The Michael Moore of Stem Cells

Tonight, Andy and I went to a party to celebrate the work my friend Alex Goldberg is doing on his film about stem cell research. He’s been called “the Michael Moore of stem cells” by Al Gore himself.

The film itself isn’t a finished product, but Alex showed us several clips that he’s put together. Apart from the obvious message that this research has the promise to cure a number of serious diseases, there was some real artistry in the way that the visuals were put together.

In one particularly memorable scene, the mother of a diabetic child walks towards her daughter’s school while the heavens above flash through textbook descriptions of the illness and how stem cells might be used to treat it. The juxtaposition is truly remarkable.

The evening was really a fundraiser for the University of Washington’s stem cell research department. They have an incredible group of men and women, and they’re in desperate need of private funds to carry out work with embryonic stem cells - which the current administration will not fund.

I encourage you to get in touch with Marilyn Dunn, vice president for development at the University of Washington to make a donation to this important cause. She can be reached at (206) 543-2565.

Internet Explorer…

“The bastard child of the Internet” - Jason Preston

Disgraceful

Why should our nation’s honored widows - whose partners died on the battlefield for this country - be treated in such a fashion as this?

I can’t believe that the military actually gets our dead soldiers mixed up with one another - sending benefits to the wrong families or not even acknowledging a fallen soldier’s family.

Something needs to be done to protect these people who have made such a huge sacrifice for this country.

I’m calling my elected representatives.

In Search of Sizemore

One of my favorite books for keeping around the house is Cathy Alter’s Virgin Territory: Stories from the Road to Womanhood. It’s great for picking up when there’s a bit of free time and nothing else to read.

I was paging through it today during an idle moment and I read a story by Betty, a now 36-year old drummer. It was about her first kiss:

He smoked. He played hooky. He was the ype your mom and dad warned you about. He was my brother’s friend, two years older than me and twice as wide. He was really, really fat. Enormous. And I kid you not, his last name was Sizemore. He gave me my first kiss…

I was in fifth grade, and we had just moved to the country. I rode the bus to school. It was the kind of bus where the kids in the back cranked AC/DC and “Highway to Hell” sounded warped and warbly because the batteries were always about to run out. They played it louder than the little speakers could handle, so it sounded all distorted too, like a muffled principal’s announcement coming across the public address system. Kids ran wild, hopping from seat to seat, gossiping, and punching, and pinching.

I was sitting reading The Hobbit when Sizemore yelled, “Hey Betty! Get over here!” So I went over and asked what he wanted. I was scared.

He made me sit on the inside, and he trapped me against the wall of the bus. It was a hot day to begin with, and his huge body pressing into me made me sweat. I cound’t breathe. He told me to give him a kiss. So I did like he said.

His stringy black hair hung down around my face, his fat engulfed my skinny body. But his lips were soft and wet.

I kissed him twice before we pulled up to my house. I raced off the bus, insane, not knowing what I was feeling I ran into my room and shut the door. Then I looked at myself in the dressor mirror and told myself, “I kissed a boy…uh, hey, I have a boyfriend!”

I packed up my stuffed animals, my Barbie dolls, and my glitter stickers, crammed them into a Glad trash bag, and tossed them out onto the curb. Only girls play with toys, and I was all grown up.

He never kissed me again, and I was too timid to approach him. In any event I forgot about him in a week, missed my toys, and wished I still had them. I went back to thinking about horses and saving to buy an Easy Bake Oven.

I heard later that he got religion and went around carrying a Bible and preaching to sinners at shopping malls.

The story made me wonder if Betty and Sizemore ever met up again. If he ever explained to her why he wanted to kiss her on the bus on that hot day. I wonder if Sizemore even knows that Betty wrote about him for her contribution to Alter’s book.

Sometimes I think there are mysteries in life that need explanations. I wonder if Betty still wonders about Sizemore just because she doesn’t understand what he was thinking, or why that kiss had such a dramatic effect on her own image of herself as a grown up.

