NYTimes: A Religious Perspective on the Newtown Massacre

I have, on occasion, made my views on religion known to readers of this blog. (I don't think religion and politics should be taboo topics of conversation, so long as disagreements are civil and rational.) I consider myself secularly spiritual.  I personally think of religion as a blend of mythology and morality, but I have great respect for religious people who live by the true tenets of their creed (which I don't think include holy wars, persecution of minorities, or evangelism), and I believe that the hearts of most religions are benevolent and peace-loving. I appreciate the value of the moral guidance and comfort that religion can bring to believers in difficult times. This is an example of such:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/opinion/dowd-why-god.html?hp&_r=0&gwh=02A7DB3DBD76598A7F25B51569ED6491

This man reminds me of Victor Hugo's Bishop of Digne, one of the first and finest examples of religious men I'd encountered.

Merry Christmas.

NASA's Take on Gangnam Style

I found this on io9, and it's too good not to share:



One of the more amusing things in this video (there are many) is the varying levels of enthusiasm and embarrassment among the NASA employees. Some people are extremely excited to be part of it, some are rather embarrassed to be dancing on YouTube for the world to see (and having fun while they're at it), some are Not Amused, some are gritting their teeth and dancing in the name of science, and some (mostly the ones at the end) are probably secretly shaking their heads and thinking, "kids these days." I can only imagine what it must have taken to persuade a bunch of scientists to put this thing together -- which is probably not all that much, come to think of it. This is a pretty geeky idea of a good time! (Also, a fun form of science outreach, which we need more of these days.)

Gun Control in the United States, an Open Letter

Dear Mr. President,

I voted for you, because I believed and still believe that your vision for America's future is much like my own: a country where every child has access to a good education, healthcare, and three square meals a day; where we, as a country, promote peace and understanding around the world; where we develop the new technologies that will improve the standard of living here and abroad. This vision is gravely threatened by gun violence, which deprives innocents of the first of the three unalienable rights supposedly guaranteed to all citizens -- life.

It's the Commander in Chief's duty to protect the people of this country. You have demonstrated, Mr. President, that you are capable of doing so; we saw you order the strike on Osama bin Laden with the clear-eyed decisiveness that your job requires. You gave us the rhetoric, the reassurance, and the follow-through on that particular project. You have the chance to do something like that again. It won't be a military exercise this time, where an executive order and a talented team can accomplish, as if by fiat, a coup like your last. It will be a tough slog, a thankless and likely ugly legislative battle that may well demand an aggressive stance against the gun lobby and the far right, rather than the compromise and civility that you so favor. (Perhaps it might be time to unleash our inimitable Vice President on Congress?)

It won't be pretty; it won't be perfect. But it is necessary. Surely you can see this. Surely it is worth fighting for. Please fight for it. We need your boots on the ground as well as your blazing rhetoric. We need your head as well as your heart.

If you need more convincing, or a more professional opinion, this Washington Post column says it better than I did:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-on-guns-take-action-now/2012/12/17/5f300f98-4888-11e2-ad54-580638ede391_story.html?hpid=z3

Yes, we can. We can ensure that these children did not die in vain. Mr. President, yes we can heal this nation. It starts with better gun control.

With hope,
Sarah

Obituaries as a Measure of Gender Equality

I stumbled upon this article about feminism and obituaries (obits can be fascinating!). It's worth reading; it certainly made me stop and think:

http://jezebel.com/5967871/major-newspapers-dgaf-when-notable-women-die

I have two somewhat opposing assessments of the situation:

1. This not quite the catastrophe for feminism that the article makes it out to be, for historical reasons. The women who have died in the past several years were in their prime decades ago, before women were really in a position to establish themselves in the way men did. Women who died in the current century were likely in their prime in the 1950s and 60s -- in the days when universities, politics, technology, culture, and high-paying jobs in general were still dominated by (white, heterosexual) men, and when feminist ideals were just becoming part of mainstream American society. It makes sense that there were more "great men" than "great women" from that era, because women lacked opportunity. It takes a long time to solve for centuries -- if not millenia -- of gender inequality. If we could see the obituaries written half a century or a century from today (our own obituaries, or those of our younger siblings and possible children), the gender ratio will reflect the progress that has been and will continue to be made.


