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January 18, 2015 January 18, 2015 / alexandtheuniverse	/ 1 Comment
December 9, 2014 December 9, 2014 / alexandtheuniverse	/ 2 Comments
If I am learning anything from my long journey toward becoming a writer, it has something to do with kindness.
Oh, sure, there's courage and honesty and creative word-smithing. Those seem important. Discipline, scalpel-sharp critical thinking, dogged commitment. Yup. Lucky breaks, too, and putting in your time and learning how to get by with less. But really, at the very bottom of it, I find it's kindness that is the most essential to continuing forward.
I'm not talking about empty kindness, easy kindness, the stuff of courtesy and politeness. Real kindness. The undeserved, the unbidden, the unworthy, the unending. And I'm talking about being kind to yourself.
I nearly broke myself last winter when I was kicking my own ass in a brightly lit apartment thousands of miles and an ocean away from home. I was working on my first book-length manuscript, demanding myself to write at least 1000 words a day and a chapter a week for twelve weeks. I was demanding myself to write the best book ever written, the best adventure story, the best gay marriage story. I was demanding myself to write a story that could change the world, that would subvert and surprise and give and give. I was writing a story that could save my relationship with my siblings and could teach my parents. It was a story that was true and right. I was demanding perfection.
Meanwhile, I was physically ill. I was depressed. I was pretty sure I was an egocentric hack. I went spiraling down a vortex of doubt feeding fear feeding frustration feeding doubt. I survived the vortex.
Some folks don't.
Six months later, thanks to a friend's suggestion and an editor's selection, I found myself sitting in a circle of writers seeking our stories together at the incomparable Summer Fishtrap workshop in eastern Oregon. Across the circle sat Luis Alberto Urrea, who told of his own doubt-fear-frustration-doubt vortex that led him to the edge of everything. He survived. And returned to the world of the living with the gorgeous epic The Hummingbird's Daughter.
If you survive the vortex does not mean you will produce a gorgeous epic. Nor am I saying you must go through the vortex in order to produce brilliance. But I do believe that to tell a great story you must be willing to face the truth of things, and you very well may balk in the face of that truth. And if you balk, it very well may be kindness which allows you to escape with your life and your story.
Later that same week of Fishtrap, the poet Kim Stafford explained to us how his father, the poet William Stafford, wrote. I find it the daily expression of writerly-kindness-to-self:
1) Write the date.
2) Write boring prose.
3) Write into an aphorism or koan – a self-contained observation or idea
4) write the thing.
Kim made us practice his father's technique. This is what I wrote that day:
Today is Wednesday. I had a harder time waking this morning than yesterday. I didn't hear as many birds and I am not sure if there actually were fewer birds or if I just couldn't or didn't hear them today. No hummingbirds yet today. Or dippers.
I'm wondering as always about the good that will come out of this. This is writing church, but I distrust all churches. I like to believe that this mistrust is not because I believe I do not deserve the sanctuary, but because I doubt the truth of sanctuary in the first place. Or if not truth, then usefulness. Though the use is obvious to be kind to oneself. To be kind to yourself means being kind to everything you know about yourself. Being kind to the ugliness. To be kind to the fear, to be kind to the doubts, the anger, the endless river of voices. These are my voices and every other voice I have ever heard.
Give me the strength to survive this, the going out, the falling. And give me the strength to still be kind, long after I've broken against the bedrock.
And then I wrote the thing:
To the Writer
Never tell the names
of the smallest gods whirring
behind your ears, but do not
swat them either, cursing
be kind to everything you know
about yourself, even your doubt
even your hate
even your own death
be kind long after you have
leaped, after you have
fallen, after you have broken against bedrock
Applications are open until December 15th for 2015 Summer Fishtrap Fellowships and Scholarships.
November 16, 2014 November 16, 2014 / alexandtheuniverse	/ Leave a comment
I'd meant to read this poem at the Fab Planet summit but ran out of time. Fortunately, there's always time for a good poem here at andtheuniverse:
W.S. Merwin
By the time I came to hear about it
I was assured that there was no such thing
no it was one more in the long trailing
troupe of figures that had been believed but
had never existed no it had not
resounded in the dark at the beginning
no among the stars there was no singing
then or later no ringing single note
threaded the great absences no echoing
of space in space no there was no calling
along the lights anywhere no it was not
in the choiring of water in the saying
of a name it was not living or warning
through the thrush of dusk or the wren of morning
This is resistance: hearing that which we are told to deny. This is hope: that the thrush and the wren will sing their own songs (regardless of the script thrust upon them). This is joy: to fill the darkness and light alike with song.
This poem can be found in Merwin's gorgeous Migration: New & Selected Poems.
Also: I'm still searching for photo credit. If you recognize this image, please help me out!
Fab Planet 2014
If you missed the first-ever Summit on LGBTQ Identity and Sustainability that took place this past September in Seattle, you are in luck! The good folks at Out for Sustainability, a national non-profit seeking to connect queer greenies, have posted the audio of the day's sessions.
How could it get even better, you ask? I had the honor to speak in the opening panel on Intersectionality with the brilliant artist/musician/policy analyst Loren Othon and Out For Sustainability's co-founder Gerod Rody.
And if you don't have time at the moment to sit down for a listening session, I've included some of my notes for the talk:
As Gerod mentioned, I currently work for the National Park Service, restoring alpine meadows in Yosemite. What that really means is that, as I'm decompacting the soil and shoveling dirt and moving plants, I have a whole lot of time to look around at the pretty mountains and think. Lots of time to think.
For much of that time, I'm thinking about why I am out there. Why do I care so much about these meadows? Why do I care about Yosemite Toad habitat? Why am I devoting my life to conservation and restoration and sustainability?
My answers to these questions include the likely suspects of ecological function; biological diversity; clean water for the Central Valley and San Francisco; the opportunity for people to come to the mountains and experience wilderness. All that feels good.
Invariably, though, my answer to that question of "why do I care?" also includes something distinctly different. There's another answer, a more important one, even. That answer is more of a feeling, and the feeling goes something like this: I care about the environment because I am queer. I suspect many of you might share in that same feeling.
Which, I hate to break it to you, isn't much of an answer to the question, really.
Explaining environmental ethics and values are complicated enough. Throwing LGBTQ identity into the mix makes for quite the messy elevator statement or cocktail party conversation.
Even so, I've spent much of my adult life trying to make sense of this intersection sexuality and the environment.
And I've come to believe that this intersection–of sexuality and the environment–is in fact much more than just a feeling, more than just a very niche market of us here in this room.
No, in truth, I see LGBTQ identity and sustainability as two communities–two projects of our modern global community–each of them attempting to determine how we define our collective future.
And I think these two projects–and the scale and quality of their impact on our future–are directly tied up in one another.
So, we are not here to pat ourselves on the back today. We are not here only to stare in the faces of like-minded people. We are also here to look outward. To better understand our selves and our communities in order to more effectively and passionately create our future.
So intersections:
What are they? How does our better understanding of sexuality and sexual identity deepen our understanding of sustainability? And vice versa?
First, let's start with how our understanding of sustainability and environmental concepts can possibly enrich the lives of LGBTQ people and strengthen the queer community:
1) Nature as Refuge
The concept I've spent much of my time writing and thinking about is the old idea of Nature as refuge, and how it affects the lives of queer people. It is an old story, the idea that the land will take you in, no matter the color of your skin, or your gender, or who you love. By land I mean the more-than-human, non-engineered world.
Ideally, there is no judgment there, or at least, the lack of judgment is inversely proportional to the amount of human impact on that place.
And you know what, it is hard to survive as someone who is LGBTQ in the judgey, prejudiced human-engineered world. Just like so many other minorities, whose lives are more difficult because of who they happen to be, it is more important for queer people to have places of refuge. Personally, I know of no better place to find refuge than the wilderness.
After Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers University student, committed suicide after being bullied online by his roommate, I wrote an article making just that point. I hoped he had at some point stood on top of a mountain, or come in close contact with a bear, and known what it was like to be unjudged. To simply be human as free of our physical and social constructs as possible. To be an animal. To be a forest. To find that solace and peace of self can literally mean life or death.
Clementi didn't necessarily need to be out in the wilderness to find it either, and I don't want to come off as a wilderness snob either. I personally find it easier.
If he hadn't, why not?
What are the problems of access for queer people to building a relationship with the natural world?
Queer people are told to live in cities and be urban. This message comes from popular media, but it also comes from family and friends too: join our kind. Live where it is safer for people like us. Beyond the fact that it is not necessarily safer for us in cities, those social pressures present all sorts of barriers for queer people to build a healthy and deep relationship to the land.
Queer people that do choose to live in rural places, or have no choice but to live in rural places, have other unique challenges. The more-than-human landscape might play more of a direct role in their lives, but they also very often face extreme isolation.
While studying at the University of Montana, I interviewed a dozen gay men who are park rangers about their experiences, and they all spoke about the internal conflict of loving the land and the refuge they found within it while also reconciling sometimes an intense sense of isolation.
And so this conversation about the values of Nature as Refuge, to me, seems to be a very important project for both the queer and environmental communities:
–how do we provide better access to the natural world?
