Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in cyntransports' LiveJournal:

Tuesday, July 18th, 2006
11:38 am	quackenbush what does it take to get jason to answer me? a poem? some witty satirical rant? plagiarism seems effective but not really my style. alas, i remain alone at top pot, rejected but caffeinated, and the glimmer of hope remains that j will take pity and come hang out with me in my super cool apartment with my supercool foster cat... but if j's more popular lj friends have advice, please feel free to comment. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 11th, 2006
3:10 pm	research i just spent a week doing a lit review and learning about lots of cool social theory and wishing i knew what jason knows. and it was a great week. i also saw me first and the gimme gimmes really cheap. anyway i saw my advisor and he not only tore up all of my mainstream economics and development theory (because, as i just learned, hes a marxist economist), but proceeded to tell me that my topic, gender and transport, is not as interesting as the other parts of my research, cross border trade... so now i have to either write the methodology he wants with no commitment whatsoever or write the methodology i want risking that i fail this years defence because i dont know enough about this issue. my soapbox The role of the gendered organisation of transport is well-documented in areas such as: maternal mortality; obstetric fistula; girls’ attendance at school; blindness, back pain, and young girls’ self-medication from excessive head-loading; increased incidence of AIDS at transport hubs; immobility due to lack of toilet facilities; urban dangers due to lack of lights and crosswalks, not to mention the inconvenience of walking on sand are all areas where an integration of gender significantly deepens an understanding of the issues and possibilities for improvement. Further, these issues inform the hypothesis that gender realities in the transport sector significantly impact the risks faced by cross border traders on a daily basis. so shitty morning plus i had to try and interview this guy in DRC in french and the phone number and computers didnt work and these interviews are really hard (hour-long surveys about my ngo's strategy for transport and governance over the next five years) that was probably really boring. if you got this far... i feel warm and fuzzy (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 13th, 2006
4:00 pm	summer flat im looking for a room for the summer in seattle or uw with my boyfriend. ideas? websites? places with signs? summer sublets? i finally went to a poetry open mike in london for the first time. it was fabulous although the worst of the 5 poets that got up was one of those people who never stopped writing 14 year old poetry. and i liked 14 yo poetry so i tend to stick up for teenagers who write, but...well, on the upside, the other four were really good and now i know that some people are worse poets than me and write anyway. here is a sample. i see you and i hope that you'll love me that you can calm my fears afraid you'll break my heart a used bag of doritos stepped on you wont understand im afraid of you getting too close if you want to love me you'll have to break down my walls.... (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 16th, 2006
12:00 pm	extra info a wicked article by a real mossad operative on "where spielberg's film went astray"... doesn't convince me about the film, but does make me think and makes a legitimate argument about "moral equivalency", where others have said basically stupid stuff. http://www.forward.com/articles/7270 (Comment on this)
11:46 am	munich well, here i am coming out more pro-muslim than a lot of people again - probably because i'm not in the US... (by the way, as an aside to my previous entry on the cartoons, muslims in denmark did complain peacefully and rationally to the newspaper and were ignored, heating up the issue for its release in mecca) anyway, having read about the outrage against spielberg for his anti-israeli film, i just saw "munich" and cannot find any possible valid criticism. some say it's lacking in facts but certainly not the important ones. so is the criticism really just the idea that palestinians have a side and that terrorists also have personal lives? first, is it ok to attack israeli policy? yes, criticising israeli policy is a valid and necessary reaction to the conflict, just like criticising american policy and people who freak out about such criticisms are a more imminent danger to free speach in free countries than foreign threats. but, the thing that really shocked me about "munich" is IT DOESN'T! it doesn't criticise israel, unless you really think that intelligence agencies never carry out assassinations and that israel is above that kind of tactic. but of course that's not true and while i think intelligence