Russell's Ramblings

a few (unoriginal) thoughts on Palin

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 17:13:00 +0000

Since I grew up in Alaska (Seward from infancy to age 6, Chugiak until age 12, visiting my dad in Eagle River twice a year up to age 18, irregular visits since then) people have been asking me about the nomination. I don't know much, since I mostly follow AK politics via my dad's news of the latest corruption scandals. Prior to the nomination I didn't even know her name, though her primary victory in the governor's race made me happy because Young, Stevens and Murkowski had been in power as long as I could remember.

Firstly, I find it odd to hear Wasilla reffered to as "a suburb of Anchorage." Here is a map of where the two are in relation to each other:

View Larger Map

Following the map from Anchorage to Wasilla you pass through Eagle River and Chugiak. If you follow what it calls highway 1 to Palmer and Sutton you see there area where my dad has a "cabin" (12'x24'structure). Anyhow, back to my point.

It's a 42 mile drive according to Google Maps. The argument in favor of calling it a suburb is that many people do commute from Wasilla to work in Anchorage. The community has changed greatly from how I knew it as a kid, with massive growth. What feels wrong to me about calling it a suburb is that there is so much undeveloped space between Anchorage and it. I picture suburbs as being congruous with the city with which they're associated. As you can see from the map, that is far from the case. Many of the definitions in dictionaries agree with me.

Yesterday on NPR one of the news casters or commentators referred to it as "that small town." I was annoyed that he couldn't remember the name (or have it written in front of him).

In that news segment he also said that many Republicans feel the negative press will help them because people will think it's unfair. We shall see.

My main response to much of what I'm seeing about her (which tends to come from people to the left) is this: they didn't pick her to try to make you happy. It doesn't matter to them what the New York Times thinks about the choice. The people who decide elections don't read the New York Times. What matters is two things (1) how this helps them turn out the base and (2) how it plays to swing voters. It clearly helps the first and we'll see about the second. Their concerns and sources of information are quite different than the people going off about McCain's poor choice of running mate.

Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar Released After Illegal Arrest at RNC | CommonDreams.org

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:23:00 +0000

Scary stuff. Kouddous and Salazar are being charged with rioting, Goodman with obstruction. They were covering the demonstrations.

ST. PAUL--Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar have all been released from police custody in St. Paul following their illegal arrest by Minneapolis Police on Monday afternoon.

All three were violently manhandled by law enforcement officers. Abdel Kouddous was slammed against a wall and the ground, leaving his arms scraped and bloodied. He sustained other injuries to his chest and back. Salazar's violent arrest by baton-wielding officers, during which she was slammed to the ground while yelling, 'I'm Press! Press!,' resulted in her nose bleeding, as well as causing facial pain. Goodman's arm was violently yanked by police as she was arrested.

ceiling fans and calculus

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:43:00 +0000

Managed to install a ceiling fan in my place. I'd hired a contractor to wire things for it, but had helped my mom put in two in her house and figured I could do it. I really should have waited for help (next time), but was a stubborn man and did it alone. The part where help would have been wise is where you lift the part with the motor off the hook it hangs on while you wire it and have to screw it to the part above. I foolishly went to the gym last night right before trying to install it, so my arms were tired. After fighting with the screws I decided to put it back on the hook and sleep on it. Thanks to Allison for encouraging this.

This morning I found a wire that had disconnected and fixed it. Turning the wall switches did nothing. Then I used the remote and it worked. Yay! Now I can save energy by keeping the place warmer. Someday I'll put one in the bedroom too. It's wired for it. Maybe that'd be a good father-son task when dad comes to visit.

I'm studying for my methods comp, which is two weeks from tomorrow (!). The notes for one of my classes said we should verify the derivative of this likelihood function with respect to pi and set it to zero (in the notes he skips the steps in between):

l = yln(pi) + (n-y)ln(1-pi)

I looked up various rules and worked through it. Forgot to apply the chain rule the first time. Amazing what difference leaving out a -1 can make. Anyhow, after struggling with it I eventually got to the correct pi = y/n.

I realize that I basically have two kinds of friends. The first type will read that say "what the hell are you talking about?" The second type will look at the function and be able to immediately work out in their head that it's y/n. It's weird to fall in the middle and be semi-lingual in math. Not like my friends in engineering, computers or math for whom it's their regular language, but something that I need to use sometimes, but not at the expense of a lot of other skills that are necessary to my work.

Anyhow, nice to actually get something done today.

wish list

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:39:00 +0000

A few people have asked what I want for my birthday. I've been adding a few items to my Amazon wish list, which I also put on my sidebar. So maybe that will give people a few ideas if they want to get me something. Mainly I'd be happy with a phone call, though.

New Pics Up

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 21:45:00 +0000

I have a couple new Picasa Web Albums, one of my day-to-day life in Salvador and one of my pictures from Brasilia.

