So I was talking to my friends about Africa again, because they were recounting memories of going to the market in South Africa. The apparently went into the market in groups of two, and had a lot of trouble with pushy salespeople and feeling guilty for not buying anything.
When we were in Africa, my sister and I were very thankful for the presence of our aunt during our shopping excursions. We went into different markets on at least three different occasions for cloth, as well as for other stuff at random times. The hardest thing about shopping there is the fact that all items require you to bargain with the seller, which you can only do effectively if you have an idea of the prices. We spent the majority of one of our shopping days just gauging the price range for the cloth we wanted. Its especially confusing because there is a different price for natives than for toubabs (foreigners).
to be continued...
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Friday, February 6, 2009
Stuff Environmentalists like....
This is from stuffwhitepeoplelike.com...apparently they have come out with a new focus :)
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Media + Science = completely untrustworthy!
So I was reading the science section of the New York Times (probably a bad idea really, I was waiting for the bus...) and there's this little mini-article that is titled 'Recess Found to Improve Behavior.' Now this article is basically saying that no recess is a bad punishment for misbehaving children because there was a study completed that said that, as compared to children who did get regular recess, the children who were stuck inside were more likely to be black, to come from low-income or less educated families, and to live in large cities.
Excuse me? How does this connection, which I am sure is true, translate to recess improving children's behavior? It looks to ME as though children that live in big cities or bad schools don't have proper playgrounds, and that misbehaving children are more likely to get kept inside! I see no causality in these results! This conclusion would NOT pass a scientific journal, and it makes me really not trust the newspapers in anything they try to write! Especially in the science section! Way to go credibility...
Luckily, there was another interesting article in the science section: Apparently they have this relatively new GPS tracker that can be put on forest creatures and is sensitive enough to tell when they are moving, standing still, and what they are doing with other creatures with tags that are near them. It can also tell when they die, and where, so that the scientists can go find them and find out how they died. The fascinating thing is that this tracker weighs only .2 grams, so is small enough even to go on Monarch butterflies and Katydids! They can even go on plant seeds!
Here's a link to the online version of the Recess article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/health/research/03chil.html
The GPS-tracker article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/science/03angier.html
Excuse me? How does this connection, which I am sure is true, translate to recess improving children's behavior? It looks to ME as though children that live in big cities or bad schools don't have proper playgrounds, and that misbehaving children are more likely to get kept inside! I see no causality in these results! This conclusion would NOT pass a scientific journal, and it makes me really not trust the newspapers in anything they try to write! Especially in the science section! Way to go credibility...
Luckily, there was another interesting article in the science section: Apparently they have this relatively new GPS tracker that can be put on forest creatures and is sensitive enough to tell when they are moving, standing still, and what they are doing with other creatures with tags that are near them. It can also tell when they die, and where, so that the scientists can go find them and find out how they died. The fascinating thing is that this tracker weighs only .2 grams, so is small enough even to go on Monarch butterflies and Katydids! They can even go on plant seeds!
Here's a link to the online version of the Recess article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/health/research/03chil.html
The GPS-tracker article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/science/03angier.html
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Comments...
Hey, can someone try to comment on this post, just to see if its working? e-mail me if it doesn't work please...thanks!
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Everybody's Fond of Owls...
So if you're wondering what the heck is up with my title...here is the video from which both the header and footer of this page are derived--but fair warning: The owls are cute but the video is random!
Well apparently birds are 'striking' aircraft now...
So I was reading this news story on yahoo, and could not stop laughing! After the plane crash into the Hudson river a couple weeks ago, NASA has been investigating how many 'birdstrikes' there have been on aircraft. The phrasing is actually 'birds striking' in some cases, as though these birds are specifically targeting plane's engines and windshields to get killed in!
The crazy thing is that the news story is acting as though this is something really new, or that it has been hidden from the public in some way...I don't know when I learned about birds flying into airplanes, but it was quite awhile ago, and I may have even deduced it myself--so this is perhaps an overreaction? After all, in the overwhelming majority of cases the only one to get hurt in these 'birdstrikes' is the bird itselfs. Perhaps these are the newest kind of suicide bombers?
The article is at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090131/ap_on_go_ot/airliners_birds
The crazy thing is that the news story is acting as though this is something really new, or that it has been hidden from the public in some way...I don't know when I learned about birds flying into airplanes, but it was quite awhile ago, and I may have even deduced it myself--so this is perhaps an overreaction? After all, in the overwhelming majority of cases the only one to get hurt in these 'birdstrikes' is the bird itselfs. Perhaps these are the newest kind of suicide bombers?
