the real eve

Want to reduce school shootings? Get rid of guns.

2008-09-10T10:45:00.003-04:00

Malignant narcissism, social cruelty and child abuse have been around forever, but school massacres are a phenomenon of the past 50 years. "It is a simple fact," Fast writes, "that school shootings are impossible without guns that are affordable, available, easy to load and fire, and capable of firing many rounds within a few seconds." "Ceremonial Violence" contains dozens of astonishing stories of irresponsible gun merchants and adult family members who allowed deadly weapons to fall into the hands of disturbed teenagers. Andrew Golden, one of the Jonesboro shooters, had been given two rifles, a shotgun and a crossbow by the age of 11. His grandfather kept 48 rifles in his house, secured only by a cable. Dylan Klebold's parents, in many respects intelligent and concerned about their son's obvious problems, nevertheless gave him a gun, as did Kip Kinkel's father, despite many warning signs that his son was seriously troubled. Teenage school shooters bought ammo through the mail or at gun shows, using friends who were over 18 as fronts. Or they stole guns from their parents, who either left the weapons lying around or stored them insecurely. Some of those parents were murdered with guns they paid for.

While the Columbine massacre was in fact a failed bombing (few of the 77 bombs Klebold and Harris planted throughout the school ever detonated), the number of people killed was nevertheless still higher than those of many other school shootings because the perpetrators had semiautomatic weapons. (Such was also the case at Virginia Tech, where Seung-Hui Cho killed more than twice as many people as Harris and Klebold.) These and other assault rifles, flooding into the U.S. market from overseas manufacturers in the late 20th century, made their wielders exceptionally lethal, despite the fact that the boys were poor shots and the cheap guns tended to jam. Assault weapons have upped the ante considerably.

Today's advice, courtesy of Theresa Brown in the NYT

2008-09-09T14:18:00.001-04:00

What can one do? Go home, love your children, try not to bicker, eat well, walk in the rain, feel the sun on your face and laugh loud and often, as much as possible, and especially at yourself. Because the only antidote to death is not poetry, or drama, or miracle drugs, or a roomful of technical expertise and good intentions. The antidote to death is life.

On reflection, this seems like a bad move

2008-09-03T10:57:00.001-04:00

coming soon to a boob near you....

2008-06-23T16:58:00.000-04:00

Harnessing the untapped power of breast motion. - By Adrienne So - Slate Magazine

from Merriam-Webster’s word of the day, the origin of the word tawdry

2008-06-04T09:59:00.000-04:00

In the 7th century, Etheldreda, the queen of Northumbria, renounced her husband and her royal position for the veil of a nun. She was renowned for her saintliness and is traditionally said to have died of a swelling in her throat, which she took as a judgment upon her fondness for wearing necklaces in her youth. Her shrine became a principal site of pilgrimage in England. An annual fair was held in her honor on October 17th, and her name became simplified to St. Audrey. At these fairs various kinds of cheap knickknacks were sold, along with a type of necklace called "St. Audrey's lace," which by the 17th century had become altered to "tawdry lace." Eventually, "tawdry" came to be used to describe anything cheap and gaudy that might be found at these fairs or anywhere else.

Science can't be separated from morality and that's bad news for conservatives.

2008-05-16T10:07:00.000-04:00

Homosexuality, polygamy, and incest. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine

Is college overrated? For some, clearly.

2008-05-12T21:25:00.000-04:00

Among high school students who graduated in the bottom 40 percent of their classes, and whose first institutions were four-year colleges, two-thirds had not earned diplomas 8 1/2 years later.

truly a Loving story

2008-05-08T11:40:00.000-04:00

I miss the swingsets with the impossibly long chains.

2008-05-02T11:06:00.000-04:00

Tom Vanderbilt worries about the state of American playgrounds in Slate.com today.

"In her book American Playgrounds, Susan Solomon notes how the fear of injuries and their litigious consequences forced the closing, or banal 'post-and-platform' retrofitting, of many playgrounds. Gone are the kinds of things that defined my own childhood: terrifying metal 'monkey bars' pitched over a pit of hard gravel or the towering, twisting, all-metal 'tornado slide,' as we called it, which was at once the most exhilarating and the most dangerous thing in my young life."

MADD has gone mad.

2008-05-01T16:52:00.000-04:00

Farhad Manjoo takes MADD to task for calling for Grand Theft AutoIV to be effectively pulled from the shelves because, in the game, one's character can choose to drive drunk. MADD says: ""Drunk driving is not a game and it is not a joke. Drunk driving is a choice, a violent crime and it is also 100 percent preventable."

Farhad says, am I am 100% with him:

"Oh, where to begin? Yes, drunk driving is not a game; it is a serious offense. But 'Grand Theft Auto' is a game. The difference turns out to be of some importance. What one does in a game, see, occurs almost entirely inside one's head, where the action cannot harm another soul. There is no evidence that doing something in a game is predictive of future such real-life action, or even suggestive of a desire to commit such action.

