea Gibson


After this, Steph Parrish, a student, shared a personal story that I did not record. Jeff Sheng, creator of the photo documentary "Fearless" spoke next. He mentioned his exhibition that was going on this week, but the majority of his airtime was a story about the California prop 8 talks that have been happening in the past few weeks. I recorded it, but did not do the work to be able to get it up here. It will be up eventually.

The amazing Ralph Willaims brought the rally to a close with a rowsing speech. I recommend that you listen to it.



Here are links to people I talked about in this post:
2009 Pride Week (Program PDF | Video)
Salt Lines (Myspace)
Jeff Sheng (Fearless | His Website)
Ralph Williams (His Website)

Life Update

Here are a few updates about my life:

Diet: After twelve days of being vegan, I am positive that I will continue this for as long as is possible. I feel absolutely fantastic, and I am sure I have reduced the probability of developing many 'western diseases'. These diseases (things like obesity, various cancers, diabetes, hypertension, dental problems, etc.) have been brought to my attention by Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food (MP's website). I have only read the first third of the book, so far, in which he covers modern issues about food, about how our views of food in the industrial West have developed over the years, and give a warning about over generalizing the results of food research.

Books: Speaking of books, I have decided to embrace my short attention span when it comes to reading and read several books at the same time. This does not come as much of a surprise to me; it just feels right. To keep myself motivated, I have used the Daytum beta account I was given to log the pages I read each day. As motivation, it has worked pretty well. I was so sad that my daily average (note: it bugs me that I do not know how this average is calculated) was only 36 pages, so I started reading more. It is up to 60.5...still pretty meager, but a good improvement. Click and it will come (My Daytum).

Summer: I am going to Portland, OR. As I have told everyone who asks, something incredible will need to happen for me to stay in Ann Arbor. I am so excited to get out of here and live freely. Yes, I am already living on my own , and no, I do not hate my current living situation; I just want a change. I have been living in the residence halls for a good 2.5 years solid now, but the convenience we all love comes with a price. I am ready for a breather from my cushy room.

I am hoping to be really eco consious on my summer escape. To do this, I think I will make a list of all of the things I want to do:

  • Compost (vermi- probably -> Instructable 1 | Instructable 2)
  • Create a CO2 scrubber (Wiki | Instructable)
  • Reduce my water consumption (start and stop water while showering, etc.)
  • Find a new way to wash my clothes (Instructable)
  • Air dry my sustainably washed clothes
  • more to come! I am open to suggestions. (really, I got distracted and want to finish this post)
Personal Development: Oh, I can never get enough of personal development. I am like my own life coach. I borrowed some "Value Cards" from Kevin, so now I have values! I am going to sort through them and see which ones I relate to most. It should be pretty interesting. I am just hoping my values don't end up being pretension, snobbery, and being a punk.

That's it for now kiddos.

Wisdom?



The Experiment
Today, history repeats itself. Three years ago, I decided to avoid eating red meat for health reasons. After a week, I found that I had eaten little meat of any kind, so I decided to become vegetarian. I have been doing well since. Today, I have decided to repeat this experiment by avoiding the consumption of animal products. I am hereby vegan for the week, and perhaps the future. It is 1:21pm, and I feel fantastic.

