Monday, January 30, 2012

Called


I was called by social conditioning in my family and biographical details.
I was born relatively poor in Berkeley in the 1960s and experienced the Civil Rights Movement.

I was called by education and by teaching.
Education taught me to analyze how & why; teaching taught me why it matters. 

An environmental disease or two taught me how pressing is the time for us all, as well as me personally.
From Wikipedia: "Most pituitary tumors arise spontaneously and are not genetically inherited. Many pituitary tumors arise from a genetic alteration in a single pituitary cell which leads to increased cell division and tumor formation. This genetic change, or mutation, is not present at birth, but is acquired during life..."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acromegaly  

Mine is causing chiasmal compression.

Some inexplicable force convinced me. I don’t know what to say about that.

I hesitate bringing my professional career and my public advocacy into OVERT convergence.

Particularly after the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows the indefinite detention of US civilians if national security is at issue.

I did not know a conference I will attend and present at will be broadcasted globally on the internet.

I know there will be consequences for taking a stand as an academic.

Many before me have taken stands in their respective areas on this particular issue: as Pediatricians and other medical doctors, as nuclear plant engineers, as biologists, as health physicists, as former government employees, as nuclear physicists (in Japan no less), etc.

I can do it too.


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