–how do we encourage queer people (along with all sorts of people who fall into any number of you-are-a-minority-so-you-must-be-urban category) to build a relationship with the natural world, finding a sense of refuge in it?
–how do we work against the corresponding urban and rural barriers for queer people to be healthy and happy?
2) Evolutionary Biology
A second intersection which I wanted to mention today is the contribution that the sciences of ecology and biology can provide to our understanding of sexuality. It's still amazing to me how little modern science really has discovered about humans as a species, how we evolved, and the biological origins of so many of our quintessential human traits.
Sure it's interesting to know how biological mechanisms work within our bodies, but for me it's way more interesting to know how and why we have such a broad capacity for behaviors. In terms of sexuality, there has been a number of theories to explain the evolutionary origins of same-sex and other non-heteronormative behaviors. And really, we still don't know.
What we do know, however, is that non-heteronormative and non-monogamous behavior are nearly ubiquitous part of sexuality across the animal kingdom and beyond. There's something so liberating and empowering about that fact to me. When I look at pairs of geese now, I do not assume that they are a male-female pair. When I see animal mating behavior, I wonder who is who and what their real motivations are. Life is messy!
Better understanding the biological and ecological mess can provide a sense that there is nothing inherently abberant, diseased, defective, or unnatural about being queer, about being a man that loves another man, or a woman that loves another woman, or desiring to present as any number of genders that is not your biological sex.
In fact, I wager that as we continue to study the evolutionary emergence of human sexuality, that the complexity and diversity of human sexuality and gender has actually played an important role in the survival and health of human communities throughout history.
One obvious caveat to this conversation, as explained best by the UC professor Marlene Zuk in her Sexual Selections: what we can and can't learn about sex from animals–is that it is dangerous to find justification for our behavior based on what we see animals doing." This goes without saying, but we shouldn't eat our babies like hamsters, or be as violent as male ducks
BUT by cultivating a more accurate understanding of the biological framework of living things on earth, we can better understand how huge our behavioral capacity is–and how it is our collective project to determine what is considered allowable within our societies.
There are no inherent biological rights or wrongs, despite what we've been told for the last 150 years.
In this way, better understanding the messy complexity of Earth's living systems allows us to more confidently assert the messy complexity of humans as a part of those living systems. In the process, we can find liberation from entrenched pseudo-Darwinian ideas of individual fitness and the supposed purpose of life which is to produce as many children as possible.
3) Queer Ecological Imagination
Which brings me to how the LGBTQ community can deepen our understanding, and in fact, play a crucial role in defining what future sustainability means. What does it mean to have healthy human relationships with the environment.
Currently, we still live in a society that in many ways is a cult of the masculine. Much of our culture's basic standards of success and happiness are directly linked to production, dominance, and power. Controlling the wild natural world is supposed to be a good thing. Even notions of sustainability, in this context, are dependent on how efficiently we can dominate, how effectively we can use resources.
Similarly, sustainability is often couched in heteronormative terms of reproduction. We need to think about our children and our children's children. What if we have no intentions of having children? Even people's sense of the outdoors often is veiled in heteronormative terms, like going out to conquer a mountain, or camping in a cul-de-sac campground designed in a very public way for traditionally-structured families.
AND SO, as queer people, we possess a unique identity and set of experiences that might encourage us to question those relationships to the natural world. How do we talk about sustainability if we aren't acting based on the continued surival of our genetic material?
Who but we can best advocate for more complicated understandings of biological and ecological processes?
Who but we best understand what it means to have to fight for our inherent right to exist, independent of our economic or biological value as an individual?
Which brings me to the bottom line:
I care about the continued existence of other living things, and the relationships between those living things because I have had to defend my own right to exist. I have had to fight so damn hard just to exist. To be who I am.
And so I can empathize. I can understand. I can extend my own sense of equality and justice and liberation ever outward. I strongly believe that my fight for all of those things, equality, justice, liberation, are tied up in everyone's fight for those things. And what I'm realizing is that that fight, that circle of empathy and compassion, must extend beyond the human world as well–if we are to succeed at furthering these modern projects of "civil rights" and "equality" and "sustainability."
I recently read an essay in Orion written by a friend, the San Francisco-based writer and activist, Rebecca Solnit. She had researched Thoreau's laundry habits, in his defense, since he's kind of gotten a bad rap about it since it is likely his sisters and/or mother often did his laundry. And what she discovered was that yes, they could have done his laundry, but they also formed a very strong, passionate family. Particularly his sisters and mothers, who were politically active, and whose beliefs affected Thoreau strongly.
Specifically, the Thoreau women were strong abolitionists, who founded the Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society. As Solnit says:
"The women seemed to find a kind of liberation for themselves in this movement for the liberation of others. They were able to act independent of husbands and fathers, to take a public stand, to become political beings in a new way. The women's suffrage movement, the first feminist movement, grew directly out of the abolution movement. The went to liberate someone else and found that they too were not free."
We are on that same journey as the women in Concord.
We are seeking to liberate others–our fellow humans first, from environmental and climate injustices while also extending that circle of empathy and liberation out to the more-than-human world.
So I encourage all of us here today to thing of this gathering and this community as more than just a fun niche interest group. This is much more than that. This is an extension of the civil rights movement. And we are uniquely positioned to provide invaluable influence in how we understand our current and future relationship to the living world.
As we learn how to build green communities and talk about sustainbility, we are also talking about expanding the circle of empathy, ecolgoical imagination, and humanity. In the process we are also continuing the process of liberation of ourselves, of others, and of life on this messy planet.
Visit Out For Sustainability's Fab Planet Recap Page for more information on the 2014 Summit and how you can get involved with Out4S, including socials in a city near you.
And for resources on Queer/Ecology, visit my website!
On writing a memwah
May 20, 2014 May 21, 2014 / alexandtheuniverse	/ 2 Comments
Turns out writing a book is hard (real hard). Who knew? Likely just about everybody. Except me. Somehow, in my youthful wisdom (read whimsical naivete), I thought I could say I was writing a book. And then just start writing. And keep writing. And voila, I'd have a book!
Not true, good sirs. Nope, turns out you have to dredge your soul. Stir up all your demons. Face all your doubts. And fail. And fail. And fail. And then after years of this–after the whole idea of the book-length story which you want to tell cuts you down right to your base, then, finally, maybe, it's no longer an idea. It's an actual story-like thing. And then, maybe, you can actually write it and write it and write it until it turns into a book-like thing. More than a collection of words, but a body. A living thing. That breathes and speaks and does the tango with itself and whoever else wants to join it.
Turns out writing a freaking memoir–or as I like to call it, a memwah–is real hard. Writing a memwah means not only having to successfully tell an interesting story in the first place (which seems easy enough, but proves exceedingly difficult in practice), but that story also has to be true! It also has to be fair to your dear loved ones who you are writing about–while also honoring your own, likely divergent perspective on shared histories and experiences. On top of all of that, the real people I write about also have to be good characters–and the real events good plot.
Speaking of plot: it is the story of an adventure I undertook several years ago with my at-the-time-boyfriend-currently-husband Pete during which we paddled 1800 miles of the Yukon River. The story is also about us falling in love, of getting married, and honeymooning in Everglades. It's also about making sense of love in general–and my gender and sexuality–within the culture in which I live. It's also about what and who is natural; where the line is between self and other; what we risk when we are true to our selves–our dreams, our loves, our desires; and what we have to gain. It's an adventure story. And it's a love story. But it's also a queer story, which hopefully means it will surprise and delight and confuse people and their expectations and assumptions.
Oh, golly. Overly ambitious, right?
Well, as you might have guessed, all this is to say that I've dropped the ball on the blog for the past few months. But for good reason: I was writing the story of my survival. It took me to some of the darkest, scariest places in my life. But the good news is that I'm seeing the light at the end of the river. I'm days and weeks away from the first complete, 300ish-page, manuscript. I will be starting to shop it around by the end of May.
For this moment when I'm about to embark once again into a new phase of the great unknown that is this living thing, I figured the following excerpt from Chapter 0 – Shape of a River would be fitting:
Peter says he's feverish. He certainly looks a little pale. Phlegm rolls down my bronchial tubes, and I give a good hacking cough. We launch the boat anyway.
"To the sea," I say.
"Sssslp, lpp, slep," says the river against the boat.
I thought it was going to be more than this. There's no ceremony, no witnesses except the lone Al-Can drivers that flash and rattle across the blue steel-girder bridge that crosses the river here. We talked for half a year, and then decided we had better start actually planning, like a couple who hadn't believed they were pregnant until the belly started to show. What maps did we need? Were there even maps? Who could we talk to about the lower sections? How do we get home? What kind of boat do we need? How do we eat? We made our best guesses and figures from a third of a continent away. After a full month of packing and driving, driving and packing, packing, then yeah, more driving, we did arrive. In my dreams, we hadn't looked quite so exhausted. A sign beside the launch reads: Warning: Stay clear of control structure. 400 Meters down stream. Stay right and use boat lock.