agencies have a morally creepy amount of power, i don't think the black ops concept is the big problem with US or israeli policy. so, that aside, the real criticism about munich is that it dares to suggest that terrorists have motives and that the good guys and bad guys are slightly harder to distinguish than we'd like to think (though clearly the terrorists are the bad guys and the assassin is good). certainly, bush would have trouble conceiving of grey areas, but historically speaking doesn't it seem like the worst atrocities have been committed by the most morally confident people? isn't the danger of islamic extremism just that - the refusal to see more than one side? right after september 11, the west wing did a special episode where josh was teaching a bunch of visiting teens and said, "if you really wanna get these guys; if you really wanna make them crazy, just keep accepting more than one idea"... hey, lets try that... for starters, i'm gonna go find out what releases women into the labour market - technical skills? time-saving domestic tools? not getting married? i just read about a woman who walked six hours to a farm, worked there 15 hours, came home with a bar of soap as pay. hey, i just realised my life is pretty cool. (Comment on this)
Friday, February 3rd, 2006
7:08 pm	islamophobia or free speech? when i first heard this story of the danish cartoonist depicting mohammed, i felt bad for the guy. tough blow - ridiculous violent response. but now that everyone understands the basic rule that the prophet not be depicted, for other newspapers to do so is both wrong and stupid. wrong because the clear motive is racist (as we can assume islamophobes have only one ethnicity of muslim in mind) and marks of unwarranted disrespect to 1.3 billion muslims who were just chillin'... some claim solidarity with the first journalist - but that could have been effectively accomplished by saying that he had a right to print what he wanted. now the stupid factor is of equal concern. and it sort of mirrors one of my main concerns about bush which is that even if we ignore all moral impetus, it's simply a bad idea to make people hate you when you already feel the environment is ripe for violence. imagine going to south central LA... it's late. you're alone - and you're wearing designer clothes. this is a scruples question - you ever play scruples with your family - maybe when the power's out and everyone is stuck with nothing to do? ... anyway, so you're walking home. the question is this: do you or do you not shout racist insults at people as you walk by? do you insult the gang whose territory you're in? now, you might say "well no, but i don't do that at home either"... true but even if you did you might consider holding your tongue... there's a desire here to mark one's territory. western values have ceased to be intrinsically meaningful (which is why bush finds it so easy to destroy them); they have become a tool for white men and brown men to pee on each other. this is why despite the apparent randomness and cruelty with which sinn fein sometimes seemed to express its concerns, no one ever depicted the pope blowing up a school. and there's not even a rule against that! (7 Comments |Comment on this)
12:14 pm	help with listservs! hey there lj fans, i need help from people who communicate on the internet. i'm looking for listservs that would deal with health and/or mobility in latin american or asia. any comments on how to look for anything of the sort would be appreciated. the idea is to find a research candidate. or just tell me how to search for listservs ;) cheers... (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 30th, 2006
1:30 pm	soil and green at home... I'm a little late in the story of recurring disappearances of women (many sex trade workers) in Vancouver, BC (my favourite place on earth) since the 1970's. it's a big deal for several reasons but after a $70 million investigation into Pickton (the guy charged with 27 of the murders), the announcement that is just one heck of a kick in the pants is: March 10, 2004: Health officials report they cannot rule out that human remains may have been in meat processed for human consumption at the Pickton property. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 24th, 2006
3:52 pm	a new job for cyndis? how many of you have thought, "princess di... that's who cyndi should work for"... everyone, right? cause everything about my personality, my background, my preferences, just screams that i should work for a rich, dead philanthropist with royal blood... here's the job Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fund - Palliative Care Initiative Africa are looking for a Temporary Research Assistant (two to three days per week).The candidate will have a knowledge of basic research methods, PC and Internet skills, understanding of development issues in Africa and knowledge of and interest in HIV/AIDS and palliative care an advantage. Start asap. Based Westminster. For more details email palliativecare@memfund.org.uk ... the girl i volunteer for at IFRTD found this job on the internet and thought of me... how great is that? it was on a web site she wasn't even supposed to be reading at the time. i should totally be working somewhere nearer the palace... nearer, that is, than my halfway house. (Comment on this)
