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I’ve been faithfully exercising on my treadmill at least four times per week (goal is five) for the past three months or so.  The sad thing is that I have owned this treadmill for at least 5 years and for approximately 3.5 of those years, it has sat there unused by me.  My reasons for starting up again were several: 1) to reduce stress specifically stress caused by unemployment, 2) to be healthy and 3) to look better.

My new found motivation is good to get me on the treadmill but I need a distraction to keep me on it for any length of time.  I used to listen to music but honestly I don’t feel like putting together upbeat playlists that last for the 45-50 minutes that I’m on the treadmill.  I would have to create new playlists to rotate daily so I wouldn’t be bored with the same songs.

What I have found that works is watching an “hour-long” show on Hulu.com; I watch these on my netbook which is the perfect size and shape for my treadmill.  With the ads on Hulu and without all the commercials that accompany the shows when they air on TV the shows are approximately 45 minutes long which is just perfect.  I especially like to use Hulu Desktop as it is easier to navigate while I am running or walking than the website.

Some of my favorite shows to watch while on the treadmill have been:

• 24
• Flash Forward
• Fringe
• Legend of the Seeker
• Ugly Betty
• The Wanda Sykes Show
• Glee
• Burn Notice
• Psych

Several of these series have ended or are ending this season.  Also the season has ended for others so I need some new shows to watch.  I’ve recently subscribed to Stargate Universe but I need other weekly hour-long shows to make time time pass quickly while on the treadmill. I saw that Burn Notice is going to begin a new season (I don’t understand the various TV seasons different shows use.)  Hopefully, there will be some new Psych episodes as well.  With those three shows, I still need two to have something to watch for five days.  I will likely have to incorporate shows that aren’t on Hulu which is fine.

So what should I watch?

1992: My boyfriend (at the time) and I were driving 200 miles from Washington, DC, to our hometown Chesapeake, Virginia, in the dead of winter.  He didn’t have heat in his car so we stopped in Lightfoot, Virginia, for coffee to warm up.  While we’re in a 7-Eleven, a white man came in and asked the cashier “Where’d them niggers come from?”  The boyfriend and I looked at each other, not sure of what he had just heard.  Being that we were in Lightfoot, Virginia, we finished adding our cream and sugar, paid for the coffee and got the heck out of there as fast as we could.  In the car, we confirmed that we had heard the same thing.

Fast forward to 2010: Four black women (including myself) are in the historic U Street neighborhood in Washington, DC.  We’re at Cafe Saint Ex‘s downstairs nightclub for a drink after a Tweetup.  The DJ was all over the place with his music selections.  He played Ray Charles’ “I Got A Woman”; that led into Kanye West and Jamie Foxx’s Gold Digger, the explicit version.  The group of us looked at each other cringing at what was about to happen.  We were sitting there in a club full of mostly white Gen X’ers yelling “But she ain’t messin’ wit’ no broke niggas.”  Um, okay.

Shannon went to talk to the DJ (who had already seen us there and he started bleeping out that N-word.  By that time, however, Danielle was already being kicked out of the club for her method of protest.  The rest of us finished our drinks and left.

Here’s what I want to know:

• What would you do in both situations mentioned above?
• Are these situations different?
• Does the fact that Kanye West is black make it okay for people to play/sing along?

According to this particular Flickr mosaic meme, this image below represents me.

The rules:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food? 
3. What high school did you go to? 
4. What is your favorite color? 
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink? 
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up? 
10. What do you love most in life? 
11. One Word to describe you. 
12. Your flickr name.

I threw in an extra image to balance out the mosaic.

Attribution: 1. Gabbra woman – Kenya, 2. Mango, 3. Deep Creek, 4. green & turquoise, 5. The Haitian, 6. macro water drop, 7. Santorini – Oia – Greece, 8. Cinnamon Ice Cream & Raspberry Sorbet, 9. Don’t Worry Be Happy, 10. My Wild River loves you!!! )), 11. unsure…, 12. The Road Home, 13. BONUS • HITOP

Today is Blog Action Day but I was already thinking of doing this post when I saw one of my Facebook friends ask why more Christians aren’t involved in the green movement. This might be a controversial post or it may not be. Sometimes we create controversy where none actually exist. I am a Christian AND a scientist. And such a combination is not as rare as many would have you believe. I believe that science explains how things work but not why while my Bible goes more into why by not the specifics of how. They are not mutually exclusive.

I can’t look at something in nature like Perito Moreno Glacier in Argentina (pictured below) and not know that there’s something bigger than us mere humans. At the same time, I know that science can explain how glaciers are formed and why they are melting at an alarming rate.