I hope that someday Sizemore will Google himself, find this post, seek out Betty, and tell her.

Another Crazy Day

Today was a very long workday - almost 13 hours - which is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it means that I don’t get to see as much of Andy as I’d like. But on the other, I really do love my job - especially when I’m acquiring new skills and putting them to the test against deadlines.

I’m feeling like I’m in a very positive place in my life right now. One of the keys to happiness for me is feeling competent, and I’ve really acheived that in my professional life. No, I’m not perfect and mistakes happen - but I learn from them and I’m a hard worker.

I was also very proud to see my younger brother David graduate from the 5th grade today. He’ll be moving on to middle school in the fall, which is insane. I was 12 years old when he was born. It makes me feel kind of old. I’m so proud of him though, he’s a great kid - very funny and almost empathic in his respect for other people.

And now I have to go to bed.

9.5% is less than 5.6%?

And I thought the guys over at Gizmodo were all good at math and other forms of geekery. Still, it looks like they’ve got themselves mixed up on this critical fact of math that 9.3 is greater than 5.6. Just look at the smallness of my little pink bar.

I love how they gave me a little pink bar though, because they were so excited that a girl entered their competition.

I voted for myself, because I’m like that. But in all seriousness - the Part of your (Gizmodo) World video totally deserves to win.

I Made it to the Finals in the Gizmodo Idol Competition

Maybe it’s because I can actually sing, or maybe it’s because I’m a girl - either way I’m in the Gizmodo Idol final five.

I really want those earbuds!!! I’ll blog about them all over the place.

Busy Busy Busy

So much has been going on. The in-laws are in town and I’ve been working and climbing nonstop on top of it all. There’s been very little time to post.

I do, however, have several interesting photo albums to share with you:

• Photos from my college graduation that my father finally managed to get off his camera (almost a year later).
• Climbing at Exit 38 this weekend.
• Updates of other stuff I’ve been up to.

So yeah, that’s about it for now. Back to playing with WordPress and doing other cool, geeky stuff.

Washington Crosses the Line with Gambling Law

Like Seattle Times staff columnist Danny Westneat I wasn’t too worked up about Washington’s new anti online gambling law. I figured that since the State said it has no plans to prosecute small-time online gamblers, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

How wrong I was. I just read today about Todd Boute, a Bellingham man who had to shut down his online casino guide after he found out that using the Web to “transmit gambling information” in Washington State is now a crime.

Can anyone say violation of free speech? This law is patently, unquestionably unconstitutional. Tod Butte has every right to link to a gambling site and to talk about gambling if he wants to. That’s protected speech.

What’s more, there are literally millions upon millions of websites - including this one - that host ads generated by the Google AdSense Network and others like it. Those networks sometimes have ads for online poker and other gambling sites. Would I be in violation of the law if an ad for an online casino suddenly popped up on my sidebar? I sure hope not.

As for the law banning online gambling, it’s absolutely hypocritical. The law still allows horse wagering online. Why is that any more acceptable than betting that your pocket pair is the best hand at the table? I think it’s mostly because the folks who own Emerald Downs pestered their friends in high places to add that little loophole before the law was passed.

I know what the State says. Online gambling makes it easy for gangsters to launder money, and cheaters can collude more easily using instant messaging programs while playing in online tournaments. But let’s be realistic, people. Do you really think that the kinds of lowlifes who are really using online poker to launder money care if the activity is illegal? They’ve obviously done a hell of a lot worse. And anyone who has ever sat down at a virtual poker table knows that there’s a higher probability that the people around him are cheating. That’s just an inherent risk of playing the game online, and online gamblers accept it.

I have no idea why Olympia is wasting the taxpayers’ time and money with such a stupid law, but it’s got to go. I’m less worked up about the gambling part, but I hope the whole law gets overturned upon judicial review due to the freedom of speech issues.

