Why I don't accept your reasons for why you're not voting

"One vote doesn't matter."
People who use this excuse do not actually believe it. Because this is based on one of two scenarios:

... the idea that your preferred party or measures are likely to pass, despite you staying home on your couch-- meaning that you are putting the responsibility for your interests off onto other people who decided to actually get up off their couches;

...or the idea that your preferred party of measures are unlikely to pass, whether you get off your couch or not-- meaning that you are willing to compromise your interests to those of the opposing view, just because they do have the energy to get up off their couches.

In short, this excuse is just plain laziness. Stop asking other people to speak for you. Get up off your butt. You have a voice. Go use it.


"The electoral college means my vote doesn't matter."

Again, do something about it. Sitting at home whining will get you nowhere. The most perfunctory of internet searches brings you to this website, where you can learn about measures to reform the voting system used for presidential elections, and even see which legislators from your state support the National Popular Vote bill (which I'll note I really know nothing about, as this isn't one of the issues I'm passionately concerned about, so I can neither endorse nor oppose it-- my point is, if this is actually something you are concerned about, and not just making lazy excuses, then learn about what you can do to change things. This part doesn't even require getting off your butt!)

In other words, if you care about the electoral college, elect people who can work to change it for you. ('Cause remember how all your congress members, state representatives, governor, mayor, school board, city council members, local and state resolutions, etc., are not elected via the electoral college? Yeah. So stop with the excuse.)

Also, I realize that one of the four instances in the history of the United States when the electoral college winner did not actually win the popular vote, happened to have occurred in recent memory, and thus has particularly memorable trauma for some. But the other three all happened over 120 years ago. So stop making excuses. You're doing more harm by not voting than the electoral college has ever done to you.


"The two-party system doesn't work." (or) "I support ___________ party, but they'll never win a major national election."(or) "I don't prefer either of the major party candidates, but I don't want to 'waste' my vote." (etc.)

Ten or fifteen years ago I learned about this thing called Instant Runoff Voting. It's really quite simple once you get how it works (that last link has a nice animation that walks you through it). This should be a bigger part of this blog post, because I remember how stunned and delighted I was when I learned there actually is an alternative to being stuck with only two options. But it pretty much sells itself.

The point is, just like regarding the electoral college... use your voice to get systems like this implemented! There's even a handy list for you of politicians and organizations that support IRV. And IRV is already currently used in a number of localities, so it is possible to get this ball rolling.


"I don't really care."

First off all, I will censor what I would actually like to say to you, and leave it at this, instead:

People all over the world are fighting for this right. They are starting revolutions, taking life-threatening risks to defy dictatorships, religious authorities or violently-enforced gender, race or class lines, or in some cases doing whatever they can to get into this country. When given the right, they vote despite tremendous hardship and obstacles to doing so. The right you are squandering was (and still is) hard-fought for you and much-longed-for by so many others. So stop being a selfish little shit. (Censoring = done.)

Secondly, you actually do care. I will have to listen to you complain about your child's school district, criticize this or that foreign policy, whine about city laws and every other thing you had a say in. Now, this is ok (to a degree, of course) if you actually voted, and the people or policies you supported did not happen to win. (Though even then, your voice doesn't end. Write those people! Call their office! Stage a rally! Even if you didn't vote for them, they still represent you.) But if you decided to just sit this one out, you get zero complaining rights. ZERO.


"It's too much of a hassle."

Voting in America has never been easier. You can vote in person. You can vote by mail-in ballot (you only have to get off your couch for a minute for this one!) You can even vote early. I'm guessing you somehow find time to go shopping, or play a video game, or go to the bar, or out to eat, or to a movie, or on Pinterest... you get the idea. You can vote. If these people can manage it, I'm pretty sure you can, too.

People waiting in line to vote in the 1994 South African elections. 

"I'm not registered to vote."

