Casting a Cold Eye on Arctic Oil

After rafting and backpacking through this wilderness for a week, weighing whether Congress should allow oil drilling here, I’ve reached a few conclusions. One is that both the oil industry and environmentalists exaggerate their cases.

Naturally. He knows all about it after a week.

I have my Alaskan-born opinions about this. People who are not FROM there will just not get it. It takes longer than a week to shed the expectation that some touch of man will be just around the corner. People from crowded areas don’t get how VAST the Alaska wilderness is.

They forget how small we human beings are. Remember Jack London? “To Build a Fire”? It’s just one teeny human animal against the whole forces of nature. You have to work hard to make a dent in it.

But this is what NY Time Journalist has to say about it:
The argument that I find most compelling is that this primordial wilderness, a part of our national inheritance that is roughly the same as it was a thousand years ago, would be irretrievably lost if we drilled. The Bush administration’s proposal to drill is therefore not just bad policy but also shameful, for it would casually rob our descendants forever of the chance to savor this magical coastal plain — and to be slapped in the butt by a frisky polar bear.

My face curls back from this facile, unsophisticated answer. WHAT?! If we put a little oil drilling town in the primordial ooze (and it is oozy) of Alaska, this prevents our CHILDREN (think of the children!) from seeing the primordial ooze.

What is the point of preserving stuff, anyway? Yes, it is nice for lots of people to get to see the primordial ooze of alaska. They might begin to have a respect for nature that seems to be utterly lacking in paved-over areas. So yes, let’s save it so that people can look at it.

But observation changes that which is observed, right? you have to build ROADS for people to be able to get out there to observe that primordialness.

And why not have the road be built by the oil companies, who could take advantage of the oil while they were up there?

While they were at it, they could get some money to the native alaskans who could use it. What’s wrong with that?

Nature is vast up there. It will be just fine if we take a patch to drill for oil and make some roads to check it out.

Games are fun. I like to play games. And let me say again, I like to PLAY games.

Some people take games very seriously. I know a great number of people (why are they always men? I know no women into these…Speak up if you know of any) who play these crazy complicated games. Games that make RISK look like “Go Fish.” Avalon Hill games, I call them. Avalon Hill no longer exists, it was bought out by someone or other.

But the games go on. Complicated moves that can take a WEEK. Forget it. I want to play a game.

On a search for a pack of UNO cards, I ran a across Kings in the Corner. Bought it too.

It was fun! I liked playing it. Chris and I played a couple games while we were watching TV. The perfect kind of laid-back game playing. I suppose we could have paid more attention to the strategy if we’d wanted to. But we didn’t have to.

It would work well for kids too. Check it out.

On my bus ride home, they were all cuddled up in the first seat. She was a large woman in a blue dress; he was a man in a short-sleeved plaid shirt with a hearing aid. His arm was all the way around her, as far as he could reach. She was giggling, and speaking in a kewpie doll voice, and his hands seemed to be wandering towards sesitive places.

They were old. She was very wrinkled, and so was he.

But they were so cute! They were flirty and giggly and terribly glad to be together.

Our culture says love is for the smooth-skinned young. Especially if you want to be publicly affectionate.

But culture doesn’t know everything.

Business 2.0 – Magazine Article – My Makeover

For more than two years, McClelland has run Geek Boy Services, a one-woman makeover consultancy. Her target: the army of ungainly men who write our code and keep our servers running — many of whom, alas, now have a lot more free time on their hands than they used to and are in desperate need of outside interests. Or, at the very least, a date. Even in these lean times, McClelland says, her phone is ringing off the hook.

———

This was my idea! Well, the idea of me and all my girls in Silicon Valley back when I was still there.

Those of us who were single (and we all were at various times) really wished we could get those boys to clean up and open up.

Half the time, it was really a problem with the opening up more than the cleaning up. Just get comfortable with yourself! It was tiring running into the same dufusses with the same lines at the clubs. A shy smile from across the room was a huge attention-getter. Really.

But they had to speak when spoken to. Eye contact is critical too. Most of us have encountered the geek boy who cannot actually look directly at a female and speak at the same time. Or just look directly at a female. Or just speak.

Actually, I think I could do a better job than this woman. I’ve done a few freebies, and there are better ways to give men a “look” than just shoving your taste at them.

You know that club of girls on the cartoon “Recess”? all of them are named “Ashley”?

That is so true! That happens all the time, when somehow a name gets mysteriously popular with EVERYONE for a year or so.

The government has a site about it. Alas, it only goes up to 1990, so those of us over the age of 13 will have to look elsewhere for our birth year.

My (nick) name Murphy does not hit the charts. My REAL name, Elizabeth, is WILDLY and enduringly popular.

No wonder I don’t use it.

But something else struck me. The most popular girls names have less incidences (girls named that name) than the most popular boys names. So, there are vastly more, like more than 10 THOUSAND more boys named the most popular boys name of the year than there are girls named the most popular girls name of the year.

The girls names are also substantially weirder. Did any of us see “Madison” becoming the rage? Suddently, it was everywhere.

But for males, Christopher, Michael and Joshua are inescapable. John has dropped off the top ten in the last decade, thank god. But not the top 20.

Anyway, I find it intriguing that males have far more name conformity than females, and their names are far more conservative, less risky. They don’t seem to get tricky or different names.

I wonder what implications this has. I wonder what it says about parents’ expectations for the roles that their male children and their female children will fill as they grow older.

I thumbed through the top 50 boys names, being struck by how vastly status quo all the names were. That is until I saw 2002 bringing in a new contender:
Angel

at number 46 in popularity.

You think that Buffy had something to do with it?

I have a new set of things to worry about as a home owner. One of them is quite pleasant:
How shall I redecorate?

My condo is not new, so I have to be careful of old-school carcinogenic building materials. Which are probably lodged in the popcorn covering that is blighting my ceiling.

I want to take it off! One of the guys at work (who also told me how to replace a toilet) told me it’s really easy: just spray it with water and scrape it off.

“But what about asbestos?” I asked.

“Psh! You don’t need to worry about that.”

But I do worry. I had to research it.

Know what I found out?

He was right!

The EPA and osha basically say that if you keep it sufficiently wet, asbestos-containing materials cannot become airborne, so they can’t be breathed in and give you asbestositis, which is basically asbestos induced lung cancer.

They don’t even say you have to wear a mask; just make sure the material is sufficiently wet.

I’m gonna have to pick the color to paint the ceiling now!

So this is it. The first day back at work after Labor day. Most kids are in school, and it makes the rest of us remember when we WERE in school and we feel like buckling down and getting some work done.

But where did the summer go?

What did YOU do with your summer vacation?

I went to 2 free shakespeare plays, that was wonderful. I took a trip to Germany, also wonderful.
AND I went to the state fair.
The biggest thing I did this summer was buy a condo.

I guess that’s about it.
There were a lot of things that I wished I could have done.
I wish I had gone to the beach.
I wish I had hiked more.
I wish I had gone to a raucous rock concert. I did go to the symphony, but that is a different thing altogether.
I wish I had danced more. I dont’ think I danced at ALL. wow. that’s not right.

But this is not the only summer I have. I can do all those things in the fall as well. My time is pinched by earning a living, so I have to enjoy the other good things in life in between.

Maybe I”ll get down to the work of having fun this fall.