Brasília

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:58:00 +0000

Access to the net has been very limited here. Have had to borrow computers from professors and obviously have not wanted to take very much of their time.

Had great conversations with people about my research. Took pictures of the city. I'll have lots to write when I get back.

I take the taxi to the airport in a little over an hour. If all goes well (fingers crossed) I'll have about 25 hours of flying and waiting in airports, 28 hours from the door of my guest apartment on campus to my condo in Carrboro. I think I may be tired.

home in a week!

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 20:09:00 +0000

Assuming my four flights (apx. 24 hours of travel) go well (fingers crossed) I should be home around this time a week from today. We had to write a composition about the difference between something in the U.S. and Brazil. I compared the streets (as in the physical streets). Maybe I'll translate it sometime.

Brazil (Week 5)

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 22:28:00 +0000

The weekdays were pretty routine. Tuesday afternoon we went to a museum of afro-Brazilian culture. It has a lot of items related to candomble. This included a lot of beautiful wood carvings of the orixás, but my pictures of them didn't turn out very good because they were big and dark and the light wasn't very good. Here is one of the better ones:

We visited the Jorge Amado foundation, which was interesting as well. I'd like to read some of his novels. They had a cafe with covers of his books from all over the world:

We had a four day weekend. Most of my group went out of town. I took it easy and tried to get some work done. I did a lot of reading, and finally finished Stuffed and Starved on Saturday. Friday I went to the mall with Mike and Tiffany (two grad students here helping my program director do his research), Joanna from my program and Mike and Tiffany's Canadian neighbors (everyone just calls them "The Canadians"). Came back to Mike and Tiffany's apartment and hung out for a while and crashed there (I'd told my host mom that I might do that).

Sunday morning I woke up with a cold which I'm still getting over. My host mom and I cooked some of my favorite dishes: honey mustard garlic chicken, three bean salad, and mashed potatoes. Mike and Tiffany came over for lunch. We had a really good time. Then I went back with them and Cindy, one of the Canadians, cut my hair. That's her job back home. It's nice to have it trimmed up and I won't look like a shaggy mess when I meet people in Brasilia.

more pics up

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:42:00 +0000

Again, I need to do more organizing and captioning. I'll add the link to the sidebar, too, so it'll be easy for people to check them out.

one week to Brasilia

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 15:05:00 +0000

In a week I'll be headed to Brasilia. Weird to think that my parents were teenagers when it was built. Also, something interesting about going from the original capital, one that existed long before European settlement in North America, to the current one.

10 year reunion

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 14:28:00 +0000

Today is the 10 year high school reunion for Whitefish High School, the school from which I graduated. When the date got set for during this trip my thought was "Woe is me, I'll be in a land of great music, great food, beautiful women and beautiful beaches." In October I'm attending the reunion for Leigh High School in San Jose, where I went to 9th and 10th grade.

A month ago I missed a family reunion celebrating my dad's 60th and my uncle Bryan's retirement, a much bigger deal for me than the reunion. I knew I needed to come here and work on my language skills for my career. In the grand scheme of things people give up it's not that big, but it caused me to reflect more broadly on the nature of opting for the academic life. I'm in NC because it's the place to be for what I want to do. I love it there, but I'm far away from family. When (if?) I get a job I'll have limited options as to where it is, so there's a good chance I'll be away from family again. The amount we in the U.S. move for work contrasts with a lot of places where people tend to live where they grew up (with the important exception of immigration...). In the U.S. it also seems to vary based on class an other social factors: certain groups of people move a lot for careers, others stay put.

things I miss (and not)

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:15:00 +0000

Tuesday I made a list of things I miss. Here they are:

hot baths for my achy feet and legs
my bed
blinds that block the morning sun
calling people cheaply with minutes for which I've already paid
my condo
daylight until 9 pm
Davis library
my desk
family
friends
being able to have guests over whenever I want, including crashing with me for the night*
my guitar
my gym
fast, reliable internet
my MacBook
my neighbors
feeling safe(r)
sharp knives*
hot, high-pressure showers
even sidewalks
yoga

Interesting that I miss comforts, activities and places. While I miss my friends, most of them are gone for the summer so I'd be missing them in NC, too. Same goes for family.

Then I made a list of things I haven't really missed that I might have expected to miss or that other people would miss:

cooking
the U.S. presidential election
NPR
NetNewsWire
and the news more generally
U.S. politics and political culture
posting to Rulablog
TV
misc. websites
Wii
World of Warcraft

I find this list more interesting and illuminating than the other one. I'm sure I'd eventually miss cooking, but cooking for one can be tiring and it sure is nice to just have food appear three times a day. I also feel like my cooking is just starting to reach the level where I can really enjoy the process and not just the output.

