Bandwagon of Uncertainty

So, I totally blog-robbed this from Katy. Because, up until yesterday I did not know this man existed. But I like the messages of his spoken word pieces, especially the one Katy has posted--because my sister is a 3rd grade teacher--a pretty amazing one.

I think the ability to articulate yourself well with words is one of the best skills to have/acquire, particularly spoken words. It's something that I admire in people, and I know I really need to work on. I generally get my point across in writing, but when I speak I have the tendency to ramble and ramble and ramble, and not really say anything too confidently...which is why this video is hilarious.

"I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, I'm just like inviting you to join me on the bandwagon of my own uncertainty...we've just gotten to the point where we are the most aggressively inarticulate generation to come along since, you know, a long time ago."

goat-udder-shaped morals

I only picked up TIME for a few minutes, but found these 2 good articles:

A response to one of TIME's "Best Inventions of the Year":

"But how can it be that in the past eight decades we've gone from measuring by furlongs and pinches to microns and nanoseconds and gigabytes, but we're still sizing bras according to the first few letters of the alphabet? And I'm not discounting the seminal work of the Swiss anthropologist Rudolf Martin, who classified breasts into four types: flat, hemispheric, conical and goat-udder-shaped. It's just that, inexplicably, his nomenclature system failed to catch on."

What Makes Us Moral

"Yugoslavia is the great modern example of manipulating tribal sentiments to create mass murder," says Jonathan Haidt, associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. "You saw it in Rwanda and Nazi Germany too. In most cases of genocide, you have a moral entrepreneur who exploits tribalism for evil purposes."

That, of course, does not take the stain of responsibility off the people who follow those leaders--a case that war-crimes prosecutors famously argued at the Nuremberg trials and a point courageous people have made throughout history as they sheltered Jews during World War II or refuse to murder their Sunni neighbor even if a militia leader tells them to.

For grossly imperfect creatures like us, morality may be the steepest of all developmental mountains. Our opposable thumbs and big brains gave us the tools to dominate the planet, but wisdom comes more slowly than physical hardware. We surely have a lot of killing and savagery ahead of us before we fully civilize ourselves. The hope--a realistic one, perhaps--is that the struggles still to come are fewer than those left behind."

I thought this last article was really interesting because I've found myself getting hung up on my morals a lot lately. In ways where it's actually been counter-productive to progress within a group setting. I have never been a "means justify the ends" kind of girl, so it is nearly impossible for me to agree to take 2 steps forward, if I know it means taking 1 back in regards to moral code. I have never even thought of myself as having a really strict moral code, just an unmoving one.

It seems that sometimes the only way to accomplish things is to make concessions. Within a group setting that makes sense-- compromising. But concessions made specifically regarding morals are a dangerous line to walk. What is "okay" to sacrifice or allow, who is drawing this arbitrary line.

Now, maybe I'm being dramatic: relating the sacrifice of morals within a group setting to this article that's discussing the Holocaust. But I think, that on the very lowest of levels, not "sticking to your guns" in small groups is what creates the opportunity for situations to spiral out of control to a much grander scale. And soon "manipulating tribal sentiments" can occur on today's stage: society, or any other group within it. If no one speaks up, everyone who also was too scared to say anything begins to think that they were solitary in these thoughts, so they must have been wrong. This creates an excellent opportunity for the leader of this body of people to exert whatever power and direction they wish, since they know their constituents are either mindless or won't talk back.

All of these things are probably already crystal clear to all of you. I guess what I'm saying is: start talking back and start sticking to your guns-- and if you are already doing both of the aforementioned, then, just keep maintaining rep.

my grandma

IS AWESOME.

On the e-mail thread going back and forth amongst the extended Reddy family about what everyone's "jobs" are for the christmas eve festivities, aka: what food they are bringing,

Grandma writes: "I'll be the official timekeeper for Xmas eve. It is one month from today."

On Thanksgiving I also discovered that (I think) I owe my nosiness to my Grandma; she would be ready with 3 questions before people even answered 1. I still call it curiosity, not being nosy.

posts overflowing like whoa

I feel like I have had too much to say lately, so much that I didn't write for fear that I wouldn't get it all down. The thoughts in my brain right now call for separate posts, so you'll just have to withhold judgment for them all having the same date.

Well, I obviously went home for Thanksgiving, I'm going on the 5th night in a row sleeping in my Waukesha bed. It's weird to think that this is the longest consecutive period of time that I have been here for almost six months, but true.

I have never seen myself living in Waukesha in the future...in fact I had never seen myself living in any one specified location for an extended period of time...I had kind of thought of myself as the eternal nomad, or perhaps the indefinite one-- open to putting down roots, should the perfect situation present itself. I still don't see myself ending up in Waukesha, but lately I have been thinking a lot more about finding a community. I still find the idea of living in one place for twenty years daunting...but I find the idea of knowing the history of a place and it's people, and being personally invested in the development of that place and it's community, intriguing.

