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So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.


The Profile


Zanzibar
Age. 39
Gender. Female
Ethnicity. that of my father and his father before him
Location Altadena, CA
School. Other
» More info.
The World









The Link To Zanzibar's Past
This is my page in the beloved art community that my sister got me into:

Samarinda

Extra points for people who know what Samarinda is.
The Phases of the Moon Module
CURRENT MOON
Croc Hunter/Combat Wombat
My hero(s)
Only My Favorite Baseball Player EVER


Aw, Larry Walker, how I loved thee.
The Schedule
M: Science and Exploration
T: Cook a nice dinner
W: PARKOUR!
Th: Parties, movies, dinners
F: Picnics, the Louvre
S: Read books, go for walks, PARKOUR
Su: Philosophy, Religion
The Reading List
This list starts Summer 2006
A Crocodile on the Sandbank
Looking Backwards
Wild Swans
Exodus
1984
Tales of the Alhambra (in progress)
Dark Lord of Derkholm
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
The Lost Years of Merlin
Harry Potter a l'ecole des sorciers (in progress)
Atlas Shrugged (in progress)
Uglies
Pretties
Specials
A Long Way Gone (story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone- met the author! w00t!)
The Eye of the World: Book One of the Wheel of Time
From Magma to Tephra (in progress)
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Harry Potter 7
The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency
Introduction to Planetary Volcanism
A Child Called "It"
Pompeii
Is Multi-Culturalism Bad for Women?
Americans in Southeast Asia: Roots of Commitment (in progress)
What's So Great About Christianity?
Aeolian Geomorphology
Aeolian Dust and Dust Deposits
The City of Ember
The People of Sparks
Cube Route
When I was in Cuba, I was a German Shepard
Bound
The Golden Compass
Clan of the Cave Bear
The 9/11 Commission Report (2nd time through, graphic novel format this time, ip)
The Incredible Shrinking Man
Twilight
Eclipse
New Moon
Breaking Dawn
Armageddon's Children
The Elves of Cintra
The Gypsy Morph
Animorphs #23: The Pretender
Animorphs #25: The Extreme
Animorphs #26: The Attack
Crucial Conversations
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
A Great and Terrible Beauty
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Dandelion Wine
To Sir, With Love
London Calling
Watership Down
The Invisible
Alice in Wonderland
Through the Looking Glass
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
The Host
The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
Shadows and Strongholds
The Jungle Book
Beatrice and Virgil
Infidel
Neuromancer
The Help
Flip
Zion Andrews
The Unit
Princess
Quantum Brain
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
No One Ever Told Us We Were Defeated
Delirium
Memento Nora
Robopocalypse
The Name of the Wind
The Terror
Sister
Tao Te Ching
What Paul Meant
Lao Tzu and Taoism
Libyan Sands
Sand and Sandstones
Lost Christianites: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
The Science of God
Calculating God
Great Contemporaries, by Winston Churchill
City of Bones
Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne
Divergent
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Old Man and the Sea
Flowers for Algernon
Au Bonheur des Ogres
The Martian
The Road to Serfdom
De La Terre � la Lune (ip)
In the Light of What We Know
Devil in the White City
2312
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Red Mars
How to Be a Good Wife
A Mote in God's Eye
A Gentleman in Russia
The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism
Seneca: Letters from a Stoic
The Juanes Module


Juanes just needed his own mod. Who can disagree.
Room at the Top
Monday. 12.16.13 6:27 pm
The weather is moderately cold. The streets of San Francisco hums with the sounds of 20,000 geologists, talking, walking, lunching, planning. As usual, plaid shirts, khakis, and tennis shoes make up the standard uniform.

Look at that guy. Dress pants and tennis shoes. That's how you can tell he has a job.

-- My friend, who doesn't have a job

Twenty-thousand geologists is four thousand more geologists than there were at this conference three years ago.

Our numbers have swelled, but times are lean. We encourage our comrades-at-arms who are still in graduate school, but they should stay there as long as they can. Between post-docs, times are lean. That's all we talk about. Who got a job, who is offering jobs, who is starting on their third post-doc, who is moving continents for the fourth time in eight years. It keeps us lean, always being on the move. A rolling stone gathers no moss, and a world-hopping post-doc rarely ever stops long enough to acquire entanglements, like a life outside of work.

Everyone loves talking about their research, but without a single exception they have a back-up plan. Ben is going to be a dairy farmer in Switzerland. Fabio is going to be a waiter. I am going to write a best-selling novel and buy a miniature golf course. Caleb is going to fund his research using his gambling winnings. [I didn't say that our back-up plans were good or even feasible.]

I run into Professor F., one of the members of my thesis committee. I tell him that I don't have a job. I tell him that times are lean. He says that today he was sitting next to some post-docs while he was eating lunch and he heard them talking about what a lean time it was He was grateful that he was a longtime tenured professor.

