At a time when we have a President who has called for bi-particianship it seems to me that there is even more particianship. My perception is likely clouded by a) the lack of attention I paid to politics when Bush was President due to my semi-perminent state of cringe, and b) the enormous amount of attention Obama gets in the media- as the grandpa I was sitting in the spa with last night pointed out, there has not been a day since he took office that he has not been mentioned on the news. I have no problem with particianship and the fact that our two parties have differing opinions, but the benefit of having differing opinions is that each can challenge the other which can lead to better ideas and decisions. Unfortunately differing opinions seem to be leading to stupidity. Republicans seem to be morally opposed to agreeing with Democrats, not on the principal of the idea but instead on the principal of agreeing. Further it seems to me that Republicans are getting dumber. Last night I was watching CNN and a Republican legislator from Bakersfield, CA (complete with a background with changing images of Bakersfield) was complaining about how stimulus funds are being spent. The governor of Ohio, I believe, he said is going to spend a load of money $23 million or so on a study rather than projects that apply the shovel to the ground and provide jobs for hardworking people... or something like that. Hello! Wake up! Get your head out of your butt!!! Obviously this guy doesn't know what a study is and for this I think the voters of Bakersfield should send him to school. Someone has to do a study. Actually a bunch of someones are often involved with a study. And these people get paid. If there are not studies to be done, these people may not have jobs. So doing a study provides jobs for people. Educated people, people like me, thank you very much. And this is what I am concerned about. In case you have not been paying attention the past 10 or 20 years we have this little problem with immigration and we Americans are snobs and don't want to do menial labor. So why are we so intent on providing menial labor jobs? In the US our educational institutions are factories of knowledge. We need to provide jobs for these people who we have already subsidized through funding to institutions of higher learning, and financial aid and subsidized loans to students. Where is this in the economic recovery plan? I am not hearing about it. I am hearing about cleaning up trash, and re-paving highways. How many Republican lawmakers want those jobs for their children. I am not knocking these jobs, they are vitally important to the infastructure of the US. Increasing the number of them, will, duh employ more people. I just see an imbalance of focus on these jobs to the exclusion of other jobs.
On Thursday I had an "ah-ha" moment when I was at a lecture given my Saskia Sassen, a world famous sociologist who is most known for her research on globalization. I had been having a funny feeling about the bailouts being given to the financial sector and the fact that it seemed that as the US economy tanked so did the world economy. Dr. Sassan was talking about the tension between the national and the global, which people seem to want to see as exclusive of one another but they really can co-exist. She pointed out that the bailouts given by the US government were not bailing out a national system but instead are bailing out a global system. Ah-ha. That is totally the case and why should the US carry the responsibilty in this area? Which goes to the G-12 (that's the right number, right?) and all that happened at that meeting...
Okay. All for now. Off to the wedding festivities! Another friend willingly surrenders her last name.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
One thing, and then another
I have written a few blogs in the last couple of weeks but I am trying to follow the adage "if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all." Not an easy task. Especially when some others do say not nice things. Apparently I said something not nice, in a moment or five of anger about a month ago that will continue to cause me problems for a while. But maybe we will get to that in a future post, maybe not.
My grandmother died on March 27 which is somewhat ironic since my grandfather (opposite side) died on September 27, 2008. In six months I lost two grandparents or 50% of my grandparents (oooh, yeah too much statistics and data analysis lately). That sucks. Now, this may be difficult to understand or some might find it harsh, but my grandma dying was a good thing in a bad way. Different people experience death and the resulting mourning in different ways and I think anger was the most prominent stage in my mourning process for my grandmother. She was old and she was in bad health. But she didn't do much of anything to fight her dissintigration into bad health and instead sat in her house and did not much of anything. A crossword, some reading, ordered stuff from catalogs, and waited for people to come visit her when she could have been hanging out at the senior center or with her great grandchildren or daughter and son-in-law. But after grandpa died and she moved to Bishop, she just seemed to have lost her desire to live and for this I am angry. But I think I am getting over it. I guess she got what she wanted... the chance to be with grandpa again. I just wish that her family had not had to experience her giving up on life as a result.
Tomorrow is Easter and this means that I can eat meat again. I was doing pretty good on this vegetarian thing until Wednesday and then I was over it and wanted some meat. A little chicken, fish, a good taco- come on!! Hopefully eating meat again will not make me sick. Eating vegetarian wasn't all bad, I just got a bit tired of all the beans I was eating in order to get some protein. I didn't eat as many eggs as I thought I might and really it was not as difficult as I thought it was going to be. Eric was pretty supportive in that he ate what I fixed, but when we went out he always got something with meat in it. Yesterday I really wanted some of his pasta with chicken in it!!! I am hoping as I merge back into omnivore status that I will not overdo the meat consumption just to make up for lost time. One thing I learned from my experience is that there are plenty of meatless meals that are good and so I plan to keep some of these foods in my diet. I was disappointed that I did not seem to have lost much weight. In that way I kinda wish I had observed Passover instead as I always seem to lose weight when carbs are removed from my diet. It is clear I love carbs.
I am working away on my thesis. Right now I am in problem solution mode as I am trying to maximize the number of cases on which my analysis is based by dealing with missing data issues. Somehow my analysis is down to 9000 some cases from 16000 cases so I need to see where all the cases went. Then I need to get on my horse and analyze this data. Then revise what I already have written, get it reviewed by the profs on my committee, revise, and put a bow on this hog! (Midwest humor?) Hopefully I will graduate on time. My dad told me yesterday that my parents have not bought their plane tickets yet.... oh, I just shake my head at that. Maybe they think I won't graduate and somehow we will know that in a reasonable amount of time before, or maybe they are just procrastinating like I did in making my reservations for the hotel in Vancouver where I will stay for Kim's wedding this coming weekend. Yikes! Kim will be married in seven days!!!