My Research Questions

History
Larger Developmental Context
  • When/with whom was the first completely vegan diet?
  • Why did animals invade diets?
  • How did veganism as a social movement come about? 
  • Why do people choose to eat/live vegan?
  • Is there a future for veganism? Will it become the new standard of living?
Internal History
  • How has veganism developed over the years?
  • When the terms vegan, vegetarian, lacto/ovo, etc. first occur?
  • How has scientific knowledge contributed to diet modifications?
  • How have vegan diets changed over the years?
  • How have the reasons for living/eating vegan changed over the years?
Structure & Composition
Larger System
  • How has the creation of veganism as a movement affect the food industry?
  • How did the development of lactose tolerance and agriculture integrate animals into human lifestyles and diets?
  • How does living/eating vegan affect the environment?
  • How does living/eating vegan affect a person's social/community standing in different environments? Why?
  • Why are the rates of veganism/vegatrianism higher in queers?
  • What is the relationship between vegans and other demographics? (age, ethnicity, general health, location, upbringing, religion, world view, personality) Why?
Fit together as system
  • How do vegans interact with each other?
  • Do vegans relate closest with vegans who feel the same as they do?
  • How do people's choices to be vegan affect their views of the vegan movement?
  • What is the relationship of people who wear/live vegan, eat vegan, or do both? Why?
  • Why are there issues like honey? What are the big contentious points of veganism?
Categorization
Groups
  • What are the different types of vegan diets/lifestyles?
  • Do the diets/lifestyles differ around the world?
  • What are the different reasons for being vegan?
  • Are vegans viewed (by vegans and/or non-vegans) as different depending on their reasons for becoming vegan? Is this a hieracrchy? 
  • How do vegans order themselves? Does age or number of years vegan play a role?
Compare & Contrast
  • How do vegan lifestyles differ from non-vegan lifestyles?
  • Are vegans more consious of non-vegan related surroundings than non-vegans?
  • Just how much 'healthier' are strict vegans than lacto/ovo vegetarians and pescatarians?
  • How is veganism as a social movement present in other countries/cultures? Why?
  • How do strict vegans, lacto/ovos, and pescatarian's differ publicly?
  • How do the ideas and lifestyles of vegans by choice and vegans by upbringing C&C?
+ > -
  • Why is veganism NOT the norm?
  • If veganism is so amazing and friendly, why is everyone NOT vegan?
  • Why is it NOT a good idea to become vegan? (What are reasons NOT to become a vegan)
  • How is a vegan lifestyle NOT beneficial to people/animals/the planet?
  • How has living/eating vegan NOT benefited people (who have tried it)?
Speculation
New Context
  • How would the social view/idea of veganism be different if it originally developed in the third world? What if it caught on in the third world today?
  • How would veganism play a role in a perfect, liberal USA?
  • How would veganism be viewed if the presidential family ate vegan?
  • How would veganism as a lifestyle/diet be different if we kept different pets? 
  • How would vegnaism as a lifestyle/diet be different if agribusiness did not exist and the USA went back to small, family owned farms?
If it Never Existed...
  • How would modern food culture be different?
  • What would the argument against obesity and other diet related health issues look like without veganism/vegetarianism?
  • How would food/diet culture be different?
  • How would modern food science be different?
  • Would the idea reemerge in the modern social/economic climate?
Sources*
Agree
Disagree

For this part, the book suggests looking at questions and ideas you agree and disagree with from sources. As I am just starting this project, I do not have many sources. I will leave these questions for the future.

Conflict

Background: I have taken a training class for intergroup dialogue facilitation and I am currently teaching a class with similar structure to IG dialogues. Dialogues are small group conversations that revolve around understanding personal experiences as a foundation for understanding social issues. The goal is to have all participants be as open about themselves and their beliefs as possible with the goal of everyone inthe group fostering understanding of everyone else's views. Due to the vulnerable and personal nature of dialogue, conflict between members is inevitable. Another note, diference between safety and comfort. One can feel safe but uncomfortable, but not unsafe and comfortable.


Conflict is not all bad. That is not to say it cannot be bad, many kinds of conflict are terrible and have resulted in the most atrocious acts on this plaent(violent, ignorant, etc.). What I am trying to explore is the conflict that happens as a result of cognitive dissonance. When two people who have different beliefs are trying to understand each other. This kind of conflict comes up all of the time. Can't think of an example? Try families; teen rebellion is like an advanced course in conflict. In dialogue, we strive for (and occasionally instigate) this kind of safe, but uncomfortable conflict. To do this, it helps to feel comfortale with conflict.

This is the concept I want to get to. I certainly believe that a faclitator can feel comfortable with conflict, perhaps with the concession that they are not apart of the conflict. I am not at this point and I wonder howit might feel to be able to separate my own emotions from those of a conflict in my class. Will I need to distance myself from what is occuring so that I may help the participants explore the conflict? Is it possible for me to not feel uneasy when conflict is occuring in my class without being a sociopath?

The other part of this topic is how one manages personal conflict. I do not think it is possible to feel comfortable when experiencing conflict (note how this is different from above), but I do think it is possible to be distressed with the knowledge that the result of conflict is change, so life will be different when it is over. Personal example: Conflict with mother; something I have avoided at great cost. I have recently noticed that I am becoming increasingly comfortable with conflict with my mother. No longer will I sit in a puddle of my emotions with the passive agressive attitude I learned while growing up!

