new age raves

When i gave money to NPR this year, i got signed up for a subscription of Newsweek. At first, this seemed rather odd to me but i have to admit that reading it over my cereal tends to make me smile.

The headline this week is about gay marriage in light of the fantabulous court decisions last week. But in the midst of it, there was an interesting article on “new age raves.” I guess you could say that i’m a part of that “new age rave” culture (albeit the term weirds me out) cause i still do yoga before dancing and view many of my dance nights as a process of reconnecting with myself spiritually, usually without drugs (no alcohol or caffeine as well). I have to wonder if this kind of press will relieve some of the hostility that people have towards dancing culture. Perhaps one day police in northern California will realize that parties with electronic music do not mean that 16 year old kids on ecstasy will show up. ::sigh::

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American Airlines censoring?

Normally, i love American Airlines. In fact, they’ve been my primary airline for two years now. Of course, a message in my mailbox makes me reconsider that:

My niece and two of her friends saw the Vagina Monalogues this year at Berkeley California and became empowered, bought Pussy Power T-Shirts with the name, date and location of the play on the back of them.

Just a couple of weeks ago these three and a friend were on an American airlines trip to Hawaii. Three of the four young women were wearing their T-shirts from the play. The stewardesses would not serve them because of the T-shirts. NO water, drinks, food, meals, head-sets for the movie, nothing. The girls tried to explain but the women stewardesses would not listen. Their friend who had not seen the play and didn’t have a T-shirt was served. Other women in the area gave them some drinks, rented head-sets for them etc.

I was outraged at this. Is their anyone whom they can contact to help them with this? Also on the return trip from Hawaii, the exact same crew served them everything as they were wearing their new Hawaii shirts and garb.

Sincerely,
Margaret Garcia

The young women are more then willing to talk to someone about this. Their travel agent is upset and has contacted American Airlines but to no avail yet.

It’s frustrating that in a big corporate world, i couldn’t even fathom who they should contact to express their outrage and frustration.

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trans-friendly bush??

Why do i firmly believe that there’s no way that this really happened:

President Bush seems pretty unfazed by different orientations. At his recent Yale reunion, among the classmates he greeted at the White House was one Yalie who had changed from a man to a woman.

According to news reports, the president did not blink and warmly greeted the alum, saying: “Now you’ve come back as yourself.”

Continue reading →

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drugs and math

A friend of mine forwarded me an interesting quote from Paul Hoffman’s biography on Paul Erdos: “The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth”

Like all of Erdos’s friends, Graham was concerned about his drug-taking. In 1979, Graham bet Erdos $500 that he couldn’t stop taking amphetamines for a month. Erdos accepted the challenge, and went cold turkey for thirty days. After Graham paid up–and wrote the $500 off as a business expense–Erdos said, “You’ve showed me I’m not an addict. But I didn’t get any work done. I’d get up in the morning and stare at a blank piece of paper. I’d have no ideas, just like an ordinary person. You’ve set mathematics back a month.” He promptly resumed taking pills, and mathematics was the better for it.

For those who are not familiar with Erds, he produced a wide variety of theories on mathematics (number theory, combinatorics, etc.). Of course, he’s also a pop culture reference for those interested in social networks. Erdos numbers are effectively the degree in which one is removed from collaborating with Erdos on papers. [Think Kevin Bacon game for mathematicians.]

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