Metacentricities

I’ve been perusing my blog stats over the past few days, and the most common way that people have been finding my site via Google and other search engines is by searching for some combination of “barak obama” and “faith” or “religion”.

A while ago, I’d come across a post by a conservative blogger who was basically suggesting that because Barak Obama’s middle name is “Hussein”, that must mean that he’s a Muslim. In fact, her post is titled “Once a Muslim, always a Muslim” - which is a reference to the Islamic point of view about whether or not one is a Muslim. Further, she talks about the fact that his mother married an Indonesian, which means to her that he’s a Muslim simply because most Indonesians are (never mind that she doesn’t know, really what he is.) And that Barak has an affinity for Kenyan culture (which is overwhelmingly Christian, but she reminds us that Islam is on the rise there.)

Anyway, she’s going farther than anyone should reasonably go. But she, along with the congressman who worries about any more Muslims being elected to office, are acting as if Muslims are about to take over the US.

So, of course, Barak Obama is suspect. Not because he’s black, which, of course, in this country is reason enough for suspicion. No, he is suspect because of his middle name, and because of association with others in his family. Nevermind that he is a Christian, and openly talks about his faith.

The world is a much smaller place than it used to be, and this country is increasingly a representation of that smallness. Religion and faith are much more malleable and changeable categories than they used to be, too. Until we are willing to see people for who they are, but instead see them for their skin color, or their religion, or their culture, or any of a half-dozen other ways that they are different than we are, we’re going to keep getting into trouble with the world, and with each other.

Right now, Obama and Clinton are in a dead heat in NH, although it’s a full year before the primaries. He might just be a contender for President in 2008. And you know what? A President with the middle name of “Hussein” sounds like a good idea to me.

Technorati Tags: democrats, faith, politics, obama, religion

As I go off to spend what is, in some regards, a very non-traditional Christmas of a walk on the beach, Asian food, and a visit to Osento, I wanted to wish everyone the following prayer:

May God be with you on this day,

May you know Her presence, and may that

bring you gladness and warmth.

May your inner Christ shine through

showing compassion and unconditional love

to all of those you meet today.

May the coming days, and the New Year,

bring you closer to being able

to live the good that you know,

and may the world finally

know the peace that we yearn for in our hearts.

Blessings to you all. May your time today, whether it be with yourself, or with others that you know and love, be fulfilling and enjoyable.

Here’s a new SF books meme, which, I think, is better than the last meme, which had no women authors. This is a longer list, and has some women in it.

I got this from Lou Anders. This is the Science Fiction Book Club’s list of the fifty most significant science fiction/fantasy novels published between 1953 and 2002.

The Key:

Bold the ones you’ve read.

Strike-out the ones you hated.

Italicize those you started but never finished.

Put an asterisk beside the ones you loved.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien*

2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov

3. Dune, Frank Herbert*

4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein*

5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin*

6. Neuromancer, William Gibson

7. Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke

8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick

9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley*

10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe

12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.

13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov

14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras

15. Cities in Flight, James Blish*

16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett

17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison

18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison

19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester

20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany*

21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey*

22. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card*

23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson

24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman

25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl

26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling*

27. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams*

28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson

29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice

30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin

31. Little, Big, John Crowley

32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny

33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick

34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement

35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon

36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith

37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute

38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke

39. Ringworld, Larry Niven*

40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys

41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien

42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut

43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson

44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner*

45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester

46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein

47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock

48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks

49. Timescape, Gregory Benford

50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

I’ve read 31 of the 50. Not too bad.

Technorati Tags: books, scifi

I don’t often write letters to the editor. I’ve been reading Tricycle off and on for a long time. I had unsubscribed during my time in seminary, but I have re-upped, and got the first issue in the mail a few days ago. Somehow, I’m looking at those articles with very different eyes. Tricycle covers quite a broad range of Buddhist traditions in the US, and often engages in interesting and sometimes difficult conversations about the practice of Buddhism in the West.

I wrote this letter to the editor in response to an article in the current issue by Cynthia Thatcher. It was a good article, but it spurred me to write this letter:

Dear Tricycle,

I do appreciate the myth-busting that Cynthia Thatcher engaged in when she spoke about the present moment in her article “What’s so Great About Now?” I definitely agree with her assertion that being aware of the present moment doesn’t mean that we all of a sudden will see some amazing hidden beauty in that moment, and it is that beauty that makes us happy. The present moment can be unsatisfactory (although it is most often because we are caught up in things that are not occurring at the present moment), and our awareness of the unsatisfactoriness of the coming and passing away of things is an incredibly important teaching. But her idea that all there is as one becomes aware in the present moment is being aware of the unsatisfactoriness of that moment is not one that I can relate to.

