Gone Campin'

For the holiday weekend I'm driving 340 miles to spend a few days "camping" with my family at Twin Lakes outside of Bridgeport in the Eastern Sierras. My parents, my two sisters and their partners, and my niece and nephew will be there. The reason I put camping in quotation marks is that I'm not sure this actually qualifies as camping. We will be staying in several cabins with beds and showers. Well, they don't have televisions or telephones so I guess we will be roughing it. This is about as close to camping as my mother really cares to get anymore.

The cabins are in the forest though and there is quite a bit of wildlife around. Last year my nephew walked right up on a bear in the dark. So, if you don't hear from me again, you know what happened. When my mother mentioned there was a chance of death she finished the sentence with "it should be fun!" Yeah, as if spending a weekend with the family wasn't enough "fun". Just kidding, Mother. You know I love spending time with the family :)

One year done.

It's hard to believe I have already completed my first year of full-time teaching. All I can say is that it was one busy year. I learned a lot about my profession and myself, thankfully it has all been good so far. I just finished grading the last exams and posting the final grades. I'll be taking a little time off, but then I'll be teaching a couple of classes over the summer and trying to finish writing my dissertation. Finish one challenge and then off to the next. Just the way I like it.

Camera Shopping

I need some advice from all of you shutterbugs out there. I have been given $1000 to buy a digital camera. I have never purchased or even used a camera in this price range, so I'm not sure what I should be looking for.

The Canon EOS 30D with a 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens has been recommended. Does anyone have any experience with this camera? Any other recommendations on either the camera or lens selection? Thanks.

Top of the Charts

Three weeks ago over on Ariel I commented on Stephen Colbert's satirically ironic speech/roast at the Associated Press hosted White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, before President Bush, the press and other D.C. people.

Not surprisingly it did not get much coverage by the very press that it lampooned, but it appears to have become quite popular with the general public.

NYT - The after-dinner speech that refuses to go away has scored another distinction: top of the charts.

An audio version of the roast of President Bush by Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central rose to the rank of No. 1 album at Apple's iTunes store on Saturday, three weeks to the night of the White House Correspondents Dinner. Also in the Top 10 were new releases by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam and Paul Simon.

An Inconvenient Truth

A highly recommended film coming to selected theaters this week. Although it may be An Inconvenient Truth, it is your world, take the time to learn more about the environment and global warming.


Ten things you can do today.
UPDATE 5/26:
This is exactly why you need to take the time to educate yourself.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute runs ads saying "The Antarctic ice sheet is getting thicker." A professor objects, saying CEI deliberately misrepresents his research.

The business-backed Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released two ads last week to "counter global warming alarmism."

One of the ads says research shows "The Antarctic ice sheet is getting thicker, not thinner. . . Why are they trying to scare us?" Actually, scientists say increased snowfall in Antarctica's interior is evidence that global warming is taking place. Scientists also say that the ice sheet is melting at the ocean's edge and a recent report says it is shrinking overall.

The ads drew a protest from a University of Missouri professor who says they are "a deliberate effort to confuse and mislead the public about the global warming debate." He said one of them misuses a study he published in Science magazine last year on the Antarctic ice sheet. An editor of Science also said the ads misrepresent the findings of that study as well as a second study on Greenland's glaciers.

The second CEI ad notes that carbon dioxide (CO2) is "essential to life," and says, "they call it pollution. We call it life." That ad fails to mention that too much CO2 can cause global temperatures to rise or that there is more of it in the atmosphere than any time during the last 420,000 years.

CEI, which gets just over 9 per cent of its budget from Exxon Mobil Corporation, said it was only trying to make sure the public hears "both sides of the story."

FactCheck.org

ANOTHER UPDATE 5/31:
Well, if you still aren't interested, maybe being real itchy will give you more incentive.

Poison Ivy Itchier, More Plentiful With Warming, Study Says

Global climate change may soon make our planet a much itchier place.

Rising levels of carbon dioxide—a so-called greenhouse gas that traps heat within Earth's atmosphere—can fuel booming poison ivy growth, a new study reports.

Even worse, the rash-inducing vines may become more potent.

inglés solamente

Here we go again. Throughout the history of the United States there have been individuals that have wanted to ban the use of any language other than English. The "English Only" movement promotes the enactment of legislation that restricts or prohibits the use of languages other than English by government agencies and, in some cases, by private businesses. Not surprisingly this movement feels empowered to push its agenda more when a portion of the public is concerned about new foreigners moving to our shores.

The problem for me is that any "English Only" laws punish immigrants for emigrating from non-English speaking countries and ultimately restrict their individual liberties.

Here are a few pieces of history on the topic. John Adams proposed to the Continental Congress in 1780 that an official academy be created to "purify, develop, and dictate usage of," English. Thankfully his proposal was rejected as undemocratic and a threat to individual liberty. This has not stopped others from trying.

In 1921 Republicans in New York pushed through an English literacy test for voting, hoping to disfranchise one million Yiddish speakers who had an annoying habit of electing Democrats. In 1981 Republican Senator Hayakawa proposed a constitutional English Language Amendment. This proposal, if approved, would have banned virtually all uses of languages other than English by federal, state, and local governments.

Since 1981 a flurry of states have adopted various forms of Official English legislation. Alaska and Arizona's "English Only" initiatives were declared unconstitutional and Hawai'i is officially bilingual. Today there are some 23 states with active Official English laws.

As an American with non-English speaking ancestors, some that never completely made the transition to speaking English, but were hard working and paid all of their taxes, I can see first hand how these "English Only" laws do nothing other than discriminate. I currently live in an area of the country with the highest language diversity, over 105 languages spoken. What benefit would banning the use of all of those wonderful languages bring to this community? I can't think of any that would make discrimination acceptable. Can you?

