Below are the 7 most recent journal entries recorded in lisaware's LiveJournal:

Saturday, August 18th, 2007
4:23 pm	Things I'm Thankful For This is an old idea for something to write about...thought I'd toss it out here just in case anyone else is looking for something to be thankful for. 1)Being Born a Human Being e.g. Color vision, hands, etc. 2)American – freedom – esp as female 3)Jewish – books, learning, question authority (Tashbi) 4)1959 – post antibiotics, air travel, telephone, writing 5)California – easygoing culture 6)mum – unconditional love 7)dad – left brain intelligence 1) 2004-08-15 The first thing that usually springs to mind when I’m remembering to be thankful is color vision. It’s something I point out to friends who are feeling depressed or suicidal. Check it out! Look at how marvelous the world appears! Savor the rich, comforting, natural tones of wood, delight in the variety of colors our eyes can discern, revel in the greens of nature. Always enjoy the vibrancy and infinitude of the sky. Wow! I’d don’t think I’m particularly special by appreciating color vision. My cleverness is in noticing it often. & it’s something we ALL can do, anytime, free! I gather dogs lack color vision. Of course, they got a much stronger sense of smell to make up for it – but I say give me color vision instead any time! Wow! Colors, colors, colors. Rainbows, Monet paintings, the seaside, old buildings, glass art, dancers, babies, the surface of water, wood inlays, jewelry, staring into a loved one’s eyes. Photographs. Beautiful people and things of any sort. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder – thank goodness we are all beholders & can enjoy beauty any time. You might find yourself in a environment – prison or the like, where there is less to appreciate. Starkness, minimalism, folds of fabric and skin could be appreciated in environments where there is less else to enjoy. Sky is always an option if you can see it, stone or wood, maybe if you are trapped inside. Of course, there are also cruel illnesses that can destroy our color vision. I guess if you are trapped inside in the dark, then your brain will go wild filling in visions as though you were insane. You are still using all the wondrous brain mechanics of color vision – just not your eyeballs themselves. You could choose to focus on any favorite sights of the past or any invention of your own. Swim your own rainbow. Most of us, hopefully, will always be free to revel in the appearance of the world around us. This whole color vision extravaganza is really just one powerful aspect of another thing to be thankful for – being a human being. This is another thing that I presume most everyone reading this is enjoying. Sure, it’s a mystery, with some pretty annoying aspects - overall general lack of fairness; death of loved ones; our own inescapable, unpredictable deaths. But what a bargain! For no apparent initial effort on our own parts – here we are! In general, some loving person introduces us to the world and language and feeds us until we can do it ourselves. Irrespective of economic or social class, we get to make friends, fall in love, swim, run, dance, play with others, garden, sing, read. 2004-08-29 I particularly also like my hands. They can type, play flute, give a massage, hold a drumstick and so so much more. The whole opposable thumb thing has become a cartoon humor standard bit, but WOW!!! I just LOVE my hands!!! I can hold a paintbrush, pen, or pencil & render a picture of what I see with my eyes or in my imagination. I can climb a tree. Sure, I wish I had useful claws & a prehensile tail, but the hands I’ve got are so fine. I like the ten fingers & can use them all on a piano or a flute. Clever humans have designed instruments such that my ten fingers can play a chromatic scale on a variety of woodwinds, strings, & brass. Poor Mickey Mouse with his lousy three fingers can only long for the variety in my hands. & the sensitivity in the fingertips! SO useful for finding just the right spot to massage or retrieve a lost item when it’s too dark to see or telling if my laundry’s dry or my fruit is perfectly ripe. That kind of leads into the dreamy nerve endings all over my body. Thanks to an unfortunate childhood event I am missing a few, but nonetheless have enough to really wallow in pleasurable skin sensations. A hot shower, a cool ocean, a fluffy cat, a soft blanket; touch is infinitely delightful. What a fabulous and always free delight! Brushing my hair out all the way such that I can feel the brush right on my scalp & going the opposite direction to the way my hair normally falls. 