Maybe it's not about finding the perfect place, but rather finding a place that's worth the fight to make it your version of perfect.

I still don't think I'll be settling down for quite a while.

Grid Systems

I met a woman from Colombia yesterday at the Global Dialogues event that AIESEC co-sponsored. She has been living in the States for seven years but is from Bogota originally...so we of course had the obligatory "Rolos son frios" conversation (translation: people from Bogota are cold--that is the rumor/saying within Colombia). Of course, because she is Colombian her warmness was actually overflowing...in the fifteen minutes that we chatted we exchanged emails and planned to get together to hang out and cook Colombian food (read: arepas, yay!!). Apparently her friend sells arepas, postobon, etc. etc so I'm pretty pumped about that.

It was funny to read Katy's blog about Colombia (she's studying in Ecuador right now, but took a weekend trip to Bogotá)..."The city. It tops my favorite latin american city i've been to thus far. There is a grid system- streets were numbered and made sense."

It made me think about the street system of Medellin. I remember reading in Lonely Planet before leaving that all calles ran in one direction and carreras in the other, and they were numbered increasingly or decreasingly depending on direction. I thought, "Okay, I got this, it seems easy enough."

When I got to Medellin I was initially frustrated to discover the simplicity of the system was not as Lonely Planet had described, especially because directions are not one of my fortes. There really is nothing systematic about Calle 42, having Calle 42A, Calle 42AA, and Calle 42B after it and before Calle 43...especially since the very next block could very well just be Calle 44. Who's deciding which streets will be lettered, and with how many letters, and where do I find this information out?!

I learned that I had to start drawing my own little mental map, or be content with wandering around Bello for an hour to find my house, because it took me awhile to realize that the street that connected to the street I lived on had a random gap in the middle, where you needed to walk up 1 street and over 2 to get back on it--always an adventure.

Now that I'm back in Madison, one of the things that I miss most about Medellin (and other places I've visited) is the lack of organization, the absence of a perfectly functioning grid system. I like the chaos that comes with not being able to walk around "the block." I miss the freedom of being surrounded by my favorite 4th grade geometric shapes, because sometimes I just want to walk around the hexagon, rhombus, or triangle.

Katy was pretty right on when she said: "I swear its the people that make the experience...I didn't just fall in love with city, the food, the countryside- but i feel in love with the warmth of the people and i know i will return."

To the old man with the white beard on the sea foam green bicycle:

Thank you.

You make me smile, because you don't ever stop smiling. In fact, when you go on your little bicycle rides around campus I think it may be your personal mission to smile insistently at people, not stopping until others' awkwardness or uncomfortableness with this act is physically evidenced in their change of walking pace, twitching lip corners, averted glances, etc.

I hope in your head you are thinking: "Joke's on you suckas!! This is how I wanted you all to feel."

There's a slight chance that you are legitimately this nice, in which case, props to you, sir.

He's out on campus today: be on the lookout for him.

In other news:

1. Archer Farms, the food brand that Target carries, is good. Today I am eating these potato cheddar things, and yesterday I had spinach and feta in phyllo dough.

2. Fast-talking adults do exist (I had expressed concern that they do not in an earlier post)!! I had to go to a National Community Based Research conference two weeks ago in St. Paul, MN for my job and I was the only undergraduate there. Which meant I got to spend the weekend chatting with professors who are actually passionate and motivated to be doing the work they are doing, as well as fast-talking. I am going to chat more about CBR in a future post.

3. Who wants to teach me microeconomics/laugh at me for not (really trying to) understanding it?

4. I realized I am, in every sense of the word, addicted to the internet and my computer. I check my email every five minutes and find myself disappointed when there is nothing new in my inbox. I am trying to create a plan to wean myself off the internet and my computer, does anyone have any ideas?

My Dad on Halloween

Our phone conversation went something like this:

Dad: "So did you have a good halloween?"

Me: "Yeah, I was a skunk."

Dad: "So, I've been hearing these things--
when did Halloween become a holiday for women to get all dressed up in,
nothing?"

Me: "Yeah, I was wondering that same thing, I don't know when the norm became wearing lingerie, throwing a pair of ears on and calling yourself an animal."

Dad: "Man, I am just so out of the loop, I had no idea this was going on, I can't believe it...
I need to get to Madison."

Me: "DAAAAAAAAAD!
Have you seen the movie Mean Girls?"

Mean Girls: "Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it."

Dad:
I did some research for you on how this phenomenon came about, and apparently it's your fault: "Kathy Grannis of the National Retail Federation blames Halloween's loss of innocence on baby boomers who can't let the holiday go, with their adult parties and costume contests at bars. 'Halloween is no longer a child's holiday,' she said." (Read full Washington Post article here) :)

p.s. My dad also wanted to know who David Horowitz is.

Oh, and for the record, I was an extremely G-rated version of a skunk, besides the fact that my face painted entirely black and white made me look a little scary.