Maybe, at least, we look good to those lonely drivers rushing by overhead. If you squint your eyes and lean back a bit, you can see us even now: two lean figures in a loaded red canoe, ready. You don't see Pouncer's bow rocking dangerously low above the surface or the whole boat wobbling side to side as we clip our final possessions into it, grasp at the gunnel, perch ourselves half in and half out. You don't see how lumpy our load is, all three hundred pounds of it, which we've squeezed into a family of canvas bags, river barrels, and plastic crates, all of it lashed to the thwart and crossbars. You also don't see what that same load looked like half an hour prior when it looked more like a full-on yard sale or gas-main explosion.
It's taken most the day to get on the water, and the sun already stalks to the north and west, pawing round the low dip between spruce and birch, right where we and the river intend to go. We squint as we look downstream, barely able to see it for all the shine and glare. I lift my foot out of the muddy bank while Pete braces the boat. I swear the whole thing nearly flips as I try to sit down. I grip my paddle with white knuckles, digging the tip of it into the shore. Then it's Pete's turn to climb in, kicking his feet clean of mud before picking up the paddle. We roost our butts in our seats for several seconds, find places to set the soles of our shoes. And just now, we strike off from the shore, shoving water around without plan until the current catches us and brings us along. We spin in stutter-step unison, Pete sterning on starboard, I bow on port. The sun pushes in through Pouncer's translucent hull and the light breaks around my legs like an aurora. The sea must be down there somewhere, out beyond what we can possibly know. We push and the river pulls. "We live and move by splitting the light of the present, as a canoe's bow parts water" says Annie Dillard. And so Peter and I face the setting sun, all that can come, and we paddle one-two, one-two, one-two-three.
The control dam rises up through the sheen, a long and low thing, like the open gates of a horse race, spanning the full fifty-yard width of the river. The current flows right on through the dam, which was built to hold back the water only when there was too much of it for the liking of the downriver residents. We can't go through any of the open gates without risking our lives and Pouncer's, so we push river right, slipping between the rusted seawalls of the lock which rise around us like a shipping crate or cell. Closing off the end are doors like old river rafts mounted and hinged. Just as in a dream, a ladder appears, lines of rebar welded to one of the walls. I tie Pete and Pouncer off, then pull myself up on top of the dam, intent on finding the doorbell.
There is none. What there is is a long lever that you can unlock. And a big wheel like you'd find on a sailboat. I am able to unlock the lever, which is about as long as I am tall, but there's no moving it. As for the wheel, it turns and turns and turns just fine, and would all night long, I believe. With no other options, I holler down at Pete for help. Pete checks again that the boat's tied off well, which I don't see him do, but know just the same that he does it, and then he climbs up the dream ladder too. I show him the situation: turning wheel, unmoveable lever, unblinking door-rafts. We'd purposely put in above the lock, just to get the thrill of the experience, I suppose.
Pete throws his whole buck-twenty-five against the lever, then he decides we need our combined two-ninety. One, two, three–we throw ourselves against the lever, which doesn't even creak and gives only the slightest shrug of a bend. As for the doors? Dead. We do what anybody who's hit a sudden dead-end does: we scowl, curse, and toss up our hands toward the sky. And we look for ways around.
"I sure as hell don't want to portage," I say to Pete. We'd have to make five, six, eight trips to haul all of our gear up and around the dam, then back down the steep slope to an unlikely put-in. I'm more afraid of the psychological trauma than I am of the physical challenge. Even though the distance is short, it could take us another two hours, at least. It is late already. Ten? Eleven in the evening?
The sun is still setting these days around midnight, though we'd probably have enough light to get wherever it was we needed to go for the night. Our plan had been to just get on the river, float down a mile or two, and then find a camp. I hack. Pete broodingly raises his brow first to the bank, then toward the river, which he surveys with an engineer's fixed intent.
"No, we can't," I say, breathless. "We shouldn't." Like a thief, Peter grins.
"I think we can," he says.
A few minutes later, we are back in the boat, paddling upstream on an eddy river right, then Pete says, "now," and I dig in deeper as Pete steers the bow into the current, catching Pouncer like the wind catches a kite just as it rises above the trees. We whip about and then we are full on, I in the bow, Pete at the stern, paddling in time, one, two, one, two, one, two, moving with the current which is neither fast nor slow, but resolute, calm, like a madman or Siddhartha, bringing us onward toward our waiting door. Loose pieces of the mountain slopes, trunks and branches, have washed down and plugged half the gates. Pete steers us toward a gate that we had agreed looked clear from where we'd peered down upon it from the lock: third from the right. I can't see Pete behind me, muscling and taught, but I feel him: the quick rocks of the boat side to side from the force he moves through the paddle to the water, the way the bow which is now our compass, slides right, then left, right, then left, to point dead on at the gate third from the right. Why do we risk ourselves? All we need we hold between us and Pouncer's skin, and here we are pushing it through the gate, third from the right. No matter the outcome, we're doomed, the two of us.
The river comes on and the future too. I keep paddling as Pete has instructed me. The dam rises up and blocks out the glare of the sun. Now I see the texture of the water, where it pushes up over the logs that jam the other gates, the way it smacks up and curls around the thin cement pillars. I see now that the gates aren't wide, but enough: five feet, a paddle width–and I can see that each gate is in fact four, all in a line, two paired upriver, two down, and a canoe length of roiling river between them. Now we near our gate, and we keep our paddling. The river breathes through the gates, speaking now in a louder, constant voice. It is the sound of falling. The rush of on-coming. The press of the present upon our temples.
"Looking good," Pete says.
"We got this," he says.
"A little right," I say.
"Looking good," I say.
Just at the gate's center, I see that the river pillows through, piling up and tonguing over and into the mouth, down the two-foot drop, passing on through the third and fourth gates, and then out. This is our line we push toward with everything we've got. There is no knowing for us now, besides paddling, and breathing, and sliding toward our line. Now the dam is a hand commanding us to stop.
Now it is a mouth, open, laughing.
And then we are in, and I do not pause to look about, but keep paddling, breathing, and sliding along that line. We pass through and out like we are opening a door that we will keep opening forever.
"Pete?" I say.
What we demand in all our foolishness
November 20, 2013 / alexandtheuniverse	/ 3 Comments
Traveling, that is, striking camp and carrying it with you, searching for where you can set it down next, is the process of asking to be let in. I first thought this city was all wall and broken concrete. Exhaust and gutter. Peter and I spent days walking the outlines of long, overlapping rectangles through the streets, under the earnest Yucateco sun and rain, burning and soaking, soaking and burning. We peeked through iron grates, straining our eyes through the cracked timber rafts of doors. We caught shady gardens, pools, refugios. We knew there was a city on the other side of those walls, but we weren't in that one yet.
Our plan was to strike our camp in California, and set it down here in Merida for a few months. We just came, no more details than that. As a traveler, you are certainly asking, even demanding something of the places in which you enter, (ie. Let me in.) and even more, you are asking something of their inhabitants. And so, I've realized, there are things asked of you in return. Of course there's the money, but I'm thinking more about the other demands. In whiskey, it's called the angel's share, the bit that evaporates out of the no-matter-how-tightly-sealed cask. I'm not one for religion, but the belief in angels, the sense of them, came before the sense of God, so let's let 'em be for now.
I've traveled over lots of this green, blue, brown, red and white earth, and I say that everywhere demands its angel's share. In wildery places, out away from people, you might have to share your fancy schmancy electro-diode gps mahuey that takes a drink in the rushing river and never wakes up. Or you offer up all the peanut butter you have, all 10 lbs of it, to the ravens. And in fact, just like whiskey (preferably Scotch), the greater your ambitions, the longer you age it, the richer the product, the more substantial the angel's share. If you, traveler, go out and attempt to cross the Bering Strait on foot, asking to be let in each day, each hour, then you might just have to give up all of yourself to the angels. (metaphorically speaking, of course. With less religiousity: you risk your life!)
Now here brings up a question I've been having about this angel's share: how much is enough? When are you paying your fair share, and when are you just a plain ol' fool who doesn't know the rules? If the peanut butter is our guide, then I suppose there's an inherent need not to want to give up your share. To actively protect your peanut butter from the ravens. But alas, inevitably you will underestimate the world for its inventive ways to give and take. And then you've got to cough it up.
These are the thoughts that sprung from a recent misadventure Pete and I had here in Merida. In retrospect, I'm not sure whether we conducted ourselves with grace, or whether we were baboons (metaphorically speaking, of course. Baboons, I'm sure you are intelligent and graceful in ways made clear from your own perspective.)
Peter and I bought two hats, sombreros, Jipi Japas.
The city streets stay busy late into the night, full of people just being outside, reveling in the special joy found in just being outside at night in a tropical climate (a joy which many of the locals probably don't find special at all, but rather quite ubiquitous). As we walked down the street casually, with no particular destination in mind, a man engaged us.
Jose stood with purpose in front of the yawning door of a castle-like building in the city center, the University of Yucatan – Merida. He was looking for dupes like us. He wanted us to know about the Maya, his people. His enthusiasm was sincere, I do believe, though the details–which were suspect in the first place because Pete and I were interpreting them with our stutter-step command of the Spanish language–were murky, if not downright lies at times.