The article is at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090131/ap_on_go_ot/airliners_birds
Friday, January 30, 2009
Backposts--England
Okay, I just wanted to point out that I have back posted all of my e-mails that I sent while I was in England in 2006 :)
Africa #1--bumsters and toubabs
Okay, so what I really need is pictures to go along with these posts, but I'll have to wait to see if my sister took any ;)
So, whether this is good or bad, (and its probably bad) the first thing that jumps into my mind when I think of Africa, and African pictures, actually, is the presence of 'bumsters.' One of the most obvious things about being in Africa is the fact that you, as visitors, are different. And this difference is the color of your skin, so its not like you can fake it and blend in, really. This means that you are treated differently in a couple of ways...the first and most obvious is the fact that the Gambian peoples teach their children to yell 'toubab' at any passing white person. The good thing is that this word just means 'foreigner' and really doesn't seem to have a bad connotation to the Gambians. The bad thing is that it is very wierd to have people yell 'foreigner!' at you randomly. The only good thing was that this was mostly yelled by children, who are cute, so you can more easily ignore it/not get offended.
The second and more annoying thing that happens when you walk around with white skin on is that you seem to gravitationally attract the bumsters mentioned earlier. By bumsters I don't mean specifically dangerous or creepy people as the term would suggest here (although they are occassionally creepy) , but rather beggars and other people who want you to buy either goods or services. These bumsters magically appear pretty much everywhere you go, and if you don't want a random native person telling you where to go or what to do, you have to be very firm and occasionally rude to get rid of them. Some of them are okay and if you just politely say no they will leave you alone, but the majority of them don't leave you alone until you resort to rudeness or running away...and even then you have to run fast...
Considering these bumsters and their part in Gambian society: I would have to guess that the getting rid of them would be rather difficult. The problem is really an economic one (not very surprisingly, all the worst problems are). These people see all the rich tourists and feel that they have a right to some of their money. There is a limited number of ways to get tourists to buy things off of you, so the pushiest people usually sell the most of whatever they are selling. This basically means that anyone nice enough to leave when you tell them no don't actually sell enough stuff to make it economically feasible for them to keep selling to tourists. So they go back and take the more stable and limited financial possibilities of being a tailor or a maid, or somesuch.
So these supremely annoying bumsters are obviously a self-propelling problem, and the government doesn't really want to get rid of them since they probably do pull more money out of the tourists than they would spend normally. Which means that bumsters and toubabs (the bumsters target the toubabs, if I didn't make that clear) are probably the most defining thing of the Gambia--which is sad really, but economics are a powerful thing.
I don't know how economics explain the toubab thing though...
So, whether this is good or bad, (and its probably bad) the first thing that jumps into my mind when I think of Africa, and African pictures, actually, is the presence of 'bumsters.' One of the most obvious things about being in Africa is the fact that you, as visitors, are different. And this difference is the color of your skin, so its not like you can fake it and blend in, really. This means that you are treated differently in a couple of ways...the first and most obvious is the fact that the Gambian peoples teach their children to yell 'toubab' at any passing white person. The good thing is that this word just means 'foreigner' and really doesn't seem to have a bad connotation to the Gambians. The bad thing is that it is very wierd to have people yell 'foreigner!' at you randomly. The only good thing was that this was mostly yelled by children, who are cute, so you can more easily ignore it/not get offended.
The second and more annoying thing that happens when you walk around with white skin on is that you seem to gravitationally attract the bumsters mentioned earlier. By bumsters I don't mean specifically dangerous or creepy people as the term would suggest here (although they are occassionally creepy) , but rather beggars and other people who want you to buy either goods or services. These bumsters magically appear pretty much everywhere you go, and if you don't want a random native person telling you where to go or what to do, you have to be very firm and occasionally rude to get rid of them. Some of them are okay and if you just politely say no they will leave you alone, but the majority of them don't leave you alone until you resort to rudeness or running away...and even then you have to run fast...
Considering these bumsters and their part in Gambian society: I would have to guess that the getting rid of them would be rather difficult. The problem is really an economic one (not very surprisingly, all the worst problems are). These people see all the rich tourists and feel that they have a right to some of their money. There is a limited number of ways to get tourists to buy things off of you, so the pushiest people usually sell the most of whatever they are selling. This basically means that anyone nice enough to leave when you tell them no don't actually sell enough stuff to make it economically feasible for them to keep selling to tourists. So they go back and take the more stable and limited financial possibilities of being a tailor or a maid, or somesuch.
