*melty*

Here is a King Charles Spaniel that adopted some orphaned baby bunnies.  

Awwwwww.  

Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou.....

Stripped of his mystique as a different kind of office seeker, he could become just another liberal politician – only one who parses, evades, dissembles and condescends. That narrative is beginning to take hold. If those impressions harden into firm judgments, Mr. Obama will have a very difficult time in November. (WSJ)

Thank you thank you THANK YOU, because this cannot possibly be said enough.  Obama is a politician.  Enough with the magazine covers proclaiming him to be exactly what American needs, enough with the stupid photos with angelic beams of light highlighting him, enough with the crazed fans treating him like the Elvis of our day.  He's a politician, and he's trying to get elected.  That means he's going to do ethically dubious things, and has done them in the past.  He's not perfect, he's not a messiah, he's not anything but someone who's running for public office who has managed to create a ridiculous, obscene cult of personality.  Yes, he's black.  No, that really doesn't make him any different.

Tornado warning! Severe thunderstorm warning!

Gotta love Santa Fe weather, man.  Tornado warnings, severe storm warnings...and yet it's actually rather nice, if a bit breezy outside.  

Granted, the spotted tornado is not really anywhere near Santa Fe - the warning predicts it will be northwest of Ribera in about half an hour, which is still way the hell away from Santa Fe proper.  But still, it's exciting to click onto weather.com and have two different warnings screeching out of a bright-red banner at you.  

I'm not hoping for a tornado, but I am hoping for a good knock-you-off-your-feet, golfball-sized-hail, wrath-of-the-gods style thunderstorm tonight.  I've got nowhere to go and some munchies I picked up at the grocery store, and thunderstorms are nature's blockbuster hits.

Memorial Day

The buses were running on a Sunday schedule today due to the holiday.

Am I the only one who thinks there might be a trace of irony in remembering the sacrifices people made so (coughallegedlycough) that we could live our lives as normal...by changing up the normal routine and inconveniencing people?  I mean, wouldn't a better memorial be to run everything as normal and just take a few moments to enjoy how great our version of normal is?

I treated myself to brunch at the Santa Fe Baking Co. today, then went to Borders and spent most of the afternoon cheating Corporate America by sitting and reading magazines I had absolutely no intention whatsoever of paying any money for.  It was a lovely day.

What sort of technology does the TSA use?

Because you know what my laptop case is made of?  Fabric, probably polyester or something, and foam.  

Know what the back of my messenger bag is made of?  Fabric, probably polyester or something, and foam.  

What sort of magic x-ray machines does the TSA use that can somehow see through the (in fact, denser) fabric of my messenger bag, but I'd need to by a special laptop case for them to be able to see through that?  

(This security checkpoint brought to you by Targus and Skooba)

Oh Santa Fe, where the winds come sweeping down the hills...

And by sweeping I mean, according to the National Weather Service, "southwest winds of 35 to 45 mph with gusts ranging between 50 and 60 mph."  

Woooooosh!

Look! America bling!

I actually somewhat agree with an opinion piece on the CNN website, about the insanity of the stupid little American flag lapel pins.  

This debate is useless, tiresome and distracting. Why? Because if there are members of Congress who wear a flag lapel pin but refuse to shore up our borders, don't do enough to stop the flow of drugs into our neighborhoods, or don't help to eradicate the gaps between the haves and have nots, then are they truly fighting for the concerns of Americans, or playing on the emotions of people by what's on their lapel?

Granted, I don't agree entirely with his reasoning, but hey, it's a start.  Here's my thing, though.  He says this:

Let me tell you something: When I'm on the golf course and I slip my wedding ring into my golf bag, the Rev. Jacquie Hood Martin is still my wife. When we shoot hoops and I remove my Texas A&M University ring from my right hand, I still love my school. The fact that I can no longer wear my 1987 class ring from Houston's Jack Yates High School doesn't mean I don't cherish the crimson and gold. And I may not be able to fit into the shirt I pledged in, but I will be a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc. until the day I die.

I am an unapologetic Christian, but you won't see a cross dangling from my neck or a James Avery charm bracelet on my wrist. Why? Because my love of Jesus Christ is in my heart.

Which I'm sure is a true sentiment, echoed by millions, and perfectly admirable.  But it's not the point, because it's not a politician's job to 'love America' - whatever that means (America's a pretty big place, and there's a lot of contradictions here).  Perhaps it's just a game of semantics, but if I expect my politicians to love and cherish something, it's not the nebulous, enormous, contradiction-filled 'America', but perhaps 'the Constitution'?  You know, the bit of paper that made America?  That's something I can get behind loving.

But even that's useless because you know what?  When any federal worker, everyone from the Speaker of the House all the way down to the mail clerk working at a satellite office for the IRS*, they take an oath:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

Pretty succinct, says what needs to be said and not much more.  And not to sound like some heathen liberal (which I am), but isn't that enough?  You pledge of your own free will to - in essence - do the right thing according to the Constitution, which is where any American's primary loyalty should lie, and that's that.  Rather like the Constitution itself, it's elegant in it's simplicity, and gets the job done.

Of course, as I said, I'm just some heathen liberal, so what would I know?  But to me the whole 'love of country' crap has always seemed to be...well, crap.

*Yes, really.  When I worked as a data monkey for them, I took the same oath.

