06.30.08

Not a public school

Posted in Uncategorized tagged at 1:20 am by kyrias

Another bunch of city kids got kicked out of the library again today.

I felt really sorry for them — even as I mostly understand the logic behind not allowing them access to our computer lab.

It was mostly my fault. I had assumed that they were the kids who were attending the summer camps at the college and were, therefore, allowed access to the computers. So when they came in and asked if they could use the computers, I said yes.

Wrong thing to say. Eagle-eyed Lily swooped down, disabused me of my notions, told me to never assume, and showed them out the door.

Lily said that we weren’t a public school and if they wanted access to computers, they could very well use the public library terminals.

I understand that you don’t want kids loitering in a research library hogging the computers and using MySpace and messaging programs when other people might want to do legitimate research. I also realize that if you allow them once, then they’ll probably bring their friends next time and the next thing you know you’ve been swamped with kids.

The thing is, knowing that doesn’t make chasing them away easier.

Most of these are inner city kids who probably don’t have access to either a computer or Internet at home. Wired as I am, it’s hard for me to deny them. Also, I’ve seen the local library — it has two or three computer terminals and you’re only allowed on for one hour, not to mention the potential hour long wait for someone to get off the computer.

Eh. I’m just happy that it’s always Lily who chases them off. I’d feel awful if I had to.

06.29.08

WPM - what’s yours?

Posted in Job tagged , at 1:40 am by kyrias

I’ve been looking at job descriptions and some of them ask for minimum WPM (words per minute) and so I figured I should know what mine is.

I tried a couple of sites online and my WPM ranged from 59 WPM to 79 WPM.

Blegh.

I do realize that I have typing issues — I still have to look down at the keyboard sometimes when I get distracted because I forget where keys are. My typing speed also goes down to 0 when someone is talking to me. Let’s not even talk about numbers and dashes and other special symbols.

Not to mention that I not only perform a lot worse on keyboards that I’m not familiar with — I also tense up when taking the typing tests because of stress.

I’m thinking about training up my typing skills so I not only can type faster, but so I can perform better under stress.

Typing of the Dead sounds like a good way to train for both. *snicker* I will have to ask Chris to install that on my computer at some point soon.

Most jobs that I’ve looked at ask for a base WPM of 30 and I’ve heard that administrative secretary positions require WPMs of 80+.

06.28.08

Wait, what?!

Posted in Uncategorized tagged at 7:10 am by kyrias

Aparently, 18% of Americans think that the sun revolves around the Earth.

Um, what?

I don’t even want to know. Really, I don’t.

I understand that it’s just a lead into the main article, which has some fairly interesting facts about how the brain works – but been there done that in neuroscience class.

What really appalls me is that 18% of Americans think that the sun revolves around the earth. How? I thought that primary school, at least, was mandatory? What DO they teach them in school nowadays?

In the same lol wut vein…

An inmate of a prison left behind a rose fashioned from toilet paper because he felt apologetic about making a break for it. He got caught again and didn’t seem to be kicking up a fuss about – probably with the guilt again.

People are weird. @@

06.27.08

Seriously, why?

Posted in Health tagged , at 8:52 am by kyrias

Couple of things that may or may not be linked:

The HIV rate is up 12% for young gay men.

Number of confirmed STD cases hit a record high in Iowa. However, Iowa is not one of the states that practices abstinence only sex education.

Survey found that 40% of New Yorkers had sex with multiple partners without using a condom.

All the surveys were taken in different states.

As such, can I venture the hypothesis that, across the board, people are having lots of unsafe sex?

I’m not quite sure even why people would have unsafe sex at this point.

Is it because of the wide-spread practice of preaching abstinence only sex education? I suppose if all you were ever told about sex was: “It’s bad and un-Christian to have sex before marriage, DON’T DO IT!!!!!!”, then you might not know anything about HIV rates, pregnancy, etc.

Kind of hard to believe — I know I was more than flabbergasted to learn that today’s generation, for all their tech-savviness, actually doesn’t really use Google all that often to learn about things that they could.

Or is it because it’s just way too awkward to stop in the middle of flirting and ask the mark: “Um, hey, wanna skip over to the hospital and get some bloodwork done real quick?” I mean, nothing like mentioning needles and tests to kill the libido, right? And with all the invincibility of youth — it can happen to other people, but not me, right?

Maybe because we’re all just stupid and don’t read the newspapers about how HIV rates are rising…

I really don’t know — why do people practice unsafe sex when there’s indications everywhere that it’s a bad idea?

06.26.08

Huge step backwards? Excuse me?

Posted in On cabbages and kings tagged , at 9:41 am by kyrias

After 49 years, Missouri’s Supreme court is now voting that the ban be lifted. Missouri was one of the first and only states to ban midwifery, with offenders being jailed for up to 7 years if caught.

Right now, the Missouri Medical Association is raising waves, saying that it’s a “huge step backwards for mothers and their babies.”

All I can say is: “Excuse me?”

I’m not even going to go into the theory that cunning-women, midwives, the local witch, etc were “banned” or outright burned at the stake not only because of Christianity but because they were alternatives to submitting to the patriarchal Church and its proponents.

