JD over at The UI Thread approached me months ago about interviewing me about my experience redesigning the AbiWord word processor for the OLPC educational laptop as part of Google’s Summer of Code program. I took my sweet time actually responding to his questions, but the the interview finally went up today..
Monthly Archive for January, 2008
An article about the violence in Kenya caught my eye this afternoon. Things there are very serious.
The core of the conflict is that many Kenyans feel that the recent elections, which kept president Mwai Kibaki in office, were rigged. Mr. Kibaki belongs to the Kikuyu tribe, the largest in Kenya with about 20% of the population.
Violence is erupting across the nation, often across ethnic lines. On January 1st, 35 Kikuyu people were burned to death in a church which was acting as a refugee shelter.
More recently, Mellitus Mugabe Were, a 40 year old member of the Orange Democratic Movement, was dragged from his car and shot to death in front of his house on Monday. Were had been working hard to bring about peace, shuttling between tribes to try to bring about a peaceful resolution to the violence. Were was Luhya, and his widow is Kikuyu.
Melitus Mugabe Were, 1968-2008
Jane: what’s been up with your sad twitters and blog posts?
Me: i don’t know, sometimes it just seems like the most noteworthy things that happen to me are sad 
Me: my life is overwhelmingly happy. if I wrote about all the good stuff it’d get boring.
Afghan journalist Sayed Parwez Kaambakhsh, 23, has been sentenced to death for printing out and distributing an article asking why men are allowed four wives, but women cannot have multiple husbands.
Sentenced to death.
This is a country in which George W. Bush has declared victory over terrorism. Bush called Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s current leader a man of “honor, courage and skill helping to build a new and democratic Afghanistan.
Fuck that noise.
So, I felt like crap Monday and Tuesday, and then sometime Tuesday got my feet under me and I’ve been feeling mostly OK since then.
I’m finding my happiness isn’t so much a function of how well things are going, but how much I’m trying to control the world. Ironically, the less I try to control the world, the better things go.
The lab has been busy lately. Lots of people are getting things done around me. It’s easy for me to start feeling bad because I haven’t gotten certain things done. But I don’t actually start working until I forgive myself for that and start thinking about what I want to give.
This is true of love too. It’s just hard to remember.
Today, José Padilla, an American citizen who was detained by the government for 4 years before being charged with a crime, was sentenced to 17 years in prison.
This is scary to me for two reasons. First, the constitution grants us the right to a speedy trial, and the right to be informed of the charges against us and the proceedings of our trial. Padilla was declared an enemy combatant and denied his right. What this means is that the US military can detain any American citizen, based on whatever definition of “military combatant” they want, for years, with no recourse from congress or the judiciary.
The second reason it is scary is that there is no evidence Padilla actually participated in any sort of attack. He applied to attend (but did not, as far as I can tell) a terrorism training camp, and he was in contact with terrorists.
But the constitution also grants us freedom of association, and freedom of speech. American citizens must be able to communicate freely with others, and they must be able to spread ideas freely. Even if the ideas they are spreading are how to make bombs and the people they are associating with are criminals. These are the rights the constitution lays out, which provide an important check to the government’s power.
Now, when there is clear conspiracy to commit a crime, that’s a different story. When the ideas being spread are plans to kill someone, or a person’s activity goes beyond associating with someone to funding their activities, then that’s a crime. Trial should be brought and carried out under due process of law.
But that was not the case here. Former Reagan staffer Paul Craig Roberts said it well:
“The incompetent ‘Padilla Jury’ has done Americans and their liberty far more damage than will ever be done by terrorists, other than those in our criminal justice (sic) system who now wield the powers that Bentham wanted to give them.”
Please spread the word: our right to a speedy trial, our right to be informed of charges against us, our right to free speech, and our right to association are getting weaker every day.
This was a very difficult Martin Luther King Day. Someone very important to me needed to tear me up this morning. Maybe I needed to be torn up. Truths needed to be told; screws tightened.
I spent the day surrounded by beautiful things: the words of Dr. King. People who love me. Beautiful music inspired by the day, by San Diego, by the divine, by the erotic. Dancing and difference and queer bodies. Food made with love and shared with love.
The Sex Worker’s Art Show came to San Diego, and along with it inspiration and beauty and celebration. Bodies of different colors, shapes, sizes, and genders. Bodies laughed about, spoken through, and hungered for. Words sweated over and delivered passionately.
But today I felt wounded, despite all this beauty. Continually unable to smile, or only able to smile briefly. Able to connect my love to another human being for a moment, only to lose it; to wander back into a place of fear.
I think, for better or for worse, Dr. King’s message got lost in this.
Lilly left a comment on my post about gourmet food asking what the alternative is. As far as I can tell…
It’s just eating stuff. Carrots, bananas, avocados, walnuts, tahini, blah blah blah blah blah. No preparation, no cooking, just clean the crud off that plant and chew on it!
Sounds appetizing, huh?
Well maybe not, but it’s what I’m going to be eating, more or less for the next thirty days. I started on Wednesday night. I say Wednesday night because Wednesday afternoon I ate a slice of pepperoni pizza and veggie burger and unfries from UFood Grill, a suprising healthy fast food place with vegan options at Logan Airport.
But I digress.
The point is, I’m just eating raw fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds and beans for the next 30 days, and I’m eating them ONE AT A TIME. No recipes, no cuisine. Just me and a bowl of spinach.
This hasn’t gone entirely smoothly over the last 48 hours. Turns out most foods aren’t that interesting after the first few bites. I’ve been buckling regularly. I put some hot sauce on a tomato. I am right now eating spinach with a few drops of balsamic and watered down tahini augmenting. And I added some chopped tomato to an avocado.
But it’s actually kind of neat. Thinking not about “what can I add to this” but “how naked can this food get” is… well, different.
I did break down and make a pot of chili for dinner coop on Thursday. I didn’t feel up to the challenge of explaining to people that I was serving them a selection of totally unprepared foods. Maybe next time.
More about why this crazy diet makes sense to me tomorrow.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the way we eat. Cuisine, I’ve noticed, is about creating well-balanced foods. We eat guacamole, which balances the sweetness of avocado, onion and tomato with the tasty fats in avocado and olive oil. It balances the tartness of lime with the saltiness from salt. It balances the crisp freshness of onion and tomato with the soft creaminess of avocado. Eat it with chips and you balance the crispy saltiness of the chips with sweet savory softness of the avocado. It all adds up to a wonderful gestalt which I can basically eat indefinitely.
I mean seriously, I could eat god chips and good guacamole until the walls of my stomach are stretching and I taste stomach acid in my throat. It’s that tasty.
But what exactly is that? Does my body really want or need all that stuff? I mean, I don’t really think so. My body seems to be telling me “more chips and guacamole!” but I don’t think that’s because it really needs the carbs and the protein and the fat and the acidity and the salt and the vitamins and the minerals and everything.
It’s just a superbly balanced food, and it fulfills almost any conceivable need I might have. The thing is, I don’t know which one. I might need a glass of water. I might need some vitamin C. I might need something to raise my blood sugar. I might need some protein to build up my long term energy store. It doesn’t much matter what I need, chips and guacamole will satisfy it.
So what’s the problem? The problem is that I’m getting all kinds of crap I don’t need along with it. And so I wonder: is it really good for us to constantly try to concoct complex foods that delight and satisfy every corner of our palettes? Did we evolve to be able to satisfy our nutritional needs in an environment saturated with gourmet foods that are available all hours of the day, 365 days a year?