Dear Curiosity Mars Rover:
Thank you.
Thank you for existing and being so cool that I stayed up way past my bedtime watching live internet video of the control room at Jet Propulsion Labs as the team of badass nerds who made you lost years of their lives to the stress of hoping you'd land successfully, then got those years back at the joy of knowing you'd touched down OK, and then gained some years with the excitement of seeing the first pictures of you on ANOTHER FREAKING PLANET OMG WTF BBQ? I mean, you had people on Twitter posting that they'd name a newborn Skycrane if they'd just given birth... well done, robot the size of a minivan, well done. (The last Mars rover had totally put a particular size and shape of interplanetary exploration robot in my head, so I was totally stunned by the full-size model of you at the American Museum of Natural History's Beyond Planet Earth exhibit back in December... yeah, I gotta go back and check that out again before it closes in less than a week... I could go on and on. Anyway.)
Thanks for being so very inspiring, Curiosity, and not just to me and this letter. I finally started writing after I saw today's XKCD comic about you, but Dinosaur Comics pretty much hit it out of the park: A BUNCH OF PEOPLE WHO TASTE LIKE PORK PUT CAR-SIZED ROBOTS ON FRIGGIN' MARS, HOW'S THAT TASTE? I say it tastes like winning.
Thank you for being deliciously good news in the face of a day that also included some jackass shooting up a Sikh temple for reasons officially as yet unknown but which are totally going to be reported as the act of an isolated individual rather than representative of an ethnic group (the shooter was a white guy, members of the unmarked category are allowed to have individual agency instead of standing for "their kind" — at best he's a "bad apple" but I doubt he'll even be labeled as such). Product of a society and culture that tolerates entirely too much hate and racism and access to deadly weapons? Nah, couldn't be. But I digress. Back to something awesome... you.
Thank you for being a use of technology on behalf of everything that's good about people — asking questions, learning, exploring, working together for causes greater than our own little petty selves. Hell, I know it's not exactly like you had a say in the matter, but thank you for your name, which makes me a little weepy as I think about it in terms of everything that's good about my species.
Thanks in advance for whatever you find out there, Curiosity, you state-of-the-stuff mini mobile science lab, you. Thanks again for being just about as real as magic gets.
Just... thanks.
Love,
-Tracy
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
06 August 2012
09 September 2006
37. Internet
Dear Internet,
(or internet, if you agree with what Wired has to say about you; I'm guessing the jury's still out),
You are awesome. I mean that both in the late-20th and early-21st century meaning of "super-cool" as well as in the more old-fashioned "fear-inspiring" kind of way. That said, thank you for helping me keep in touch with friends scattered far and wide, old and new, close and just-this-side-of-acquaintance. I suck at talking on the phone, and it's hard for me to finish paper letters, let alone mail them, and even my emails have a habit of going unfinished for as long as years before getting sent, but thanks to this new-fangled "blogging" that's all the rage, I can (metaphorically) talk to myself in public, or a semi-filtered facsimile thereof, and be (again metaphorically) heard if people are bored enough to (metaphorically) listen in. Also I can read what other people have to say to themselves albeit in this same self-conscious "somebody might look at this" kind of way, and I like to think that as a result we all grow closer as a group, to borrow a phrase from the late, great Bill Hicks ("it's cathartic, it's a spiritual thing"). But I digress, or do I? I like the fact that you make it difficult to determine what, exactly, is a digression. Sure, it's distracting as hell sometimes, but so is life, so whatever.
I seem to be waxing philosophical, to the point of boring myself and wandering off to look at other websites than the one that hosts this and other unanswerable letters of mine, so I'll finish this letter and get to the real point. Internet (if I start sentences with you I need never worry about the capitalization issue because unlike so many of the punk kids using you on MySpace and beyond, I still give a semblance of a crap about grammar), thanks to you and Title 9, I need never shop for bras in normal stores again. For that service alone, I will honor you forever.
Love,
-Tracy
Started and published on 8 September 2006; last updated 9 September 2006. Title abridged 1 December 2011.