Nor am I going to theorize about how the medical business might be deliberately discrediting alternatives to their care because they like charging the big bucks and they don’t want other people sharing in their pie and thus potentially driving down their profits.

I don’t have proof at hand for any of that, so I’m just going to stick to what I do know.

Huge step backwards? To what?

Women have been giving birth and helping each other give birth for millennia. Since the human race managed to survive decently, I’m assuming that they didn’t do a piss-poor job of it.

And if you don’t want to talk about those “romanticised good ol’ days”, then maybe you can approach it from a pragmatically economic standpoint. Which is that, if midwives weren’t providing comparable, even better care, people would not be going to them instead of to the “proper” doctors. YOU’re doing something wrong, not them, if you’re losing “customers”.

Not to mention all the little things about standardized childbirth procedure that has been lamented at great length across many forums.

For example:

The pressure to have a C-section because it’s “more convenient” for the hospital. Or because they don’t want to have to deal with a “normal birth” when it’s “faster and safer” to just cut you open and then stitch you up.

What they don’t tell you is that if you get a C-section, it dramatically raises the chances that you will need another C-section if you have another child. They also don’t tell you that some studies show that being birthed vaginally is often better for the child.

Pressure to either have an episiotomy or epidural. What they don’t tell you is that having an epidural could actually make it harder for you to “push” and could cause other birthing complications resulting in a C-section. There’s also many anecdotes about how having episiotomy can actually make you tear more than you would have without it and how a clean cut doesn’t necessarily heal better than a “ragged one”.

Silver nitrate drops in the newborn’s eyes.

I’ve even heard stories about pressure to circumcise baby boys.

I’m not dissing “modern science”, but when it takes a look at alternatives to what they’re doing and call it wrong/backwards/un-necessary — be “it” water births, vaginal births without an epidural or episiotomy — then I’m not so inclined to want to give birth in such a hostile environment.

Savvy?

06.25.08

I have to admit, I LOLed.

Posted in I.T tagged , at 8:32 am by kyrias

Asides from the sheer entertainment factor, this post is specially for those “gifted” friends of mine. You know who you are. *wink wink nudge nudge*

Check it out, the concept of “harnessing the un-tapped power of breast motion” by Adrienne So.

I have to say, if they ever did come up with t-shirts that could power cell phones or I-pods, that’d be grand. I’d be interested if a person could wear enough clothing of that type to power a laptop computer.

I don’t think I like the idea of the linear motor as much — but that may just be sour grapes talking. *grin*

And the solar-powered bra - what’s up with that? Might as well put the tech to use making hats if you’re going to go that route, I’m certainly not going to be caught wearing my underwear outside. Although — the concept could prove useful for those sunning beach bunnies I see all the time. I can just see the marketing sound byte now: “Are you tired of your I-pod battery running out in the middle of an otherwise lovely afternoon in the sun? Tan yourself and power your I-pod at the same time! Environmentally friendly and empowering!”

In conclusion, I don’t know how it’s not sexy to see the girls as a pair of batteries — any future kids of mine will certainly be eying them in that light. Oh wait, that’s right, that’s not sexy. My bad.

But weren’t we just talking about empowerment?

06.24.08

Much ado about nothing?

Posted in I.T, On cabbages and kings tagged at 1:52 pm by kyrias

Apparently, the global community wants the Internet truly globalized — they want to be able to have domain names in their native languages.

Not only that, but many are pushing to have local-script domain names corresponding to the dialects. Some minority groups, for example Russian immigrants living in the U.S, are requesting something to denote their status in addition to the .us that is currently in use.

Frankly, I don’t really know what to think about the issue.

To a certain extent, I also believe that it’s more than past time to have the Internet be more flexible than it currently is. I think that it would be immeasurably helpful for the citizens of the world who don’t know English, and as such, it’s something that needs to be done.

But — I wonder how it’s going to be implemented — the ability to type in Chinese or Arabic letters as a domain name. With the issues about fonts and accents — it’s going to be interested to see how they get around that.

But I think, to a certain extent, that asking for dialects to be included is just overkill. Looking at China alone, the dialects are overwhelmingly different and many, I don’t know if and how they would manage to appease everything if they did start doing minority dialects.

Also, I don’t know that it would actually work to de-globalize the Internet in terms of information transfer. For example, I know Mandarin — the official language of China, but I don’t know Cantonese or Shanghainese or the other dialects. If people were to start writing exclusively in their dialects, I wouldn’t be able to understand what they were saying. Or even if it were just the domain name, is there a possibility that I wouldn’t be able to either find their sites using the usual Chinese characters and searching?

To be honest, I’m not entirely clear on what they want to do and how they plan on going about it. I’m not even sure about what would be changed. The news article wasn’t horribly illuminating for me. I’m hoping to get some more information through other channels soon.

06.23.08

A case for home-schooling?

Posted in On cabbages and kings tagged , , at 9:21 am by kyrias

John Freshwater, an 8th grade science teacher at Mount Vernon, apparently teaches creationism to the detriment of teaching “proper” science.