Social Networking, the Bane of my Career or its Salvation

From reading The New York Times a couple of days ago, it would be easy to get the impression that being on a social networking site, or having a blog would be a real problem when you’re looking for a job. After all, what you post on the Web lingers forever and ever.

For example, it may be discovered years from now when I apply for a job at Microsoft that I once made fun of Bill Gates on a blog with a PageRank of 7. Or maybe the photo of me on Facebook where I’m drunk, covered in soot and making a monster face might give a potential employer pause.

But on the other side of the debate, Jeremiah Owyang is hailing the fact that MySpace and SimpleHired have joined forces to allow people to look for employment while they socially network with complete strangers.

So where’s the middle ground? I’ll tell you.

We’re living in a world where it’s increasingly easy to make your voice heard. People are posting photos, blogs, podcasts, and all kinds of other things about themselves in very public places. It used to be that you could neatly compartmentalize your personality at work and your personality elsewhere, but that’s not the way things work anymore.

I expect that most of the potential employers/clients/constituent in my future will have been drunk at one time or another in their lives. Perhaps they ran around and did crazy things on their college campuses. It’s possible that they’ve even had a little fun. So yes, my life is pretty much an open book for anyone who knows how to use Google and has a Facebook account. But isn’t it possible to keep those things in context?

What I do in my free time has absolutely no bearing on how well I do my job. Sure I’m the same person, but I know how to keep things strictly business. I can dance on the bar at Cowgirls, Inc. in a miniskirt and tube top on Friday night and be completely professional on Monday morning. The two are not mutually exclusive, and they never were. Now it’s just more public.

That’s the truth and I’m sticking to it.

Oh yeah, and I can still hear the sound.

I’m a Collossal Idiot and Other Tales

So I was up at my coworker’s house today working on a proposal when I magically managed to spill an entire glass of water directly onto the keyboard of my iBook G4. It was really dumb of me.

Anyway, I sprang into action. Before the water had even finished splashing all over the place, I had grabbed the computer and turned it upside down to drain the water. Then I ripped out the power cord, slammed my finger down on the off button and tore the battery out.

Within five minutes, I had the computer almost completely disassembled and was blowing a hair dryer on a cold setting on the RAM container. Thankfully, no water got into that part of the computer or into any of the other internal organs, from what I can tell.

After a fraught trip to the Apple Store in Bellevue Square at which fabulous Apple Genius Elizabeth Chapin (other geniuses ask for her by name) helped me to put things right. We turned the computer on and presto! No damage. I’m such a lucky son of a bitch.

In other news, I downloaded two truly amazing records from the iTunes Store today. Julie Roberts’ eponymous debut album and Sara Evans’ Real Fine Place (both iTunes, in case you didn’t figure that out). Julie Roberts looks a bit like a blonde Natalie Portman with a voice like Bonnie Raitt’s child would have if her other mother happened to be LeAnn Rimes. I’m very into this girl, can you tell? Evan’s album doesn’t have me quite so excited, but it’s definitely a wonderful record to listen to, and I recommend it to anyone who already owns her smash hit 2003 record Restless (iTunes).

Also, I’ve decided to enter the Gizmodo Idol contest for a shot at those headphones. Here’s my entry:

And finally, I can still hear the sound.

Checkbook Journalism

Yesterday, AdAge accused Time Inc. of “checkbook journalism” for their purchase of the first bona-fide pregnant Angelina Jolie photos and, more recently, their huge donations to Jolie’s favorite charities in exchange for photos of her offspring.

Now, normally I would agree. If the Times were to pay someone close to President Bush for information that would bring down the administration, I would be shaking my head with disapproval (even as the rest of me was dancing a jig). But this is celebrity coverage. It’s just for voyeuristic fun. And it’s raising money for kids who don’t have the luxury of caring about just how beautiful Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s baby will be.

I say no harm, no foul.