Most of the other things have to do with information, technology and entertainment in some combination. I'll get caught up on reading my friends blogs via NetNewsWire when I return. I guess this makes me a bad friend, but right now I feel fine being out of the loop even though I'm sure interesting things have been happening in their lives.

When I return I'll go back to playing WoW with my uncle and some friends for a few hours a week, and I'll play the Wii a bit, mostly when friends are over. I haven't bothered with the other sites (goodreads.com, etc.) because it's a huge pain not having the passwords saved on whatever computer I'm using and waiting for slow load times). I'm sure I'll go back to them when I return, but I'll be sure to not get to sucked up. There's so much to life offline.

Enjoying tuning out the news is a subject for another post, perhaps.

I'll also do some more reflecting on if I want to keep doing Rulablog or not.

Apologies for spelling. Spell check doesn't work on this browser. I'll go back and fix it later.

* = Added since the original post.

yay Google Talk!

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:39:00 +0000

It has been nice to be able to chat with a few people on Gmail's chat while I've been here. Plenty of my friends aren't on it and I of course don't always end up being online at the same time as some of my friends, but it's nice to catch at leaset a few friends. Of course there are other times back home when chat annoys me and is too distrating. There's a simple solution: log out.

Brazil (Week 4)

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:43:00 +0000

Normal routine most of the week. Thursday we went to see Afro-Brazilian dance, which was amazing. There's a small world story there I'll write about sometime. Actually I've had several. Went out for a while that evening, but I headed home relatively early becasue we had to get up the next day.

Friday we had an-all day boat trip around the bay, stopping at two islands for two hours at each one to enjoy nice beaches. I'll eventually upload pictures. The weather was perfect for it.

Saturday morning we made up my graduate seminar, which had to be canceled at the last minute on Wednesday. Took it easy the rest of the day.

Sunday I helped my ~~mom~~ host mom cook lunch. This involved, among other things, putting shrimp in a blender. Family came over for lunch. My friend Katie called to see if I wanted to go to the beach so we did that. I had my first water from a coconut and tried this fruit called açai blended with cashew fruit, frozen with bananas and granola. So good. Then we went back to her apartment and helped her get her computer on the internet. All she needed to do was turn off the wireless card so it would use the ethernet cable. Chatted with her family for a while and then went home.

This week I need to write a couple papers (in Portuguese). I'm going to appreciate having my own computer when I get home.

the joys of language

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 22:22:00 +0000

This blog post is PG-13. Not that I know of any young people reading my blog.

Slang never makes any sense. Three common phrases are legal or optimo ("optimal") where we would use cool (I'm sure there's a distinction--optimo seems to me to be more for when something is really good), and droga as an exclamation where we would say fiddlesticks.

The word for condom is camizinha, litterally "little t-shirt" (I would have gone with "little raincoat" but no one consulted me on the matter). This means that when someone actually needs a little t-shirt (like for a child) s/he needs to say it with the adjective pequeno and not using a diminutive form.

Portuguese has nasalized vowels that don't exsist in English. As in most languages there are words that sound nearly identical to non-native speakers but are actually quite different. Consider, for example, the nasalized pão, bread vs. non-nasal pau, wood. As in English, the word is slang for male anatomy. Pão de queijo is a traditional cheese bread. I'm sure every day foreigners go into stores and mean to ask a man if they carry cheese bread:

"Você tem pão de queijo?"

but actually ask:

"Você tem pau de queijo?"

Of course he'll know what the person is asking and not say anything, but it's got to either annoy or amuse him depending on his personality and the mood he's in that day.

God only knows how many innappropriate things I've said without realizing it. It just comes with the territory of learning a new language.

Che Guevara's Blog

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:58:00 +0000

The most serious weekly magazine for politics in Brazil is called Carta Capital. I've heard it described as being like the UK's Economist but leaning left. Each week they have a fake blog for a famous person. They're pretty hilarious. Here are three of the most recent ones:

Che Guevara (legal means cool)

Marx

Mother Teresa (gotta love the comment spam...)

date stamps; albums

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:07:00 +0000

How much do the date stamps on my photos bug people? They bug me some, but it's also nice to be sure not to lose the date, though that's also encoded in the file, I believe. My camera always defaults to that when I change the batteries. Now I feel like I want all the Brazil pics to be consistant.

I'm dumping all my pics into the Brazil 2008 album. Over time I'll sort them into albms by location and delete the really bad ones.

distributing Going Away in Brazil

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:57:00 +0000

It being my music. I brought a bunch of copies of Going Away with me and I've been giving them to some of the people I meet here, both gringos and Brazilians. It seems weird to say "hey, want to buy my album" to people I just met. It didn't cost much to make the copies and this helps get the music out there. I'll be more hard-nosed about charging for them when I start gigging back in NC. Some people have been very excited by the CD and others less so. I'm just happy to share it with some of the new friends I've made.