There was a festival going on, he said in Spanish. He told us that we should visit the festival tomorrow, but if we were to visit, out of respect, we should be wearing traditional Mayan garb. His enthusiasm was real, and so ours was too. Yes, we do want to be respectful travelers. He explained hammocks: Maya only slept (and made love (he said with a quick vulgar motion of his hands)) in hammocks. He explained guayabera: the traditional maya shirts had four pockets, which the men would fill with guayaba fruit (which could only be found in the native villages, he said. We had to go and taste them, he said) after climbing up the local trees. And he explained the Jipis, the hats: the best hats, the true Maya hats, were made out of Cayamo (best attempt at phonetic spelling), a fiber made from the henequin plant, a type of agave. He also told us that we needed to hurry to the artisan shop, not the governmental one, but the local cooperative one, that it was closing and would be closed for the next month because of Mayan festivals.
We arrived at the cooperative, which did not appear to be closing within the next few minutes. Immediately, a kind employee swept us in, explaining that five artisan families had come together to create the cooperative. All the items were the highest quality: hammocks and guayaberas, belts and tapestries, and Jipis. First we tried out the hammocks. The finest quality. We needed a bigger size, he told us, because I was so tall. Cuanto cuesta, I asked. Tres mil ochenta. Nearly four thousand pesos. Even with the strong dollar, that's in the almost three hundred dollar range. We politely refused, and then we moved on to Los Jipis. He took us into a side room, for the air conditioning, he said. He showed us many Jipis, explained how they were made from Cayamo. The scent repelled mosquitoes, he said. They also hold their shape, he demonstrated as he folded up the hat into a ball, thanks to the process in which they are formed, after being woven–inside a warm, wet cave to cure. It was impossible to know what was true and what was false. On the street, I'd believed it all. But now, we were ducks waddling around through an impressionist's garden. Our friend was the painter himself. What did he want from us? How much were we worth?
Tres mil sesenta, for the two. Three hundred dollars. I immediately balked, and expected Peter, the generally more-thrifty of us, to do the same. But Peter looked at me with those let's-get-the-puppy eyes. Maybe he was having trouble with the conversion rate. That's ALOT, I said smiling, glancing at our collective friend. I said, in halting Spanish, that we would have to wait for another day. But you will have to wait a month, he said. That's okay I said. But we need money for the festival now, not in a month, he said. I'm sorry , I said. Tres mil pesos, he said. No, you don´t need to lower the price, I said. We just don't want them. He was no longer our friend. Is it the quality? he asked. No, I said. The price? No, we just don´t want to buy them now, I said.
Dos mil cinquenta, he said. Peter, still with that let's-get-the-puppy look. That´s like a hundred dollars a hat, I said. They will be with us for the rest of our lives, Pete said. Okay, I said.
After the momentary thrill, Pete and I both began wondering if we'd been duped. We went home and inspected our hats more closely in the privacy of our room. Mine had a weak point, a soon-to-be tear. We were embarrassed to show our friends we'd made at the hostal we'd been staying at, or to tell them how much we paid. Our guidebook said people could spend between 200 and 5000 pesos on a Jipi, which told us nothing. Days later, we went to the Sunday market, and found a display full of hats just like ours, for 200 pesos. Arghhhhh! We blew our budget on a broken hat. We walked home and grabbed our hats, put them back in the bags in which we had carried them home, and returned to the street vendor. Identical.
And so we went back to the collective, asking for our share back. Here was our dilemma: we were strangers, güeros, that really didn't know anything about these hats, how they are made, or the people that make them. We'd already accepted that we were destined to always climb our way out of the hole that is the legacy of ugly US imperialism (and corresponding tourism). Had they given us a good deal? Had we paid our angel's share? Or had we, like fools, paid too g-d much for our g-d Jipis.
We walked in and put on our best business faces. We were doomed. Good afternoon, we said in our best business Spanish. We would like to return our hats. This one has a hole, we said. Oh, sorry, you can only return them one day after, he said. We can still return them, Pete said. I don't understand, he said. You understand, I said. Awkward silence. You can change the one with a hole, he said. We want to return them, we said. You can't, he said.
We exchanged them, and took our sweet time finding the finest, best made hats in the place. The poor guy who had greeted us at the door this time had passed us back off to the original sales-guy, who wasn't quite our friend, but wasn't wasn't either. After our neither friendly nor angry goood-byes, we took to the street.
As we walked past, a man pointed to our bags, which were apparently quite obviously Jipi bags, and said we needed Guayerabas with our hats. Yes, we know, I said, but not today.
This man began in again on the Maya. I accepted the fact that this was both a scam and an education. But then I decided to ask him: if we were to still need hats, how much should we spend. Oh, a good hat can be tres mil pesos, he said. We pulled ours out of our bags. Oh, yeah, those, those are the highest quality. How much did you spend on them? he asked.
And so we still don't know the truth of it all. We've asked around some more about the hats. Did we get ripped off? Maybe. Did we give them a hard time, even after they gave us a good deal? Maybe. It doesn't matter so much though, not only because they are just hats, but also because it has been a full exchange. We asked to be let in. And we thought we were being let in. But we weren't. And so we asked again to be let in. And we thought we weren't. But maybe we were. Or weren't. And so we'll ask again. And again.
I know what love is.
November 16, 2013 / alexandtheuniverse	/ Leave a comment
Dear Cedric,
A strange thing happened to me today. I saw a big thundercloud move down over Half Dome, and it was so big and clear and brilliant that it made me see many things that were drifting around inside of me; things that related to those who are loved and those who are real friends.
For the first time I know what love is; what friends are; and what art should be.
Love is a seeking for a way of life; the way that cannot be followed alone; the resonance of all spiritual and physical things. Children are not only of flesh and blood — children may be ideas, thoughts, emotions. The person of the one who is loved is a form composed of a myriad mirrors reflecting and illuminating the powers and thoughts and the emotions that are within you, and flashing another kind of light from within. No words or deeds may encompass it.
Friendship is another form of love — more passive perhaps, but full of the transmitting and acceptance of things like thunderclouds and grass and the clean granite of reality.
Art is both love and friendship, and understanding; the desire to give. It is not charity, which is the giving of Things, it is more than kindness which is the giving of self. It is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit. It is the recreation on another plane of the realities of the world; the tragic and wonderful realities of earth and men, and of all the inter-relations of these.
I wish the thundercloud had moved up over Tahoe and let loose on you; I could wish you nothing finer.
Read this and other fabulous correspondences at Letters of Note.
To read more about my wedding, where our dear friend Dor (aka Bacon Bit) read this letter, visit my Big Gay Fancy Camp page.


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Myanmar's Black Hole: Evolution of a Mafia State (Part 1)
ASIA--PACIFIC, 21 Oct 2013
Maung Zarni – TRANSCEND Media Service
Despite being in power for over half-a-century, Myanmar's military, both the despotic leadership and its institutional instruments of power, namely the Tatmadaw, or armed forces, remain an enigma. It is the black hole of understanding in all the literature, research and reporting produced about a country that suddenly finds itself in the limelight after decades of international isolation.
The world knows plenty about opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi – her political beliefs, her inspiring personal tale, and her pedigree as the daughter of Myanmar's independence hero, General Aung San. Even her aesthetic tastes are well-publicized, and so are the abuses and acts of persecution towards her.
And yet the world knows surprisingly little about the country's dictatorship, despite its half-century of repressive military rule and the exceedingly negative impact that has had on Myanmar's society, culture, economy, politics, and foreign relations. This is not surprising since dictatorships typically thrive on secrecy about their modus operandi and the resultant confusion among the oppressed.
Myanmar's military dictatorship is no exception. In contrast, iconic dissidents such as Suu Kyi and opposition movements can only sustain their relevance and popular support by making their views, stances and strategies accessible to their friends and supporters, as well as opponents and detractors. Systems of political repression strive to paralyze the domestic public and its international supporters, while liberation struggles seek to mobilize both.
Despite their often-reported ignorance, Myanmar's military rulers are in fact far better informed about the world than for which they are given credit. Still, the West continues to deliberate as to what will help to nudge them out of their darkness. The military despots may feign strategic ignorance, but it would be a mistake to underestimate their knowledge of the geopolitical space their country occupies.
As a Burmese saying goes, "the ruler has 1,000 ears." According to Kyaw Thet, former professor of international relations and history at Rangoon University, former dictator General Ne Win sent one of his personal assistants to fetch a copy of Kyaw Thet's doctoral thesis which examined Sino-Burmese relations. In Professor Kyaw Thet's words, "(of all people) the General was the only one who showed a genuine interest in my thesis."
The current aging despot Senior General Than Shwe, a former instructor at the now defunct Central School of Political Science at Chawtwingone, leader of the previous ruling junta and current behind-the-scenes mastermind of the country's supposed transition to democracy, is known among the staff of the country's foreign and defense ministries to have a keen interest in strategic ideas about international relations.
Before the relocation from the old capital Yangon to the purpose-built new military capital at Naypyidaw in November 2005, Than Shwe was known to have surprised the staff at the National Defense College, the country's highest-level staff college for upwardly mobile military officers, by coming to attend class discussions and listen in on seminars.