2007-08-18 Well, how embarrassing of a time gap is that?!? 3 years, almost to the day! Well, let's move on to being an American. This is such luck of the draw! One of those historical fortuities. My ancestors a couple of generations back were having such horrible lives – the pogroms of Eastern Europe - being burned in the streets just for being born into Jewish families – that they fled. They largely had to abandon all worldly wealth to get out with their lives. They came to the United States or Canada. They had to start from scratch in a strange land, speaking a new language. (I know I'll never be truly “at home” in any language besides English. A pity.) But in exchange for all the suffering, I get to be born in California! Live a life at the apex of Pax Americana! Have the incredible freedoms and liberties of a single woman born in 1959. I can vote, own property, pursue most any career. I am not someone's property. I need not marry. I can choose whether or not to have childern. I can direct my own future to the extent that I am capable. Wow!! This is so precious and shockingly rare in the history of human women. Some friends of mine, usually female, will point out how an American woman still earns less than a man for the same work. & the whole “old boys” network that prevents women from rising to the highest positions in corporate America. And the paucity of women in government. These are all true, and are all problems. But let's keep them in perspective! Our guys are the best that womankind has ever seen! They are the most fair. I know there are some retro models out there that think a woman should be subservient, even ones that use their physical advantage to beat women into subservience. But as a country, we acknowledge that is is wrong. We try to make things better. It's some slow going sometimes. I just got to see Freedom Park in Rosslyn, Virginia. (Wow!) I learned something I hadn't realized – that apparently women went to Congress every year asking for the vote from (I think it was) 1880 till 1910! 30 years of asking & asking & asking. Amazing! For something so seemingly self-evident. 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Friday, July 21st, 2006
1:34 am	terrorism & Nazi-like actions defined I keep hearing people ask on the radio "what is terrorism?" or wondering to what actions the term should be applied. HELLO!!! It means "deliberating targeting civilians in order to create terror among the general population" or just "deliberately targeting civilians". For example, Hizbollah lobbing missiles at Israeli settlements - that is terrorism. Hamas followers blowing themselves up in cafes or public buses - that is terrorism. Hizbollah kidnapping an Israeli soldier - that is NOT terrorism. Israeli bombing southern Lebanon in order to destroy Hizbollah weapons and members - that is NOT terrorism. Here's another term abuse that has been bothering me - saying the actions taken by some country are like those taken by the Nazis. !!! Now, if the situation warrants the use of the term, then by all means, it is powerful & go ahead & use it. But do remember what actions the Nazis actually took before using it. For examples: - they built gas chambers in which they murdered ***millions*** of innocent civilians - they built ovens where they cremated the millions of murdered victims - they extracted and saved the gold from the teeth of their victims - they performed horrendous medical experiments on their victims, such as sewing a non-human fetus into a human woman's uterus, blowing wind against a person's face until the flesh was ripped from the skull, etc. - they took babies out of their mother's arms, threw them up into the air, and shot them as they fell - they forced jews to wear an identifying star on their clothing - they forced all the jews of a town into a building, then burned it down with them in it alive - they forced jews out of their homes and onto cattle cars, where they then took them to concentration camps, where they were worked to death, starved to death, raped, experimented on as above, or murdered as above You show me another group, party, institution, or country that has committed crimes even vaguely approaching this list - I certainly don't know of one. I have heard about the killing fields of Cambodia - that's on the order of the horror. There's this awful genocide going on in Darfur - that's on the order of the horror. It's a short list, thank goodness! But what really irks me is when Israel is accused of acting like the Nazis. This is simply a vicious slander on a nation doing its best to minimize the harsh side-effects of ensuring its own survival. Israel has done nothing even vaguley comparable to the Nazis. If Israel wanted to turn the surrounding enemies and their territory into molten slag, thus ending the terrorist attacks, but at a huge human cost to their enemies, they could. But they don't. They've been the victims, so, as a general ethics-based policy they try to avoid victimizing others. Argh!! Current Mood: awake Current Music: hard drive fan (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006
4:44 pm	slimebot I just read about some folks that used a slime mold to control a robot! How cool is that!?!? I just love slime molds - in an arm's length, intellecual kind of way. They have, if you haven't heard, a life cycle that includes life first as a single-celled organism which reproduces asexually. Then they swarm together to from a slug-like thing that can crawl a bit, presumably to an area with more food, then grows a stalk, at the top of which takes place a wild sex orgy, resulting in spores that get thrown out & grow into the free-living single-celled organisms. So, it's like the opposite of cancer when they swarm. I've seen cool pictures of different species swarming over each other to form separate slugs. The robot didn't have a slime mold on board running the show - it was kind of indirect - they had the slime mold in one spot & used its light-avoidance movement to control the robot remotely. Still, very cool! (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 8th, 2006
12:02 am	Emperor of Scent - Book Club Zipped home tonight to host my book club - this month was "The Emperor of Scent: A Story of Perfume, Obsession, and the Last Mystery of the Senses" by Chandler Burr. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007NLUZO/104-5367294-8750365?s=books&v=glance&n=283155 Pretty disheartening read as the guy's theory (the guy being Luca Turin) seems solid, but it never gets a hearing from the established smell research community. The author's note is noteworthy. Kind of reminds me of the reception that "The Bell Curve" http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684824299/qid=1139386282/sr=2-2/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_2/104-5367294-8750365?s=books&v=glance&n=283155 - people dissing the book because they didn't like its conclusions, without ever bothering to read the book to see if the conclusions were valid based on the data presented. Kind of like well Darwin and Copernicus, famous reversals of the past, although Darwin's STILL being argued against!! Pretty incredible. Anyway, the Emperor was a fun read, if you don't mind a little chemistry. Gave me an excuse to finally unpack (after moving in 3 years ago) all my grandmother's perfumes & pass them around for a sniff. She had THREE count 'em THREE Chanels - 5, 22, and Russian. Plus a bunch of other greater and lesser scents & a few others I've been given along the way. Lots of adorable little glass bottles - that's why I keep 'em; I don't wear perfume. Nothing against the smell, just doesn't occur to me, & I'm afraid of dousing too heavily! Some compound was discovered recently to increase the trust level - the experiment being that the wearer is suggesting some kind of financial planning deal to the subject. If the wearer was doused with this particular chemical, the subject was more likely to agree to the deal. Somewhat frightening. Default human input mode is to accept what is presented as truth. Critical thinking must be taught and requires practice. I'm not all that great at it myself, sad to say. & overall, I don't often remember to view any situation I'm in as the "fly on the ceiling" would (as my friend Sondra puts it). When I do, however, it's almost always useful. That extra perspective. (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 5th, 2006
9:19 pm	IDA Festival - over for another year Whew! Well, I just finished another IDA February Festival (http://www.idasdc.org). Cat-herding a bunch of dance groups into putting on a show that, in theory, they should all just be thrilled to do. But, such is the way with volunteer organizations, things are not alwasy what you'd hope. I can only imagine that when this org first formed, maybe 40-50? years ago, there was a lot more participation by the various member groups and their members. I guess its part of the general trend of less volunteer involvement due to some combination of women working, baby boomer cohort aging, increasing number of leisure time activities, and decreasing number of leisure hours for a large segment of the population. And a general falling away of interest in "folk" dancing. Even though this festival actually has more than just "folk" dancing - Line, Cajun/Zydeco, Ballroom. But, general public turnout was reasonable, especially given that we were competing with the Stupor I mean Superbowl. Just kidding football fans - have at it! But please keep it in January instead of leaking into February and conflicting with my dance festival! Anyway, hopefully it won't be mine next year - hopefully some other volunteer will step up to the plate & take on the FebFest challenge. I hate missing my drum circle. So, in the future, leisure time is supposed to in general overall increase. So maybe dance will see a resurgence of interest. It is a community-forming/building enterprise. Several of my most interesting friends have come to me via Morris Dancing. Unusual people taking up an unusual pasttime. Off