(or internet, if you agree with what Wired has to say about you; I'm guessing the jury's still out),
You are awesome. I mean that both in the late-20th and early-21st century meaning of "super-cool" as well as in the more old-fashioned "fear-inspiring" kind of way. That said, thank you for helping me keep in touch with friends scattered far and wide, old and new, close and just-this-side-of-acquaintance. I suck at talking on the phone, and it's hard for me to finish paper letters, let alone mail them, and even my emails have a habit of going unfinished for as long as years before getting sent, but thanks to this new-fangled "blogging" that's all the rage, I can (metaphorically) talk to myself in public, or a semi-filtered facsimile thereof, and be (again metaphorically) heard if people are bored enough to (metaphorically) listen in. Also I can read what other people have to say to themselves albeit in this same self-conscious "somebody might look at this" kind of way, and I like to think that as a result we all grow closer as a group, to borrow a phrase from the late, great Bill Hicks ("it's cathartic, it's a spiritual thing"). But I digress, or do I? I like the fact that you make it difficult to determine what, exactly, is a digression. Sure, it's distracting as hell sometimes, but so is life, so whatever.
I seem to be waxing philosophical, to the point of boring myself and wandering off to look at other websites than the one that hosts this and other unanswerable letters of mine, so I'll finish this letter and get to the real point. Internet (if I start sentences with you I need never worry about the capitalization issue because unlike so many of the punk kids using you on MySpace and beyond, I still give a semblance of a crap about grammar), thanks to you and Title 9, I need never shop for bras in normal stores again. For that service alone, I will honor you forever.
Love,
-Tracy
Started and published on 8 September 2006; last updated 9 September 2006. Title abridged 1 December 2011.
11 May 2006
31. Uterus
My dear uterus,
Thank you for more or less making peace with the new foreign object inside you. I know you've been wondering about it, or at least I've felt you cramping, and I choose to interpret the resultant discomfort as bewilderment and confusion on your part, which is about as good as our communication ever gets. You seem calmer now, and that's great. Please don't go back into uncomfortable spasms just to spite me for writing that; I've left this letter unfinished for over a month because I didn't want to jinx anything by getting too optimistic. Maybe I should have gotten up the courage to write sooner, but I was worried, and also I didn't want to interrupt what seemed like some pretty productive discussions with our mutual friend ibuprofen. Now that it's been a few weeks and a menstrual period since we got what I've been calling our radical new piercing, and as of yesterday the awesome nurse lady at Planned Parenthood says everything looks and feels perfect, I'm finally feeling confident of everything I have to say in this letter.
I'll start with the basics: helpful information. The copper and plastic contraption you feel is called a Paraguard IUD, and it's supposed to keep us from getting pregnant, even if nobody's exactly sure how. I know, that's a little freaky, but so are all the side effects we've experienced with hormonal birth control, and I'd rather talk to you and ibuprofen about cramping than to my head and even more ibuprofen about migraines. Also I'd prefer to make my own mood swings instead of going crazy from drugs for awhile, and as an extra bonus, the Paraguard could be good for as long as ten years, which is pretty freaking sweet. If you hate it too much, I guess we could switch to an IUD with hormones in it, but really if I'm going to go back to messing with my biochemistry I think I'd prefer to use drugs that I can quit myself, without the help of a nice nurse lady.
Speaking of which, wasn't it great to see the nice nurse lady again yesterday? Remember how much it hurt when she gave us the Paraguard piercing last month? Since I sort of doubt you were listening to her at the time, much less understanding, I'll just tell you that she said that cramping then was a bit like a labor contraction, and joked that if I'd thought I didn't want to have a baby before, that pain probably made me more certain. She was ever so right, and I hope that you're coming to agree with me. Meanwhile, I'm still here to help however I can. I don't have a heating pad, but I can always fill my belly with nice warm tea, and sometimes I can persuade one of the cats to sit on my belly and purr. I'm sorry if it was wrong of me to go on a big bike ride when you were still in the first throes of shock, but maybe you'd been freaking out all along and the ibuprofen wore off at an inconvenient time? I owe exercise a thank-you note at the very least, but I could probably turn it into a whole letter without too much trouble. But I digress.
Back to you, uterus. Are we cool? I don't want to jump to conclusions or take you for granted or anything that might send us back into a world of not severe but persistent and annoying pain. Like I said before, I'm here to help. But meanwhile, in a spirit of cautious optimism, I hope you don't mind if I thank you once again for being awesome, as always, in this exciting time.
Love,
-Tracy
Started 5 April 2006, published and last updated 11 May 2006. Formatting edited 8 April 2014.
