dizzy spell

So my vision has been weird and I've been a bit dizzy or "out of it" (for lack of a better way to describe it) for a few days.  I'd like to think that I'm just fine, but the last time I thought I was just fine and needed a few rest days, I got diagnosed with MS.  It sucks.  Anyway, I can't even tell if I'm thinking about it more and making it up because now I've noticed it. I hate that shit.

Had dinner with a friend tonight, Happy Hour at Village Pizza for the GGE last night (free food, but god the service was terrible), and on Wednesday I went to Oakland to climb with Shannon...

On the way to the Oakland gym, I stopped by the Berkeley Bowl West and plundered their citrus section. I bought a bunch of Meyer lemons and blood oranges...I also made friends with the produce guy and got to sample a bunch of fruit.  Yessss.

So I made this: http://foodlibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/01/los-angeles-times-upside-down-meyer.html


And I want to make this: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Blood-Orange-Tart-with-Orange-Caramel-Sauce-106137


I'm super psyched on citrus right now! And I have to say, the produce at the Berkeley Bowl is amazing.  They have an entire section devoted to different kinds of eggplants!

I'm craving another rest day tomorrow. I hope that the wonkiness in my brain will go away, but sadly I think it's permanent. har.  Trying to make light of these things.

More climbing on Sunday! Yeah! And then maybe some sort of superbowl get together where I don't actually watch the football but hang out with friends and maybe have a beer or two.

On moving on.

I read this article today: http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/many_minds_one_story/ about Virginia Woolf and the possible mental illness that she had.  The article was pretty interesting, but two parts in particular caught my eye.


The first echos my sentiments about the nature of reality that I blogged about a little while ago (italics mine):


"Biology likewise confirms Woolf’s intuition that “reality,” a term she put in quotes, is contingent. We cannot know one another absolutely. “What solitary icebergs we are, Miss Vinrace! How little we can communicate!” says Richard Dalloway in The Voyage Out, while Terence Hewet is correct that “I say everything’s different. No two people are in the least the same.” Reality is subjective because the brain is not a passive antenna for “objective data” impinging on it, as people often suppose. Each brain actively pursues what interests it, filtering the world in its uniquely subjective way. Genes prime a life while experience in a given culture contextualizes it."


The author basically says what I said but way better...reality only exists in our minds, and if it's that subjective, then it isn't reality.  Case closed. Just kidding...


The second is regarding empathy, and the lack thereof in some people. I'm always trying to diagnose people who have no empathy...or at least figure out what is wrong with them...at least so I stop blaming myself. (Paranoids blame other people, depressives blame themselves...guess which I am?)


Here it is:
"She had what I would describe as a faulty theory of mind—a standard term describing a developing child’s ability to attribute mental states to others that depends on what are called “mirror neurons.” Though one cannot know others absolutely, once developed, our brains are good enough to infer what others might be thinking or feeling, allowing for empathy."


Maybe people with no empathy (who are sometimes sociopaths) simply are not wired properly neurologically. Who knows. Regardless of the reason, if someone has no empathy, is it wrong to be angry with them for being mean?  It's almost like being mad at the retarded kid down the street for acting like a retarded kid.  Can you blame them?  Can you be pissed? At any rate, it's not useful to blame myself, though I get pissed that I'm pissed in the first place, or that I let someone piss me off, or that I let someone continue to be mean.  I mean, isn't it my responsibility?  Should I expect anyone to give a shit about whether they hurt me or not?  Is that a basic expectation that you can have of everyman?  Seems so, but maybe it isn't. Maybe it's my responsibility to weed through the jerks and assholes in the world and make sure that I only spend energy on people who are kind.  If I expect everyone to be an asshole, then I'll be really psyched when they are not.  But I think that has gotten me into trouble before. I think that maybe I should switch to expecting people to be decent and kind and being disappointed when they aren't...I'm not sure.


Maybe the right path is the "middle path" (not to be too la-di-da), where I can forgive people for their weaknesses (much as I'd like to be forgiven for mine), and still protect myself by cutting off damaging and toxic relationships. And focus on putting effort in to the good relationships in my life; I've been reminded recently that there are many.


I suppose there's no right way to grope blindly through confusing interpersonal relationships...other than to continue to grope blindly and hope you grab onto something that you can hang on to. Sometimes it really does feel like chance. You can take all the initiative in the world and not get anywhere, or you can just sit and wait for things to happen. You can be super aware, super reflective, and still make mistakes.


All I can say is that I'm ready for good things to happen. I hope that I'm at least putting myself in a position for good things.  Shit happens, we get sick, friends and family can die or be hurt. I'm ready for good things.


And now to tack on the token climbing  paragraph of the day:


I went to the Berkeley gym and met up with Jason on Sunday...since he epic-ed with public transport meeting up with me, I climbed a little bit with Drew and Alice and got to chat with Rachel and Hallie.  Karl and Audrey showed up later, which was a treat. It had been so long since I'd seen them!  Also Weezie and Mick were there (who hopefully will go to the Red...yay!).  Afterwards Rachel and I went and had a chat and a burrito at Whole Foods.  I got a good workout in (though I was still worked from the fingerboard/pullup/crossfit workout I did with Shannon on Thursday (!)). Today I rode my bike for the first time in a while...I hate the way my neck gets so freakin' sore if I haven't ridden in a while. Tomorrow I'll head back to Oakland to boulder and then do some crossfit/hangboard stuff with Shannon. The weather has been a blessing because I've spent a lot of time with people I haven't seen in a while.  It's been really good.