Music Drop: Girlyman


Harmonies - if you had to describe the music of Girlyman in one word, this would be it. The story doesn't end there, of course: the band blends modern acoustic, americana, and folk-rock into a musical recipe The Village Voice has called "really good, really unexpected, and really different." The wide range of instruments - acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin, djembe, electric baritone guitar - reflects an eclectic sound, and the band members switch off lead vocals and songwriting duties. But it is the stunning three-part vocal blend that creates the Girlyman magic.
-From their website http://www.girlyman.com/



Their description of themselves is quite accurate. They have some amazing harmonic power as well as a fantastic ability to entertain. Their album Somewhere Different Now, a live album, is gravid with satisfying music, hilarious tuning songs, and smart political commentary. 

Check out their music page for samples of their music. 

DRM is Dropped!



Big news! Apple has decided, along with Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group, to drop all DRM from iTunes. How fantastic is that!? Not only that, they will also be dropping the price for individual songs, unless they are very popular. I can now do all of the things I was prevented from doing with DRM like putting music on my non-apple mp3 player (I have an iPod) and...and...certainly not sharing music thats for sure. 

Adventures in Intro Biology Part 3

I walked toward the natural science building and was surprised to see a line of students queued up from one of the doors. At least 30 students were in that line or pressed up against the door and once in a while, a student would burst free from the cluster and exit the building. I laughed on the inside and put on my best expression that said, "huh, why are you all standing there like that? You are all so strange," as I walked in the door just to the right of the ones they were lined up against. I easily walked into the building, strolled into the lecture hall, and immediately found a seat in the front row. I know that the freshman who were waiting were ignorant of the lesser known portal, but superiority is a great feeling.

Having gotten off to such a great start, there was no way I was going to give my undivided attention to the review of the syllabus that has been elongated into an hour long lecture. Instead, I thought about all of the changes the biology department has been making. I do need to throw in the disclaimer that I only have three semesters of knowledge about the biology department so hopefully there will be some input from more experienced readers (or siblings or significant others of siblings that bought me a wonderful book of hilarious comics that shares the title of my blog). There is a noticeable difference between the biology classes I have taken and the other natural sciences and I assure you it was not the subject matter. The biology department has been trying very hard to teach "processes of scientific inquiry", a subject I find extremely valuable to know.

My attention was drawn away from class and to this idea first by why this was being included. Obviously, the process and method of scientific investigation is important to SCIENCE....that's what it is. Has this been taught in the past? Did it used to be a part of all science classes and slowly fell out of the course content? Has it ever been its own class? Why are they teaching this in an introductory class? That last question is easy to answer; because it is so vital to science that students need to be exposed to it before they continue. If it is so vital (it is the foundation of science), why is it not a separate class?

After having thought of more questions than I wanted to even think about answering, I started thinking about to whom they were catering. The knowledge of scientific design is important to biologists (scientists), professors (who, at least at research universities, are scientists), and....doctors? I hope so. The most represented demographic in the class was pre-med freshmen and my, oh my, how they looked stereotypical. I hope that despite their current conformity, they go on to become doctors who have a decent idea of real science. That way, my detestment and distrust of M.D.s can be directed completely at their arrogance and greed.

First day of class: successful and largely uneccessary. The reason I continue to attend classes is that being forced to sit in one place for an hour or so does wonders for my imagination. I have had some fantastic ideas during class, I just hope they come during intro bio part 3, not orgo.

I Will Not Remain Silent


“We regret that the issue escalated to the heightened security level it did,” the airline said, “but we trust everyone understands that the security and the safety of our passengers is paramount and cannot be compromised.”

...however the dignity and humanity of your passengers only matters if they are not from the Middle East.

This story is the exactly why I wear my "We Will Not Be Silent" in Arabic shirt. Why must we go to amber alert every time we see a hijab or hear someone speaking Arabic? Success is ensured in our cunning plan our scaring all 1.8 billion Muslims away from this country by perpetually inconveniencing them especially when we pick on the lawyers. Great Job Americans. 

We Will Not Be Silent is a protest campaign organized by Artists Against the War as a call for action against the racism occurring against Arabs and Muslims worldwide. You can order a free shirt in Arabic, Farsi, Spanish, German, or Hebrew with Arabic. There is also a story about a gentleman who was harassed in JFK airport simply for wearing one of these shirts. My favorite quote is, "Many people called and complained about your t-shirt. Jetblue customers were calling before you reached the checkpoint, and costumers called when you were waiting here in the boarding area ..."We cant make sure that your t-shirt means we will not be silent, we don't have a translator. Maybe it means something else." Obviously! Terrorists have decided to stay away from technological communication and talking to each other; they have moved on to mass producing t-shirts with messages on them. How effective. 




