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eredienNot in that order.
Got the original watercolor of my Surreal Botany Ozymandias-plant in the mail today. It looks lovely, Janet! I can't wait to frame it--hopefully next to my surreal botanists association membership certificate.
One of my tetras died over the weekend. It was the smallest, weakest one, and the tank has been overrun by algae lately, so I am not suprised. I was sad, though. I got a really comprehensive fish book and have been reading it slowly.
I've been obsessed with origami again. This happens to me about once a year, and has been happening since 6th grade. Apparently a strong intermittent obsessive interest. I've learned enough to figure out that some of the diagrams in the "beautiful origami" book I got are wrong--they skip steps. Did a little research--apparently the author does that with a lot of her books. A shame, as they've got great pictures. Tonight before I go to bed I will fold a quetzal; others I am interested in include a caterpillar, cat, frog on its own lilypad, a phoenix, a totoro, a weasel, and a pteranodon.
It's not that I can't sleep; rather, it's that I am falling asleep quite late--independent of when I actually go to bed and shut the lights off--and wake easily, sleeping fitfully with a lot of dreams and nightmares. It's frustrating and I'm not sure what to do. My therapist suggests tea. That may help. I'll try it tonight.
For those of you who are in the SFPA, it's apparently Rhysling award time! I'm trying to figure out how to take advantage of the nominees and educate myself about them, as I haven't been recieving Star*Line for a year due to a USPS mix-up such that all my old issues went to the wrong place. It's been fixed, and generously so, but I still haven't got any Star*Lines yet so I'm not sure how I can be a useful voter. Suggestions welcome.
Two short book reviews:
Animals in Translation, Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson.
This book was interesting and at times, useful, but I felt like it lacked a strong scientific correlation between the worthwhile scientific research that is being done into the fields of neuroscience and animal thought and behavior, and the personal and/or seconhand anecdotes of the author; Grandin's main thesis was that animals and autistic people may share many traits in common in terms of motion perception and visual processing, and this may inform the way that animals and humans of all stripes either relate to each other, or fail to relate. (Grandin is autistic). While she gives some concrete examples of how her autism has personally helped her work with animals, and brings up some some good points--I, too, think that humans fail to notice that animals have very strong body language signals, and generally discount their own use of body language almost entirely (except in a business, interview, or sex situation, I feel)--she fails to show that her thesis can be universally applied, despite bringing in scientific evidence to try and do so. I feel like a book that is trying to make a claim based on scientific evidence, which is being backed up by scientific examples, should be more rigorous in trying to tie personal anecdote into the claims and try to make a more coherent thesis, widely applicable. I think I wanted a little more from this book than it could offer. Maybe it was only trying to be a general account of an idea.
Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex, Judith Levine
This book was well-researched, a little dry at times (there's a lot of numbers-massaging in some paragraphs), and is, I think, important. It's about the history of policy, and current policy, surrounding adults' ideas of what children should know or not know about sex. Helpfully, this includes a discussion of what children may actually know about sex. This book helped me give a time-based framework to some issues I knew about, put some issues I had wondered about (why is there such a lack of queer role models for teenagers?) into a context in light of other issues I hadn't always clearly understood (if teenagers come out as having a sexuality, then adults have to deal with them as sexual beings, something which our current culture is ill-equipped to deal with); gave voice to both children and parents in equal measure, which is refreshing; and dealt with the divide between love, pleasure, and sex as they are performed by, acted by, and/or institutonally spoon-fed to teenagers (and their parents). It gave me some things to connect to and mull over in my personal life, too, which is always useful.
Got the original watercolor of my Surreal Botany Ozymandias-plant in the mail today. It looks lovely, Janet! I can't wait to frame it--hopefully next to my surreal botanists association membership certificate.
One of my tetras died over the weekend. It was the smallest, weakest one, and the tank has been overrun by algae lately, so I am not suprised. I was sad, though. I got a really comprehensive fish book and have been reading it slowly.
I've been obsessed with origami again. This happens to me about once a year, and has been happening since 6th grade. Apparently a strong intermittent obsessive interest. I've learned enough to figure out that some of the diagrams in the "beautiful origami" book I got are wrong--they skip steps. Did a little research--apparently the author does that with a lot of her books. A shame, as they've got great pictures. Tonight before I go to bed I will fold a quetzal; others I am interested in include a caterpillar, cat, frog on its own lilypad, a phoenix, a totoro, a weasel, and a pteranodon.