Both Eric and I have been applying for jobs. I think he really did apply for a job in Antarctica. If he goes without me I will be sad and maybe a little ticked off. But on the other hand I am cold here in Wisconsin and do you know how much the coats they suggest you have for being in Antarctica cost? Over $500. And I am tired of being inside here and hate the cold wind, how much worse will it be there? So maybe I should be happy the Norseman may go without me.
Tonight, another basketball game (go Bucks!) night. Keeping a positive attitude about it.
My grandmother died on March 27 which is somewhat ironic since my grandfather (opposite side) died on September 27, 2008. In six months I lost two grandparents or 50% of my grandparents (oooh, yeah too much statistics and data analysis lately). That sucks. Now, this may be difficult to understand or some might find it harsh, but my grandma dying was a good thing in a bad way. Different people experience death and the resulting mourning in different ways and I think anger was the most prominent stage in my mourning process for my grandmother. She was old and she was in bad health. But she didn't do much of anything to fight her dissintigration into bad health and instead sat in her house and did not much of anything. A crossword, some reading, ordered stuff from catalogs, and waited for people to come visit her when she could have been hanging out at the senior center or with her great grandchildren or daughter and son-in-law. But after grandpa died and she moved to Bishop, she just seemed to have lost her desire to live and for this I am angry. But I think I am getting over it. I guess she got what she wanted... the chance to be with grandpa again. I just wish that her family had not had to experience her giving up on life as a result.
Tomorrow is Easter and this means that I can eat meat again. I was doing pretty good on this vegetarian thing until Wednesday and then I was over it and wanted some meat. A little chicken, fish, a good taco- come on!! Hopefully eating meat again will not make me sick. Eating vegetarian wasn't all bad, I just got a bit tired of all the beans I was eating in order to get some protein. I didn't eat as many eggs as I thought I might and really it was not as difficult as I thought it was going to be. Eric was pretty supportive in that he ate what I fixed, but when we went out he always got something with meat in it. Yesterday I really wanted some of his pasta with chicken in it!!! I am hoping as I merge back into omnivore status that I will not overdo the meat consumption just to make up for lost time. One thing I learned from my experience is that there are plenty of meatless meals that are good and so I plan to keep some of these foods in my diet. I was disappointed that I did not seem to have lost much weight. In that way I kinda wish I had observed Passover instead as I always seem to lose weight when carbs are removed from my diet. It is clear I love carbs.
I am working away on my thesis. Right now I am in problem solution mode as I am trying to maximize the number of cases on which my analysis is based by dealing with missing data issues. Somehow my analysis is down to 9000 some cases from 16000 cases so I need to see where all the cases went. Then I need to get on my horse and analyze this data. Then revise what I already have written, get it reviewed by the profs on my committee, revise, and put a bow on this hog! (Midwest humor?) Hopefully I will graduate on time. My dad told me yesterday that my parents have not bought their plane tickets yet.... oh, I just shake my head at that. Maybe they think I won't graduate and somehow we will know that in a reasonable amount of time before, or maybe they are just procrastinating like I did in making my reservations for the hotel in Vancouver where I will stay for Kim's wedding this coming weekend. Yikes! Kim will be married in seven days!!!
Both Eric and I have been applying for jobs. I think he really did apply for a job in Antarctica. If he goes without me I will be sad and maybe a little ticked off. But on the other hand I am cold here in Wisconsin and do you know how much the coats they suggest you have for being in Antarctica cost? Over $500. And I am tired of being inside here and hate the cold wind, how much worse will it be there? So maybe I should be happy the Norseman may go without me.
Tonight, another basketball game (go Bucks!) night. Keeping a positive attitude about it.
Friday, April 3, 2009
April (snow?) showers
Okay it has been a long time, a long long time. I will try to make up a few here soon, we will see. What is going on? A lot. I finally got my thesis proposal to a good point and defended it and now I am on to the actual thesis work, thank heavens. Lots to do in a short amount of time. Lots of stress as things are really coming to the end here- of many things... but how many? Here is the current countdown
29 days until the goal I made for having my thesis done.
35 days until I have to be done
45 days until graduation
58 days until I am homeless
Yeah so I gave notice on my apartment when I paid my rent this month. That was scary enough, but then they put a For Rent sign in the yard so I get to have the reminder every day. Somehow I need to find a job and new place to live before those 58 days are up. It is going to be pretty difficult I fear.
Eric and I celebrated out semi-anniversary and that was nice. It has not been an easy six months in either of our lives, what with deaths, a layoff, and my thesis, but I think it has gone very well.
Eric was in a horrible mood today. I don't know what his deal was and I hope he gets over it. I was talking to Jamieson about guys and their tendency to get into a funk that is impermeable to intervention and can only blow over. But he did make me some tea while I was working on my thesis which was very kind.
29 days until the goal I made for having my thesis done.
35 days until I have to be done
45 days until graduation
58 days until I am homeless
Yeah so I gave notice on my apartment when I paid my rent this month. That was scary enough, but then they put a For Rent sign in the yard so I get to have the reminder every day. Somehow I need to find a job and new place to live before those 58 days are up. It is going to be pretty difficult I fear.
Eric and I celebrated out semi-anniversary and that was nice. It has not been an easy six months in either of our lives, what with deaths, a layoff, and my thesis, but I think it has gone very well.
Eric was in a horrible mood today. I don't know what his deal was and I hope he gets over it. I was talking to Jamieson about guys and their tendency to get into a funk that is impermeable to intervention and can only blow over. But he did make me some tea while I was working on my thesis which was very kind.
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