Game Review: Amorphous+


I've learned an important lesson over the past few days: To survive, I can't sit at the computer and play web games all day. I learned this unfortunate lesson through the game Amorphous+. The game is so simple, but lethally addictive. You are a little warrior wielding an enormous, albeit blunt, sword which you use to squish various goos that squiggle across the ground. You win awards for doing certain tasks and get fun toys to play with if you recieve enough awards. I warn you, if you want to play this, but having anything to do in the next 
hour, DON'T. 

Click to play

Reading Update:










Chapter 4
Chapter 4 is more exciting than the past three and, though it covers a few principals found in most elementary statistics classes, it brings in new characters to the story like Galileo and Pascal! Here goes:

  • The simple space technique (using a space or coordinates to denote potential outcomes) can only be used when the outcomes are equally probable
  • The chances of an event depend on the number of ways in which it can occur. This is important, so how do you calculate it?
  • Pascal's Triangle
  • Mathematical expectation = probability of each outcome * payoff of each respective outcome, i.e. the cost of something, say a parking meter, is the probability of each outcome ($40.00 ticket 1 out of 20 times I use one and $0.25 on the rest of the time [19 out of 20]) so $40*1/20 + $0.25 each time I use it = $2.25. So the real cost of paying a parking meter is about $2.25 each time I use one if I average it out.
  • This idea has been helpful for winning lottery tickets. For example, if you calculate the expectation of buying all of the different combinations of six numbers from 1 to 44, and compare that with the payoff of about 27 million, you will find something quite interesting! There are 7,059,052 ways to choose those six numbers with a pot of that size, each ticket is worth almost $4. Now remember that it is possible for other people to win at the same time. Appropriate the probabilities of winning alone or with other people and add them all up to come to a grand total worth of $3.31. The price to buy one is $1. What is the appropriate course of action here? Hire a whole bunch of investors, fill out 1.4 million slips by hand (each with 5 games) and coordinate a massive ticket purchasing campaign. The result? 27 million dollars! 


Reading Update:

 The Drunkards Walk by Leonard Mlodinow

 







Chpater 3

Chapter three covers quite a bit of history and a few specific examples. Here it is in summary:

 

  • Gerolamo Cardano existed and, more importantly, pioneered the idea that possible outcomes of a situation could be thought of as points in space (or coordinates)
  • This chapter covers three probability problems:
  1. You flip two coins, what is the probability that at both will heads? The answer is 25%. There are four possible outcomes of the flip: (heads, heads), (heads, tails), (tails, heads), and (tails, tails). There is a 25% chance that both or neither coins will be heads and a 50% chance that just one will be heads. The other question addressed is this: Assuming one coin will be heads, what is the probability of both coins being heads? Is it 50%? No. The condition that one of the coins will be heads only removes one of our four possible results (tails, tails). The statement does not state explicitly which coin is heads, so it could either be (heads, tails), (tails, heads), or (heads, heads). Therefore, the chances that both will be heads, knowing one of them will for sure be heads, will be 1 in 3, or about 33%.
  2. The next problem is a joke I read last week involving some college students that missed an exam due to returning late from a road trip. They appealed to their professor claiming they had a flat tire. The professor issued the exams in different rooms and, in an attempt to catch the students lying, wrote the question, “which tire was flat?" on the second page of the exam. What is the probability that they answer the same tire? The correct answer is one in four. This is because there are four tires for them to choose. Check out the table. The chance that they choose the same tire is 4 in 16, or 1 in 4.
  3. Now for the most fun one, the Monty Hall problem. This one has been around for some time and has caused quite a bit of humiliation for many many Ph.D.s as you will see later. Here is the problem as submitted by Craig Whitaker to Marilyn von Savant's column in PARADE magazine: 

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car, behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say #1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say #3, which has a goat. He says to you, "Do you want to pick door #2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice of doors?

The answer is yes! I will not take the space to explain why, but you can see this -- and the humiliation of numerous mathematicians-- on Marylin's website here. 

And that is about it for chapter 3. I will keep you up to date with what else I learn in this book




Oh I love it! Great work GLSEN!

Movie Aftereffect*: Valkarie


I left Valkarie feeling confident that I would do whatever it takes to get done whatever needs to get done. I was very sure. Very deliberate. I was dedicated. I remembered the aftereffect for Milk and saw how they connected. It lasted for about 40 minutes before it started to fade. It was mildly diluted by an hour and a half. As usual, the television did a fantastic job of distracting me from everything and contributed to the dilution. It was still there when I went to sleep and was gone in the morning.