Over this half-century, successive military rulers have adopted a rather successful strategy of keeping their inner circles and the institution of military as little understood or "readable" as possible, by friends and foes alike.
Even Beijing, the regime's most important international supporter and business partner, was left in the dark on the regime's plan to relocate the entire administrative capital to Naypyidaw, an effective military fortress complete with North Korean-designed underground bunkers and escape tunnels. Regardless of the Chinese leadership's reported irritation at being kept in the dark, the military typically takes enormous pride on being able to keep its affairs and modus operandi secretive, unpredictable and thoroughly under-studied.
An illustrative motto "Reveal little, listen, look and gather all you can" is posted on the door of former Military Intelligence Unit Number 7 on Halpin Road sums up the military's strategic stance on informational and institutional secrecy. It is also considered treason for rank and file members to communicate with foreigners without prior authorization. Those who are officially assigned to liaise with foreign visitors of all national backgrounds are highly trained and unlikely to spill any revelatory beans about their institution.
During the first military dictatorship of General Ne Win (1962-88), in the mid- 1970's the regime relaxed a little in this respect by allowing some of its top commanders to mingle with Western diplomats and military attaches.
Declassified US Embassy cables from that period sent to Washington by its diplomatic intelligence unit in Yangon indicate that ex-Brigadier Thaung Dan, former Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff and a graduate of the Japanese Military Academy in the 1940's, would make personal requests to US embassy staff to get certain books, such as Dr Ba Maw's "Breakthrough in Burma", at a time they were banned by the regime he served.
Former Defense Minister ex-General Tin Oo (now the 82-year-old vice-chair of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party) was allowed to play tennis with Western diplomats by the mid-1970s. Restrictions on such contacts with foreign diplomats have been tightened since the end of Ne Win's rule. Headquartered in the remote new capital Naypyidaw, the military is increasingly inaccessible to the West.
Over the past five decades, only two foreign scholars have been granted limited access to the Army Archives at the Ministry of Defense. They are Robert H Taylor and Mary Callahan, political scientists who respectively authored "The State in Myanmar" (1987) and "Making Enemies: War and State Building in Burma" (2003). After a serious vetting process by military intelligence and blessings from the highest level of authorities, both Ne Win's and Than Shwe's regimes officially allowed these Americans in as researchers, Taylor in the early 1970s and 1980s and Callahan a decade later. Even then, no archival materials dated after March 2, 1962, the date of the military coup, were made accessibleto either researcher.
The limited knowledge of Myanmar's military dictatorship and the military as their institutional base of power is the intended outcome of a deliberate strategy of information and data control. Thus the resultant general ignorance about the generals and their world, and the generals' studied display of ignorance about the outside world, has served the country's dictatorship well. The generals have apparently taken Sun Tsu's advice, "confuse your enemies", to heart and turned it into official policy.
Notional nationalism
On the eve of the country's greatest popular uprisings in 1988, a decorated soldier with the rank of major remarked candidly to me that the Tatmadaw in which he served had morphed from the once venerable national and nationalist institution into the country's largest mafia, soaked in corruption and rotten to its core, with all the manifest characteristics of a criminal network.
Sitting in his office in a military compound and looking deeply dismayed, this officer mocked such a long-cherished popular notion as "soldiers as ultimate patriots". He continued, "We call ourselves patriots and nationalists. All we do is steal from the people and rob them of their future. This whole army stinks. My wife has to suck up the wife of my boss. The guy below me licks my boots and I have to do the same with my superiors.
If I want to climb the career ladder I have to pay my commanding officer. This chain of bribery and corruption is pervasive." His final solemn words of advice to me were: "So, don't come back here (Myanmar, then known as Burma). Find greener pastures and settle there."
The overwhelming majority of foreign writers, experts and diplomats usually find Myanmar's military dictatorship morally repugnant and show varying degrees of disdain towards the ruling generals. And yet many of them would not hesitate to use the term "nationalist" to describe the motivations of military personnel. What moved a decorated soldier to speak unequivocally ill of his "surrogate parents", the army, while many scholars and journalists who have never met a flesh-and-blood Myanmar soldier and/or set foot on a military compound refer to the very same institution as "nationalistic"?
"Soldiers' surrogate parents" is a special term the Ministry of Defense Directorate of Psychological Warfare has coined and actively promulgated among the military's rank and file members in order to specifically remind them that their primary allegiance is to the Armed Forces, which is coterminous with the sovereign Myanmar nation-state.
Upon hearing speculation about possible reforms that would arise from the formation of a new cabinet and new parliament in April 2010, a former junior general who was forced to retire and is now resident in Yangon remarked to a foreign visitor that the new generation of rising military officers would be more "interested in getting to the buffet table than launching genuine reforms to address the concerns of public welfare."
That was in early 2010, two decades after my own officer friend, the major, described the military, his employer, as a "national mafia." And yet one often hears policy-makers and the popular press make reference to the country's military rulers and the military institution as fiercely "nationalistic", as if this presumed patriotism explains and justifies the generals' behavior, policies and practices.
So what is in the regime's "nationalism" and why does it qualify to be referred to as such? Do "national level mafias" have ideologies that can be glorified as nationalism in the most elemental sense of advancing the interests and agenda of one's own "(presumably) mono-ethnic nation" within and without the recognized territorial confines?
Since its inception as a revolutionary armed force in 1942, Myanmar's military has gone through a regressive evolution. At the outset, the military was generally a popular nationalist institution which helped restore a sense of national pride among the dominant Burmese, or Bama, majority, who had been barred by British colonial rulers from carrying knives bigger than pencil sharpeners, while at the same time recruited large numbers of exclusively non-Burmese ethnic groups into its local imperial army, organizing them in ethnic-based battalions such as the Chin Rifles, Kachin Rifles, and so on.
Despite how nationalism was used to mobilize support for the armed forces in the period immediately after independence, by 1962 the country's armed forces were blowing up nationalist symbols such as Rangoon University's student union building and indiscriminately killing unarmed students on campus in the name of national security.
At the second party Congress in 1968, Ne Win's deputy, San Yu, who was 2nd in command of the Revolutionary Council government, officially declared that that the newly established Burma Socialist Program Party (BSPP) and its nucleus of military officers considered both politically active students and Buddhist monks to be the greatest challenge to his government as "enemies of the state."
The regime's bloody crackdown, including raids on hundreds of monasteries and indiscriminate shooting and killing of students and monks, during the 2007 Saffron Revolt (of the saffron-color-robed monks) is only the best known and most recent event in a long-running tension between these two groups and the state.
The same military internally discriminates against military officers of Christian faith, denies Muslim Rohingyas the right to nationality resulting in systematic abuse and exploitation, loots local ethnic Karen villages, scavenges from rural populations, and condones the rape of ethnic minority women and girls by military personnel in the country's eastern war zones.
The Tatmadaw also jails and tortures the political opposition, auctions off irreplaceable natural assets such as rivers, forests, minerals, and natural gas, confiscates thousands of acres of virgin lands from minorities for the development of mono-crop agri-business with no compensation to the latter, forcibly relocates hundreds of villages in armed conflict zones, and uses innocent villagers and prison convicts alike as "human mine-sweepers" and porters during military operations.
As recently as March 2010 the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Burma, Tomas Quintana, repeated his official calls to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to establish a UN-led Commission of Inquiry to investigate alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the military-ruled country, a call that has been backed by several previous Special Rapporteurs and Harvard University Law School's International Human Rights Clinic.
During his address at the annual conference of the Commanding Officers of the Defense Services on September 9, 1957, Myanmar's first Prime Minister (and the last democratically elected one before the coup of 1962) with an illustrious nationalist career, spoke these prophetic words:
"There are generally two different types of armies: a truly national people's army, and a pocket army for the powers that be…. The primary task of a truly national people's army is to protect the lives and property of the people…. Thus in countries which have truly national people's armies, the people do not go about in fear of the army. A pocket army's primary task is to protect the lives, property, status and vested interests of the party or the individuals who are exploiting the pocket army. (As such), the people have no regard or respect for the army, but only a great loathing and fear."
Whatever the nomenclature, "a national mafia" or "pocket army", today's Tatmadaw is without doubt as widely feared as it is loathed. The military's regressive evolution in terms of its institutional ethos, culture, and practices have created its current mafia-like nature. A mafia mindset has infected the beliefs and attitudes of those who lead, manage and man this omnipresent organization, the self-proclaimed guardian of the national interest in Myanmar's supposed new democracy.
Next: Fascist Roots, Rewritten Hstories
Maung Zarni, Associate Fellow, the University of Malaya. Dr. Maung Zarni is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment, founder and director of the Free Burma Coalition (1995-2004), and a visiting fellow (2011-13) at the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit, Department of International Development, London School of Economics. His forthcoming book on Burma will be published by Yale University Press. He was educated in the US where he lived and worked for 17 years. Visit his website www.maungzarni.com.
Anticopyright: Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgement and link to the source, TMS: Myanmar's Black Hole: Evolution of a Mafia State (Part 1), is included. Thank you.
