Och, me aching buttocks...

One of the nifty things that we picked up over the July Fourth weekend was a new commuter backpack, something I could use when riding my bicycle to and from work. It is a very silly backpack, full of small pockets with labels like "USB port," "Laptop Vent," "Mouse," "PDA," "Cell Phone," "Automotive Adapter," "MP3 Player," "CD Player," "Spare battery," "Power Cords," "USB Cords," and the like. But it seems to be robust enough that it'll carry two notebooks, a textbook, the laptop, lunch, and spare clothes for the office.

So, with a new bicycle and a new backpack, I was obligated to try it out. My chosen ride was a simple one: from the house to the Park & Ride, about a mile and a half, and then from the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) to my office, about two and a half miles. An estimate shows that doing this twice a day (to and from work) on Seattle's hilly terrain will burn about 800 calories a day, which is my current exercise target, especially if I can do this 3-4 times a week.

The ride to the Park & Ride was okay yesterday. I'm in much better shape than I thought; I did the ride without much effort, despite Burien being significantly higher than Normandy Park and so most of my ride is uphill. The same is true going from SAM which is almost at sea level, up over Market Hill then down again to the waterfront at Elliot, then uphill to Lower Queen Anne.

Riding home yesterday sucked, though. It was wet and rainy, true Seattle weather, and they won't let me load my bicycle onto the bus in the downtown free-ride zone, so I have to ride to the other end of the zone-- at which point the bus is full and I can't sit down and write. Grr. By the time I had gotten onto the bus I was soaked through.

Today's ride into town was a little harder-- my butt's not used to the narrow seat yet, especially since this one has that ridge in the middle that's supposed to allow blood flow through the groin region and prevent injury to the genitals. But other than that there were no surprises. Well, two-- I couldn't find my bus pass this morning, and I forgot a belt for my pants. Things to get used to when doing this routinely. I also have to find a better way to package my radio. And now I sit at the front of the bus, so I can make sure nobody walks off with my bike; the fellow I sat next to clutched his faux camoflage backpack tightly and acted as if I were about to go postal any second. Very strange.

I hate science reporting

Okay, so why is it that every report about Cassini starts with one of the following:

"The 3.3 billion dollar space probe Cassini..."

"About the size of a bus, the nuclear-powered space probe Cassini..."

Does it really matter, now, that Cassini cost that much money, or that it has a nuclear power source? I suppose it does, but it's not really the big first thing when talking about space probes now, is it? Why do they have to put that in the first paragraph, often the first sentence?

Is it that they're easy targets, simple fnords ("your tax money", "nuclear power") that the writer can hang a story off of, whereas details of the hydrocarbon-rich oceans and organic molecule-laden clouds don't resonate with a scientifically illiterate population?

Went to Third Place

I think the salmon spread I had on my bagel this morning wasn't the best in the world... Urgle.

Went to Third Place books last night for the weekly north-end polyamory get-together. And while I have to admit that there are a lot of very cool and froody people there, poly "get togethers" sometimes attract folks who bother me...

... enough to make me wonder if I belong there. I mean, am I a freak? Do I look like one, act like one? Just kinda wondering if maybe I go to these subcultures because I'm the strange one, the one who makes other people uncomfortable.

"You're so vain..."

So, I was listening to this woman the other day, a woman who I usually respect for her opinions and her experience, and she went on a tear about current standards of beauty, specifically the way porn stars shave their pubic hair and the way this fashion has trickled down so that "ordinary" women are expected to shave their pubes. She went off on how this was somehow the logical extension of the neoteny (look it up, I had to) and creeping pedophilia that was rampant in our culture.

And it suddenly occurred to me. She wasn't really out to "protect the children," or "protect women," or whatever. What she was really saying, over and over, was "The standards of beauty don't include me, and I feel left out. I'm a victim!" And in our current culture, claiming to be a victim, and pointing out why other people are victims, is a very effective technique.

When I realized this, my reaction to her was "tough." Standards of beauty wiggle around a very common pair of qualities: youth and health. We might feel other things for people with other qualities but, y'know, if the standards of beauty don't include you, there isn't much you can do about it. And claiming we shouldn't have standards of beauty at all, or that they're "unfair," just sucks the life out of any appreciation for beauty in the first place.