Cognitively, I was curious about what actually happened and who the people in the plot really were.

*Movie Aftereffects: After seeing a movie, I am always left with an aftereffect, a change in my perception and interaction of and with the world. I may leave the cinema feeling ready to inflitrate MI6, save the world, or solve a mystery. These changes in cognition vary in intensity and last for varying amounts of time.

I am officially announcing my move from Firefox to Chrome. I am trying to move toward improved efficiency and fewer distractions. While I love Firefox and its many add-ons dearly, I don't have the RAM or time to spend on my glutenous usage of Firefox (I typically have at least eight tabs open at a time, one of which is a stumble upon dedicated tab). My next post will be from Chrome.

NOW USING CHROME

Reading Update:
The Drunkards Walk by Leonard Mlodinow









I am up to chapter three and I have learned very little and read a twenty page review of the first quarter of a statistics class I took. Here are the first two chapters in summary.

Chapter 1:
  • The right side of your brain is 'intuitive' and always tries to find heuristics
  • The left side of your brain is 'logical' and always tries to find patterns
  • If two events are occuring randomly and event 1 occurs thrice as much as event 2, in guessing which event will occur next, you will be correct more often if you simply choose the event that occurs more often everytime.
  • Praising a person for good behavior is more effective than punishing people for bad behavior
  • This can seem counter intuitive due to regression toward the mean; that is, after someone does much better than they usually do, it is natural for them to do about as well as they had been doing before that accidental success, the same goes for accidental mistakes.
Chapter 2:
  • This is a review of probability rules
  • The probability that two events will occur can never be greater than the probability that each event will occur individually
  • You can predict the probability that two events will occur by taking the product of the probabilities of the two events ONLY IF the two events are completely independent of each other.
  • The probability that, given an event with multiple different and possible outcomes, the probability that one outcome or another outcome will be the result is the sum of the probabilities of two potential outcomes (assuming that the sum of all of the possible outcomes is 1 [100%])
  • When making a point about the potential outcomes of an event, make sure you are looking at the correct proability.

Things it is not:

Saying "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays"
Giving gifts
Giving to charity
Being Christian


Things it is:

Only assuming that all white people that do not 'look Jewish' celebrate christmas
Only saying 'happy holidays' around the 25 of December
[obvious] Having the 25 be a national holiday and not have ANY OTHER RELIGION recognized
Thinking about others only at this time of year
Thinking about 'the poor' as if they are not human
Millions of people excluded from identifying with our consumerist culture who's advertisements focus on christmas celebrators

I have chosen to minor in Peace and Social Justice, a minor that was created last year. I have now taken two classes that count toward it, one is Nonviolence in Action and the other is Intergroup Dialogue* Facilitator Training. I am most interested in talking about the prior. As a class, we noticed the lack of support or importance placed on us by the university considering we did not have a room for the 50 of us to occupy. We ended up having class in large lounge of the residence hall attached to the union.

...I have a paper to write, so I am cutting this short. Really short. All I wanted to say was that there is not a wikipedia article on it and I am in a bit of a wikipedia editing craze. I am trying to revamp the article Nonviolence, which means I also need to edit Nonviolent Resistance (Don't even get me started on this one), Pacifism, and several other articles with similar ideas. I also want to fix Social Justice and make an article for Intergroup Dialogue. Anyone want to help?

paper time.....less than a week left


*P once said the 'dialogue' sounded pretentious. Maybe it is, but there is a definite distinction to be made between debate, discussion, and dialogue. Dialogue is a particular kind of communication that is supposed to be the ideal learning conversation. When a group of people are in dialogue, members of the group are open with each other, take personal risks, share their social identities, seek understanding, etc. The term dialogue is used to convey a very specific kind of interaction. See "Intergroup Dialogue in Higher Education : meaningful learning about social justice" by Ximena Zuʹñiga, et al. I will loan it to you if you want it.

I had a thought:

A good way to get word out about a cause is to be innovative for the sake of being innovative. Be the best at something: design, use of color, whatever. That way, the message will be spread not only for the sake of spreading the message, but also because it is amazing at whatever it is the best at. Problem I foresee is that the message will be lost in the hype of things. Example of this working. AIDS slogans at baseball games: visuals to come

Time to tutor more.

Update (12/27/08): Here are those pictures I promised: