I’d like to introduce you to an old friend of mine, Salmonella typhi. S and I first became acquainted when I was traveling in eastern Turkey in 2003, and we quickly became fast friends or even closer yet. I still don’t remember exactly how we met, but it seemed like it had barely been a week or so before S. typhi’s toothbrush was in my bathroom and a few million of her agamogenetic clone friends were in my gut. (more…)
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Today is a glorious day. It’s 85 degrees - in the city! - and the Republican plan to close 50 state parks (but save no money doing so) was defeated. Oh, and we’ve peeled back another layer of bigotry: we’re finally allowing that fags are people too.
We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians,whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.
. . .Under these circumstances, we cannot find that retention of the traditional definition of marriage constitutes a compelling state interest. Accordingly, we conclude that to the extent the current California statutory provisions limit marriage to opposite-sex couples, these statutes are unconstitutional.
(California Supreme Court case S147999)
Tomorrow may see me weeping, but today I am granting myself the luxury of believing that my fellow citizens are essentially decent people and that there will be no state-wide effort, encouraged from the national level as a divisive issue in the election, to modify the Constitution via California’s direct plebescite*. No one would actually intentionally add bigotry to the constitution, right? Right?
* Democracy is the belief that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. - H L Mencken
The California Academy of Science had a fantastic display on leafcutter ants.
A fallen cacao tree lay on a bed of simulated jungle floor in a 40′ plastic viewing chamber. A ceaseless line of ants curved around fake boulders, climbing over each other in a mindless drive to consume the leaves restored daily by museum workers. Leafless ants stream outward to the tree; flecks of green sail back upstream in a silent green regatta. Each ant takes its turn slicing off a piece of leaf, then returns it to the nest, where they are composted and used to grow food.
But what appears to be an organized dance is more of a drunken mosh pit. Leaves are dropped halfway back to the nest. Ants start slicing a leaf, are bumped by another and, and wheel around, slicing indiscriminantly. Ants resolutely chomp through the last bit holding the segment they themselves are on, and flutter to the ground. From time to time the ant stops slicing, tugs on the cut section, and if it doesn’t come loose, may wander away. Half-cut segments are abandoned, then restarted at an odd angle by another ant. Sometimes a final cut breaks a section free entirely, and it flutters to the ground below while the ant stumbles upside down to the other side of the leaf — or an ant tugs resolutely on the uncut piece of leaf, forgetting the piece that took so much work to cut free.
What does this have to do with my day? Nothing at all. I spent my day at an institute of higher learning.
My brother is an actual freaking race car driver. How cool is that? 
Randal’s fantastic photos from my birthday party.
Well, actually, the flowers haven’t even really stopped blooming on Berkeley campus this year. I spent my birthday at the beach by Fort Funston, lying in the ice plants, running up and down the hill with dogs, and playing in the monumental surf. So it’s hard to say what sort of winter spring is springing out of.
But it’s really spring because the semester is starting. Tomorrow marks the first day of a my second semester. A mind-bruising day: 9:30 to 7:00 pm, Eve Sweetser, John Searle, George Lakoff. Not much of an opportunity to be non-clever even for a minute. Oh, there is half an hour around 3:00 for food, that’ll be nice.
I also have a new office. I am installed in #544 on the fifth floor of the 1947 Center St. building, under the auspices of the clearly naive and optimistic International Computer Science Institute. (This is where the Neural Theory of Language group, FrameNET, the Semantic Web and several other AI projects live, too.) I have a view over Martin Luther King, Jr. park and the Peace Wall, over the bay to the fog on San Bruno, and on sunny days I can hear the bums fighting on the street below. I’m sure I’ll see many sunsets through this window and eat lots of cheap takeout in this office.
We have received notification indicating you are enrolled at
UNIV CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY until 06/30/2014.Payments have been deferred on the student loan(s) you
received from KALAMAZOO COLLEGE.
2014 used to be when I’d finally be trading up my old-fashioned, ground-based vehicle for a heli-car. Now it’s when I’m going to be done with school.
George was gracious enough to play his mandolin for us after dinner.
I can’t lift my right arm over my shoulder. I did Something Stupid at the gym two days ago, apparently, and now it hurts if I move it wrong.
“So don’t lift your right arm over your shoulder,” says Reid, with his usual approximation of wit.
Funny as that might be, or funnier even, this is serious. Every chiropractor in San Francisco is on vacation, or at least hiding behind their office door and laughing at me ringing their doorbell with my left hand, and I can’t reach out and pick up my drink.
I’m not thirty for another five weeks. Maybe I’m still under warranty.