Well, it appears the Republican-run Senate along with the assistance of 11 Democrats believes that there is a good enough reason.

The Senate first voted 63-34 to make English the national language after lawmakers who led the effort said it would promote national unity.

But critics argued the move would prevent limited English speakers from getting language assistance required by an executive order enacted under President Clinton. So the Senate also voted 58-39 to make English the nation's "common and unifying language."

"We are trying to make an assimilation statement," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of two dozen senators who voted Thursday for both English proposals.

Oh, assimilation, also known as the Wal-Martization of America. It will be interesting to see how the President officially responds to this plan. Hmm, this might get a little sticky.

"The president has never supported making English the national language," Gonzales said after meeting with state and local officials in Texas to discuss cooperation on enforcement of immigration laws.

One last note for those hardcore "purist" out there, remember that even the Articles of Confederation were originally printed in English and German. America has always been a multilingual nation. Why should we change that now?

Only if I were this brave.

Well, with all the stuff I've been throwing at my TV lately,
I'm surprised it doesn't look like this.

I have to admit, these ads make me chuckle.

"Get a Mac"

The Evolution of the Simpsons Tonight

New Episode: The Monkey Suit

Lisa is arrested for defying the new law in Springfield against teaching evolution after Reverend Lovejoy is appointed by Mayor Quimby (at Ned Flanders's request) to be the town's new "morality czar" in charge of promoting creationism; can a comment made in the show's first season come back to save her? Guest stars Larry Hagman and Melanie Griffith.



Should be timely and entertaining :)

From a recent Wall Street Journal editorial:

After years of unsuccessful attempts to have creationism recognized in public schools as a "scientific" alternative to the theory of evolution by natural selection, anti-Darwinists pinned their hopes on intelligent-design theory (ID), which tries to argue that living things are too complex to be products of random mutations. But this movement lost much steam in December, after a judge in Pennsylvania ruled that, contrary to the Dover, Pa., school board, ID was not science.

Today I wore my "One Nation Under Surveillance" shirt. If you don't know why, click on the image.

Preserving Life by Promoting Choice

I've always considered myself both pro-choice and pro-life. I've never seen the contradiction in this stance. I've just found a site called Pro-Both that outlines the logic and humanity of this viewpoint. I've posted the introduction from the site below.

To be pro-both is to be both pro-life and pro-choice.
It's a viewpoint rooted in two moral principles:

Life: A humane society must seek to make abortion a rarity.

Choice: Society must not infringe on a woman's right to control her reproductive destiny.

Though often viewed as contradictory, these principles align perfectly if we focus not on blocking women with unwanted pregnancies from having abortions, but on helping women who don't want children to avoid pregnancy. The key to being pro-both is to recognize that the abortion problem is a symptom of the unwanted pregnancy problem.

A pro-both policy is one that works simultaneously to reduce the abortion rate and increase the ability of adults to personally control the course of their lives. Many such policies are possible. Improvements in education and the development of better contraceptives are among the most obvious approaches to take.

Substantial progress has been made with these kinds of efforts in our lifetimes. But if the energy now expended in the debate over the legality of abortion were put behind constructive programs such as these, then far greater reductions in the abortion rate could be achieved.

Puerto Rico Grita!

My recent trip to Puerto Rico was first and foremost one of academic interest. I was presenting a paper on my current research on the murals of Las Higueras, Veracruz at a conference. I know, the things I put myself through for my work ;)


San Juan just built a new convention center. Actually they were still working on the exterior and landscaping during the conference. It is a nice building but there aren't any amenities. Since there are no restaurants nearby, we were left with the limited and very overpriced food served in a makeshift buffet in the conference hall. Hopefully this will be changed in the future.


Puerto Rico is in a bit of a political and financial crises at the moment. While we were there the streets were continuously filled with protestors wearing clothing and carrying signs reading "Puerto Rico Grita!" - Puerto Rico Screams!. Overall this didn't have much impact on our stay, but on May 1, the morning after we left the island:

Schools closed. Building permits were on hold. Renewing a driver's license was impossible.

Many basic functions of Puerto Rico's government were unavailable Monday as the U.S. commonwealth ran out of money and imposed a partial public-sector shutdown putting nearly 100,000 people including 40,000 teachers out of work and granting an unscheduled holiday to 500,000 public school students.

Well, as you can see from the look on my face it wasn't all work. Catherine's mother, stepfather, several siblings and a mix of other relatives live in Puerto Rico. So, Catherine joined me and this also became a "meeting the parents" type of trip. They were all very kind to me, fed me A LOT of food, and showed me some of the island.


We stayed in a hotel in the center of Old San Juan. In Spanish colonial times, most of the urban population resided in this area. The old city remains partly enclosed by massive walls and contains several defensive structures. You can see Catherine here inside an observation point on the wall.


Catherine's mother took us for a day in "El Yunque", the island's tropical rain forest, and then to a few beach communities. El Yunque is the only tropical forest in the United States National Forest System. Originally set aside in 1876 by the Spanish Crown, the Forest represents one of the oldest reserves in the Western Hemisphere. The Forest contains over 240 species (26 species are found nowhere else) of trees and plants and rare wildlife including the Puerto Rican Parrot, which is one of the ten most endangered species of birds in the world.






Here we are enjoying the beautiful beach and water. We also walked out on a reef and looked at some tide pools. Doesn't Catherine look so graceful in the next photo ;)


It was a wonderful trip!