Thank you for more or less making peace with the new foreign object inside you. I know you've been wondering about it, or at least I've felt you cramping, and I choose to interpret the resultant discomfort as bewilderment and confusion on your part, which is about as good as our communication ever gets. You seem calmer now, and that's great. Please don't go back into uncomfortable spasms just to spite me for writing that; I've left this letter unfinished for over a month because I didn't want to jinx anything by getting too optimistic. Maybe I should have gotten up the courage to write sooner, but I was worried, and also I didn't want to interrupt what seemed like some pretty productive discussions with our mutual friend ibuprofen. Now that it's been a few weeks and a menstrual period since we got what I've been calling our radical new piercing, and as of yesterday the awesome nurse lady at Planned Parenthood says everything looks and feels perfect, I'm finally feeling confident of everything I have to say in this letter.
I'll start with the basics: helpful information. The copper and plastic contraption you feel is called a Paraguard IUD, and it's supposed to keep us from getting pregnant, even if nobody's exactly sure how. I know, that's a little freaky, but so are all the side effects we've experienced with hormonal birth control, and I'd rather talk to you and ibuprofen about cramping than to my head and even more ibuprofen about migraines. Also I'd prefer to make my own mood swings instead of going crazy from drugs for awhile, and as an extra bonus, the Paraguard could be good for as long as ten years, which is pretty freaking sweet. If you hate it too much, I guess we could switch to an IUD with hormones in it, but really if I'm going to go back to messing with my biochemistry I think I'd prefer to use drugs that I can quit myself, without the help of a nice nurse lady.
Speaking of which, wasn't it great to see the nice nurse lady again yesterday? Remember how much it hurt when she gave us the Paraguard piercing last month? Since I sort of doubt you were listening to her at the time, much less understanding, I'll just tell you that she said that cramping then was a bit like a labor contraction, and joked that if I'd thought I didn't want to have a baby before, that pain probably made me more certain. She was ever so right, and I hope that you're coming to agree with me. Meanwhile, I'm still here to help however I can. I don't have a heating pad, but I can always fill my belly with nice warm tea, and sometimes I can persuade one of the cats to sit on my belly and purr. I'm sorry if it was wrong of me to go on a big bike ride when you were still in the first throes of shock, but maybe you'd been freaking out all along and the ibuprofen wore off at an inconvenient time? I owe exercise a thank-you note at the very least, but I could probably turn it into a whole letter without too much trouble. But I digress.
Back to you, uterus. Are we cool? I don't want to jump to conclusions or take you for granted or anything that might send us back into a world of not severe but persistent and annoying pain. Like I said before, I'm here to help. But meanwhile, in a spirit of cautious optimism, I hope you don't mind if I thank you once again for being awesome, as always, in this exciting time.
Love,
-Tracy
Started 5 April 2006, published and last updated 11 May 2006. Formatting edited 8 April 2014.
22 March 2006
29. Fertility Treatments
Dear fertility treatments,
Quite frankly, you give me the heebie-jeebies. Not just because my experiences with hormonal birth control suggest that modern medical science might be even more mystified by my reproductive system than I am, but that's a good place to start. I could go on for longer than even I care to read about how said medical science reflects a culture that's ambivalent at best about women exercising control over their own bodies, but I'll try not to go there too much. After all, you're part of a whole cloud of technologies that for better or worse are changing pretty much everything about reproduction for people who can afford the state of the art, and now that the metaphorical genie's out of the bottle I've got to learn to accept the good as well as the bad, just like everybody else.
Speaking of that cloud of technologies, it occurs to me that you're in many ways the flip side of contraception, of which I am a big fan, and it's an interesting thought, maybe even a useful one. What would it do to discussions of birth control if they addressed the kinds dedicated to causing births as well as preventing them? Intellectually, I'm forced to recognize that true reproductive freedom should include both, even if my emotions aren't quite on board with the idea. Maybe my knee-jerk negative reaction to you isn't all that different from the feelings driving the so-called "pro-life" activists who want to ban contraception as well as abortion, even when it seems painfully obvious to me that the former prevents the latter more effectively than laws or protests or any of a number of things that make me so angry I don't know if I could even write a letter about it. Then again, it's not my goal to impose my beliefs on others — I write letters to abstract concepts instead of people who might answer, and that mostly because it helps me to express and understand my own feelings and opinions, which are so obviously and sarcastically always right. But I digress. I wish I had something clever to say about how I hate that modern medical science inflicts you — and your mirror twin contraception, for that matter — almost exclusively on women. Sadly, I don't see a way around that problem until some badass invents the artificial womb, and I don't have the money to sponsor that research or otherwise help make that kind of thing a higher priority everywhere. Dangit. Also, I really didn't mean for this letter to turn into such a rant about patriarchy in medicine, but it was hard for me to avoid the subject. Sorry about that.