"My PhD advisor once told me something," he says, "and I am going to tell the same thing to you:

There is always room at the top."

He gives me a nod and disappears into the crowd.



Ok. The miniature golf course will have to wait. Let's be at the top.



"If you'd like to discover new worlds with our innovative team and enjoy a competitive salary and impressive benefits with the renowned leader in space exploration, apply now!

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Weird Times
Thursday. 12.12.13 1:30 am
Be it extremely emotional, controversial, messed up, or whatever, this entry has been password protected.

If you know it, enter it; or, ask me for it.

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Pics or it didn't happen
Saturday. 11.23.13 9:30 am
Be it extremely emotional, controversial, messed up, or whatever, this entry has been password protected.

If you know it, enter it; or, ask me for it.

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A Small Thought on the Fourth Dimension
Tuesday. 11.19.13 1:44 pm
"Let us assume that the three dimensions of space are visualized in the customary fashion, and let us substitute a color for the fourth dimension. Every physical object is liable to changes in color as well as in position. An object might, for example, be capable of going through all shades from red through violet to blue. A physical interaction between any two bodies is possible only if they are close to each other in space as well as in color. Bodies of different colors would penetrate each other without interference... If we lock a number of flies into a red glass globe, they may yet escape: they may change their color to blue and are then able to penetrate the red globe." --- Hans Reichenback, The Philosophy of Space and Time, 1927.

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It's My Personality That's The Killer
Saturday. 11.16.13 8:25 pm
Tonight I went out to a bar and met some weird people.

They were part of Paris' golden upper crust, the children of the wealthy, and they did whatever they wanted. First we went to a boy's father's apartment, which was at least seven times the size of mine. It was decorated with incredibly famous art, coincidentally painted by the boy's grandmother and grandfather, who are so famous that I will not put their names on this blog lest it make my blog googleable. The boy's father usually comes and smokes weed with his son's house guests, but not today. The father is being sued for something and it puts him in a bad mood.

We spent 45 minutes looking for a rentable electric car to drive, because the boy's 1960s classic car (very cute, nice in the summer) had been in the shop for 5 months and he was selling his scooter. We wanted to take the metro. He wanted to try another car stand. We wanted to take the metro. He wanted to take a taxi. If we had taken the metro, we would have already been there. He hasn't taken the metro in seven years. That's a lot of years for someone who can't be more than 25. He knows nothing about the metro. I had assumed that there were people who were too rich to take the metro, but I never thought I would meet one.

When we finally arrive we are at a birthday party for someone we don't know. She has rented out the whole bar, and there is a person manning a table at the entrance. They recognize the boy, though, so it is fine. He brought her a present-- his mom had bought it. It was a fur stole, because that's apparently what people give people for their birthdays. She loves it. She has a table of presents filled with beautiful necklaces and antique bookends. It's weird to give a fur stole to someone who you don't know very well, isn't it? he asks. We don't know. His mom had made him drive her all around Paris, and wait 45 minutes for her outside Louis Vuitton, or Chanel, or all of the other stores in the Place de Vendome. She even made him run around and open the door for her when she came back. He's her son, he says, not her driver. The kids in the bar are controlling the music from an iphone. Between each song is a long silence while whoever is paying attention searches for a new song. Boys are making out with boys and then turning around and grinding with girls. The South American guy is moving his hips and all of the girls are paying attention. They break about three glasses while I'm watching them. I try not to watch them too closely. They do whatever they want all the time. Their lives must be much more complicated than mine, I think. A guy asks me out and then he asks me that question I hate:
"Why hasn't anyone swept you up yet?"
"Oh, I dunno, maybe I lure guys in with my looks and then as soon as they learn more about me they run the other direction."
"Oh, I dunno, maybe I'm a serial killer and every guy I've ever dated didn't last longer than a week."
What are you trying to achieve with that question? What kind of information are you trying to get out of me? I'm single, ok, if you want me to explain my many personality traits that work together to make this a reality then we could be here all night.

But we can't be here all night, because the beautiful young rich people are changing bars. This place is dead, they say.

"I'm going to head home," I say.
"Me too..." says one of my fellow scientists.

"...this night has been really weird."

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Conversations
Sunday. 11.10.13 4:56 pm
We are in a boring seminar. I draw eyes on the side of my hand and my thumb starts mouthing words to M. He feeds my hand a pencil, which it gobbles up in an instant. He tucks his thumb under his index finger to make a similar creature, but does not bother to draw any eyes. He starts running his hand into my spare elbow. "What is he doing?" I ask. "Shhhhh..." he says, looking at me like I've made a terrible gaffe. "He's blind."

Viktor the Siberian: I've been gone only a few weeks, and when I come back someone has taken my monitor, someone has taken my desk.
Me: That's what happens when you're not around... you can't defend your desk.
Viktor: I should have put a guard dog there while I was gone, on a chain.
Me: Or a bear.
Viktor: Yes, then everyone would know it was Russian desk. During the day the bear could drink vodka, and at night it would make a little show, riding a bicycle. Ahhh... I used to have such a bear, when I was child.