So these supremely annoying bumsters are obviously a self-propelling problem, and the government doesn't really want to get rid of them since they probably do pull more money out of the tourists than they would spend normally. Which means that bumsters and toubabs (the bumsters target the toubabs, if I didn't make that clear) are probably the most defining thing of the Gambia--which is sad really, but economics are a powerful thing.
I don't know how economics explain the toubab thing though...
Why do we love to sleep so much?
So I was taking an afternoon nap today, and my roommate woke me up to say that dinner was ready (she was making Runza casserole, it was delicious) and as I was trying to get my brain out of dream mode it occurred to me that there is a curious (and perhaps obvious) connection between the activities that we find enjoyable and the basic human needs that we all have...and that same connection goes further to embody at least three of the cardinal sins. Basically (haha), humans naturally want to eat, sleep, and have sex. These 3 activities are all needed to survive personally and/or for the survival of the species as a whole.
What's fascinating then is how we don't such do these activities out of some sort of biologically need (at least most of the time). I know for me its a daily struggle not to just keep eating because food is so enjoyable or two keep sleeping because of the feeling of relaxing so completely. And there are definitely people who cannot make it through a day without a sexual encounter of some kind.
On the other hand animals, at least the commonly termed 'wild' animals, do not seem to find this pleasure in the way we do. Domesticated animals do seem to find pleasure in food and sleep, but they do not take eating to the depths that we do, mostly because they have no method of cooking. There are animals (ex. Bonobos) who obviously find sex pleasurable, and even use it in their 'forgiveness' rituals, but that is definitely not very widespread.
So this human difference between some animal instinct for the good of our species and our enjoyment of these activities that apparently goes beyond what many animals experience seems to be why these activities all correspond to one of the seven 'deadly' sins. Realistically, that list is a bit strange since there is actually no reference in the bible to a list of 'deadly' sins. All of these sins are listed in the bible, in different areas of Proverbs and Galatians, but God never actually said that there are a limited number of 'deadly' sins or gave some sort of definitive list. It is my understanding that any sin no matter how apparently small is enough for you to need forgiveness for. However these 'deadly' sins translate to God's Word, three of the cardinal sins are lust, gluttony, and sloth. Obviously these God-given gifts, which he made more than just biological functions in us humans, are easy targets for the enemy to twist. And probably because of the biological basis for these sins, these are particularly hard to get out of. You cannot just abstain from sleep or food, especially, for more than short periods of time.
Whatever the connection, I will probably still love to sleep...and will also be happy that my roommate can still wake me up.
What's fascinating then is how we don't such do these activities out of some sort of biologically need (at least most of the time). I know for me its a daily struggle not to just keep eating because food is so enjoyable or two keep sleeping because of the feeling of relaxing so completely. And there are definitely people who cannot make it through a day without a sexual encounter of some kind.
On the other hand animals, at least the commonly termed 'wild' animals, do not seem to find this pleasure in the way we do. Domesticated animals do seem to find pleasure in food and sleep, but they do not take eating to the depths that we do, mostly because they have no method of cooking. There are animals (ex. Bonobos) who obviously find sex pleasurable, and even use it in their 'forgiveness' rituals, but that is definitely not very widespread.
So this human difference between some animal instinct for the good of our species and our enjoyment of these activities that apparently goes beyond what many animals experience seems to be why these activities all correspond to one of the seven 'deadly' sins. Realistically, that list is a bit strange since there is actually no reference in the bible to a list of 'deadly' sins. All of these sins are listed in the bible, in different areas of Proverbs and Galatians, but God never actually said that there are a limited number of 'deadly' sins or gave some sort of definitive list. It is my understanding that any sin no matter how apparently small is enough for you to need forgiveness for. However these 'deadly' sins translate to God's Word, three of the cardinal sins are lust, gluttony, and sloth. Obviously these God-given gifts, which he made more than just biological functions in us humans, are easy targets for the enemy to twist. And probably because of the biological basis for these sins, these are particularly hard to get out of. You cannot just abstain from sleep or food, especially, for more than short periods of time.
Whatever the connection, I will probably still love to sleep...and will also be happy that my roommate can still wake me up.
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