hope phones

it's summer! and you know what that means: it's time for my annual collection drive! this year i've decided to go with hope phones, which reuses and recycles old cell phones. they receive the value of each recycled phone to purchase supplies for medic mobile, a non-profit that has helped an estimated 400k+ patients in 15 countries. "This work includes needs assessment and technology strategy, designing services that leverage effective communication, developing software, installing and configuring software and training health workers."

hope phones accepts any phone in any condition, working or not. they also take all chargers and accessories, though they don't need them. "The current average value per used phone is $5, but smartphones are regularly valued at $80."

i will be collecting your old phones through august, and if you need me to come and pick them up from you, email or call me so we can arrange something. thanks in advance!

"black man's music"

i was in front of grauman's chinese theatre the other day with felix (i took my mom and godmother to see cirque du soleil's iris at the kodak theatre for mother's day and invited felix to come along since he likes photography and doesn't get out much). it was a saturday so there were tons of people: tourists, costumed characters, performers, panhandlers. we were walking back to the kodak when i realize that felix is no longer behind me. he's standing with a guy who handed him a homemade cd.

i go back to him. the guy was asking where he was from. "taiwan." he asks me where i'm from. "i'm from here." and he starts giving his pitch: this is his first cd. it only costs 50cents (not sure if i heard that part properly. 50cents is cheap!). he has earbuds and asks if felix wants to hear the music. i translate the gist of this to felix in chinese since it's his choice if he wants to buy the cd though i'm pretty sure he thought the cd was free. someone hands you something and you take it (well, naive people anyway).

anyway, so the guy starts getting kind of pushy and i can tell felix isn't interested. there's a ton of people around and it's really loud so i'm pretty sure he can't hear what either of us is saying. so i tell the guy that actually felix can't listen to his music, he has a hearing problem, and i point to felix's hearing aid in his ear. the guy turns to me and asks if i want to listen. i tell him that "no, i'm okay, thanks." and he says "you don't want to listen to black man's music?" and i get pissed.

i take the cd from felix's hand and shove it back to the guy and say something along the lines of "don't be racist" and walk away. felix follows me this time (good thing too, i would've left him if he didn't). and so does the guy. he starts yelling after me about how i'm a fucking bitch or whatever. i don't say anything in return. then he calls me a hater. i yell back "that only hater is you, you fucking racist." he keeps following us. i ignore him. honestly, i don't care to fight with him and i'm not scared he's going to do something. there are way too many people around. eventually he leaves us alone.

i realize later that the reason i reacted so badly to this could've been a whatever incident is that i honestly feel like i've never been so insulted in my life. unwilling to listen to "black man's music?" i didn't even think about what kind of music he was offering. the reason i didn't want to listen is because i don't like panhandlers. and i don't like pushy people. and using some stranger's earbuds when they've probably been used by many others that day grosses me out. for him to assume that i don't want to listen to his stuff because i've somehow deduced that he's made stereotypical "black man music" even though he never said what kind of music he made is fucking ridiculous. also, who's to say i don't like that kind of music? does he think i go home and listen to chinese opera or asian pop or something? i live here, i've grown up on music / books / culture that isn't "my own."

i also felt like (rip and ting said the same) he was trying to racially guilt me somehow. as if him pointing out that he's black means that i owe him a listen. owe him to buy his cd. that's fucking stupid. i don't buy into white guilt, least of all for the reason that i'm not white. i just feel like it's such a low blow to use a serious matter like racial discrimination to guilt people into buying your stuff.

anyway, turns out that if you ever want to get me really fucking angry, call me a racist. lol, who knew?

crater lake

 april 25th's astronomy picture of the day

if you follow the link and mouse over the picture you can see the constellations charted out.

fstr

james gleick - faster: the acceleration of just about everything

     "For the sake of fairness, wen the world's fastest sprinters line up for the 100-meter dash, the sound of the gun comes up to them electronically, to protect against millisecond differences in the time of its arrival through the open breeze. Lasers shine on their backs to provide a continuous Doppler measurement of speed, acceleration, deceleration. And the finish line is monitored by filmless, computer-enhanced, digital cameras, splitting time with a precision beyond the reach of human senses.

     "Carl Lewis, at his peak, occasionally lost 100-meter races that he had run faster than his competitors. His reaction time--the time it takes for the starting signal to translate through the eardrum, brain, nerves, and muscles--was generally mediocre, on the order of 140 milliseconds, compared with 115 to 120 milliseconds for the fastest starters. That one-fiftieth of a second difference now matters. It matters so much that reaction times are now regularly monitored. Officials declare a false start not only if a runner moves before the gun but also if a runner moves within a tenth of a second after the gun--because reaction times that fast are believed to be humanly impossible." (108-109)

"depressants like alcohol slow time, because the brain receives fewer inputs per second." (279)

obama on gay marriage

Biden Apologizes to Obama for Marriage Controversy

1. biden makes me laugh. but seriously, he's kind of a numbskull...
2. about the obama thing: FINALLY!!!