A bad time for Asia, a good time to do something

The death toll from the earthquake in China is possibly over 50,000.  There's over 43,000 dead in Burma and 28,000 some missing.

From my (admittedly brief) searching, it looks like this might be one of the best ways to make a meaningful donation to aid efforts in Burma.  

Larger aid organizations are of course also trying to help - groups such as Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, the American Friends Service Committee, Oxfam, the American Refugee Committee, of course the Red Cross, and the World Food Program would (as they always are) be worthwhile places to send a small donation.  There's also MercyCorps, which I've only recently become aware of, and seems like one of the better international charities out there: they'll direct your donation to relief in Burma, or aid in China, or a number of other causes you can pick.  

If none of those strike you as a worthy group, I'm sure a minute or two with Google can help you find someplace that will help.  

It takes five minutes to make a donation, and any tiny amount you can give helps.  There are millions who are now homeless, without food or clean water, without any basic sanitation - without anything.  We have the luxury of houses and unlimited clean water and more likely than not more food than you can eat, electricity and DEET insect repellent and nice warm beds.  Millions don't.  Please, do something to help.

Hooray California!

I may be an east-coast elitist who thinks that the west coast will never, ever be as good overall as the northeast, but I'll admit, sometimes California does some things really right.

The California Supreme Court ruled today that same-sex couples should be permitted to marry, rejecting state marriage laws as discriminatory.

Well done, California.

Dear skin:

Sitting outside for an hour between 9 and 10 AM is not sufficient exposure to the sun to get sunburnt.  Please do not do this again.

What fifty years will do to grass

That in the center there is the brand-new Cherry Hill Mall, circa 1961 or so.  Pan left about an inch and a half at that scale and you could see my house, which was there long before the mall.  Many of the houses surrounding it are not, nor is the strip of businesses along Haddonfield Rd (running vertically [north/south]).  The building at the bottom was the Cherry Hill Inn.  Now there's a 24-screen movie theater there and a TGI Fridays.  Just to the east, which looks mostly empty, is now a shopping center with a Target and Kohls.  North of the mall is a series of strip malls (seeing a trend?), including a big supermarket.  Northeast of the mall - more strip malls.  

For comparison, here's how it is now:

View Larger MapI'm pretty sure that there's more open space in the 1961 picture than there now is in all of Cherry Hill township.  

One down

I had my oral today.  I think it went pretty well.  I'm glad to have it over with but I'm glad I didn't have it right after turning in my paper; I needed some more time to let the ideas really properly gel in my mind.  

Left to do: Language paper, math paper, lab paper, figure out a way to make myself sound somewhat vaguely close to intelligent and worthwhile in my junior conference.  

I'm so glad I'm just working in the library again this summer, because I could not deal with finding a job right now.

Newark: Not *totally* worthless

Reading this made my blood run cold:

Philippe Quint is giving a private 30-minute performance on Tuesday in the cab waiting area at Newark Liberty International Airport.

He left his violin, a 1723 Kiesewetter Stradivarius, in a taxi on the way back from the airport last month.

Gah!  What?!  He left a Stradivarius in a cab?  Good god.  I A) am not a professional musician and B) have a decent-but-sure-as-hell-not-a-Stradivarius violin, and I can't stand to take my eyes off it when I travel.  If I know I'm going to be flying with it I will try to get a seat towards the back of the plane, so I'm sure I'll be able to put it in an overhead compartment I can see when we land.  Once while walking through an airport, the shoulder strap on my case spontaneously broke - the clip on one end just stopped clipping, and I nearly dropped it, which caused me to freak out.  

Kudos to Mr. Kahlil for returning the instrument.  I'm willing to bet that he didn't know what exactly it was that he was carrying in has cab, but even still, the honesty is refreshing.  

How in the hell do you get so distracted that you leave your four million dollar Stradivarius in a cab?  Or anywhere?

Seminar, I love you.

I felt overwhelmingly 'meh' about seminar for most of this semester.  Why?  Kant, mostly.  Kant and I are not friends.  I don't understand Kant and quite honestly, I'm okay with that.  I'm pretty sure that if I did understand him I wouldn't like him any more.  So seminar and I have been kind of drifting apart this semester.

Now I want to buy seminar flowers and chocolates and take it out to dinner and stuff.  (Note: not my actual seminar as in the people in it.)  Why?  A couple reasons:

1.  The Scarlet Letter is an amazing, incredible book.  I got a hint of it with Shakespeare last year, but I'd still been waiting to revisit something we read in high school and have it be a different book.  That very much didn't happen with Austen (she's still boring).  Rereading Hawthorne, then discussing it, then reading it again and discussing it again was like intellectual heroin or something.  Holy crap: how did I possibly hate this book in high school?  (I know; I hated everything.)

2.  Adam Smith.  It's dry, and I'd never read economics if I were left to my own devices.  But I'm so glad I read it - he's not at all what I thought he was.

3.  And now we start the serious joy.  For Thursday, we read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and start the Federalist Papers.  I'm very very very excited about this.  There is no possible way seminar will be anything but awesome, because those are some of the most amazing documents ever penned.

4.  To round the year out, our last two seminars are on Huckleberry Finn.  If I'm not already filled with warm fuzzies from the Federalist papers, a good dose of Mark Twain will pick me up.  

Hell, I'm even feeling good about math right now.

Click click click

I love science so much sometimes.