Ok, well this one might actually be a bit of an obstacle for you in the next couple weeks. But now's your chance. Don't wait till the next election rolls around in your area, and you once again realize you didn't get registered in time. Do it right now. Not next month. Not tomorrow. Not later this evening. Right this minute.

Happy voting! :)

30 before 30!

The list is finalized! It is what it is. I fairly quickly went from not having enough things that I could come up with, to having too many. Basically I went looking for the person's list who inspired this project, only to get linked back to the blogs that inspired her 30 before 30 project, only to read comments on that blog and links people left to other such lists, with many more ideas. You get the idea. Soon I was left with more ideas (and mostly things I'd already wanted to do, not just getting entire concepts from other people, I mean) than I had room on the list for. Fortunately, I also in this process I discovered the Day Zero Project, so I now have a lengthy list of short-term goals and longer-term dreams to keep me going in addition to these 30 I'll be focusing on for now.

Anyhoo... without further ado (and in no special order), here they be:

1. Take part in a flash mob. Totally didn't plan this one, but did one with my 8th grade campers during the second week of Summer Safari back in June!

2. Memorize Psalm 104 all the way.

3. Find out the answers to all the questions I’d jotted down in my Bible, while reading it all the way through. (The factual ones, I mean. Not trying to answer all the deep questions of theology, in the next year.)

4. Apply to graduate school. (And hopefully, get in!) This one is totally done. Though I forget the date. But by early March, for sure, I've had my first acceptance!

5. Go on a blind date. (I’ll need friends’ help for this one, somebody set it up! J) (For the record, this one was on the list before my mom suggested it.)

6. Dye my hair some color that is not usual for me. Calling this one done. It's been a long time since I was actually a brunette.

7. Visit a National Park I have not been to before.

8. Use a chainsaw.

9. Finish the quilt I started forever ago. (No, seriously. It’s been years. I keep forgetting about it for many months at a time.) 

10. Complete a 10K (note that I did not say I have to be running for all of it).

11. Completely go through all my closets (clothes, storage… ok, that’s the only 2 kinds). Leave them much emptier when I am finished. Done! And this was not necessarily a given with moving, though knowing that I would be made this an easy one to include in the list... but yeah, there was lots of weeding out and trips to Goodwill before I loaded up to move what was worth it, all the way across the country. :)

12. Throw a surprise party for someone.

13. Stay up all night in the woods.

14. Fire a gun.

15. Karaoke. (For the record—before any of my friends try to hold me to their interpretation of this one—I am entirely planning on this not being by myself. So there, friends! You’re gonna get dragged into this one, right with me! :) Completed, 03/15/13-- though I had no idea that would be the case, when the day began-- Jes and Cathy are super awesome friends for helping me accomplish this one!!  

16. Learn a magic trick (card tricks count). (Also, I would consider “learn a yo-yo trick” to be a suitable substitute for this one.)

17. Go skinny dipping.

18. Learn to knit or crochet (gotta have something to do when I’m old, right? ;)

19. Try brussels sprouts. Completed, 11/02/2012

20. Host a dinner party for friends.

21. Drag a friend to my church. (Well, if they walk in willingly, that is of course fine, but I’m covering all bases. Also, I realize just one sounds like not much at all, but as most of my friends in Colorado are from my church, it actually seems a tad daunting to me.)

22. Learn to identify all the countries on a map/globe. Workin' on it. It's the Balkans that get me.

23. Be able to do 10 pushups. (This also may sound like aiming low. But seeing as I can currently not—nor even in my life have I been able to, I don’t think—do even one, I think this is perfectly reasonable.)

24. Speak in front of people in some sort of situation that scares me. (That caveat is included because I am actually quite fine speaking in front of people in a great many situations. I’m not entirely sure where I would find a situation that fits the bill for this one, where it would make sense for me to be saying something in front of them. But basically, this means if such a situation arises, I can’t very well say no! J) This one might actually be difficult to mark as done... just presented to a workshop of 75 eighth graders + their teachers/chaperones + a half-dozen volunteers + a few co-workers the other day. So, you'll have to top that to even start making me nervous.