Where was I? Right, getting the "patriarchy in medicine" rant done and over with as quickly as possible, so I could move on to other stuff. Really, even so-called natural reproduction is fraught with dangers and weirdness, so I shouldn't be surprised that the artificial kind is problematic, too. A big reason you're so upsetting to me, of course, is that I can't shake the feeling that there's already enough people in the world, maybe even too many, and it feels like a terrible waste to devote the aforementioned state of the art to making more people instead of learning to get along with everybody who's here already. As always, I'm trying to speak only for myself here, just like I was with all that scary radical feminist stuff in the last paragraph. That said, I can't get behind the idea that my genes are so special that they need passing on, even if a nagging voice in my head screams, "I could shit a better baby!" at the sight of some little darlings I meet. No, I'm not particularly eager to add to the teeming mass of humanity that so often looks to me like the source of all the problems in the world (by which of course I mean my world, because I'm completely self-centered like that). Speaking of those world problems, don't get me started on how you're only available to a small and incredibly privileged segment of the world's population, fertility treatments, and how if everybody consumed resources at their incredibly privileged rate, we wouldn't have a world left or we'd all have starved to death already or something equally dire and irrelevant because in reality we don't all live the same way and there's still a long way to go before we can even say that everybody lives well. See? Don't get me started, or I go off into run-on sentences and useless apocaphilia.
I think it's a good thing that we don't all live the same way, and it's an especially good thing that not everybody thinks like me, or I probably wouldn't have made it to the point of writing all this, for lack of ancestors both close and distant. Furthermore, whether I like it or not, some of the people who think differently than I do are women so determined to have children of their very genetic own that they'll submit to you, fertility treatments, even if just the idea of that is alien and horrifying to me for all the reasons I've described in this letter. Sigh. No matter what else I say on the subject, at least I can hope that you and the aforementioned insane-to-me determination produce people who feel loved and wanted, even if I'm still more concerned about the unloved and unwanted people currently inhabiting the world than with anyone who might potentially come to share it with them someday.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again, fertility treatments. If I ever decide I want to be a parent, it won't be with your help. In fact, given my ambivalence about my own genes, and aforementioned concern for the people who are already here, I might enlist the help of an adoption agency. While using what I've got might be cheaper, if that doesn't work out for any reason I'd rather pay the cost of adopting than the price of technologies I don't trust — especially who knows what risks with my body. Besides, as far as I can tell, kids, like all people, are complicated and expensive no matter what.
Love,
-Tracy
Started 25 January 2006, published 22 March 2006, last updated 24 March 2006. Title abridged 1 December 2011.
Quite frankly, you give me the heebie-jeebies. Not just because my experiences with hormonal birth control suggest that modern medical science might be even more mystified by my reproductive system than I am, but that's a good place to start. I could go on for longer than even I care to read about how said medical science reflects a culture that's ambivalent at best about women exercising control over their own bodies, but I'll try not to go there too much. After all, you're part of a whole cloud of technologies that for better or worse are changing pretty much everything about reproduction for people who can afford the state of the art, and now that the metaphorical genie's out of the bottle I've got to learn to accept the good as well as the bad, just like everybody else.
Speaking of that cloud of technologies, it occurs to me that you're in many ways the flip side of contraception, of which I am a big fan, and it's an interesting thought, maybe even a useful one. What would it do to discussions of birth control if they addressed the kinds dedicated to causing births as well as preventing them? Intellectually, I'm forced to recognize that true reproductive freedom should include both, even if my emotions aren't quite on board with the idea. Maybe my knee-jerk negative reaction to you isn't all that different from the feelings driving the so-called "pro-life" activists who want to ban contraception as well as abortion, even when it seems painfully obvious to me that the former prevents the latter more effectively than laws or protests or any of a number of things that make me so angry I don't know if I could even write a letter about it. Then again, it's not my goal to impose my beliefs on others — I write letters to abstract concepts instead of people who might answer, and that mostly because it helps me to express and understand my own feelings and opinions, which are so obviously and sarcastically always right. But I digress. I wish I had something clever to say about how I hate that modern medical science inflicts you — and your mirror twin contraception, for that matter — almost exclusively on women. Sadly, I don't see a way around that problem until some badass invents the artificial womb, and I don't have the money to sponsor that research or otherwise help make that kind of thing a higher priority everywhere. Dangit. Also, I really didn't mean for this letter to turn into such a rant about patriarchy in medicine, but it was hard for me to avoid the subject. Sorry about that.