While science tells us that we must take action to take care of our planet, the Bible does as well. Obviously, it’s not clearly spelled out but the groundwork is there. While Genesis establishes that mankind rules over all the earth, the concept of stewardship is pervasive. Are we not mere stewards whose job is to take care of all the natural resources that God has created? We certainly don’t own them and certainly can’t take them with us when we leave this earth.

Choices we make everyday are having a drastic effect on our planet now. The consequences could prove catastrophic if we don’t do something to prevent further damage. Climate change is not a political issue and politicians alone should not be expected to fix it. It is the responsibility of every individual on this planet. Are you onboard? Read Scientific American’s 10 Solutions for Climate Change now to see what you can do.

Photo credit: me

See more glacier photos here.

Many are no doubt wondering why I watermark many of the photos I post online. The most obvious reason is that I want to generate traffic for my blogs and other websites. However, this is not the only reason. Almost all of my photos on Flickr (except those with people) have a Creative Commons License 3.0 which allows the end user to 1) to copy, distribute and transmit the work and 2) to adapt the work provided 1) the work is attributed in a manner specified by the author or licensor (me), 2) the work is not used for commercial purposes, and 3) if the work is altered, transformed, or built upon, the resulting work is distributed only under the same or similar license to this one.

Many seem to grasp the meaning of the license while many do not. I have seen my images show up on blogs and even in a presentation from MIT. These were fine as they were not commercial uses. Where I start to have a problem is when images are used for commercial purposes without my express permission. There seems to be some debate as to what commercial means. For me if your site intends to make money (either through direct sales of products, through advertisement, or whatever) your usage is commercial.

I have had pleasant experiences with people asking for permission to use my images and I’ve had not-so-pleasant experiences. One woman (I presume) asks for permission to use one of my images for some jewelry she was creating. I asked for her website URL and photos of similar jewelry she has made before. She refused saying that it was only courtesy that she was asking for permission because my Creative Commons license entitled her to use the image anyway. Another bad experience was this image lifted from Webshots. Webshots used to have a copyright message but replaced it with “uploaded by [username]“. At the time I was not marking my images. While the photo is properly attributed to me, they have watermarked the image themselves and the site is obviously commercial. I contacted the owner of the site and never received a response. Unfortunately, I don’t have much recourse since the site is operated in the Netherlands. I’m especially upset since I stuck my hand practically in the bush where that cayman thought it was hiding to get that photo.

The fact of the matter is that no matter what you try to do to protect your images, everything online is fair game. If this is going to happen anyway, I can watermark the images to 1) better identify my original images and 2) get some attribution. I’ve been experimenting in ways to watermark images internally which would make them more identifiable when searching online. (Of course, that will do nothing to identify print publications.) Once I perfect my method I may talk about it on my GDGT GRL blog.

A conversation with my father brought to mind a blog post that I’ve been meaning to write. It’s a question that seems to come up quite frequently. Why has seemingly everyone assumed that a woman cannot have a career AND a family. Are these concepts mutually exclusive? According to many people they are.

Three years ago I posed a question to a group of women about how women can avoid pregnancy discrimination at work and got some interesting responses. Many focused on the legality of anti-pregnancy bias and whether or not it can be proven while others told me that women are fooling themselves if they think that can have both a family and a career. One woman started her own company to avoid the work drama. I got several emails from women wanting to know what kinds of responses I had received because they too were afraid of being discriminated against for having children.

Working women and families are certainly nothing new to me as my mother as well as all of my aunts worked while also having a family. I have also seen people say that women automatically take less stressful jobs with less potential for group after starting a family. I would like to understand if that is because they want to or if it’s because they are expected to. In addition, are these women from families where someone else is the primary provider? This is important to me as many single mothers I know do the same types of jobs they were doing before they had kids. Not only that but they also attend school to advance their education to help their careers. So to me it is a given that a woman can do both. I am a bit taken a back when others don’t see it that way.

What my father said to me was “I thought you were all about your career and not into kids.” I still wonder why he as well as others have said that about me. I know people who are very vocal about their desire not to have kids; I’ve never expressed this. I also don’t know what “all about your career” even means; especially since I hardly ever discuss it. What I am most certainly about is make sure that if I (re)marry and decide to have kids that it’s not for anything other than the right reason. The wrong reasons include my biological clock and the infamous “I’m not getting any younger.” One of the worse things in the world for me would be to be stuck in a stupid marriage because I’m afraid to be alone or because I rushed to have kids because my clock was ticking. When I make that decision I want it to be right. If God sees fit to bless me with children, then I will have them.