25. Leave nice notes for people (either that I know, or don’t know, e.g. in a public place). Completed, 10/31/12

26. Eat 100% vegan for a week. (Because seriously, I’ve been vegetarian for over 13 years. Maybe it’s about time, already?)

27. Send in something to PostSecret or Found.

28. Memorize a favorite poem. (http://www.bartleby.com/119/21.html)

29. Donate blood (and don’t pass out. Preferably). (This will also tell me my blood type, which I have always wanted to know. I don’t know why I care so much, but I’m intrigued.) Attempted, 10/31/12 and 11/20/12

30. Do a 30-day photo challenge. (My mom did something like this last year, but for the entire year, taking a photo every day—well, usually more than that, but choosing one favorite from the day—and posting them to facebook. I’m opting for a shorter version. J) Completed, November 2012

(Links to progress updates now available right from here, by clicking the underlined item numbers!)

30 before 30... a work in progress

So I've been trying to compile a list of 30 things I want to do before my next birthday (which is now barely 11 1/2 months away)... but I'm only up to 14 so far! I need help. I know that there are other things I've long been wanting to do, or should do, but I can't think of them. Further suggestions welcome!

The list thus far (in truly no particular order, other than perhaps the order they were suggested to me/I thought of them):

- Take part in a flash mob.

- Memorize Psalm 104 all the way.

- Find out the answers to all the questions I’d jotted down in my Bible, while reading it all the way through. (The factual ones, I mean. Not trying to answer all the deep questions of theology, in the next year.)

- Apply to graduate school. (And hopefully, get in!)

- Go on a blind date. (For the record, this one was on the list before my mom suggested it.)

- Dye my hair some color that is not usual for me.

- Visit a National Park I have not been to before.

- Use a chainsaw.

- Finish the quilt I started forever ago. (No, seriously. It’s been years. I keep forgetting about it for many months/a year at a time.)

- Complete a 10K (note that I did not say I have to be running for all of it).

- Completely go through all my closets (clothes, storage… ok, that’s the only 2 kinds). Leave them much emptier when I am finished.

- Throw a surprise party for someone.

- Stay up all night in the woods.

- Fire a gun.

How I fell in love with the scripture

A little over two years ago, someone suggested I read Acts (this was in a conversation, not just a random person walking up to me on the street, out of the blue. Though if that had happened, it would have been so completely random that I might have listened anyway). So I did... and then I just kept going. I decided I wanted to read through the entire Bible, because while I'd grown up having Bible class in school and memory verses and Sunday school classes, there was much of it I hadn't actually necessarily read. So I kept going through the New Testament, and started reading the Old Testament sort of in tandem with it (to do this without running out of New Testament much sooner, you have to sort of pace yourself on it). I left the Gospels for last. I didn't want to set myself a goal (like, "I'm going to read the entire Bible in one year!") because I didn't want to rush myself, as some parts I definitely took more time to process, while some page-turners I couldn't put down. And so, last Monday night, I finished.

I should say I'd recently gotten a new Bible, too, maybe a few months prior to starting this all-the-way-through deal. This is important. You have to have a good Bible. Prior to that I'd had the giant, bulky hardcover student study Bible that my school had given everyone for 8th grade graduation... and somewhere a really fat but tiny-print, slightly battered paperback (which I don't know where it actually is in my house, come to think of it). But nothing that was easy to take with me or curl up with. So I did some shopping around and ordered myself a pretty light-blue faux-leather Bible. It's not too thick, nor too big, nor too heavy. It's easy to grab and take with me or read, wherever I am, but still big enough for me to underline things and scribble notes or questions in the margins. And it doesn't have any commentary or notes in it, which I need if I'm to focus, because I could never resist stopping to read all the side notes and background tidbits in the study Bible.

