Obamanation!

I have internet at my house again, but I am posting this from school, because I have spent the last half hour being distracted from my work by reading about President Obama (isn't that cool to say?!) online.

Living, as I do, in Ireland, I have been rather out of touch with what's been going on back in AmericaLand. Specifically, I have been curious about how the new president's term has been going. So I am now hooked on this website, which tracks Obama's first 100 days in office. It's updated all day by different journalists as things happen, and is great for someone like me that doesn't get the constant media bombardment. (I don't have a tv, so if I want to see news I have to seek it out.) And, in these first ten days, I have been happy to see a definite feminist stance! On his fourth day in office he lifted the ban, put in place by Bush, on federal funding for family planning agencies that "promote or give information about" abortion. And the first law he signed was supporting equal pay rights in the workplace for women. (And look, he keeps campaign promises! Wow!) As a proud vagina-American, this makes me very happy. And it just makes me wonder about all those "feminists" who support(ed) Sarah Palin. Do you really think any of this would have happened if McCain had been elected? Certainly the ban wouldn't get lifted during a McCain administration.

I also found an interesting editorial that characterizes Obama as a "liberal imperialist." It's an interesting article, and a pretty strong thesis. However, I wouldn't call Obama a "humanitarian imperialist," at least not in reference to his support of military action in Afghanistan and Pakistan. His express reasons for action in those countries is U.S. security. Now, in my opinion, war is always a great tragedy, but if intelligence shows that there is a direct threat to your country, then it is a leader's responsibility to protect the country and neutralize the threat. Preferably this should get done without, you know, killing, but I'm a little too cynical to believe that diplomacy can always win. Iraq never posed any threat to the U.S., and all the half-assed flimsy excuses that the Bush administration came up with to go in there-- Al Qaeda, WMDs, etc-- were unfounded, and millions of dollars (not to mention lives) were poured into the country for no real reason while groups that were actually making direct threats to the U.S. went ignored. (I remember an article a few years ago in The Onion, in response to Kim Jong Il's threats... "Bush on North Korean Threat: We Must Invade Iraq!" It went to "quote" Bush as saying things like "This threat in North Korea must be dealt with, so it is imperative that we send troops to Iraq.") The people who destroyed the World Trade Center and killed thousands of civilians live in Afghanistan. If we have to resort to violence, at least it should be directed at the right people. That isn't an attempt at cultural or political hegemony, it's just security.

Sorry, that turned into kind of a rant! Well, what else is a 'blog for?

Also, isn't it interesting that all my sources for information on the White House are British?

everybody talks about it, but no one does anything about it

(Still don't have internet at home, so updates might be sporadic for the month of January. Apologies!)


Man, it is winter in Ireland! Friday was an absolutely lovely day, sunny and in the high 40s, so I was hoping for a nice weekend-- I had visions of myself ambling around the market, maybe eating a crepe or drinking a coffee, on Saturday afternoon. Alas, it was not to be-- the weekend was incredibly windy and blustery. There were winds up to 70 miles an hour! Lots of trees blew down, and there were warnings on tv and on the radio not to drive because of all the falling limbs. And, of course, there was constant rain and hail. Consequently I spent as much time indoors as possible, not even venturing as far as the college.

Then, this morning, I woke up to see snow! It didn't even melt off until noon! I know, in Michigan right now the snow is literally ass deep, but seeing any snow in Ireland at all is rare. Met Éireann promises "hail, sleet and snow showers in many areas this evening and tonight, with a continuing risk of thunder," and "an unsettled, wintry week ahead." Oh, joy.

Happy new year!

Happy 2009!

I am back in Ireland, after an enjoyable and relaxing break. Perhaps too relaxing, because it's been very difficult to get back in the swing of things back on this side of the pond. I have actually been back for about ten days, but I spent the first week sleeping and watching movies online. (More on that later.) I have been under the thrall of some pretty bad jetlag-- the last couple days, I have been falling asleep at my desk during the day, and lying awake in bed at night. My classes have finally begun, though, so hopefully the demands of an external structure will help get things back on track. Also, my mother sent me some melatonin.

My classes, thus far, look interesting. I have two: "History of the Book" and "History of Colonialism and Imperialism." Now, if you saw my report card from last year, you would wonder why I'm taking two history classes, when it is clearly my weakest subject. Happily, PhD school works rather differently than MA school did: I don't actually have to write papers on the subjects! Any assignments are going to be something that is directly useful to my thesis-- like a chapter, or a literature review, or a conference paper. So, rather than memorizing details that have no relevance to my work, the classes are much more knowledge for knowledge's sake. As one of my classmates pointed out, it's like watching the History channel!


One unfortunate thing has happened, though. My internet connection at home has a limited bandwidth allowance per month-- 10 GB. On their site, it says "most people never exceed this." I have been using it now for three months, and the first two months I came in under the limit. Apparently, though, if you spend a week doing nothing but streaming videos for like 5 hours a day, you will burn right through it. Monday night, I ran out... but it kept letting me use the internet for another day, before cutting out and slapping on a €50 charge! (Ouch.) And now I am internet-less at home until the 27th. Two whole weeks. The reason I'm using this service is because it's much cheaper than any others I've found, €20/month instead of €40. But I'm not sure it's worth it, if I am going to be so limited. Of course, normally I don't spend 8 hours a day sitting around and streaming movies... normally I spend all day working at school, and then maybe use a couple hours of internet at home in the evening. I didn't go over the limit in the first two months I was using it, so I'll live with it this month. But if it happens again, I will switch to one of the more expensive but less limiting services. And now that I have some idea how much 10 GB of bandwidth is, I will pay better attention and won't get slapped with another charge.