the beaten track. Way off. :) But not SO far off, as hundreds of people do dance Morris. How do people build their personal communities? Mine is largely happenstance & also the result of trying many varied activities over many years - Morris, science, politics, improv, rock & roll, drumming, baroque music, cajun dancing, camping. I've often imagined a sculpture of sorts that would have a long snakey string representing my geographic path through life & maybe a couple of other friends or relatives that I could get enough info on to map out. Even more cool if I had a GPS output that automatically tracked & generated the 3D picture for me! But, a bit late to catch the earlier interesting bits that got me to the lovely place I am today. Been listening to "Sea Train" album David K loaned me. Making me think of the "familiarity breeds liking" study Andrew B pulled out of the edge.org questions. [Digression: OK - trying to find the reference I see in edge.org that Ken Livingstone has come up with a great implementation of something I belive - I was talking to a couple of Afghani guys my parents helped bring over to the U.S. (via my Dad's Rotary Club & my step-mum's Sister Cities org) about how since I don't believe in an afterlife, I'm more motivated to try to make things better for everyone on earth Right Now. These guys were Muslims, but they agreed heartily with the sentiment. Ken L., according to Anjana Ahuja, suggested that anyone believing in an afterlife be barred from public service. Yeah! Some people suggest that my country's current regime is cavalier about the state of the world because they truly believe in the imminency of the Christian Armageddon!!! Yikes!!!] Found the ref - Richard Nisbett - echos of Malcolm Gladwell's notes on how we think we are making a decision or choice for some reasons, but really it's our subconscious reaching a conclusion that our conscious mind then rationalizes. Here's the clip: {Rats brought up listening to music by Mozart prefer to move to the side of the cage that trips a switch allowing them to listen to Mozart rather than Schoenberg. Rats raised on Schoenberg prefer to be on the Schoenberg side. The rats were not asked the reasons for their musical preferences.)} So, if I listen to "Sea Train", I will come to like it. This does seem to be true in my experience. (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 4th, 2006
12:10 am	inspiration Well, it's been mmm months I guess since I logged on... Now I've been inspired to do some brain dumping thanks to an email from Melanie Swan. Combined with Jess at our local Futurist's book club meeting tonight telling me she enjoyed hearing what I had to say. Nothing like a few compliments to make one feel worthwhile. :) Lately I am very excited because after years of just dabbling in learning some new things by reading & going to conferences, but mostly just being in a work & play rut, I am actually taking a couple of classes! Intro to Unix & Perl for Bioinformatics. Woo-hoo! In the perl class last weekend we downloaded some DNA sequences from GenBank. Free! Amazing! I might even be able to test this hypothesis I've had since college - without having to open a reagent bottle! Yes!! Nothing against bench science, but I'd rather play with a computer. No spills! Easy to back up your work! Safer! [Digression to illustrate point: Years ago I was working at Scripps Clinic & Research Foundation. I was trying to clone the ethanolamine ammonium lyase gene for my PI Bernie Babior - a hematologist with a deep interest in the way clostridium flipped protons with this enzyme. He'd hired me as recombinant DNA tech. [even deeper digression into silly story about working on this bug: Clostridium's an obligate anaerobe - that is - does not grow in the presence of oxygen. I'd never worked with one of those before. It was quite a little learning experience. Originally I was supposed to purify the chromosomal DNA out of these frozen grey batches of cells grown for Bernie back east at the NIH. I did this for a couple of weeks. I fancied myself a pretty good DNA purifier. But then I'd cut it all up with a restriction enzyme and, instead of nice clear distinct bands of variously sized pieces of DNA showing up in my gels, which you'd expect, I'd get a big smear. (Restriction enzymes cut DNA up at specific patterns like GATTAC or ATTCCG.) So then I started with a bit of the frozen cells & grew up my own batches very carefully. Still a smear. Kind of embarrassing. I was being so careful to keep an anaerobic environment! Finally I took my culture over to the hospital - Green Hospital is basically attached to the research building I worked in - we shared X-ray development facilities - I learned to see all kinds of interesting masses & needles in X-rays. They plated out my cells & told me to come back in a couple of days. When I came back they were giggling. Evidently the NIH