Some parts were familiar; other stories completely foreign to me (it's interesting to see what parts of the Bible no one chooses to teach or preach about). Some parts were unexpectedly rich-- my friends are still bemused at just how fond I was of Leviticus and Numbers-- while others, took some serious effort to get through. Like Kings and Chronicles. I am so over reading in Kings "for more details, see Chronicles" and in Chronicles "for more details, see Kings" while both are basically the exact same story. And all those kings... I remember in elementary or middle school Bible classes, spending so much time being forced to memorize the orders of the kings of Judah and Israel. And why? To this day, I can comprehend no point in it. Understanding the history of Israel? Sure. But keeping track of the reigns of Jeroboam and Jehoram and Jehoash and Jehoahaz (I could not make this stuff up) never really did anything to bolster my faith. 

At least when they tried to teach us the books of the Old Testament via rap, it served some purpose in being able to find your way around the Bible. But a lot of what I was taught in Christian schooling seems now like a lot of pointless busywork which served little purpose other than to avoid having to talk about any real questions of faith. Outside of the Gospels, the New Testament was left completely untouched until high school (and by then, we did less in-depth Bible study and more "how to figure out what you believe" type of stuff).

I discovered parts that were quite (and in significant ways) different than the "Bible story" versions I was taught of them. And I don't just mean in ways that sanitize it for children, like leaving out the part in the flood story where it states quite clearly several times over that everyone else died. I mean theologically important differences. Not that I have a particular example to give you at the moment. But if I look back through, I'd find some. With slightly indignant comments in the margins.

And in many places, I found my perception of books or stories therein had been colored by common opinion, which was not necessarily an accurate portrayal of what I found on the pages. For example, I think Job's friends get a bad rap. Everyone talks smack about his friends, because they've heard everyone else talk smack about his friends, but if you actually read their exchanges, they sound a lot like the church. (And I don't think wrongly so. They're really supportive. They ask Job if he's gone against God and deserved the fallout in his life, and talk about how people can never measure up as righteous before God. I don't think they're necessarily too off track in their strategy, they just happen to have been wrong in his particular instance. Which opportunity for misjudgment is why maybe we, as the church today, should take care when making those kind of statements to each other, too. Sin has its natural fallouts, but so does just being alive.)

And Leviticus... well most of the Pentateuch, really, people tend to skip over, once they get past the stories they know from their kiddie books. They assume it is dry, boring. Now, I've never read any of those books about the Bible being love letters, and always thought it a little odd that it referred to all the books-- like, Leviticus is a love letter? Or for that matter, Jeremiah-- what even happens in Jeremiah, anyway? Some other little random prophets with names that were probably hard for them to learn to write, as children? But the law was all these guidelines that not only helped keep God's people in line with his best plan for them, but also to do their best to stay right with God, before our savior arrived. We get to see that alternate reality, the life we would've had to try and live up to (not as a response out of love, but out of having no other choice in the matter) if not for Jesus. And Jeremiah (and others of the prophets' books) is chapter after chapter of God just begging, positively pleading with his people to come back to him, telling how much he loves them and they belong with them, and giving them just chance after chance after chance to come back to him. So, I buy that analogy.

Some particular bits of the Bible I discovered bring me joy beyond words. Psalm 104, for instance? I cannot read aloud without giggling. It's my new favorite. (Though my previous favorite is still a favorite, as well. And the first part of it, anyway, was actually a memory verse at school, back in second grade. See, I'm not saying they got everything wrong.) 

Some parts utterly baffled me. I think it's a cultural thing. I mean, for the most part they were sections that just seemed to be completely random thoughts in the middle of an unrelated section. Or to have some significance, of which I have not a clue. Like in the middle of the story, someone suddenly dons a blue turban or something, and clearly I'm supposed to get something about why that detail was included. Thus, this comment (above) is a common one in the margins of my Bible by now. (Oftentimes with more numerous question marks following it.)  So now I get to go back through, and look up the answers to all those questions and points of clarification or confusion, that I had noted in the margins.

