This week!
On Saturday night I watched Braveheart for the first time.
On Tuesday morning Chris Field gave a talk on climate change impacts and adaptation that shifted my discontent from weariness to action.
On Thursday night I sat in a cold auditorium, belly full of kofta, listening to two badass lady revolutionaries' stories of Syria's transformation from paranoid oppression to hopeful against all odds. On Friday morning I read this piece on Guantanamo Bay.
On Friday afternoon, I left work early, eye-glazed exhausted and greasily exuberant.
On my way home I had a chance coffee with my friend Shara and her friend Claire. Claire does research on a controversial subject, one that has conspiracy theorists sending death threats to her advisor. Coincidentally I've been working on an audio piece about this subject, using an interview with this advisor. Before I realized that she might take it quite personally, I told her our take on the subject in the audio piece was a pretty decisive thumbs down. She told us that she's written an op-ed about her research that Big Deal People have encouraged her to publish in the Times, but she's hesitated. Her future job might be at stake, or maybe she doesn't want her name publicly available to be targeted by the crazies.
My labmate Aitzol, raised in the Basque country, also went to the Syria teach-in on Thursday night. I told him that hearing their stories (and thinking of Braveheart) had made me acutely grateful for my personal freedom. He told me that speaker Sana Khatib in particular had a look in her eyes that he hadn't seen in a long time. The look of full conviction for a cause, of strength, of knowing what it is to really live. To him (I think), this was freedom. Feeling that you have freedom is simply a reflection of your proximity to the power centers in your society, he told me. The farther you are, the more oppressed, the less free you feel. Having freedom is something else entirely.
This summer Shara and I went to see a talk by Lonely Planet cofounder Tony Wheeler. It was about his travels in non-tourist destinations: Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Afghanistan. And so on. I thought it would be awesome, but it was so far from it. I grew giddy on the bike ride back as we tore apart his talk, and realized how good it felt, viscerally, to know exactly where I stood on something. I felt the same way in June in Boston after Harvard professor John Johnson made a powerful case for affirmative action to our little crowd of science communicators.
I am just writing to say that it is exciting to notice that new ideas can change the way you move through the world. This is not profound, but it is exactly where I am right now.
On Saturday night I watched Braveheart for the first time.
On Tuesday morning Chris Field gave a talk on climate change impacts and adaptation that shifted my discontent from weariness to action.
On Thursday night I sat in a cold auditorium, belly full of kofta, listening to two badass lady revolutionaries' stories of Syria's transformation from paranoid oppression to hopeful against all odds. On Friday morning I read this piece on Guantanamo Bay.
On Friday afternoon, I left work early, eye-glazed exhausted and greasily exuberant.
On my way home I had a chance coffee with my friend Shara and her friend Claire. Claire does research on a controversial subject, one that has conspiracy theorists sending death threats to her advisor. Coincidentally I've been working on an audio piece about this subject, using an interview with this advisor. Before I realized that she might take it quite personally, I told her our take on the subject in the audio piece was a pretty decisive thumbs down. She told us that she's written an op-ed about her research that Big Deal People have encouraged her to publish in the Times, but she's hesitated. Her future job might be at stake, or maybe she doesn't want her name publicly available to be targeted by the crazies.
My labmate Aitzol, raised in the Basque country, also went to the Syria teach-in on Thursday night. I told him that hearing their stories (and thinking of Braveheart) had made me acutely grateful for my personal freedom. He told me that speaker Sana Khatib in particular had a look in her eyes that he hadn't seen in a long time. The look of full conviction for a cause, of strength, of knowing what it is to really live. To him (I think), this was freedom. Feeling that you have freedom is simply a reflection of your proximity to the power centers in your society, he told me. The farther you are, the more oppressed, the less free you feel. Having freedom is something else entirely.
This summer Shara and I went to see a talk by Lonely Planet cofounder Tony Wheeler. It was about his travels in non-tourist destinations: Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Afghanistan. And so on. I thought it would be awesome, but it was so far from it. I grew giddy on the bike ride back as we tore apart his talk, and realized how good it felt, viscerally, to know exactly where I stood on something. I felt the same way in June in Boston after Harvard professor John Johnson made a powerful case for affirmative action to our little crowd of science communicators.
I am just writing to say that it is exciting to notice that new ideas can change the way you move through the world. This is not profound, but it is exactly where I am right now.
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