Getting back to the issue at hand though, it is assumed that a career-minded woman has no interest in family. A guy friend of mine told me that so many women are single because they spend too much time on their careers. This is unbelievable to me since I’ve always held the belief that you spend time working on self and growing and then the relationship/marriage thing will come. I’ve apparently been living on another planet with that one.

Having supported myself for how many ever years, I do question the idea of needing a man to support me as well as other societal norms that I don’t necessarily subscribe to. Among my problems is the belief that even though my career is just as important as any man’s, society says that I should give mine up should children enter the equation. Am I less of a human because I’m a woman? Maybe I just have less rights as a woman?

I normally don’t post things like this but I’m in that kind of mood. I’m not sure of the source.

Accept differences
Be kind
Count your blessings
Dream
Express thanks
Forgive
Give freely
Harm no one
Imagine more
Jettison anger
Keep confidences
Love truly
Master something
Nurture hope
Open your mind
Pack lightly
Quell rumors
Reciprocate
Seek wisdom
Touch hearts
Understand
Value truth
Win graciously
Xeriscape
Yearn for peace
Zealously support a worthy cause

Walden University held it’s fifth annual Social Change Conference, Social Entrepreneurship: Taking Action, Leading Change, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.  The conference focused on the success stories of social innovators and the new partnerships springing up to lead change in our country and around the world. Noted speakers included Cheryl Dorsey, President, Echoing Green, and Michele Jolin, Senior Advisor for Social Innovation for the Domestic Policy Council, The White House.  A replay is available online.

Below are my live tweets.  There are some gems here.

• koa: En route to Walden Univ’s social change conference.
  2009-09-30 12:30:57
• koa: I will be live tweeting from the Walden University “Social Entreprenuership: Taking Action, Leading Change” this morning. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 13:30:55
• koa: Photo: http://bkite.com/0coJS from National Press Club: Getting started #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 13:33:49
• koa: Walden President Jonathan Kaplan: goal of the conference is to prepare each one of you to take action and lead change. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 13:35:59
• koa: Social entrepreneurship is about more than individual actions. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 13:37:45
• koa: RT @rosettathurman: You can watch the live webcast of #waldenscc NOW http://ow.ly/rPMQ
  2009-09-30 13:38:17
• koa: Cheryl Dorsey of Echoing Green up first. Provides seed money and advice to social entrepreneurs. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 13:39:22
• koa: Echoing Green was started 20 years ago by a private equity firm. They adapt business principles to the social sector. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 13:45:19
• koa: Echoing Green invests in 40 countries around the world – they are program agnostic and geographic agnostic. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 13:48:14
• koa: Echoing Green has a 67% rate of success for social “businesses” in which they’ve invested. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 13:50:24
• koa: If you are watching live at http://bit.ly/43WLDl, we can take your questions via Twitter. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 13:51:59
• koa: RT @rosettathurman: Cheryl: Momentum of idea that “citizens can do it better than gov’t” spurred on fld of social entrepreneurshp #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 13:57:23
• koa: Millennials are shaking up the way we think about social entrepreneurship. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 13:58:51
• koa: Dorsey does not advocate creating new organizations instead she champions new ideas, more hands on deck. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 14:00:52
• koa: It’s important to have an asset based world view. We must see problems as opportunities. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 14:03:31
• koa: Are the walls between for profit and non profit crumbling? New approaches are less siloed and use every tool at their disposal. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 14:07:01
• koa: Are you a social entrpreneur? Check out @echoinggreen #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 14:08:56
• koa: A new trend is double and triple bottoms lines focusing on profit, social, and environmental. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 14:11:55
• koa: RT @rosettathurman: Cheryl: Book recommendations! Megacommunities http://bit.ly/JBcjZ, Age of the Unthinkable http://bit.ly/LYyjR #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 14:16:37
• koa: Michelle Obama came to Echoing Green 20 years ago to get money to start Public Allies. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 14:19:49
• koa: Did you know that you can micro-volunteer via the web or an iPhone app? http://bit.ly/2t4fPz #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 14:28:21
• koa: Dorsey They take a social justice stance on social entrepreneurship. Asked if they focus more on social or entrepreneurship. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 14:35:05
• koa: RT @jaywalk1: Dorsey – If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes several to raise a soc. entrepreneur #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 14:35:23
• koa: Second speaker is Michelle Jolin (senior advisor for Social Innovation for the White House’s Domestic Policy Council). #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 14:39:05
• koa: Jolin also served in the Clinton White House. She was also with the Center for American Progress. @AmProg #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 14:41:46
• koa: Watch live at http://twurl.nl/a64z52 #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 14:44:56
• koa: Looking for my buddy @thestemadvocate . Are you in the building? #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 14:46:16
• koa: The Domestic Policy Council is looking for new ways to get people engaged in social change including use of technology. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 14:48:09
• koa: Jolin: Government action alone is not going to make the difference. Needs partnerships btw profit, nonprofit, gov’t. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 14:50:04
• koa: Jolin: Looking at things the government can do as well as things they can stop doing. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 14:52:16
• koa: Jolin is now taking questions. Have any? Tweet them now. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 14:56:04
• koa: RT @rosettathurman: Jolin: … With technology there are new ways to involve communities. We’re using more online chats, etc #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 15:07:33
• koa: Aside: Obviously many are left out because they don’t have access to these technologies. #waldenscc #digitaldivide
  2009-09-30 15:09:05
• koa: @ajlovesya You can watch at http://twurl.nl/a64z52 #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 15:32:29
• koa: Next up Peter Kannam executive directory of New Leaders for New Schools. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 15:34:35
• koa: Kannam introducing panelists; Dr. Kathia Lazlo, David Bostein, Anthony Jewett, and Dr. John Nirenburg. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 15:37:03
• koa: Bornstein is author of How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 15:39:00
• koa: Jewett founded Bardoli Global to provide opportunities for outstanding minority youth through study abroad and service-learning. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 15:41:17
• koa: RT @rosettathurman: Panelist bios here: http://ow.ly/rVKO #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 15:41:43
• koa: Lazlo is a mentor for MBA students studying green sustainable enterprise at the Dominican University of California. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 15:43:45
• koa: Niremberg has done a lot of work in organizational development and is a faculty member at Walden. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 15:45:13
• koa: Bornstein: The biggest challenge is getting people to overcome their internal resistance to change. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 15:49:52
• koa: Lazlo: It’s all about human capital. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 15:58:02
• koa: Nirenberg: Social entrepreneurs solve problems that industry alone and government alone are not able to fix. #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 16:02:01
• koa: Nirenberg: What looks like social entrepreneurship today will be a necessity tomorrow (if we don’t change on a national scale). #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 16:03:19
• koa: RT @rosettathurman: Jewett: president of Bardoli Global, http://www.bardoliglobalfoundation.org, Teach for America alum #waldenscc
  2009-09-30 16:06:02