It's not that I can't sleep; rather, it's that I am falling asleep quite late--independent of when I actually go to bed and shut the lights off--and wake easily, sleeping fitfully with a lot of dreams and nightmares. It's frustrating and I'm not sure what to do. My therapist suggests tea. That may help. I'll try it tonight.
For those of you who are in the SFPA, it's apparently Rhysling award time! I'm trying to figure out how to take advantage of the nominees and educate myself about them, as I haven't been recieving Star*Line for a year due to a USPS mix-up such that all my old issues went to the wrong place. It's been fixed, and generously so, but I still haven't got any Star*Lines yet so I'm not sure how I can be a useful voter. Suggestions welcome.
Two short book reviews:
Animals in Translation, Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson.
This book was interesting and at times, useful, but I felt like it lacked a strong scientific correlation between the worthwhile scientific research that is being done into the fields of neuroscience and animal thought and behavior, and the personal and/or seconhand anecdotes of the author; Grandin's main thesis was that animals and autistic people may share many traits in common in terms of motion perception and visual processing, and this may inform the way that animals and humans of all stripes either relate to each other, or fail to relate. (Grandin is autistic). While she gives some concrete examples of how her autism has personally helped her work with animals, and brings up some some good points--I, too, think that humans fail to notice that animals have very strong body language signals, and generally discount their own use of body language almost entirely (except in a business, interview, or sex situation, I feel)--she fails to show that her thesis can be universally applied, despite bringing in scientific evidence to try and do so. I feel like a book that is trying to make a claim based on scientific evidence, which is being backed up by scientific examples, should be more rigorous in trying to tie personal anecdote into the claims and try to make a more coherent thesis, widely applicable. I think I wanted a little more from this book than it could offer. Maybe it was only trying to be a general account of an idea.
Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex, Judith Levine
This book was well-researched, a little dry at times (there's a lot of numbers-massaging in some paragraphs), and is, I think, important. It's about the history of policy, and current policy, surrounding adults' ideas of what children should know or not know about sex. Helpfully, this includes a discussion of what children may actually know about sex. This book helped me give a time-based framework to some issues I knew about, put some issues I had wondered about (why is there such a lack of queer role models for teenagers?) into a context in light of other issues I hadn't always clearly understood (if teenagers come out as having a sexuality, then adults have to deal with them as sexual beings, something which our current culture is ill-equipped to deal with); gave voice to both children and parents in equal measure, which is refreshing; and dealt with the divide between love, pleasure, and sex as they are performed by, acted by, and/or institutonally spoon-fed to teenagers (and their parents). It gave me some things to connect to and mull over in my personal life, too, which is always useful.
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(no subject)
6/1/09 04:59 (UTC)That is very, very cool.
I'm trying to figure out how to take advantage of the nominees and educate myself about them
Also publish more poetry, so I can nominate it.
(no subject)
6/1/09 13:37 (UTC)(no subject)
6/1/09 17:17 (UTC)You should send somewhere (if you haven't already) the poem you wrote for me and International Cephalopod Awareness Day. It was amazing.
(no subject)
7/1/09 00:37 (UTC)(no subject)
7/1/09 00:38 (UTC)(no subject)
7/1/09 00:42 (UTC)(no subject)
7/1/09 00:57 (UTC)(no subject)
7/1/09 17:03 (UTC)(no subject)
9/1/09 05:06 (UTC)(no subject)
9/1/09 05:32 (UTC)(no subject)
9/1/09 14:06 (UTC)(no subject)
6/1/09 07:03 (UTC)(no subject)
6/1/09 13:38 (UTC)I am going to read more about how to grow plants since that is something I never tried before and is something I'd like to be better at.
(no subject)
7/1/09 02:10 (UTC)Trying different sorts of plants can be useful. I went through five or six different varieties before I found something that seemed to like my water that the f33sh wouldn't eat. Amazon swords are about the most foolproof plants available, in my experience, and they're relatively pretty to boot.
If you have snails -- as can happen if you're importing new fish or plants often -- talk to your pet store owner about getting some fish that like the taste of escargot. Clown loaches happily nom-nom-nom on the blighters, but clown loaches also reach maturity at about 18" and prefer to hang out in large schools, so you might want a larger tank for them.
(no subject)
9/1/09 05:08 (UTC)The only plant that's left is, I think, a sword. I had a lot of snails this summer but they all died off after a while.
(no subject)
7/1/09 00:36 (UTC)sleeping
6/1/09 16:01 (UTC)I second Tea. Do you need some chamomile or peppermint? I have a ton.
Re: sleeping
7/1/09 00:36 (UTC)Re: sleeping
7/1/09 00:37 (UTC)