3:29 pm	the most fun you can have with dead bodies ...in prague, pierre and i went to the old jewish cemetery, a must see in europe's earliest jewish ghetto (ghetto/quarter dates to the 10th century, the cemetery, early 15th). http://www.jewishmuseum.cz/en/acemetery.htm the old cemetery comprises 12,000 tombstones, with potentially several times that many bodies. when authorities refused to allow more space for the dead in the jewish quarter, the response was to bring in more dirt, layering body after body of family and friends in bumpy overgrown mounds. it seems the picture of the foot with a line through it (to say, you know "dont walk on the graves") is somehow superfluous. so we are in the jewish quarter, bought tickets to the six main synagogues which each have something special... old jewish artefacts, documents, art, clothes... and the pinkas synagogue which is in a gorgeous spot and pays homage to bohemians who were victims of the holocaust (each of the 80,000 or so names written on the walls of the synagogue). it was touching. then we got kicked out by the managers - a couple and one other guy, sweet-looking old people who don't speak english, like, AT ALL. but i know that we're right by the jewish cemetery and am worried we wont be allowed in so i show them my ticket with the picture of the cemetery and the words in czech. eyes are rolled and the couple gently nudges us toward the cemetery as one man offers the only words we will here from them in english, a stern "TEN MINUTES".... so we are pleased and we dutifully enter the cemetery and take our pictures and have our moment of appreciation for the, let's face it, wicked old tombstones and who knows how many dead jews from 4-600 years ago with how many different stories. we take a second to imagine their stories, but really only a second, because we're sensitive to the couple's desire to go home and it is FREEZING beyond freezing. so we head back (the whole thing is a circle of no more than 200 yards), having been in the cemetery MAYBE six or seven minutes. lo and behold, the couple either got tired or assumed we had made it out already because there is NO ONE and we're locked in the cemetery... we go around again... "hello?", "hello?????" we head back to the synagogue - locked. head to each gate - locked... not quite believing the situation, pierre heads around the path to look for another exit or any human who might help, while i call the jewish museum (luckily i have a cell phone and a brochure). the museum phone answers "dobry den... blah blah blah something that probably means jewish museum" "dobry den... do you speak english?" "... OF COURSE" (as in you know, DUH!) "i am in the old jewish cemetery, but it is closed and the people have left" "im sorry? what?" "you know the old cemetery?" "yes, of course the cemetery" "i am locked in the cemetery, the people have left" "so what do you need?" ....................... and my phone turns off because i have no more credit...... cut to, pierre, who has a little more luck. he's tried to find escape routes but they are scary with the spikey iron doors and he has a sprained ankle already... it seems a bad idea. but he finds a kind, strange man who speaks french. after some confusion, a crowd develops on the other side of our beautiful iron prison door. young girls wondering why the foreigners are behaving so oddly, several older gentlemen discussing options with our new friend. who should they call? where should they go? finally they go to the "old new synagogue" down the street where people are still working. (called "old new" because the outside of the ancient synagogue was destroyed and replaced with some kind of ridiculous art nouveau plaster architecture, but i digress). a security guard comes with our new friend, looking at us like we're insane and says. "close! close! 4:30... close!" "uh, we know, but they left"... "4:30... close!" ... we shrug... he doesn't seem to have more words and we're a little afraid he's not gonna let us out... finally, he rolls his eyes and pulls out his keys. free at last, free at last... we thank our friend and the guard. and as we walk out we here the ringing, repeating sound... "4:30... close!" we'll try to remember that next time we spend an afternoon with ancient graves in 18 degree weather. our shivers were cured by a hot chocolate at the franz kafka cafe, and i think the cemetery was my favorite part of the trip. (1 Comment |Comment on this)