ASIA--PACIFIC:
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The US Military Is Polluting Hawaii's Water Supply – and Denying It
British Colonialism and How India and Pakistan Lost Freedom

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Dr James V Stone
infoshort
The computational approach to biological vision
Seeing has puzzled scientists and philosophers for centuries and it continues to do so. This new edition of a classic text offers an accessible but rigorous introduction to the computational approach to understanding biological visual systems.
The authors of Seeing, taking as their premise David Marr's statement that "to understand vision by studying only neurons is like trying to understand bird flight by studying only feathers," make use of Marr's three different levels of analysis in the study of vision: the computational level, the algorithmic level, and the hardware implementation level.
Each chapter applies this approach to a different topic in vision by examining the problems the visual system encounters in interpreting retinal images and the constraints available to solve these problems; the algorithms that can realise the solution; and the implementation of these algorithms in neurons.
Seeing has been thoroughly updated for this edition and expanded to more than three times its original length. It is designed to lead the reader through the problems of vision, from the common (but mistaken) idea that seeing consists just of making pictures in the brain to the minutiae of how neurons collectively encode the visual features that underpin seeing. Although it assumes no prior knowledge of the field, some chapters present advanced material.
This makes it the only textbook suitable for both undergraduate and graduate students that takes a consistently computational perspective, offering a firm conceptual basis for tackling the vast literature on vision.
It covers a wide range of topics, including aftereffects, the retina, receptive fields, object recognition, brain maps, Bayesian perception, motion, colour, and stereopsis.
MatLab code is available on the book's website, which includes a simple demonstration of image convolution.
Published 2010 by MIT Press
Download cover and contents page (PDF, 1.8MB)
MatLab code for demonstrating basic convolution (M, 12KB)
Preface to second edition ix
Preface to first edition xii
Chapter 1. Seeing: what is it? 1
Chapter 2. Seeing shape from texture 29
Chapter 3. Seeing with receptive fields 55
Chapter 4. Seeing aftereffects 75
Chapter 5. Seeing edges 111
Chapter 6. Seeing and the retina 133
Chapter 7. Seeing figure from ground 155
Chapter 8. Seeing objects 173
Chapter 9. Seeing with brain cells 205
Chapter 10. Seeing with brain maps 229
Chapter 11. Seeing and complexity theory 255
Chapter 12. Seeing and psychophysics 281
Chapter 13. Seeing as inference 307
Chapter 14. Seeing motion, part I 325
Chapter 15. Seeing motion, part II 355
Chapter 16. Seeing black, gray, and white 373
Chapter 17. Seeing color 397
Chapter 18. Seeing with two eyes, part I 419
Chapter 19. Seeing with two eyes, part II 465
Chapter 20. Seeing by combining cues 497
Chapter 21. Seeing in the blocks world 511
Chapter 22. Seeing and consciousness 527
Chapter 23. Seeing summarized 539
"Seeing is not a new edition but a completely new book, and a unique book – a carefully written, beautifully illustrated text of the computational approach to human vision that will take the reader from first principles to cutting-edge ideas about all levels of the visual process."
Oliver Braddick, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford
"It's back! In its first incarnation, this was one of the treasured books of vision, launching a thousand seminars, workshops, and courses on vision. This second edition covers even more than the first but keeps the excitement of the computational and physiological research that was the strength of the original. It's accessible, advanced, great to read, and fabulous for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses – an absolute winner."
Patrick Cavanagh, Professeur des universites, Universite Paris Descartes, and Research Professor of Psychology, Harvard University
This volume is an excellent example of how textbooks ought to be written and classes taught. Like its predecessor, the current edition employs an exquisite selection of visual illusions and illustrations to provoke a strong desire to understand how the visual system works. Having done so, it proceeds to demonstrate, by example, how this can be achieved by formulating visual phenomena as computational problems that have to be solved by the brain.
Many topics are addressed in this work, from lightness perception to familiar object recognition. In contrast to most textbooks on visual perception, this volume is not organised to reflect the functional hierarchy of the visual system. Instead, it is specifically designed to accustom readers to the computational approach. Thus, "high-level" topics such as 3D-shape perception can sometimes be presented before "low- level" topics such as lightness constancy; this is because the former is better suited as an introductory demonstration of how computational theories can be derived from direct observations, while the latter avails itself to the demonstration of more advanced image processing techniques (ie deconvolution).
Readers can be expected to gain a full appreciation for the diverse competencies of the visual system. This is because they are directly engaged in thinking about the problems that the visual system has to deal with and are instructed in how acceptable solutions can be derived. Clearly, this is a more enjoyable learning experience than being presented with a list of factoids about the visual brain. In fact, the experience of reading this book is not unlike the pleasure that some might gain from working through a crossword puzzle.
In conclusion, this volume is suitable for general readers as well as vision scientists, regardless of their topical interests. It dispels any misconception that the "[computational] approach has something uniquely to do with computers" (p. 53) and provides a compelling case that a process is best understood by first thinking about the computations that it is expected to perform.
Review of Seeing in The Quarterly Review of Biology, September 2011 by Heinrich H. Buelthoff and Lewis Leewui Chuang, Max Planck Institute for BioCybernetics, Tubingen, Germany
See all books by Dr James V Stone
Copyright © 2022 Dr James V Stone


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BlogsEducation
What Does Weirdchamp Mean? – Weirdchamp emote Meaning
By: Teodora Torrendo
Last Modified date: August 27, 2021
WeirdChamp Emote Meaning
1 WeirdChamp Emote Meaning
2 What is weirdChamp?
The WeirdChamp gesture is used when someone is disappointed or disappointed, usually because of something the streamer has said or done. It is also used when someone says something that seems incredible.
So what is weirdchamp emote? What does it mean? This is the usual face that perfectly sums up the weirdchamp meaning of everything. What you're saying when you utilize this Emote is that you're so much totally disappointed and that this really makes you feel totally dissatisfied. And at times, you may even feel sad and sorry for what's happened to the person you're emulating.
WeirdChamp Released: July 2018
There are a lot of emote themes that can be utilized in the game of Odd Future: Fight of the Botox. Some of these are the popular weirdchamp emotes such as Anger, Frustration, Disappointed, and Ugly. However, there are also some other emotes which are not that popular. Below are some examples of weird emotes that you can utilize to express your emotions for this year.
The first one is, of course, anger. A lot of people would use anger as their weirdchamp emote of choice. It has its own theme, which is the desire of people who have been betrayed by somebody or somewhere to exact revenge. A lot of the pictures of weirdchamp emotes have angry faces with bulging eyes and a no sense of reason. There are also some that are screaming and crying.
The second popular weirdchamp emot is, of course, rage. Rage is often associated with the fight or flight mechanism that we all went through during our childhood. When we are either scared or angry, our body prepares to react accordingly and releases adrenaline into our system. One example of an example of a weirdchamp emote which shows anger is a picture of rage icon in a red background accompanied by the word "Rage" in a yellow box. Some of the images which show rage are, of course, very funny and witty. There are others however, which convey anger and frustration in a picture such as a man slowly pushing his wife in the back and shouting "you're hurting me, wife".
What is weirdChamp?
The third and weirdchamp emot is disbelief. This one is pretty self explanatory. We all have experienced disbelief at some point in our lives, whether it was while looking at a flying aircraft or a poorly designed toy. People have used disbelief to mock their fears, or to protect themselves from attacks by people they deem untrustworthy.
The last weirdchamp emot is the weirdchamp streamer. A lot of streamer emotes contain the weirdchamp logo which looks like a cross on the streamer. It is basically a graphical representation of someone else's voice or a symbol. People use weirdchamp streamers in order to make their room look more original.
While you can find weirdchamp emotes in a number of different websites across the internet, the official weirdchamp website has been established as a leader. You can access this website from the weirdchamp homepage. Other weirdchamp browser extensions include Oddchannel. This browser extension allows you to play weird games, surf the internet using weirdchamp games, enter text into weirdchamp chat rooms and much more. Odd Channel is actually free to download!
In short, the weirdchamp means anything you want it to mean, depending upon your mood and situation. People use weirdchamp emotes in order to bring themselves out of their comfort zone and express their own emotions. If you have ever surfed the internet using weirdchamp then you might have seen one of these odd channel icons on the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. Odd channel icons are used by people in a similar way to weirdchamp emote icons. To get an idea of what weirdchamp means when it is in a weird channel text, just imagine an orange dot with four red dots in a square.
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Teodora Torrendohttps://www.ccdiscovery.com
Teodora Torrendo is an investigative journalist and is a correspondent for European Union. She is based in Zurich in Switzerland and her field of work include covering human rights violations which take place in the various countries in and outside Europe. She also reports about the political situation in European Union. She has worked with some reputed companies in Europe and is currently contributing to USA News as a freelance journalist. As someone who has a Masters' degree in Human Rights she also delivers lectures on Intercultural Management to students of Human Rights. She is also an authority on the Arab world politics and their diversity.