2. There are certainly women who achieved great things fifty years ago who have not been acknowledged, and who would probably not have been overlooked if they were men with similar accomplishments. They were neglected by a male-centric culture much as ethnic, religious, and other minorities were by a WASP-centric culture. The social changes that these women fought for were labelled "women's issues;" the literature that they produced was marginalized as "women's lit;" and the doctors, scientists, lawyers, writers, and intellectuals of the day were prevailed upon to pursue specialties that could be safely (if not correctly) considered, by their male counterparts, exclusively female territory -- areas such as obstetrics/gynecology, family law, romance novels, feminist criticism, &c. The fact that these specialties affect women more than they do men does not make them intrinsically any less important or valid in their respective fields; rather, they were systematically labeled as less valuable by the predominately male elite, whose opinions shaped the views of countless others -- male and female. Ergo, the writers of obituaries might consider a pioneer in obstetrics, say, less influential than one in cardiology. They might consider a women's rights activist less important than an environmentalist, or an anti-war protestor. Changing this mentality, which still affects women today, is necessary to achieving gender equality in symbolic as well as practical terms.

It is therefore important to acknowledge, in today's obituaries of famous women, the hurdles that they overcame in accomplishing what they did, even if obit columns feature a glaring lack of gender parity. The gender ratio of obituaries published in my lifetime will still be skewed, which makes each woman's obit more significant. (Here's to hoping that there are female obituary writers helping the process along!) Society seems to be, by and large, moving in the direction of greater equality; undoubtedly the day when obituaries achieve gender parity will come.

Abstruse Goose: The Beneficence of Others

My mother reads the Chinese newspapers, which are chock-full of articles that aren't quite news (recipes, health tips, celebrity gossip, &c.). There was recently a spate of (somewhat alarmist) reports about a few instances of people falling, or even being pushed, onto subway tracks here in New York; she has subsequently warned my sister and I, in all seriousness, that we had to hypervigilant, in case crazy people randomly went about pushing us into the paths of oncoming trains. 

I thought this Abstruse Goose was fitting:

http://abstrusegoose.com/479

Social Dance in New York

One of the things I miss most about college is social dance. I was told by people in the Bay Area dance community that there is little waltz in New York, but a lot of good swing dancing. I've attended exactly one dance event in the city thus far; I enjoyed it, even though the turnout was unusually low (thanks to a rainstorm), but noticed that the style here is rather different (more structured, for one).

I came across this article about swing dancing in the city:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/arts/dance/swing-dance-clubs-go-retro-in-new-york-city.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Of course, this means I'll have to really learn how to swing if I'm to dance here. (I know enough to hold my own for a few dances, but I was always more of a waltz person.) There are also classes at a lot of New York dance halls, but that's a whole other level of commitment.

Another November, Another Novel

I won! 

That is, I produced, according to the official NaNoWriMo word counter, 50,023 words of fiction in the month of November. And this is a story I intend to keep and work on, that I'm not sick of after a month of staring at it nonstop, so I'm quite pleased.

Doing NaNoWriMo at home was quite a different experience from doing it in college. For one, Thanksgiving threw off my writing schedule more than I anticipated. At Stanford, Thanksgiving break was actually quite productive in terms of wordcount; there were no classes, little (pressing) homework, and most of the other students went home -- leaving me a few solid days of writing (and hanging out with the friends left on campus, when I was feeling burnt out). At home, I suddenly had all of these social engagements for the holiday, which left me very little time to write. You can see from my stats that I was on target, writing about 1667 words per day for the first two weeks of November. There's this horrible flatline period right around the holiday when I didn't get in any writing. And, in a bout of insanity, I somehow managed to produce a little over 10,000 words in the last twenty-four hours of NaNo.

Now that I've got a lot of raw material (much of which I will likely end up binning), I need to do all of the research I didn't do before November rolled around. This might end up changing the story some -- who knows? I'm really looking forward to hunkering down and reading up on English history over the next few months.

And I did end up meeting some cool people through NaNo write-ins and such. Huzzah for new friends!