If that were the case, a majority of Americans would spend their days crawling through sewers in search of magic mushrooms, or else hunting ducks and trading real estate."

the future of politics....yuck!

2008-04-29T12:42:00.000-04:00

In Slate.com, Anne Applebaum has this to say about the current mayoral election in London:

"But it's nevertheless worth watching because this campaign could well be a blueprint for the elections of the future since it is postmodern and post-ideological in the deepest sense: In a world in which 'issues' are not the issue and no one takes political parties seriously anymore, there's nothing left to talk about except who said what to whom and whose tongue was sharper while doing so."

See, I'm not wrong to love Mariah!

2008-04-29T12:39:00.000-04:00

Arggggggh!

2008-04-26T12:18:00.000-04:00

How the Bush administration meddles with government science. - By Bonnie Goldstein - Slate Magazine:

"The Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit group championing scientific integrity, keeps an A-to-Z tally of politically motivated meddling with hard science at U.S. government agencies. Its latest report, titled 'Interference at the EPA,' (executive summary below and on the following eight pages) documents complaints from hundreds of scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency. The bad news: '60 percent of respondents personally experienced at least one incident of political interference during the past 5 years.' The problem appears to be worsening, because obstruction occurred 'more often in the past five years' than during the previous five-year period (Page 3). Examples of political intrusion include White House manipulation of 'scientific findings … regarding mercury pollution and climate change.' In addition, the White House Office of Management and Budget and other federal agencies have second-guessed the EPA's assessment of toxic chemicals (Page 5)."

totally excellent toilet paper!

2008-04-23T15:11:00.000-04:00

no where to go

2008-04-17T21:11:00.000-04:00

The truth about small towns:

"One side rushes to drape themselves in flags, guns and the kind of Norman Rockwell hagiography that is far removed from the 2008 reality of meth labs and foreclosure frontiers. The other side says religion is for fools, and if only they had a new Starbucks in town, some of those Bible-banging gun nuts could learn to love Sundays with Norah Jones and a Scrabble game."

Jon and Will make hay....

2008-04-16T21:42:00.000-04:00

Slate V - Did You See This?

He who controls the language of an argument usually wins.....

2008-04-08T10:48:00.000-04:00

Broadsheet - Salon.com:

"Unfortunately, the United States just had its own disturbing flirtation with blocking 'sensitive' search terms: POPLINE, the world's largest database on reproductive planning (including some 360,000 articles on subjects like fertility and family planning) was recently set to ignore 'abortion' as a search term. Yes, you read that right. Administrators programmed the database to treat the word 'abortion' the same way it does 'a' and 'the' -- that is, to pretend it didn't exist."

a heart breaking hero's story

2008-04-04T23:56:00.000-04:00

Real female heroes: Ingrid Betancourt - Broadsheet - Salon.com

See, I'm not crazy for loving this show.

2008-04-04T14:40:00.000-04:00

TV Review: "Battlestar Galactica" Salon Arts & Entertainment:

"As post-9/11 global relations have reflected too well, in a chaotic world of shifting alliances and conflicting belief systems, remaining firm in your conviction that you're on the side of the righteous can be the greatest challenge of all. But who would've thought that a TV remake of a goofy '70s space thriller could bring these fundamental geopolitical tensions to life so palpably? The sharpness of the dialogue, the dramatic weight of each scene, the relentlessly high stakes and the informed, multilayered approach to big questions combine to make 'Battlestar Galactica' an electrifying drama series that far too many viewers are missing out on."

it's my first YouTube video!!!!!

2008-04-03T19:16:00.000-04:00

2008-04-02T12:09:00.001-04:00

Why aren't there any jokes that start with "A penis walks into a bar..."?

So, I am giving up sugar!

2008-04-02T11:58:00.000-04:00

Today, we learn about willpower. (Now is that a great word or what?)

"Focusing on success is important because willpower can grow in the long term. Like a muscle, willpower seems to become stronger with use. The idea of exercising willpower is seen in military boot camp, where recruits are trained to overcome one challenge after another.

In psychological studies, even something as simple as using your nondominant hand to brush your teeth for two weeks can increase willpower capacity. People who stick to an exercise program for two months report reducing their impulsive spending, junk food intake, alcohol use and smoking. They also study more, watch less television and do more housework. Other forms of willpower training, like money-management classes, work as well."

in case you were wondering about Battlestar Galactica....

2008-04-01T22:20:00.000-04:00

Where goeth America?