I speak not as a Buddhist scholar - this is from my own experience. Her point of view is a reflection of an especially arid form of Buddhist thought that I find common, but, to my mind unfortunate. It has been my experience that some times when I am most aware in the moment - I become aware of my connection to what is greater than myself. For me, I think of that as my connection to the Divine - but there are all sorts of other ways people express it. To assert that “bare attention doesn’t expose some hidden core of radiance in the empty vibrations; no such core exists” is to, in my opinion, strip the numinous from the mundane. No, I don’t meditate to find happiness in hidden beauty in the mundane moment - I meditate to become aware of everything in the moment - the unsatisfactory and the numinous.

Metta,

Michelle Murrain

Technorati Tags: buddhism, meditation

• Those hardiness zone maps that one uses to figure out what you can plant are being revised. “D.C. is the new North Carolina.”
• NASA and Google are teaming up to bring mission data to you and me. Yay!
• Read this blog entry by Barbara O’Brian. It’s not a surprise, but the evidence of impending doom is mounting. This time, it’s coming from the military industrial complex.
• Turn off your computers, printers, etc. before you leave the office for the holidays.
• This is a no-brainer: 95% of all adults have had premarital sex. Even people born in the ’50s. Methinks abstinence-only sex ed is kinda silly.

sucks. Of course, everyone knows this. What’s interesting to me, is that even if you don’t actually expend much physical effort in carrying stuff from place to truck to place, it is still physically, mentally and emotionally draining. Anyways, my first move is done. I’m in Oakland, moved out of my room in Benton (one of the PSR dorms.) I handed in my keys, forwarded my mail, got all of the signatures necessary so I can actually get my Certificate in the mail sometime this summer. It will be interesting living in Oakland for about a month. Here’s the place (care of Google Earth):

It feels strange, to be gone - to finish this chapter of my life. My friends at PSR had a really sweet party for me on Wed night. I feel both sad to leave PSR, and them, and ready to move on with the next phase.

P.S. If you want a fun game, you can track Santa on Google Earth. I found today’s gift in a city I won’t give away:

Technorati Tags: christmas, googleearth

I was doing some searching for blog posts relating to women and technology, and I came across Basic Blogging for Women. It’s actually run by someone I know of in the nonprofit technology field - Britt Bravo. It’s a great place to start, if you’re thinking about starting a blog.

Technorati Tags: nptech, blogging

I don’t know how many of you know about Digg. Digg is one of those Web 2.0 collaborative bookmarking systems - with a big twist - people vote on whether a story (mostly news-y kinds of things) deserves to be seen. The more “diggs” a story gets the more attention it gets.

There used to be this thing when a site got “slashdotted” (or the “slashdot effect” - that was when it got on the front page of slashdot.org.) Well, now, there is the “digg effect”

Anyway, something came across my inbox that I didn’t want to blog about, but I thought it would be worth a “digg” - so if you have an account, digg this story about a contest and a charity. And while you are at it, digg these:

• A famous cancer scientist was paid by Monsanto for years
• The overwhelming majority of Americans think that the government should negotiate for price with the drug companies.
• Google adds the “Geographic Web” to Google Earth

Technorati Tags: digg, technology

Chesterfield, Cummington, Ashfield, Leverett, Sunderland, Buckland, Deerfield, Leeds, Wendell, South Hadley … Shutesbury. After 3 trips to Massachusetts (Ruth took three, I only took one of those) looking at lots and lots of houses in lots and lots of places, we’ve found the house we will be living in (barring, of course, unfortunate circumstances). It’s a cute little cape on a small dirt road in northern Shutesbury, just south of Lake Wyola, and across a driveway from Ames Pond.

It’s just about everything we’d been looking for: away from any traffic, no neighbors we could see, and close to water (we’d have preferred water actually on the land, but this is a good compromise.) It’s a nice size, has a fireplace on the main floor, and a wood stove downstairs. It has room enough for all three of us (that’s me, Ruth, and the cat - how typical lesbian.) It’s got almost 3 acres to play with, and lots of light.

So, there are the practicalities to deal with, but we’ll be in the house by the middle of February, possibly early February. It means that we’re leaving here later than we thought, which is fine. It gives me some more time to get everything settled.

One snag: no easy broadband. Of course I pretty much already knew this about the kinds of places we were looking at, and had done some research on satellite broadband. It will present some technical challenges for me, but nothing I can’t overcome.

Technorati Tags: shutesbury, moving, house

One of the things I look at, on occasion, is the search terms people use to find my blog. They can be entertaining, or sometimes just plain wierd. So here are a few:

• The obvious, and interesting: “barak obama *” (where * is “faith”, “religious views” or “speech”), “audre lorde”, “oj simpson interview”,“seminary”, “overfarming”
• The humorous: “barak obama antichrist”, “nazarene weekly torah lesson”, “christmas wrong”, “bezerk leisure northampton”, “seminary lesbians undergoing theological stress”
• The puzzling: “1950s panties”, “wikipedia are poinsettas poisonious”, “women leaders of ancient egypt”
• The embarrasing: “guerro negro” (I misspelled it on a post - it’s really Guerrero Negro)

Technorati Tags: search