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Bizarre and Grotesque
Disappearances
The Two Men Who Went Missing Looking for a UFO
July 19, 2015 July 29, 2015 / Tristan
Wilbur Wilkinson
On November 11, 1953, electrical engineers Karl Hunrath and Wilbur J. Wilkinson paid an hour of rent time for a small plane from Gardena Airport in Los Angeles, California. They submitted no flight plan. Hunrath, despite being only an amateur pilot and having little familiarity with the area, flew the plane. The day before, he called up some acquaintances and told them he was going on a trip. He believed a UFO had landed near-by, and he and his friend Wilkinson were determined to find it. They thought it would take them to another planet, possibly Venus or the home world of the Maserians, an extraterrestrial race Hunrath allegedly communicated with by radio. Whether or not they were taken to Maser is unknown, for the two UFO enthusiasts were never seen again.
The fact that their plane and bodies never showed up anywhere inspired the UFO community in Los Angeles to proclaim that, yes, they really did make it off the earth. A tabloid paper called the Los Angeles Mirror ran an article giving credence to the abduction theory a week after their disappearance. Reporters interviewed Wilkinson's wife, who explained that her husband and Hunrath believed the end of the world was at hand. The Maserians, Wilkinson had told her, were plotting an invasion of earth. Wilkinson was obsessed with UFOs, and had his den covered in UFO pictures and strange pictographs that were supposedly written in an interplanetary language. He had only moved to California back in June, lured to the state by his old friend Hunrath. Hunrath claimed that he could show Wilkinson a flying saucer, so Wilkinson promptly left his job in Racine, Wisconsin and moved his family 2000 miles away to Los Angeles.
Some of the pictographs found in Wilkinson's home.
According to George Hunt Williamson, a UFO researcher active in the 1950s contactee scene, Hunrath was a mysterious man who would frequently spread false rumors about other researchers. He had developed an interest in UFOs after meeting what he believed was a "spaceman", and moved to Los Angeles after having a fall-out with cult leader George Adamski in Palomar Gardens. Williamson, who insisted that the Maserians were actually a benevolent people from the Moon, suggested that UFOs had nothing to do with Hunrath's and Wilkinson's disappearance. He thought, whether alive or dead, they were somewhere on earth.
And this, coming from a man who believed he could contact UFOs by ouija boards, is probably the more rational explanation. There were rumors that the two men had flown to Mexico, but this would have been impossible, since they only had a three hour supply of fuel. Rather than land somewhere, they easily could have crashed and died. Hunrath hadn't flown a plane in a long time, and he was an inexperienced pilot to begin with. As Williamson noted, "the down-draft and illusive qualities" of the near-by Big Bear mountain range "could have doomed the small plane."
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ufo/otof/otof16.htm
http://ufobc.ca/kinross/planeMishaps/hunrathAndWilkinson.html
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03Jul / 2012
Adele Announces She's Expecting Her First Child
Adele has announced she is pregnant with her first baby with her boyfriend Simon Konecki who she met through a mutual friend last year.
The 24 – year – old announced the news as she took to her blog on her official website saying: "I'm delighted to announce that Simon and I are expecting our first child together.
"I wanted you to hear the news direct from me, obviously we're over the moon and very excited but please respect our privacy at this precious time. Yours always, Adele xx."
Adele wrote the message eon her website for her fans to know.
Earlier this year in January, Adele revealed she and Simon, 36, were dating.
A month later she revealed she wanted three sons by the age of 30. She said: "I really want to be a mum. I better start getting on with it."
Blessings and compliments have started to pour in for the couple from celebrities on Twitter.
US chatshow host Ellen DeGeneres said: "Adele is pregnant! I'm so happy, I'm rolling in the deep! At least I think I am. I'm still not 100% sure what it means."
Whilst former X Factor winner Alexandra Burke said: "Adele is pregnant?! So happy for her. Such a blessing!"
Perez Hilton also tweeted his excitement, saying: ''HUGE and happy news!!! #Adele is pregnant!!!!!!''
X Factor winner 2011 Marcus Collins tweeted: "Congratulations to Adele! Made up for her! Baby's gonna come out singing x"
Adele's albums
The singer released her debut album 19, in January 2008 and hit the No.1 spot. In January 2011, Adele released her sophomore album 21, she sold more than 17 million copies and it went straight to the No.1 spot on the album chart and stayed there for 11 weeks. The album is the fifth best – selling album in chart history. The album has earned Adele six Grammy, Two Brits and two Ivor Novello Awards.
Congratulations Adele!
Posted in Adele
Tags: 21, Adele, Adele 'Over The Moon' On First Pregnancy, Adele Announces Her First Pregnancy, Adele Announces Pregnancy, Adele Announces She's Expecting Her First Child, Adele Blogs Her Pregnancy News On Her Official Website
Bobbi Kristina's Aunt Pens Letter About Niece's Death


Indonesia is one of the favoured destinations in South Asia for the students. Moreover, its proximity to India ensures that there are a lot of NRI students living there. These students know about the high standards of Indian medical education and thus start preparing for Top Medical Entrance Exams like AIIMS and NEET from an early stage. This is because it is the only option to ensure a seat in one of the top medical institutes in India.
Students in Indonesia do not have access to direct coaching that is based on Indian academics standard. And, this is why they rely on Medical Coaching in Indonesia to prepare for medical entrance exams. Medical Coaching has been beneficial to many students in imparting quality education across the world. eMedicalprep has been conducting live online classes in Indonesia for a long time and has been helping students clear medical entrance exams in India.
It is a known fact that Indian doctors are in great demand everywhere due to the skills and techniques they possess. Moreover, they are hard- working and are very much committed to their profession. This is the reason every individual wants to study in Indian medical institutes. However, the only way to get into those colleges is to clear medical entrance exams like AIIMS and NEET with a very good score.
Medical students face significant competition because of the limited seats in medical institutes in India and thus need a top rank that can help them to get into popular medical colleges. Students in Indonesia seek quality coaching to get a good score in Medical entrance exams in India. eMedicalprep has the expertise and experience in providing top quality live online classes for medical entrance exams to students in Indonesia.
The courses at eMedicalprep are designed keeping in mind the latest medical exam trends so that students can prepare well to beat the competition.
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eMedicalprep is very proud of having a maximum number of faculties as top medical experts, who have worked in top hospitals.
eMedicalprep has tied- up with the Texmaco DPS International School for helping students efficiently prepare for AIIMS and NEET.
eMedicalprep provides a variety of courses according to the needs of the students. Students can either take one- year Coaching Package, two- year Coaching Package or just a subject package if they feel they need help only in that particular subject.
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We provide a demo class to students to demonstrate our high standards of medical coaching that eMedicalPrep follows.
The live online classes for AIIMS and NEET are conducted according to the school hours of your country so that students don't miss out on anything - be it school studies or our online classes.
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The manufacturing sector's stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) added up to some EUR 251.
The manufacturing sector's stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) added up to some EUR 251.1 bn in Germany in 2013. This is equivalent to more than 27% of total German FDI. The data is collated on the basis of the specific business sector to which a German investor belongs. The statistics incorporate the following direct investments of domestic companies and private individuals: firstly, direct cross-border share capital or company voting rights of 10% or more. Secondly, stakes in foreign companies are taken into account if the directly and indirectly (that is via dependent holding companies) held share capital or voting rights exceed the 50% mark.
In 2010 the FDI stock of the German manufacturing industry was just about EUR 220.9 bn. The increase until 2013 was equivalent to an annualised average growth rate of nearly 4.4%. Within the manufacturing sector four industries are the dominant foreign investors. The automotive industry leads the way with a 47.2% share. Electrical engineering (13.6%) and chemicals (13.5%) come next. Mechanical engineering has a share of 9.7%. Of the major industries it is the automotive sector that has also recorded the fastest growth in foreign direct investment: an increase of 7.1% p.a. between 2010 and 2013.
Ultimately, the above-mentioned sectors that top the FDI rankings are the "usual suspects". They not only invest particularly large amounts abroad, they are also the key pillars of Germany's export industry. In 2014 these sectors combined were responsible for 56.5% of all goods exported from Germany. The high foreign direct investment and the strong export figures indicate the global focus of the sectors concerned.


text:
Back to Research News
News of Plaque-Clearing Drug Tops Week of Major Advances Against Alzheimer's Disease
CLARKSBURG, MD— "In the last eight days, scientists have delivered a powerful one-two punch in the fight to defeat Alzheimer's disease," said Stacy Pagos Haller, President and CEO of the American Health Assistance Foundation, a nonprofit that identifies and funds exceptionally high-impact research worldwide through its Alzheimer's Disease Research program.
"We are excited about today's announcement by Case Western University researchers that a cancer drug, used in mice studies, appears to help clear out the excess plaque found in the Alzheimer's-disease brain, and it does this by enhancing the body's natural defense mechanisms," noted Haller. "This follows last week's announced discovery of how Alzheimer's disease spreads in the brain. The timing of these findings coincides with new proposals in Congress and the White House to increase federal funding for Alzheimer's research. This has been a big week for all who seek to end this disease."
In a study of mice, a research team headed by Case Western University scientist Gary Landreth, Ph.D., found that bexarotene-a drug currently used to combat T cell lymphoma-helped the body clear out amyloid beta proteins. Alzheimer's disease arises in large part from the body's inability to clear these naturally occurring proteins. As amyloid beta levels increase they tend to aggregate and contribute to the so-called brain "plaques" found in Alzheimer's disease.
