Wine Tasting

Spring barrel tasting last weekend in Yakima Valley, WA.
Weekend tasting pass = $25. Rolling tipsy with 10 winos and 1 sober driver = priceless.

Deano's

A Seattle institution will soon be gone forever.
Can't say I'm too torn up about it.

draping

Draping I at New York Fashion Academy, ironically nowhere near New York. Yet oh so much fun.

My new favorite Southern aphorism

I grew up in Texas, yet I somehow seem to have missed out on most of the aphorisms of the South... I am so delighted to have found a new favorite:

"Busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest."

Now that is busy.

Shopaholicism

I've been inspired to post here again! It's probably just that I have more free time on my hands now and that procrastination is always a big part of my life.

I recently read a book called Not Buying It, and I've been thinking a lot about our capitalist consumer culture here in the USA. I could go on about this for hours, but it turns out I actually hate writing down my thoughts. SO laborious...

I'll just say that 1.) I totally agree that consumerism is completely out of control, and that we must learn to value something more... valuable, and 2.) I had to unsubscribe myself from J Crew, Urban Outfitters, and Sephora, because I have a bonafide shopping problem. My post-graduate salary and school debt do not allow me to shop, yet I do so anyway. Desperate times call for desperate measures I suppose.

anxiety & paranoia

I guess social psychologists are a paranoid bunch. This book review was recently posted on a listserv I subscribe to:

"We've seen this story before: The Pentagon takes an interest in a rapidly changing area of scientific knowledge, and the world is forever changed. And not for the better....

According to Jonathan Moreno's fascinating and frightening new book, Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense (Dana Press 2006), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been funding research in the following areas:

• Mind-machine interfaces ("neural prosthetics") that will enable pilots and soldiers to control high-tech weapons by thought alone.
• "Living robots" whose movements could be controlled via brain implants. This technology has already been tested successfully on "roborats" and could lead to animals remotely directed for mine clearance, or even to remotely controlled soldiers.
• "Cognitive feedback helmets" that allow remote monitoring of soldiers' mental state.
• MRI technologies ("brain fingerprinting") for use in interrogation or airport screening for terrorists. Quite apart from questions about their error rate, such technologies would raise the issue of whether involuntary brain scans violate the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
• Pulse weapons or other neurodisruptors that play havoc with enemy soldiers' thought processes.
• "Neuroweapons" that use biological agents to excite the release of neurotoxins. (The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention bans the stockpiling of such weapons for offensive purposes, but not "defensive" research into their mechanisms of action.)
• New drugs that would enable soldiers to go without sleep for days, to excise traumatic memories, to suppress fear, or to repress psychological inhibitions against killing."

I know the government wishes they could use mind control, but come on now. The only experiments I know of show that you can play a game of Pong by "using your mind." As far as I know, this involves being hooked up to an MRI machine, and you control the paddle by activating positive and negative emotions. Let me know when MRI gets portable enough for the battlefield, and when the controls get a lot less simplistic.

Well, I guess that's what these lovely researchers working for the government are doing, perhaps. (???) My guess though, is that Mr. Moreno's interpretations of the research projects are a bit of a stretch.

I suppose I could go and find out for myself - maybe some other day when I have more time to kill. Dissertation calls.

I wonder what the other 2/3 is?

So I took the Texas quiz, and it has confirmed my suspicions:

Donna is 32% Texas

You're as welcome in Texas as a skunk at a lawn party.

How Texas Are You?