Maybe Mission Cliffs on Saturday? I need to get my blanket back from Ethan who STOLE it from my house.  Who does that? Apparently he's holding it ransom for a Snuggie. I think I'll arrange a trade.


Also, thanks to everyone who has written personal emails to me regarding the blog. I'm always psyched for feedback, even though sometimes it helps to be more honest with my writing if I feel like I'm writing in a vacuum.  But I think it is good.


I'll end this post with another quote from the article that I liked but that I don't have much to say about. I just thought it was interesting:
"The idea that humans possess more than one mind, in a literal, physical sense, was first suggested in 1844 by Arthur Wigan. In The Duality of Mind, he described the autopsy of someone he knew well in which one brain hemisphere was discovered to be entirely missing! Wigan had wits enough to deduce that a single hemisphere was enough to be a person. It implied that the brain is not a single organ of two halves, but a closely apposed pair just as the kidneys or lungs are paired one to a side. Wigan concluded that if one hemisphere was sufficient to have a mind then the customary pair made having two minds inevitable. His astute observation suggested a physical basis for why it is ourselves with whom we are most often at odds and “can’t make up our minds.”"

A conference on Saturday.

Yes. I went to a conference in Sacramento today from around 9-3. It lasted longer, but the folks I went with fortunately wanted to go home before the last session.

It was the Planning and Conservation League's (PCL) annual symposium (Greening California's Landscape). I went because I want to expose myslf to other sorts of jobs that people do in the field of conservation, as well as learn some about how the ESA (Endangered Species Act) is affected by climate change, as well as the (possibly) pending water bill and the effect it may have on the delta.

The delta session was pretty interesting. Senator Lois Wolk spoke, as well as a rep from the PCL (who was super young btw), and some guy from the Metropolitan Water District of Souther California, which apparently is a wholesaler to cities such as LA and San Diego. Apparently cities such as LA, and wholesalers such as this guy who spoke, have sort of a portfolio of water sources...the Owens Valley, the bay/delta area (via the California aqueduct), desalinaton (!) and the Colorado River. The more they can diversify their portfolio, the more they can guarantee that they will have a steady supply coming from somewhere or another. Even though the water bond states that they won't get any more water from the bay/delta (they'd be guaranteed what they are already getting I think), it's better than nothing, and it's a guarantee. So they are for the water bond, which may or may not construct some sort of canal around the delta (protecting the ecosystem (?)) to deliver water south.

Lois Wolk was avidly against the water bill, because there is no enforcement and apparently the delta communities get hosed. I'm not sure how they get hosed, but I was surprised that they didn't talk about whether it was a good idea or not for people to even continue farming in this area since the levy system is such a disaster, as is the ecology of the area (for which the ESA is used to sue and make sure that the water flows for the native species), the chemical buildup from agriculture and the peaty soils is alarming and poisonous to people and wildlife alike, and the general subsidence of the islands that were created when delta land was reclaimed in the early part of the last century, causing major flooding potential. That was a super long sentence.

I was a little disappointed that the speakers didn't really know the ecology and biology of the delta. I was also interested in what one person said about the biological opinions being only about the pumping of water (here's the FWS website, I need to look this stuff over). There have been lawsuits to stop pumping (which sends water down south to the San Joaquin Valley for agriculture and the cities down south) because of the endangered delta smelt. Everyone is suing everyone else and it's a huge disaster and the delta smelt are practically already extinct.  Now the farming interests are asking for a National Academy of Science panel to convene before the end of March to go over the science of how pumping affects the delta smelt. I'll tell you: they get sucked into the pumps and they die. But apparently, this is controversial, because even though they've had to stop the pumps during low flow times to protect the smelt, the smelt is still declining (I spoke with the guy who does the sampling and they found 4 this year. FOUR!!).  So just because the smelt aren't coming back means we should just pump away.

Obviously this is a complicated issue, and other measures need to be taken for the smelt to come back (such as introducing more natural variability cycles in the delta in salinity and flows), but for God's sake. The pumping isn't helping at all.

Jim Hobbs, who refers to himself as the grim reaper for native species, because he pretty much only gets called to work on species that are in dire situations (seems a little similar to my study species), was talking about the fact that it's almost inevitable that we will lose the natives...the Sacramento perch are already gone, replaced by "invited guest" species such as the striped bass that provide a fishery. There is an extinct chub already, and the delta smelt are circling the drain. So do we just adopt the introduced fishes as our "flagship species"? Just embrace the change? Yay striped bass because they are yummy and the perch are gone anyway? Yay threadfin shad because they are good enough baitfish and are hardier than the delta smelt and the longfin smelt? I don't know.

