An Open Letter to President Obama and the 113th United States Congress

Mr. President, Senators, and Representatives,

I would like to express my extreme displeasure at the way you look at your homeland.  You stare at it with greedy eyes, reminiscent of the cartoon characters we used to watch on Saturday mornings.  Your soul eats evil green paper like it is the food of the gods and your belt of morality gets tighter and tighter until you take it off and all you have left is your hunger.

This is unacceptable.

America is not a run down gas station that needs more brown oil oozing through its cracks and faults.  It is not a bank account that you can withdraw from and then, when you're overdrawn, you just get a slap on the wrist.

America is a landscape, a factory, a conversation.  It takes effort, critical thinking, and maintenance, not magic, petty grovelling, and band-aid solutions.  We are better than that.  You are better than that.  Wake up and realize this.

To my point, Representatives and Senators who have supported the Keystone XL Pipeline:
Shame on you.  You are lacking in perhaps the most important aspect of governance and that is working towards sustainability.  The founding fathers wrote the Bill of Rights knowing full well that it would have been easier to explicitly state all of the rights that individuals, state governments, and the federal government had because limitations would make working within the system easier.  However, they knew that it was not sustainable and they had to reach a compromise that allowed for ambiguity, uncertainty about the changing times, in order to maintain a thriving United States.

The bill you are pushing through has no such concessions for uncertainty and evolution of American culture.  It is a bedazzled eye-sore that you are forcing, unwanted, upon us American citizens who still believe that this crazy system is working.

Mr. Obama:
It has come out that, while you may still veto the approval of the Keystone Pipeline, you may use it as a bargaining chip in the future.  Mr. President, our country is not a bargaining chip and if you think that our country only extends to the urban environments, then you are sorely mistaken.

The facts are there: the jobs created by the Pipeline are temporary and we could be putting our construction industry to far better and more sustainable use.  The pipes are structurally strong in the middle, but the junctions are untested, which is where leaks occur.  Most of the revenue that is expected to come out of this project will not even stay in the US.  By enabling Canada's fracking, which is widely accepted as a danger process for both the human and environmental elements, the US would send a message to the world that the end, however temporary, justifies the means.

But clearly facts are not at play here.  Science, once picked up by the political system, becomes meaningless.  And it is for this reason, that I am imploring you on the basis of your humanity, your appreciation of beauty, and your faith in the American people to take the high road: Please do not approve of the Keystone XL Pipeline.

We are better than that.


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To contact your senator, visit:
http://www.senate.gov/reference/common/faq/How_to_contact_senators.htm

To get more facts about the Keystone XL Pipeline, visit:
http://www.factcheck.org/2014/03/pipeline-primer/

I'm not a "People-Person"

I have a lot of apologizing to do, I suppose.

I'm sorry to my housemate who walked in my room just a few hours after I returned from a really long road trip to try to tell me something helpful and all I wanted to do was lay in my bed and watch Game of Thrones so I came off sounding like a detached brat.

I'm sorry to all (if any) of the readers of my blog for not posting in a long time.  One thing led to another and then writing began to seem like an obligation rather than something I actually enjoyed.  My apathy got the better of me and senioritis kicked in like it never had before.  Like seriously, I thought I had it bad in high school?  Guess again, kid.  The lack of motivation is paralyzing and, worse, frustrating.  I know I can do better, but I still find myself calling it quits far too easily.

Sorry, self-deprecating ramble.

So here's something new: I'm doing awful at physics again.  How many times will it take me to realize that simple of equations of kinematics depend on where you put the damn sign.  Do you know how many times I've gotten questions wrong simply because I put a positive where I should have put a negative?  Or when I've divided where I should've subtracted?  It's mortifying.

And I think I'm losing my touch.  I'm not able to stay up as late as I used to.  I'm usually in bed by midnight/1 am and all nighters are getting harder and harder to do.  Oh well, I suppose it comes with territory of growing up, along with paying your own rent, deductibles, and taxes. Ugh.

But the amazing thing about not being a people-person is that I am allowed, by society, to retreat into my room like some sort of hermit who found a treasure that she doesn't want to share.  I don't particularly do anything in my room, but sometimes it's nice just to know that I can sit there and stare at the ceiling and hate myself in peace and quiet.  You know, like a kind of introspective opossum.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/fire_brace/

A musing that I would like to leave you with as I go quietly into my goodnight because I soooo need it if I'm going to do well on my physics test on Friday:
Given the current trend of weather (increasingly late summers and winters) and the earth's history of polar reversal, I wonder if, perhaps sometime in my grandkids' lifetimes, America's Independence Day will be held in the winter and Christmas will be held in the summer....
Just a thought.
Cheers!

An Inactive Activist

I did something horrible today.

No, I did not kill someone, but thanks for putting it into perspective for me.

Today, I stayed inside and lay on my bed and watched as my neighbor washed out his paintbrushes in his lawn.

Why is that so bad, you ask?

With all the rains the Midwest has been getting, the ground is already saturated.  I don't know whether or not he used an environmentally-friendly paint, but I will assume not because they're not typical for interior paint jobs.  Therefore, all of the unsafe chemicals in the paint will enter the top soil which, already being saturated, means that those chemicals will be the first things in our water systems next time it rains.

Not only that, but he was using a hose.  A HOSE!!!! FOR 2 MEASLY PAINT BRUSHES!!!! Thanks to the Internet, we know that a hose has an average flow rate of about 3.5 gallons per minute.  This guy was washing each brush for roughly 5 minutes.  Let's do some basic math, people:

2 brushes x 5 minutes/brush x 3.5 gallons/minute = 35 gallons of water wasted!!!!

When he could have used a 1 gallon, 5 gallon, or even 10 gallon bucket and got the same results!!!!

And I stayed inside. And laid on my bed. And watched as my neighbor washed out his paintbrushes on his lawn.

English freak. Science geek. Social Activist Wannabe.  Well, the wannabe really came out here.
I knew the science.
I'm working the English even as you read this right now.
But I didn't act.

Acting is a conscious choice that, most of the time, is very difficult.

Sometimes you think, "The situation isn't clear enough" or "I'm not close enough" or "I wasn't ready".  And sometimes, that may be the case, but that doesn't make the action any less hard.  The situation was clear, I was close enough, and I wasn't preparing for anything else and yet I still didn't act.

And so I confess my crime to be complacency and I stand before you, my readers and friends, my judge and jury.  I cannot promise that this will not happen again, only that I have recognized my mistake and will not be so ignorant to my apathy in the future.

Even the best of us fail and I certainly will lay no claim to being the best.
But, starting today, I will be better.