It was a memorial service but many had billed it as a tribute concert. I honestly did not know what to expect and I hadn’t planned on watching it. I had decided not to watch any of the coverage because of the media circuses the deaths of Princess Diana and Anna Nicole Smith turned out to be. I saw folks on Twitter talking about the service so I decided to tune in.

The service opened with a choir singing “Soon and Very Soon” (We are going to see the King). Upon hearing the choir I knew this was a serious affair. Above the choir stained glass windows were projected on the screen. The whole scene reminded me of going to church with my grandmother. Many on Twitter commented on how they could turn the Staples Center into a church overnight. That they did.

It was when I saw the casket being rolled out by Jackson’s brothers that I realized that this was the actual memorial service. I couldn’t believe it. People got up to share their experiences with Michael Jackson while others sang songs in tribute to him. It was beautiful. I don’t believe I’ve ever watched a memorial service on TV before but this one was a normal old-fashioned church homegoing service, despite gold plated casket, the star studded guests and the sheer number of other guests attending.

Though watching it on TV, I felt like I was there in that it evoked various emotions in me that I have felt at funerals of family members. I was looking at the brothers and sisters that I had not seen in years (probably 20) thinking of them like family. I grew up with them (on my TV). Back in the 80s all of the Jackson children were on my TV though most are completely out of the public spotlight these days. I was pleased that none of the family members or other guests made it all about them as Joe Jackson has been doing during the past two weeks.

With this memorial service, we got to see Michael Jackson as human. I’m glad about that. It was very refreshing and cathartic. I made it through the entire service without a tear but when Jackson’s daughter spoke about her father I just about lost it. Most of the service focused on his accomplishments but her words were the biggest tribute to Michael Jackson as a human being.

R.I.P. Michael Jackson
“Maybe now they will leave you alone.” -Marlon Jackson

Photo credit: donielle and LadyDucayne

Artomatic is an annual art (art, music, performance, film) festival featuring local artists in the DC area. This is the tenth year of the event that started in the historic Manhattan Laundry building in NW Washington, DC. There are nine full floors of art on display in a brand new building at 50 M Street, SE (Navy Yard Metro Station).

I went to Artomatic twice and still did not manage to see all Artomatic had to offer. Even though you may not see everything, it’s still worth taking a look today, the event’s last day. With so many different styles of art, there is truly something for everyone (though there are some pieces that are not kid-friendly).