For some more background on the Sacramento-San Joaquin bay/delta ecosystem, check out the UC Davis Center for Watershed Science website: http://watershed.ucdavis.edu/research/delta.html

It makes me think about the similarities between conservation and conservatism.  Conservatives want things to be like "they remember it back in the day", so they are conserving what they like. In many ways, conservation workers are doing the same. It's just an interesting way to think about it...aesthetics. Perhaps I want things to be like they were when I was a kid, and the next generation will want what they  had as kids, and we're still moving the baseline forward but reaching back out of some nostalgic lust.  I don't know.

I've also been thinking about the public perception of science as either some sort of religion and fact (think of Joe Plumber talking about this being "scientific" or that being "based on scientific research") or as just more political machinations (think of the tea party perception of global climate scientists).  It just seems to me that the general public doesn't really understand what science is. And what science isn't.  I'll get into that later. But I'll repeat one of my favorite lines: Science isn't a democracy.  All ideas don't get to be represented (sorry intelligent designers); only the good ones get to be taught in the classroom.

OK, going to Ironworks tomorrow to climb routes. I went to Oakland on Monday and Thursday to train with Shannon, which was good. We did some workout on Thursday (well I sort of did it) that hurt my shoulders a bit...so I took it easier. I think I'd rather work on core and abs instead.  Fortunately we got a crossfit instructor to help explain some of the exercises to us. He seems to really know his shit, which is very cool. And he's interested in teaching us (even though that's his second job). James is convinced he's flirting with us.  Whatever the case, we're learning, and that's pretty cool.

psyched on life

Maybe it's because there are more daylight hours, or it's not raining, or I've been getting excellent training sessions in the Oakland gym with some fabulous people... Or possibly it's because I'm looking forward to a climbing trip, or have been hanging out a lot more with friends...

Could it be because I've been motivated more at work, and I'm actually collecting data on my third chapter? 

Why not because I'm off of Facebook, or I'm blogging again? Baking a ton, and cooking a lot of veggies too?

Whatever the reason, I'm pretty psyched right now.  Motivated to do things, getting out of the house a lot.  I remember what this is like. This is good.

I'm adding a blog to the blog list...

Parasite of the day!!!

A nice piece on why FB isn't real

My friend Lyn sent me this article, and once I got past the stuff about the history of friendship and on to the op-ed about how Facebook devalues friendships, I was into it. It put a lot of the things that I'd been thinking in to words.

I had another friend tell me that I'd regret leaving Facebook, and that he thought it was a "rash" decision. It wasn't. I'd been thinking about it for a while, actually. The weird privacy settings, the fact that you have to "reject" people who you don't want to be friends with, or just accept everyone, or defriend people...whatever.  It bothers me. It's like being in a crowded room with a lot of people you'd just rather avoid. I'm not the kind of person who wants to have superficial contact with a lot of people. I'd rather have meaningful contact with a few people. My friend Jeff says that it keeps marginal friendships alive. There isn't a single person on Facebook who I want to keep in touch with who's phone number or email address I don't have. And this is because I've put a lot of effort into the relationships I have in my life. Real friendships take effort. Facebook doesn't.

Not to mention the ads that are on there and the fact that "we are conducting market research on ourselves."

It's interesting to think that deciding NOT to be on Facebook is the outlier position, when only a year or two ago the exception was to be on a social networking site.

And about finding people, I suppose people could google me and come up with a way to get in touch if they really wanted to. Rather than seeing my name somewhere on someone's wall and friend requesting me without any note or anything at all.  I got friend requests from people I'd never met before.  I guess it's cool that maybe you could meet someone new on Facebook, but it's just too easy to let your tally of friends rack up with people you'll never see again, or even talk to again.

Anyway, here is a link to the piece.

I found these paragraphs particularly interesting:

"The most disturbing thing about Facebook is the extent to which people are willing—are eager—to conduct their private lives in public...Are we really so hungry for validation? So desperate to prove we have friends?


But surely Facebook has its benefits. Long-lost friends can reconnect, far-flung ones can stay in touch. I wonder, though. Having recently moved across the country, I thought that Facebook would help me feel connected to the friends I'd left behind. But now I find the opposite is true. Reading about the mundane details of their lives, a steady stream of trivia and ephemera, leaves me feeling both empty and unpleasantly full, as if I had just binged on junk food, and precisely because it reminds me of the real sustenance, the real knowledge, we exchange by e-mail or phone or face-to-face. And the whole theatrical quality of the business, the sense that my friends are doing their best to impersonate themselves, only makes it worse. The person I read about, I cannot help feeling, is not quite the person I know."

So that's a little more on the Facebook decision for now.  It's definitely not a big deal, I mean who cares if I'm on it or off of it. Plus, why couldn't I just keep my account and not use it? To answer that question, it's too distracting to have an account and not use it. Maybe I'll go back on at some point. It's just that I've been thinking about Facebook more critically, and in a broader context, and what is this blog for if not to put random thoughts down?

This is a fucking no-brainer

Men are less sensitive than women, and they feel less guilt.  Aren't we lucky to be women?

Here's the link.