Velvet Banana

Dear Governor Napolitano,

I am first and foremost a proud American. I was born in America. I served in the Armed Forces for 6 years. My dad is a retired military veteran with three tours of duty in Viet Nam. Both of my parents legally immigrated from Peru in the sixties. I pay my taxes, and I exercise the right to cast my vote regularly. My two kids are both honor’s students in school. Our entire family has never been in any sort of legal trouble, and we love living in Arizona (since 1989).

However, and it’s a big however, I am beginning to question if I wish to continue living in Arizona. Namely the actions of Joe Arpaio’s saturation raids are forcing me to examine if living in Arizona might deter my family’s pursuit of happiness. Because of my Hispanic heritage, I have a fear that my kids, my brother, or I might get caught up in Arpaio’s dragnet. I find myself ensuring our vehicles are washed, clean, and serviced at all times in order to decrease my chances of getting pulled over. I intentionally avoid any potentially ethnic areas of the city, and I am constantly preaching to my family to make sure they don’t forget to bring any ID cards along– just in case.

Having to live like this with the threat of getting racially profiled by officers of the law distresses me. I don’t mind complying with the law. In fact, my best friend from my military days in Georgia moved to Arizona in the early 90’s and presently is an officer in MCSO. I just don’t want my kids exposed to this sort of racism. The ends do not justify the means – especially to innocent, law abiding Arizona citizens.

I have read in news articles of your opposition to Arpaio’s tactics, and I applaud it. The purpose of this letter is to add one more voice of opposition and ask for your continued leadership in making Arizona a great state.
Respectfully,

George M. Velez

I was thinking of getting a Roomba, so I wouldn’t have to vacuum anymore.  Can you imagine my surprise when I go to the site and discover Roomba’s are actually made for moms?  Doh!

An elementary school in Wisconsin held a week long themed school dress up event. One of those days was “Senior Citizen and Opposite Gender” day where kids could dress up as the other gender. Naturally, right wing Christian fundamentalist groups assailed the innocent school tradition to the point where the school will never hold an opposite gender day. This is exactly the sort of societal pressure to adhere to antiquated ‘norms’ projected onto a forward thinking school (and causing the school to cave-in) that we’ve discussed in class. One of the headlines of this story is “Cross Dressing Event at School Causes Controversy” located in the “Strange and Unusual” section of the paper. Wow!

During Tuesday’s lecture, the question of why are men faster than women was raised.  A quick glance at the timed speeds of Olympic events shows the times of men are significantly faster than women – across the board.  If women were to compete with men head’s up, they would not receive gold, silver or bronze medals at all!

One journal article (American Physiological Society from August 2002 ) theorizes a sort of gendered-Darwinism explanation of lower female run speed.  “Archeological evidence suggests that human ancestors were tool users and may have had gender-specific tasks at least as much as one million years ago, possibly lessening the importance of running speed particularly in females. This analysis is strictly speculative.” So, slow cavemen were naturally selected from the population, while cavewomen stayed back in the cave and didn’t have to worry about run speed??

The rest of the journal article states that there is a negligible difference in male and female horses with respect to run speed.  The same applies to dogs.  It kind of makes you wonder if the principles of Darwinism are applicable especially for some of the physical differences.