Pics from the first three weeks

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:16:00 +0000

The nagging got me to do it. My picassa page has the pics up. I haven't sorted them, added captions, linked to maps, or even rotated them, but there they are. Enjoy! I may put a couple in blog posts, but then again I may not.

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:44:00 +0000

Katie (my ex-girlfriend and current friend) has a post from when she was back in the U.S. after almost a year abroad listing the "Weirdest things so far." Many of the things that will be strange for me are on her list.

*Drinking fountains, with water you can drink out of

We can drink out of the ones at school but not elsewhere.

*You can drink the tap water

Yep. I've had a little bit, but it probably contributed to my mild digestive difficulties.

*Dollars are bills, not coins.

Yep. Single coins here as well. I read that if the U.S. managed to get us to adopt them we'd save a lot of money because the coins last much longer.

*Free refills

I guess. We don't have them but I hadn't really noticed. Today at Pizza Hut I noticed not being able to get free drinkable water.

*Cars that stay in their lanes

Hell yep.

*Cars that stop for pedestrians

H few do. We give them a thumbs up. Brazilians are all about giving each other the thumbs up. It rubs off.

*Driving for the first time in a year

Will probably be long enough to be a bit weird.

*Grocery stores

We have those.

*Even small children speak English

Yep.

*No one cares about football, of the soccer variety

Yep. Unless I run into a few grad students I know in History (and one in Comp Lit).

Though of course I'll have been gone for a much shorter period.

Brazil: Week 3

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:42:00 +0000

Quickly, here's what I did last week.

Monday we watched a video about candomble rituals. Then we went to one. It was a long drive and then the ritual was very long. We left about 11 pm. It consists of a lot of dancing as they channel Orixás. I was very tired, but it was a good cultural experience. If you want a sense of what the dancing is like there are videos on YouTube.

Tuesday my annual report for the Truman was due so I finished that and worked on my outline for my sociolinguistics seminar.

Wednesday we had the seminar then I went to a soccer game with my host mom and host cousin. It was a long trip there by bus. The game was Vitoria (the home team) vs. São Paulo. We left when Vitoria was down 0-3. They scored a goal near the end. It was interesting to see my mild mannered, intellectual cousin become very passionate about the game as we sat there with around 35,000 of our closest friends.

Thursday we went to the airport to register with the police, as required by our visas if we stay longer than 30 days. More on that later, but it went very smoothly.

Friday we headed to the island paradise of Morro de São Paulo, returning Sunday. It was great to just relax and take it easy. Friday I struck up a conversation with two women playing frescobol on the beach, Viviane and Sandra. They were from São Paulo where Viviane does marketing for Calvin Klein and Sandra manages fashion models. We grabbed some food that afternoon and they invited me to meet them at a party at a club that evening. We met up the next day at the beach and that evening for a great, inexpensive traditional Brazilian dinner. It was nice to get so much conversation practice. I also spent time with people in my department hanging out on the beach. The breakfasts at our pousada (inn) was amazing. I really need to write more about food.

things that haven't worked in the past 24 hours

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:27:00 +0000

Sanjay trying to Skype out to my cell phone last night--didn't even show up as a missed call.
The hot water halfway through my shower.
The internet connection this morning and at various other times today--slow and couldn't load Google Chat.
Firefox on another computer--crashed. I screamed "I hate Windows." Actually those weren't my exact words, but my mom reads this blog.
Various keys on this keyboard.
The sound on this keyboard even with headphones plugged in.
The USB port on this computer.

A reminder of all the things I often take for granted. Anyhow, writing a simple outline in Portuguese has been harder than it should be.

photos coming soon, I think

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:25:00 +0000

Wednesday when I got to my program director's apartment for seminar my friend Mike who lives with him is going to use his laptop to transfer pics from my camera's card to my usb drive. So Thursday or Friday I should be able to put up some pics.

Laundry Service

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:06:00 +0000

And I don't mean the album where Shakira made the (in my opinion) terrible error of starting to sing in English...

I packed light to come here. Just one checked back, a medium sized roller bag. I have a satchel for taking two bags back. So I took a little over a week's worth of clothes, figuring laundry one a week. The key problem is that laundry takes a while. It has to hang dry in a humid country. Also my host mom saves it for the maid's weekly visit so it can be ironed. Today I snuck a pair of boxer shorts out of the to-be-ironed pile because I was out of clean ones. I think I'll buy a few more articles of clothing to help me get through laundry cycles.

specific questions please

noreply@blogger.com (russell) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:26:00 +0000

People keep asking me `How is Brazil?´That´s overwhelming and I don´t know where to begin. But if you ask more specific questions in the comment section of this post I´ll try to address them in future posts. Fair enough?