Mishaps and other haps

I’ve had my cell phone for two years and I didn’t discover until tonight that it had *THAT* feature.

My oh my …

Why is it that water with lemon slices seems to cool you down and quench thirst better than plain water? Maybe this is all in my head, or maybe I just love lemon. It’s still hot here, although not as hot as it was over the weekend. I have been drinking quarts and quarts of lemon water.

Last night I avoided the hot weather by staying inside and having cool things applied to my head. Like many women, I make the occasional trip to a salon for haircut and color. So yesterday it was time to do that again.

I arrived early and there was nothing to do in that neighborhood, so I settled down in the lobby and leafed through magazines. These are the sorts of magazines carried at grocery store check-out lines, with famous faces and titillating celebrity gossip.

I’m not compelled to pick up celebrity magazines to flip through when I am standing in line for ten minutes, but when I am at the salon and there is nothing to do but wait for an hour or more (wait for appointment to begin, wait for dye to sink into each strand of hair), I pick up a couple of magazines and am temporarily drawn into that very strange realm, part social high-life and part social isolation.

There was nothing much interesting going on with the Jessica Simpsons and Kate Bosworths of the world. Lots of reporting on the recent rash of new celebrity babies (pun intended). But then I saw an article/interview with Audrey Tautou.

I have not seen every film that Audrey Tautou has appeared in (just couldn’t drag myself to see “The DaVinci Code”, sorry), but I do think that she is one of the most interesting and expressive actresses I have ever seen. I think part of it is that she is amazingly beautiful, not just cute, but stunning in an anti-Hollywood sort of way. Maybe she is not what you would expect to be beautiful by American standards, but I guess that I have not seen too many people in film that I consider beautiful, or more beautiful than your average person on the street. With stick-out ears and all, Audrey Tautou is stellar.

Yet in this article, she expressed insecurities about her looks and general insecurities about herself. Almost every response she gave to the interviewer had a qualification or hesitation. Maybe it is more of a personality trait than lack of self-confidence (and also, she has only learned English recently). But she seemed unsure of herself.

I guess it wasn’t that surprising, but maybe a bit sad. Then again, every personality quirk is embellished, every weakness is exploited, and every mistake you make is so much more visible when you are a celebrity.

Marilyn Monroe comes to mind as the typical example of insecurity expressed at the pinnacle of success and fame. She has been dead for over forty years and is still an American icon. Was her work as an actress simply that good? You have to wonder about the subconscious forces at work in our cultural memories …

Books have been donated to the library.

Various items are finding their way into boxes and bags. I will be hauling most of my random belongings over to the house this week so that we can tackle furniture and large appliances next weekend.

For those of you not in Madison this weekend, it has been uncomfortably HOT finally. See, I can deal with 80&#176 F. It feels about right to me. When the mercury creeps up to 95&#176 F … not so good. I grew up in Florida, but nobody there likes the summer heat.

Apparently I am starting to update my blog more often again. I’m kind of excited about the moving. I haven’t lived in a place for more than three years since I moved out of Mom and Dad’s house to go to college. Just think of all the junk I will have time to accumulate …

My roommate’s car has died again. This is a different car from the last car that died. She has not had good luck with vehicles. I went to pick her up on Friday and we stopped by Pegasus (big sale) and ran into Splott and her friend. There were just a couple of people in the store at the time and I hadn’t seen Splott since sometime late last year when we met up on purpose– so what are the chances? I don’t usually run into people I know when I’m out because they don’t generally shop where I shop and I’m not out all that much. Something about friends being in the same building and also spending a lot of time in front of my computer …

PhysOrg called from the beach with toes in or almost in the Pacific Ocean last night. He sounded excited. Vacations are nice

EDIT:

1) I am enjoying the fact that my hair is at its longest length in about ten fourteen years because this means that I can put it up when it’s hot. I used to enjoy having short hair, but short hair has to be quite short in order to be manageable during hot weather and the period when all of the middling bits were growing out was *awful*.

2) I have updated the photo album with some screenshots from WoW and expect to be updating with more real photos soon.

3) The weather icon at the bottom of my browser window shows up as a sizzling red thermometer today. When I hover over the icon, it informs me that it is currently 98&#176 F in Madison. So I think I will still move some things out to the house today, but I will wait until later, when it is a little cooler.

I am sure all of you have heard about the UW-Madison instructor (hired for Fall term 2006) who is creating a lot of controversy about university hiring practices right now.

Kevin Barrett has been hired to teach a course on Islam and plans to spend part of the course discussing his theory that the U.S. government was directly responsible for the World Trade Center attack and loss of lives five years ago. Specifically, he claims that the government rigged explosives to bring down the towers in order to justify the subsequent war with Iraq.

While I am not sure very many people *agree* with Barrett’s theory, there is quite a debate going on over whether he should be allowed to teach and whether he is actually fit to teach.

And what does the university stand to lose (reputation) or gain (national attention) by hiring him?

While journalists have focused on the “academic freedom” question in coverage of this story, there is another issue I wish they would follow up on more:

What responsibility do scholars have to ensure that their research is accurate and that the ideas they publish and teach in the classroom are well-supported by evidence?

Ann Althouse, a law professor at UW-Madison, blogged about this story earlier and asserted that she believes the supporters of this theory *know* they are lying. I had a crystal-clear moment of realization when I read that statement.

Is it *acceptable* to lie in order to generate “critical thought” in a classroom? To knowingly perpetuate false information for the purpose of “educating” students?

Certainly, a lot of crap has been taught in public classrooms over the years, usually through lack of information, misinformation, or ignorance. But if you knowingly falsify information, that’s a different thing. That is entirely unacceptable.

This instructor better have some damn good evidence to claim that the U.S. government intentionally and maliciously killed its own civilians. His reputation, his advisor’s reputation, and the reputation of a fine public institution are all on the line. To say the least, academic careers have been made and broken by far, far less.

A man with any sense of humility and any lingering doubt would step down from his position so as not to further embarrass himself or injure the university’s reputation. From what I have read, this man has no humility and no doubt. His response to the media attention he has received fuels my intellectual feeling and my *gut* feeling that he is a pompous crackpot.

A bit before 11 AM, we signed our last bit of paperwork and became the legal owners of our new house.

We went to the house, received our keys, three Bablers came over with champagne and some essential house items (yay for toilet paper!), we had a toast, discussed and inspected things a bit and went out to lunch.

Now it is time for a nap. I was up until the very early hours making a LBRS run with people and I am sleepy.

Random facts about Fitchburg, WI, as gleaned from the city’s website:

– The city was incorporated in 1983.

– It has its own police and fire department, but no post office or library

– Plans for opening a library in 2008 are in the works.

– You can reserve one of five park shelters through the city. Fitchburg has 29 neighborhood and area parks and a golf course. (We are going to be living pretty close to the Arboretum, so that is exciting).

– The city of Fitchburg does not issue marriage licenses, birth certificates, or passports.

– Fitchburg has a population of just over 22,000 people (as of January 2005).

EDIT: Closing date July 11th; Moving the weekend of the 22nd.

RE-EDIT: Or it could be the 7th. Apparently, we might still be moving this weekend. I guess we will know later today. Maybe. Hopefully.