had done a pretty poor job & it was a zoo in there - so that's why I was getting a smear - the DNA from so many different organisms getting cut up meant that there was pretty much every possible size fragment represented, so I'd get a smear instead of distinct bands.] Part of this work involved determining the sequence of the DNA. This is done by machines now. But back in my day heh heh it was a project. Not so much of a project as in the really early days with M-G, but you still had to use reagents & pour a gel. The gel was polyacrylamide, which is a neurotoxin as a monomer. Once it was a gel it wasn't very dangerous, but when you measured out & mixed up the powder, you had to work in a fume hood. It was moderately stressful. One night I was measuring out the powder & the janitor came by. He was complaining about how robots might take his job. I was like - bring on the robots!!! The robots can have my job!!!] Anyway, I've always thought that the rods & cones in our eyes might have evolved from bacterial flagella. I'm hoping I kind find genes in GenBank that might let me do a comparison - wouldn't that be fun? 'Course, I had this thought 20 years ago, so could be someone's already had the same idea, convergence being the way and all; Mark R. told me tonight he thought he'd heard something similar. Ah well. Would still give me practice with my new tools. Tomorrow I am nominally in charge of the International Dance Association February Festival http://www.idasdc.org. Two days of dancing in San Diego's lovely Balboa Park - in the beautiful Balboa Park Club ballroom. Somewhere in there also ready the "Emperor of Scent" by Burr - my book club is meeting chez moi Tuesday so I need to get caught up! Tonight's Futurist's was hosted by Andrew Breese. http://perspectivism.livejournal.com/ He did a great job herding the cats. Went through this years http://www.edge.org/ questions. It was fun, in that delightfully intellectually stimulating way. I feel so lucky that we have such a great group in town to go think with. The scariest future things for me tend to center around the problem of living in a world where so many people don't think like I do, yet have voting rights or guns or both! The best futurist things for me are medical nanotech - here's hoping that the great wealth that the baby boomers have accumulated will be spent to develop life extension and health technologies such that I personally have the option of living an extra hundred healthy productive years! This will be the only benefit I can see of being born at the trailing end of the baby boom. All the other advantages seem to lie at the leading edge - cheaper housing, growing economy, etc. But I'm sure I'm at the leading edge of something good - just don't know quite what. :) Just finished The Stone Diaries. A good fiction read. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 5th, 2005
3:07 am	test drive Well! I just booked my ticket to lovely Vancouver Island - probably drier up there right now than it is in soggy San Diego! My roof is leaking along the edge of the new-ish porch area. Paul Stangeland, who built it, is coming to have a look tomorrow morning. So...this whole management question - I wonder if I have a personality suitable for doing the job well - or, if not, if I want to grow into it. What personality traits are useful for such a position? Probably depends on lots of factors. One of my most commented-on-by-others personality traits is my bluntness/honesty. This seemed okay for the first few years of management, but now seems to be a hinderance. I wonder if I want to grow into a personality that doesn't care about getting "credit" so long as the goal is achieved. Seems like the mature thing to do. VanIsle will be nice. A few days learning to carve wood with Gil, founding father of the S.O.B.s, then a few days with HDK and BLT at Yellow Point Lodge. Mmmm. Today had the day off - went to a lengthy eye exam, followed by lunch with the Ciardullos, then pick up pants at Nordy's, tea with Diana - joking about still doing the same silly things at 90, home & climb up on the roof to see what I could see, then up to Barnes & Noble for the SD Futurists meeting with the illustrious and entertainingly knowledgeable speaker John Smart. Futurism & Activism. I remember a few years back wondering if it was better to buy from China, thereby supporting a questionable government but also helping economically tie China to the rest of the world facilitating infection with democratic memes OR NOT to buy from China. Seemed like good arguments could be made either way. Finally resorted to asking folks from China for the real deal - and got both answers from them, too! Truly there are so many grey areas. But John more or less promoted positive-change-promoting-globalization. I generally agree with that. Well - super late now so maybe more later. 'Night wide wild world! (Comment on this)