Bexarotene appeared to improve brain function in these mice. Study results were published in the journal Science.
"Although this is a mouse study, the results are encouraging, and the drug did its job with unprecedented speed, by targeting ApoE, the primary genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease," said AHAF Vice President for Scientific Affairs Guy Eakin, Ph.D. "This announcement is particularly exciting because bexarotene achieved regulatory approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration more than a decade ago for the treatment of cancer. That earlier approval could speed up the prospects for human clinical trials of the drug as an Alzheimer's treatment."
AHAF, which had also supported Landreth earlier in his career, started funding the preliminary work leading to this line of research in 2007. Currently, AHAF is funding follow-up studies in which the Landreth team is testing the latest findings on other "mouse models" that may better represent the human form of Alzheimer's disease. Positive findings could help pave the way towards human clinical studies.
"While it is still too early to make predictions, if these findings can be replicated in additional preclinical studies, and then later in human clinical trials, we may have a powerful new weapon in the battle to halt this disease," noted Eakin.
This latest news comes only one week after an AHAF-funded research team in Boston and another team in New York announced a major breakthrough in understanding how Alzheimer's disease spreads in the brain. By learning that toxic "tau" proteins jump from nerve cell to nerve cell, scientists can now focus on ways to target and stop this cell-to-cell spread.
Although these reports are coming in rapid succession, the overall progress of Alzheimer's disease research has been slower than that of other major diseases, due in part to comparatively meager financial support for Alzheimer's disease research. "We hope this funding scenario will improve, as promising study results stimulate our national resolve to defeat this disease," said Haller.
This week the Obama Administration announced it will provide an additional $130 million in Alzheimer's research funding over the next two years. Last week a bipartisan group in Congress unveiled the Spending Reductions through Innovations in Therapies (SPRINT) Agenda Act of 2012. The legislation, introduced by Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Susan Collins (R-ME) and Representatives Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Ed Markey (D-MA), would spur public and private research funding and streamline the regulatory review of treatments.
More information on the Landreth study is available on the Science journal website at www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/02/08/science.1217697
The description of Landreth's current AAHF-funded research is found at
www.ahaf.org/landreth
For information on the SPRINT Act, visit www.ahaf.org/sprint
Details on the Obama Administration's initiative are available at https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/obama-administration-presents-national-plan-fight-alzheimers-disease
About the American Health Assistance Foundation
The American Health Assistance Foundation (www.ahaf.org) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to finding cures for age-related degenerative diseases by funding research worldwide under its three programs: Alzheimer's Disease Research, Macular Degeneration Research, and National Glaucoma Research. AHAF also provides public information about these diseases, including risk factors, preventative lifestyles, current treatments, and coping strategies.
To learn more about AHAF-supported research, visit www.ahaf.org/research or call 1-800-437-2423. Stay connected to breaking research and medical news by signing up for AHAF eAlerts at www.ahaf.org/news. To follow the American Health Assistance Foundation on Twitter and Facebook visit www.ahaf.org/connect.


Behind Sullivan Square park (foreground), lie the Charlestown Elevated and Sullivan Square Station, both of which opened to the public on June 10, 1901. The station was served by streetcars at ground-level and both streetcars and rapid transit trains one story above the street. Nothing in this image exists today.
We utilize Epson fine art paper and Epson Ultrachrome inks. Using this highly engineered combination of archival inks and acid-free paper, we create museum-quality, no-fade reproductions of the images from our collections. Fine art papers are heavy-weight, matte finish.
While we print reproductions onto paper of pre-determined sizes, the proportions of our photographs and other images vary. We reconcile this discrepancy by printing each image as large as possible onto the given piece of paper, while maintaining the original proportions of the source image. Given that the proportions of the image rarely match the proportions of the paper, there is always white space (the color of the white paper before printing) around each reproduction. This is to say: there is a portion of the paper or canvas with no printing on it, usually no more than an inch or two around all sides of each reproduction.
Prints sized at 13" x 19" or smaller are packaged in clear, plastic sleeves with rigid backer-boards, and ship flat. Prints over 13" x 19" are shipped rolled, in tubes.


Fifty years after Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published, no "missing link" had yet been uncovered to prove the descent of man, and in a time when the British Empire championed such nationalism of explorers and discoverers, the man who could prove the theory of evolution would most certainly be knighted and catapulted into celebrity. And he was...well, almost. The Wizard of Sussex is a satire that follows Charles Dawson, the Edwardian amateur antiquarian whose 1912 discovery of Piltdown Man was hailed as Darwin's "missing link." Now considered the greatest scientific hoax of all time, this tale of skullduggery and ambition is explored as Dawson's doomed creation unravels around him. Based on a true story.


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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


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text:
Home Arts Film
Discovery Channel and PBS to air Holocaust documentaries for Yom Hashoah
TOPICS:Yom Hashoah
Alan Moskin in "Liberation Heroes: The Last Eyewitness," which airs on the Discovery Channel. (Natalie Muni)
by Curt Schleier
(JTA) — Alan Moskin served in Patton's 3rd Army as it liberated Mauthausen. The experience, he said in an unintentional wordplay, was "tattooed right here on my heart, on my soul."
He didn't share what he saw — not with his parents or siblings, not his wife and children — until 50 years after he came home. But when he finally spoke up, it was a catharsis that lifted a weight from him.
Moskin is at the center of one of two similarly named documentaries airing next week to commemorate Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day.
"Liberation Heroes: The Last Eyewitness" will air at 9 p.m. May 1 on the Discovery Channel, and PBS will show "The Last Survivors" at 10 p.m. April 30. (Both times are Eastern.)
At the start of "Liberation Heroes," Moskin is shown addressing a group of ROTC students at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
"I want you to be an upstander, not a bystander," he says. "You're probably the last generation who are gonna hear people like me, hear from survivors."
"Liberation Heroes" is the more interesting of the two films, in part because it records the reaction of the soldiers who liberated the camps and offers a different perspective than the traditional Holocaust documentary. The participants also are not all Jewish.
Moskin remembers how the camp prisoners feared his group of soldiers until he reassured them "Ich bin auch ein Jude" (I'm also a Jew).
That's not to diminish the importance of "Last Survivors," which is produced by the BBC and features British-raised survivors. As one notes, "I do think people — certainly this [young] generation — haven't got a clue."
Yom Hashoah begins on the evening of May 1.
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LA will not solve its problem of racial inequity without greater civic participation. Voter turnout is at a historic low, and LA Voice has a plan to turn that around. Barriers to voting can be overcome by leaders from diverse faith backgrounds investing in local relationships to increase participation. When LA Voice leaders turn out all 40,000 people represented by our 36 diverse congregations-- AND their neighbors--it will shift the electorate towards a more representative, inclusive county.
Los Angeles remains segregated not just geographically, but by civic participation. We have one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the country. The most recent local election in May of 2015 saw an abysmal 8% turnout, and turnout in low-income communities and communities of color was even lower. But LA Voice has a plan to bring people together across race, class, and faith to reverse LA's low voter turnout– not just in this election, but for years to come. The traditional voter turnout tactics used by most campaigns don't work in low income communities and communities of color. What does work is local, trusted community leaders working to turn out their neighbors. To build a truly representative LA electorate, we need to "meet people where they are", and for these communities that often means their church, mosque, or synagogue. LA Voice, with our 36 member congregations representing 40,000 families in LA County, is uniquely poised to turn out votes for the Fall 2016 elections. In 2014, LA Voice trained over 500 volunteer leaders to talk to 36,081 low-propensity voters, mostly voters of color, and our contacted voters voted at a 7% higher rate than the County average; now, we have a plan that will engage even more leaders to turn out even more voters in a more strategic way. Our plan is based on three principles: Leader ownership: LA Voice leaders, not staff, will own this work. Leaders will commit to registering and turning out their congregations plus 5-7 precincts in the vicinity, guaranteeing that every eligible voter will be contacted by a trusted local leader. Leaders will turn out their congregations through non-partisan preaching and teaching about voter engagement, voter registration drives, and phone banking congregational members. Then they'll turn out their neighborhoods by hosting voter registration house parties, running targeted voter registration phone banking and canvassing, and canvassing at community events. Starting early: We're developing our teams now, not waiting until just before the election. This guarantees that we're building a sustainable movement that can transform the electorate long term. Transformational relationships: A simple, transactional message won't increase voter turnout in lasting way. We are asking people to vote as part of a larger strategy to transform LA into a more just, equitable place to live, and to keep working alongside each other year after year, not just during the election.
Evaluation is a key component of our voter turnout work. By tracking all data in the Voter Activation Network and analyzing what worked best in our 2012 and 2014 campaigns, we were able to develop our plan for the current election cycle. We will partner with PICO National Network to conduct research and identify best practices for our voter turnout work. We will look at the effectiveness of our work over the past two election cycles by tracking our contact rates with community members and comparing them to actual voter turnout. We will evaluate the effectiveness of different forms of contacts (phone banking compared to in-person, etc) in order to continually improve. We are also part of a learning community of organizations in LA and the state that constantly evaluates best practices and the effectiveness of new technology.