I'm about to give a talk. I'm going through my slides. M comes and sits next to me. "I'd like to go through your slides with you before you give your talk," he says, authoritatively. I take him to the first slide. It is of some geological features on Mars.
"This---" he says, "looks like... an alligator. Next."
I flip to the next slide. "This one... looks like... sort of a guy, with his mouth open like O and that's his hair." He outlines in the air above my screen with a pencil.
I scroll through the slides and he tells me what he sees in each one. A man, a dragon, a lizard. "Those are my interpretations," he finally says, and he approves my presentation for delivery.

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Falling Behind
Saturday. 11.9.13 12:37 pm
Well

well

well.


I used to play this game all the time, DDR. Dance dance revolution, for the uninitiated. There are a bunch of arrows that go by on the screen, and you try to stamp on the "dance floor" or ground pad in the square that corresponds to the arrows on the screen. You start with easy songs, one arrow at a time, and work your way up to crazy, impossible songs with five arrows on each beat. The screen is filled with arrows, busting with arrows, arrows overwhelming the screen and pointing in every direction.


Easy Mode

I played with my friends, and I found it interesting to watch them at the precise moment when the number of arrows became too much, and they essentially lost control of the game, lost count of the arrows, lost the cadence and then the rhythm. What followed was usually a kind of controlled train wreck that ended by losing the game. At this important breaking point, there were usually one of two responses: some people would stop altogether, take a deep breath, and begin again. Others would helplessly bat at squares, just after the beat, trying to get every other arrow on the screen, focusing on one or two directions and trying to get at least these arrows, etc. These people often looked panicked and harried, and it took them longer to get back on the beat. But the people who stopped, composed themselves, and continued often lost. The game rewards you for arrows met. It rewards you slightly less for correct arrows slightly off beat. It really kills you for strings of unmet arrows. So while desperate arrow punching seemed harried and stupid, it tended to be a better strategy because while you still suffered losses, the hole you were digging was not inescapably deep.

In DDR and in life, I've always been a sort of a harried arrow presser, batting down problems like whack-a-moles, combating stress by doing at least half of what was required, or doing everything slightly out of phase, so that even if things weren't done right, they were at least *done*.

I'm still sort of randomly tapping work arrows, doing just enough in all four directions that my remaining life bar stays just barely in the green, but feel like I've kind of been falling off the wagon in terms of my friendships, especially since the beginning of October. In the last couple of weeks I've felt like I've gone to bed, pulled the covers over my head, and let unmet arrows flow by in a torrent of flashing animations and j-pop music.

It's led me to the point where I should probably make some phone calls or write some emails, but how do you begin such emails?

"Hey, so it's been a while--- how's that whole 'marriage falling apart thing' going??"
"Hey bff! Cool email about finally hanging out with the crush you've had for years! Sorry for the slow response, I've been really busy eating oreos, sleeping and playing the bodhran! You are a treasured friend!"
"Hey, so did your ex-boyfriend ever kill himself or what?"
"Hey, thanks for the email three months ago about having new baby twins! I'm really excited about this new stage in your life, which you can clearly tell by the priority that I assigned to writing you back!"
"Hey, thanks for taking the time to write that really long email helping my friend find a new job. You probably don't remember writing it, because you haven't heard from me in 12 days, but it was great!"
"Hey, I wanted to get back to you about that serious life decision advice you asked me about.... I kind of assume that by now you've made the decision already, so I guess that's less work for me! lol!"
"Hey, I got your email about wanting to talk to me on the phone about something important. Could you just text me whatever you wanted to say? I'm really busy listening to Taylor Swift and cooking frozen pizzas in a frying pan."

Everyone Else:

Start watching at about 0:58.

Me:

The ironic thing is that I've been paying lots of attention to my physically present friends (I went to church like FOUR TIMES this week), which is a big part of the reason that I've been falling behind on my correspondence with friends who are farther away. Or so I tell myself. The days that I wasn't at church I just lay in my bed staring blankly at my wall until it was late enough to go to sleep. But here I am on Nutang, saying hello to all of my Nutang buddies that I have neglected. Sorry Nutang buddies. :3 You are my treasured friends.

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Me, Space Philosopher?
Sunday. 10.27.13 8:26 am
My church just told me that they have a hole in their weekly philosophy series schedule, and that if I want I can give a talk about space and extra dimensions and metaphysics. Whaaaaat? I have to send them an outline of what I want to talk about so that they can approve it.

DO YOU THINK THEY WOULD REALLY LET ME TALK ABOUT SPACE AND METAPHYSICS, GUYS??????!?!?! IT WOULD BE LIKE A DREAM COME TRUE!!!!!!

K BYE I HAVE TO READ MORE ABOUT UNIVERSE TOPOLOGY

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