ah, i remembered the first line correctly, and here it is.

There is comfort in the knowledge
you are of your kind and species,
that your name be not forgotten
when your flesh has joined your forebears
and returned to earth, and rotted,
in your time and in your season.

You will die, not like the sparrow,
unregarded, unconsidered,
in the dark beyond the chamber
people's names are known, remembered
if they dare to live while living.

Your wide actions build tomorrow,
which your children see without you.
Every deed that's well accomplished
lives beyond you, and each sapling,
that you plant and tend and care for
casts its shade into that future
that you neither fear, nor enter.

All will die, decay and perish
and the world will perish with it.
In the scale of rocks and oceans
you are living in an eyeblink.
In the scale of stars and planets
life itself too fast to measure
flickering green upon the surface.
All the gods and stars will flame out,
entropy alone will triumph
in cold victory-feasts of stillness.

This is comfort: face it bravely.

Your significance, your measure,
is the scale of your perspective
on the way you live while living.
That you are a fleeting dust mote
is a truth you can encompass
And go on, each breath accomplished
in the joy of human living
till we die, in each breath choosing
life, and time for love, and caring,
though all falls to rot around us.

Unimportant, and a hero,
both together, faring forward,
free of fate, in choice, becoming
what you will, your destination.

by jo walton.

my friend rachel died on sunday. the memorial service is on thursday.

i can't find the poem i want to post. this makes me want to cry. instead, i think i'll go ask my friend who wrote it for a copy, and if i can post it.

oh-- and could someone, anyone, comment on this post? cme had a problem with commenting the other week, and i would like to know if comments are broken. if commenting doesn't work for you, you can email me to tell me at betsy at this domainname.

from They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer, an excerpt:

'The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your "little men," your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about --we were decent people--and kept us so busy with continuous changes and 'crises' and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the 'national enemies,' without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?
'To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it--please try to believe me--unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures' that no 'patriotic German' could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

ow ow ow my brain ow.

New Scientist News - Quantum computer works best switched off

Even for the crazy world of quantum mechanics, this one is twisted. A quantum computer program has produced an answer without actually running.

very very cool. very very brainhurty.

dorcasina, over at et al, talks about white privilege and about the new show "changing races".

the people commenting on her post go off topic, but her post is very useful to read.

here's my thoughts on it, the ones that aren't just vociferous agreement, anyhow.

it's certainly possible that you do your best to play the game fairly. if you are white and reading this blog because you're a friend of mine, i sure hope you fall into that category.

as a white person, whether or not you do your best to play the game fairly has no impact on the fact that the game is rigged in your favor.

i could torture that metaphor some more, but it seems silly to do so. but in order to work on ending racism (and sexism and and and) you have to spend time first acknowledging that the system is rigged in your favor, and second, trying to figure out how to un-rig it.

a quote from dorcasina, talking further on that subject.

Et al.: in which I think about something other than bereavement, for once:

It seems to me that their insistence on 'intentionality,' and the refusal to take responsibility for anything outside of what one acknowledges about his or her intentions and desires, is at the root of white privilege.

jeanne d'arc, over at Body and Soul is doing important important work. if you are a us citizen, you need to know what is being done in your name. if you are not a us citizen you need to know that some of us are still horrified by it.

In October 2003, the ACLU filed Freedom of Information Act requests for documentation on detainees' treatment. A year later, they had thousands of pages of important documents (and they keep on coming), but they were heavily redacted, and there were major gaps. Last fall, a federal judge ordered the government to reveal the redacted sections of the documents, along with 87 photos and 4 videos, taken at Abu Ghraib, that Joseph Darby, the AG whistleblower, turned over.  Congress has seen the photos and videos. According to Lindsey Graham, they show scenes of "rape and murder," although another senator said that although the images showed "inhuman treatment," he did not see anything that rose to the level Senator Graham described. Seymour Hersh says the videos show children being raped.

welcome to minnesota!

weather.com - Aches & Pains - Local Forecast

saturday, february 18th. sunny. 3f for the high, -4f for the low.

god, but i love living here.

http://kevan.org/johari?name=betsy

i give. go pick words to describe me, and then we'll see if what i think about me and what you think about me match up.

"Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine."

as evidence, i give you:

The Dog Powered Scooter

not a great night, tonight.

Psyche in Somerville, by Denise Levertov:

I am angry with X, with Y, with Z,
for not being you.
Enthusiasms jump at me,
wagging and barking. Go away.
Go home.

I am angry with my eyes for not seeing you,
they smart and ache and see the snow,
an insistent brilliance.

i had a doctor's appointment yesterday to consult with her to see if i have an ear infection.

so far, two doses of antibiotics have not totally cured me. i say this because i can hear regular office noises and also WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH WHOOSH.

m. socks recorded a special off of cable about moscow, st. petersberg, and murmansk. (was it murmansk, m?)

in moscow, the guy who the special was following stayed at hotel ukraina, and he went to arbat street, and he went through some of the subway stations that i know, and the moscow section was pretty much twenty minutes of non stop squeaking from both me and m. socks. ("omigod! the statue! and the ceiling look at the ceiling we took pictures of that ceiling! and omigod the view isn't it a fabulous view our view was like that and eeeeee!")

m's boyfriend gets points for not throwing things at us while we were doing this.

to quote my friend lori, the howling noise you hear is me yelling about an underlying third cause for type 2 diabetes. (rather less politely than she is, i must say.

Diabetes from a Plastic? Estrogen mimic provokes insulin resistance: Science News Online, Jan. 21, 2006

Exposure to small amounts of an ingredient in polycarbonate plastic may increase a person's risk of diabetes, according to a new study in mice.

The synthetic chemical called bisphenol-A is used to make dental sealants, sturdy microwavable plastics, linings for metal food-and-beverage containers, baby bottles, and numerous other products. When consumed, the chemical can mimic the effects of estrogen. Previous tests had found that bisphenol-A can leach into food and water and that it's widely prevalent in human blood.

The newfound contribution of the chemical to insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes, might partially explain the global epidemic of that disease, says Angel Nadal of Miguel Hernández University of Elche in Spain, who led the new study.

earlier studies, for the record, have shown that exposure to bisphenol-a increases the rate of obesity in mice.

must post something here so that sif will scroll. scroll little sif, scroll!

um. do i have anything exciting to say now?

soon it will be time to sign up for programming at wiscon. like, possibly tomorrow soon. oh my goodness the fabulosity of this year's program. i'm just totally in awe of the great panels suggested for this year.