Also, now that I'm done, I've started The Case For Christ (not because it necessarily had to follow, because I'd never actually thought of it previously, or even known anything about the book before picking it up; just that I now have an additional amount of reading time available to me, and because I happened to pick it up the other day at Goodwill-- along with several other books, I seriously am not to be allowed into the used book section there, as I cannot resist books that are measured in cents rather than dollars). I'm only about 50 pages in so far, but it's already sort of blowing my mind (like, did you know that Paul's letters were written before the Gospels were written down? That one was so surprising to me, it made me stop and stare at the wall for several minutes. I want to finish that book, then re-read the entire Bible again in light of the more things I know about it!) It's already helping me make more sense of the Gospels, which very unexpectedly were among the longest to get through. I'd had only the Gospels remaining, since maybe May or so. I don't know if it's because they were fairly familiar to me already, or because I was reading the parallel parts of the four together, but it just took a long while to make it through them. And with some confusion over the minor parts that differ between them. And surprise over how briefly the entire crucifixion is covered, and how little is actually written (in the Gospels themselves) about Christ after the resurrection. But I've already had some of my questions answered via that book, so it was good timing, after all.

But any parts that confused me were few, relatively speaking. And the parts I've mentioned here that I love are just a few among many, many, many... see, that's the point of all this, really, only there aren't the right words for it. The parts that are the heart of the love letter, I cannot adequately describe, either for what they are or for what they meant to me. The story cannot be understood in just oft-quoted verses without context, snippets and stories from here and there. The true magic of it is in its whole, in the big picture (or the biggest we as humans can understand, anyhow). You just have to read this book. 

(Also: if you don't have a good one and you want one, I will get you one. I'm serious. If 300 people e-mail me and say they need a Bible, I will figure out a way to make it happen.)

Quick and gratuitously cute: the puppy cam

There's no real point to this post. I just couldn't help taking some screenshots from the puppy cam, while I had it open on my computer at a couple points today, while catching up on e-mails or studying a bit.

So here it is: several reasons to watch the puppy cam (if you haven't already discovered it for yourself). In no particular order:


1. Pitbull puppies are cute.

2. Puppies are cute when they are sleepy and wiggly.

3. Puppies are cute when they are sleepy and wiggly and next to each other.

4. Puppies are cute when they are asleep. (And cute when they are asleep, are picked up to be put on a blanket, and still are asleep.)

5. Puppies are cute when they are asleep, stacked on top of each other.

6. Puppies are cute when they are asleep, all piled on top of each other.

7. Puppies are cute when they fall asleep at their dinner.

On hemoglobin (sort of)

This evening in the first session of my microbiology class, the professor was talking about RNA and whether or not viruses are alive (or something-- I don't entirely actually recall how this tied in to the topic. But I didn't really mind, because it is awesome).

But anyhow, he read an excerpt from Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene, which was first published in 1976 (and is not about genes that don't know how to share, but rather about a concept of genes as the evolutionary units. Which is not relevant to this story either, but I just didn't want you to be confused as to where we're going with this).

So anyway, Dawkins is an (outspoken) atheist. Which I didn't know for an absolute fact until I came home and Googled him, but was pretty clear from the passage my professor read, as Dawkins seemed to desperately grasp at how to find an explanation for the absolute complexity of the world (he read more than just the paragraph below; you can check it out for yourself, if you want-- the text is pretty easy to find online. This part is from chapter 2).