Exploring the High Pitched Ringtone

The high-pitched ringtone whose existence is now all over the memetrackers and the MSM like sexually transmitted diseases on Colin Farrell first came to my attention about a month ago. My fiancé, a high school teacher, told me about the noise after his students brought it to his attention it in class. They wanted to see if he could hear it. He couldn’t.

Andy was born on November 10th, 1982. He was exactly 23 and a half when he was first exposed to the noise in Vero Beach, FL. The school where he taught is right on the beach, so he was at sea level. But today, almost two months later in my apartment in Kirkland, he could hear it just fine. The elevation here is 102 meters (334 feet) above sea level.

Our theory is that higher elevation may give older people the ability to hear the sound because of the difference in air pressure within the ear. For the first part of our project, we’ll be checking out whether he can hear the sound when we go to Alki beach to play volleyball this weekend.

The second part of our experiment will take a bit longer. Today, I played the ringtone for Steve, my coworker Kim and her 15 year old daughter Hillary. Hillary could hear the noise loud and clear, and she begged me to stop playing it. I can just barely hear it. It sounds like a clear high hissing noise just on the periphery of my sense of sound. I can tell that I’m close to losing the ability to hear that frequency of sound. Meanwhile, neither Steve nor Kim could hear it at all. As Steve said, “that must be the sound that the bell on the Polar Express makes.”

From this day forward, I will listen to the sound every day to pinpoint the exact date on which I can no longer hear it. Today, I am 23 years, one month and seven days old. I can hear the sound just fine.

Tomorrow, who knows?

12 Reasons Gay Marriage will Ruin Society

This is quite possibly the most hilariously prescient commentary on the gay marriage debate I’ve ever encountered. My favorite is reason 8.

Cat Trees Bear

This is probably the most hilarious thing I’ve read in quite a while. What an awesome cat.

Not Sure How I Feel About this Watada Fellow [Updated]

UPDATE: Since I wrote this post, I’ve rolled the issues brought up by Lt. Watada’s objection to the war around in my brain a bit. I can’t say that I’ve become 100% supportive of his decision, but I do see his point about participation in the war as being party to war crimes. Given the continued lack of accountability in this administration, I’m beginning to see why protests like Lt. Watada’s are crucial to the future of our democracy.

I hate this war, don’t get me wrong. In 2003, I marched in protest on the ROTC offices at Claremont McKenna College along with hundreds of others to voice my opposition. I’ve said from day one that this effort in Iraq was a bad idea, and I’m pretty damn sure I was right.

That said, I’m not exactly thrilled that 1st Lt. Ehren Watada has decided to pull a stunt like this and refuse his orders to deploy to Iraq. When you join the armed forces, you take a solemn vow to obey the orders of your Commander in Chief. And despite his inept handling of this conflict, George W. Bush does hold the highest office in this land.

If Watada had been drafted, or if he had signed up before the war began, his protest might mean more. But this is a man who knew exactly what he was getting into when he signed up. His right to dissent is clear - but he has obligations and responsibilities.

What’s more, Watada’s decision doesn’t accomplish anything for his political viewpoint. Make no mistake, this is a blow for the left. Watada will be seen in handcuffs. He will go to jail. And it will make everyone who opposes this war look like they belong behind bars with him.

I can’t get behind him. I won’t get behind him. It’s partly a political matter, but it’s mostly a matter of honor. What would happen if every soldier questioned his orders when sent into battle? We’d have complete anarchy in our armed forces. There’s a chain of command for a reason, and it must be upheld. When you sign up, you sign up.

Do your job, Lt. Watada.

al-Zarqawi is Dead, but does it Matter?

Ok yeah, I know it’s a blow to the terrorists in Iraq. But is the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi really going to make much of a difference in Iraq?

The insurgency is like a hydra. Cut off the head and three more grow in its place. Yes we’ve dealt a blow to their leadership, but don’t think for a second that this will stop them. I still don’t believe that we can just cut and run, but to quote Ned Flanders, we’ve gotten ourselves into a dilly of a pickle with this war.

Next Page »