According to the Columbus Dispatch, he’s been undermining the educational system for 11 years by discrediting evolution. On another related note, he’s been teaching that homosexuality is a sin. A Mount Vernon News article states that he’s been teaching intelligent design as early as 2003, that he has “code words” for when he disagrees with the textbook, and that he teaches religion in his classroom.

What really worries me is that according to this article, he’s been teaching for 21 years and has been caught teaching Christian values and viewpoints for at least 11 years.

So, first of all, was he just not “caught” the first 10 years? Or was he quietly supported by the school board? Also, eleven years of teaching creationism, what the FUCK was the school board doing not kicking his ass out ten years ago? And if this blog’s source is accurate — if the high school principal didn’t want him teaching her daughter, why hasn’t she done something about him? So it’s alright for him to be teaching someone else’s kids?

Even more disturbing: supposedly one in eight highschool biology teachers teach creationism as valid science. Out of 2,000 teachers polled, 2% said that they didn’t cover evolution at all and 12.5% taught creationism as a “valid, scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations for the origin of species”.

Um, hi — run that by me again?

I’ve always thought that I would want to home-school my kids if I every had them, mostly because I was worried about potential bad school environments and lack of “good” teachers than anything else. But this is horrifying. One in eight — I really would not want to bet against those odds, considering it’s my kid’s education at stake.

Ackf.

06.22.08

Stop the pedestal-placing, seriously!

Posted in On cabbages and kings tagged at 2:13 am by kyrias

I was reading “The Sword” by Jean Johnson and it was decently executed and I was mostly enjoying myself until she got to the “women are the keepers of civilization” bit.

I’m not going to go into that in detail right now, because there’s a lot more of that bone I’d gnaw on but that’s not my point right now.

The thing is, I love how so many people, especially women, love to say that the world would be a much better place with women in charge.

Sorry, I beg to differ.

Maybe it’s because of our patriarchal society. Maybe it’s because of the imperfect, flawed world that we live in, but I don’t think the world would be a substantially better place with women in charge.

There have been some women in power in history and I can’t see that they were without human foibles. The first female empress of China did some pretty sketchy things — such as murdering her own newborn to depose the current queen, having a male harem, and other similarly cruel things. At least Wu Ze Tian actually did some right things along with her flaws, but the dowager empress Chi Xi was pretty much skank city. I’m somewhat convinced that the dynastic system wouldn’t have fallen apart so quickly if she didn’t continuously obstruct reform. Then there’s the Virgin Queen of England, Cleopatra, and Catherine the Great. On a more modern bent, I suppose you could say there’s Margaret Thatcher, Condoleeza Rice, and Hilary Clinton, to name a few.

I really think that it’s mostly masturbation to say that women would be much better for the world. It’s true that women may bring elements to the table that men can’t or won’t — but it’s sophomoric to dismiss the failings of men as because they lack certain things, over-encumbered with testosterone and balls as they are.

I believe that it’s the individual that makes the case, not an entire gender.

Tongue-in-cheek observation: I don’t think that I would be much happier living under the rule of a person whose gender was allowed to kill while they were pregnant because it was so widely observed that they were extremely unstable in that state. Also, wasn’t there a state that had a law that stated a woman could, under extreme rage, empty an entire clip of bullets into a man and still not be accused of premeditated murder? Apparently a woman’s rage is such that only emptying a clip and then refilling it would be considered premeditation.

06.21.08

Washing clothing by hand?

Posted in Money tagged , , at 1:14 am by kyrias

Motivated by the idea of not spending more money on washing clothing than we absolutely have to — I tried looking up the average cost of a load of laundry.

Unfortunately, Google failed me and I wasn’t able to find out exact numbers because the amount of water and electricity each washer/dryer uses is different, not to mention the differing costs based on location, and I think I heard some rumor of having to pay for sewage. The one site that I found that was willing to hazard a guess said that for the average load, water cost about 5 cents and power 9.

I think my mind boggled for a bit there. If those number are more or less accurate — then at $1.25 to wash a load of laundry, the owners of the machines would be making more than $1 per load off of us. To be honest, to a certain extent I feel that even making 50 cents is too much.

It’s true that the owners would have to pay for repairs and upkeep - but really, how often do washers break down anyways? Of course, if they’re cheap Chinese crap, there’s no telling…

I spent another hour or so looking up reviews of the Wonder Wash and what’s disturbing is that the reviews vary wildly from site to site. Even worse is the large number of blogs/sites that plug it without actually saying anything about personal experience. *grr* From what I can tell, sometimes the base gets loose or the cap malfunctions or things just break because it’s “flimsy plastic”.

Even more unsettling is the fact that the only place that seems to sell the thing is reputed to have horrible customer service. There’s a thread over at Treehugger at least 3 pages long, all with multiple complaints against Alternative Laundry.

If we have a bathtub in the new apartment, I might debate just doing my laundry by hand. If driven to it, I might just invest in one of those hand wringers and just spend my evenings with the dirty laundry. Seriously, considering that the average urban dweller’s lifestyle doesn’t involve a lot of grime and other icky stuff, I don’t think that it would be hard to wash the clothing by hand.

Once Caesura comes up with a new budget that involved the incorporation of laundry — I might seriously look into it.

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