As the professor read, I wanted to laugh at Dawkin's confused grasping, all the while refusing to accept the one answer that makes it all make sense. But it was this passage that really got me excited:

"Sometimes when atoms meet they link up together in chemical reaction to form molecules, which may be more or less stable.    Such molecules can be very large.    A crystal such as a diamond can be regarded as a single molecule, a proverbially stable one in this case, but also a very simple one since its internal atomic structure is endlessly repeated.    In modern living organisms there are other large molecules which are highly complex, and their complexity shows itself on several levels.    The haemoglobin of our blood is a typical protein molecule.    It is built up from chains of smaller molecules, amino acids, each containing a few dozen atoms arranged in a precise pattern.    In the haemoglobin molecule there are 574 amino acid molecules.    These are arranged in four chains, which twist around each other to form a globular three-dimensional structure of bewildering complexity.    A model of a haemoglobin molecule looks rather like a dense thornbush.    But unlike a real thornbush it is not a haphhazard approximate pattern but a definite invariant structure, identically repeated, with not a twig nor a twist out of place, over six thousand million million million times in an average human body.    The precise thornbush shape of a protein molecule such as haemoglobin is stable in the sense that two chains consisting of the same sequences of amino acids will tend, like two springs, to come to rest in exactly the same three-dimensional coiled pattern.    Haemoglobin thornbushes are springing into their 'preferred' shape in your body at a rate of about four hundred million million per second, and others are being destroyed at the same rate."

(model of a hemoglobin molecule)

400 million million per second. If I understand that correctly, that's 400,000,000,000,000. Either way, I don't really "understand" it. It is incomprehensible to me. Yet it has happened dozens of times since I began just this short paragraph.

Um... whoa.

Anything I can say here just sounds overly simplistic and obvious. So I'll leave it that way:

God. He made it. All of it. All the crazy, complex... everything.

Mr. Dawkins, there is no other explanation that works with the brilliant science you describe. I'm sorry. I hate to be the one to break your bubble. But so it is.



P.S.: I just remembered about this video:

Acceptable ambition

In this society, there are certain life ambitions that are acceptable. Well, not just acceptable, but encouraged, demanded, required to be stated and bragged about, even: the ambition to complete college (or various advanced degrees thereafter); the ambition to enter a career field; the ambition to move up at work; the ambition to start a business, or buy a vacation home, or upgrade to a more reliable or fancier vehicle... the list goes on. If you lack ambition in any of these areas, if you aren't passionate about accomplishing them, or even just not passionate about talking about those goals, you are somehow seen as not participating fully in society-- you are somehow forfeiting your claim on your little share of the American Dream.

But other ambitions are less socially acceptable. For instance, while starting your own business or making partner at the firm are admirable ambitions, saying you want to get married or have a family are much less so. They are seen as misguided at best, desperate at worst.

But, screw it. I want these things.

So why is it less acceptable to say that?

These desires are no less Biblical. Maybe they are more ok to state in the church? But, still... from my observation, they have a similar stigma, just to less degree, perhaps. These desires are just less "cool" by society's standards-- a society in which we are all supposed to be independent, driven, and self-sufficient-- while women are simultaneously denigrated if unable to "get a man."

...That paradox is a whole 'nother can of worms. But it is not the particular one I am pondering today. The one I am pondering today is the one that says it is not only ok, but admirable, to pursue ambitions which may even be to the detriment of others (depending on your business practices, the economic and environmental impact of the homes or vehicles you seek, etc.). But that's another aspect of our society-- the "dog-eat-dog world" ethic, in which those practices are all ok. But seeking love? Not so much.

So maybe somebody needs to start by saying it's ok. If I have to be the first one in the entire world to outright state it (though I don't think, and I'm really hoping, I'm not the very first one), so be it: I want a husband, and a family. I would like to find someone to do life with, before I'm so old that I have to rush to have babies while it's still reasonably healthy to do so. And that has not a thing to do with any fact that I don't have a full life now-- I have school, and an enjoyable job, and really fantastic friends, and am involved in church, and actually really enjoy the freedom that being single allows me at this time. I like decorating my own home and letting the cat crawl up under my neck as I'm watching TV and eating tortilla chips in the evening (more on this general satisfaction with current man-less-ness, probably to come in another post in the near future. But my life being generally awesome does not mean that it is how I wish things to be forever. And that is ok, dammit. Regardless of what anyone else may think of that ambition.