i wonder how much of a real difference this would make. my mom (who is a registered democrat and against gay marriage [tho not gay rights...]) said she would vote for obama anyway because this is just his opinion, and he doesn't get to make laws about gay marriage. i also think that as against gay marriage as you may be, what matters most to you is probably your pocketbook. so assuming you're not a staunch democrat or republican, you'll probably vote for the candidate that has the best plan for economic recovery, job creation, etc, regardless of his/her stance of gays, guns, and abortion. tho all else being equal, you would start to "nit-pick" on issues that don't necessarily affect your daily personal life. but since we're talking democrats and republicans here, i doubt this will really make that huge of a difference. were this the primaries, maybe.

btw, regarding my mom (and many others). she's okay with gay people having "domestic partnerships" or whatever you want to call it, with all the same rights as marriage. but, she is uncomfortable with it being called "marriage". i think this is incredibly strange. i mean, if you're for their rights, why deny them the word? this reeks of "separate but equal". words make a difference. i mean, you wouldn't call a black person a n*gger, because it's simply not the same thing. marriage and domestic what-ever-the-hell are not the same thing because you would not use the words interchangeably.

yuri's planet

 april 12th's astronomy picture of the day

love is...

allen shawn - wish i could be there: notes from a phobic life

"...i discovered that the power of sex didn't entirely depend on what 'happened.' the smallest sexual encounter could carry the charge of the most complete one (every jealous lover knows the truth of this from the other side). sex has to do with giving and receiving appreciation, with seeing and knowing, being seen and known. it is no coincidence that in the bible to have intercourse is 'to know'... beneath our clothes, beneath our thoughts, we are animals.

"love teaches us to accept the human body. it is the antidote to the horror of it, conveyed by ernest becker, in the denial of death, when he speaks of the realization that we are nothing but a sack of flesh with holes in it. love for your infant children draws you to them and makes you relish feeding them, holding them, and changing their diapers. love is the suspension of disgust. it helps us bond with ourselves and with each other. at the same time, it connect with all the other big things; it can't be taken lightly. love helps us habituate to our arbitrariness."

"love is the suspension of disgust." must be, or i could never stand being around rip and his constant fartiness. =\

consumer stats

found this interesting consumer habits statistics thing off an infographic about walmart's green policies.

 some of these stats are really interesting. an average of 59 garments (which doesn't include shoes, i think) purchased a year is 5 items a month; i know i'm a bit under for that. but the one that REALLY got to me is the stat that u.s. citizens throw out an average of 83lbs of clothes a year. what?! i throw away a couple pounds only (mostly socks and underwear) because i donate everything else. so who are the people throwing away over 100lbs of clothes to balance me out?

anyway, how about you? are you pretty average?

beach

march 7th's astronomy picture of the day!

under age

how can we sometimes try an under 18 year-old as an adult? i don't even understand how this is legal.

i know that turning 18 doesn't mean anything in the mental / psychological sense. some 12yo are more mature than many 25yo. but the law says that at 18 you are legally an adult. this means that you are mature enough to make decisions for yourself, like smoking, enlisting, gambling, anything sex related, quitting school, a tattoo... before 18 you're not allowed to make these decisions yourself, no matter how actually mature you are. it's kind of silly, but the law has to pick a age (since reviewing every single person for every single decision would take forever), and for whatever reason, they've picked 18.

i understand that with some gruesome crimes you want to try a 17yo as an adult. because mentally, 17 isn't too much different from 18. but you see the problem, don't you? it just keeps getting younger and younger. we've even tried 14yo as adults. 14!! that's too young to do anything! you can't drive, get a job, get married in most states (even with parental consent). and some states "have passed laws allowing a person who commits an extremely heinous crime such as murder to be tried as an adult, regardless of age." (source)

it's so strange. at 14 you're not allowed to get a tattoo (something that only affects yourself) but you are apparently mentally developed enough to decide to commit a crime and understand all the repercussions. oh, and btw, up until only 2005 was it still permissible for the govt to punish under 18yo by death.

color run

i "ran" my first "5k" couple sundays ago on april 22nd and it was freaking awesome. i did the color run and while i wouldn't say that i'm hooked, i'm definitely interested in doing more. not regular 5ks tho, cause that's too hard and damnit exercise sucks. but maybe fun 5ks like the foam fest or the ridiculous obstacle course. but no more this year, i'd need to train more.

honestly, i had intended to walk the whole thing. but g insisted on staying with me so i felt bad and we slowly ran about half of it. oh, and we also cut a corner. haha, which is why i put "s around 5k. cause i probably did only like 4.8k. i don't feel too bad tho. cause we walked a hell of a lot more than .2k to and from the parking lot and before the race and after so eh. but anyway, i just wanted to throw a couple pictures and videos up to commemorate. :)

it was a super chillax race. no need to check in even! and the whole thing was pretty damn chaotic from the beginning since they gave us wrong directions on how to get there. rip realized it pretty early on, but i figured since everyone was making a left off the freeway we'd go down a street to be sure. after we got back on course, we had to contend with the "parking lot" getting into the parking lot. but it wasn't so bad. since everyone (i hope anyway) was going to the same place, it was kind of funny. everyone in white shirt and a smile. :)

thanks to team orfin for letting me join. big thanks to annie g for never leaving my side (even though i practically begged her to!). and a bigger thanks to rip for pushing me to train the little that i did and for coming along to take pictures and be supportive. :)