Where was I? Right, getting the "patriarchy in medicine" rant done and over with as quickly as possible, so I could move on to other stuff. Really, even so-called natural reproduction is fraught with dangers and weirdness, so I shouldn't be surprised that the artificial kind is problematic, too. A big reason you're so upsetting to me, of course, is that I can't shake the feeling that there's already enough people in the world, maybe even too many, and it feels like a terrible waste to devote the aforementioned state of the art to making more people instead of learning to get along with everybody who's here already. As always, I'm trying to speak only for myself here, just like I was with all that scary radical feminist stuff in the last paragraph. That said, I can't get behind the idea that my genes are so special that they need passing on, even if a nagging voice in my head screams, "I could shit a better baby!" at the sight of some little darlings I meet. No, I'm not particularly eager to add to the teeming mass of humanity that so often looks to me like the source of all the problems in the world (by which of course I mean my world, because I'm completely self-centered like that). Speaking of those world problems, don't get me started on how you're only available to a small and incredibly privileged segment of the world's population, fertility treatments, and how if everybody consumed resources at their incredibly privileged rate, we wouldn't have a world left or we'd all have starved to death already or something equally dire and irrelevant because in reality we don't all live the same way and there's still a long way to go before we can even say that everybody lives well. See? Don't get me started, or I go off into run-on sentences and useless apocaphilia.
I think it's a good thing that we don't all live the same way, and it's an especially good thing that not everybody thinks like me, or I probably wouldn't have made it to the point of writing all this, for lack of ancestors both close and distant. Furthermore, whether I like it or not, some of the people who think differently than I do are women so determined to have children of their very genetic own that they'll submit to you, fertility treatments, even if just the idea of that is alien and horrifying to me for all the reasons I've described in this letter. Sigh. No matter what else I say on the subject, at least I can hope that you and the aforementioned insane-to-me determination produce people who feel loved and wanted, even if I'm still more concerned about the unloved and unwanted people currently inhabiting the world than with anyone who might potentially come to share it with them someday.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again, fertility treatments. If I ever decide I want to be a parent, it won't be with your help. In fact, given my ambivalence about my own genes, and aforementioned concern for the people who are already here, I might enlist the help of an adoption agency. While using what I've got might be cheaper, if that doesn't work out for any reason I'd rather pay the cost of adopting than the price of technologies I don't trust — especially who knows what risks with my body. Besides, as far as I can tell, kids, like all people, are complicated and expensive no matter what.
Love,
-Tracy
Started 25 January 2006, published 22 March 2006, last updated 24 March 2006. Title abridged 1 December 2011.
06 March 2005
14. DMCA
Dear Digital Millenium Copyright Act,
I knew you were a bad law from hanging around with geeks who care deeply about intellectual property and freedom, but it wasn't until recently that I found out exactly how bad you really are.
You see, it turns out you're the reason I can't listen to live internet broadcasts of Vin Scelsa's freeform radio show Idiot's Delight, because Vin's prone to stuff like playing the entire B side of an album when it suits him, which is just too... oh, I give in, it's too free for some people, never mind that it's exactly that freedom that makes it good art, and if you don't think deejaying can be art then clearly you've never listened to Vin on a good night, which is why I want to be able to hear him here on the West Coast though the signals don't carry that far and for a brief shining moment I thought maybe the marvels of technology might be able to help me out. But no. Vin's show is too free-form and too free for the likes of laws like you, and so he can't be broadcast online.
You suck.
Love,
-Tracy
Started 18 January 2005, published 5 March 2005, last updated 25 May 2005, a few happy weeks after I had been advised as to the whereabouts of online archives of Vin's shows (yay!)
I knew you were a bad law from hanging around with geeks who care deeply about intellectual property and freedom, but it wasn't until recently that I found out exactly how bad you really are.
You see, it turns out you're the reason I can't listen to live internet broadcasts of Vin Scelsa's freeform radio show Idiot's Delight, because Vin's prone to stuff like playing the entire B side of an album when it suits him, which is just too... oh, I give in, it's too free for some people, never mind that it's exactly that freedom that makes it good art, and if you don't think deejaying can be art then clearly you've never listened to Vin on a good night, which is why I want to be able to hear him here on the West Coast though the signals don't carry that far and for a brief shining moment I thought maybe the marvels of technology might be able to help me out. But no. Vin's show is too free-form and too free for the likes of laws like you, and so he can't be broadcast online.
You suck.
Love,
-Tracy
Started 18 January 2005, published 5 March 2005, last updated 25 May 2005, a few happy weeks after I had been advised as to the whereabouts of online archives of Vin's shows (yay!)
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