2008-03-31T22:12:00.002-04:00

Race and the Social Contract
By EDUARDO PORTER

(from the NYT op-ed pages)

In 1893, Friedrich Engels wrote from London to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, another German Communist then living in New York, lamenting how America’s diversity hindered efforts to establish a workers’ party in the United States. Was it possible to unify Poles, Germans, Irish, “the many small groups, each of which understands only itself”? All the bourgeoisie had to do was wait, “and the dissimilar elements of the working class fall apart again.”

America’s mix of peoples has changed in its 200-plus years. Yet when Barack Obama delivered his bracing speech on race, he was grappling with a similar challenge. “Realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams,” he said. “Investing in the health, welfare and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.”

It is a tall order. Ten years ago, William Julius Wilson wrote that American whites rebelled against welfare because they saw it as using their hard-earned taxes to give blacks “medical and legal services that many of them could not afford for their own families.”

As obviously sensible as Mr. Obama’s proposition might be in a nation of as many hues, tongues and creeds as the United States, it struggles against self-defeating human behavior: racial and ethnic diversity undermine support for public investment in social welfare. For all the appeal of America’s melting pot, the country’s diverse ethnic mix is one main reason for entrenched opposition to public spending on the public good.

Among the 30 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a club of industrial countries, only Mexicans, Koreans and Greeks pay less in taxes than Americans, as a share of the economy. The United States also ranks near the bottom on public spending on social programs: 19 percent of the nation’s total output in 2003, compared with 29 percent in Sweden, 23 percent in Portugal and almost 30 percent in France.

The Harvard economists Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser correlated public spending in Western Europe and the United States with diversity and concluded that half the social-spending gap was due to the United States’ more varied racial and ethnic mix. The other half was mostly due to the existence of stronger left-wing parties in Europe.

Americans are not less generous than Europeans. When private charities are included, they probably spend more money for social purposes than Europeans do. But philanthropy allows them to target spending on those they personally believe are deserving, instead of allowing the government to choose.

Mr. Glaeser’s and Mr. Alesina’s work suggests that white Europeans support a big welfare state because they believe the money will probably go to other white Europeans. In America, the Harvard economist Erzo F. P. Luttmer found that support for social spending among respondents to General Social Survey polls increased in tandem with the share of welfare recipients in the area who were in their own racial group. A study of charity by Daniel Hungerman, a Notre Dame economist, found that all-white congregations become less charitably active as the share of black residents in the local community grows.

This breakdown of solidarity should be unacceptable in a country that is, after all, mainly a nation of immigrants, glued together by a common project and many shared values. The United States has showed an unparalleled capacity to pull together in challenging times. Americans have invested blood and treasure to serve a broad national purpose and to rescue and protect their allies across the Atlantic.

Still, racial and ethnic antagonism all too frequently limit generosity at home. In one study, Mr. Alesina, with Reza Baqir of the International Monetary Fund and William Easterly of New York University, found that the share of municipal spending in the United States devoted to social good — roads, sewage, education and trash clearance — was smaller in more racially diverse cities.

While this tension manifests mainly along racial lines, it has broader ethnic, religious and even linguistic dimensions. A 2003 study by Julian Betts of the University of California, San Diego, and Robert Fairlie of the University of California, Santa Cruz, found that for every four immigrants who arrived in public high schools, one native student switched to a private school.
Politicians, from Richard Nixon to Tom Tancredo, have long exploited racial tensions. But there is nothing inevitable about ethnic animosities, as Senator Obama argued in his speech, which came at an important moment.

Globalization presents the United States with an enormous challenge. Rising to the test will require big investments in the public good — from infrastructure to education to a safety net protecting those most vulnerable to change. Americans must once again show their ability to transcend group interests for a common national cause.

We should all be so lucky in loss and love

2008-03-30T16:23:00.002-04:00

How We Got From Grief to Pancakes
By PATTY DANN

(printed in the Modern Love column in the New York Times)

I was nervous about meeting my future husband’s parents, even though I am old enough to be a grandmother. When I told a friend I was marrying again, he said, “What? And lose your widow status?”

My first husband, Willem, died eight years ago of brain cancer. He was 50, Dutch, a marathon runner, as graceful as a heron. Then one day, while a spring breeze rustled the curtains, he gazed at me and said meekly, “Who are you?”

I am now older than he was when he died, as is my future husband, Michael. A wedding photograph of Michael and his late wife, a beautiful reddish blonde, sits on my bureau. Some people find it strange that I would have such a photo on my bureau. I do not. These people are our stories, our past, and the parents of our children.

“I would like you to meet my parents,” Michael said several months ago. I had seen pictures of them. His father, at 84, is a federal judge, still active on the bench. His mother, who had been a ballet dancer, is still married to him.

They fell in love and left their small towns in South Carolina to go to the big city of Atlanta. They were a mythical couple whose friends soaped “Just Married” all over their 1940 Plymouth. They washed it off, or so they thought. But the “Just Married” message on the roof remained, faded but defiant, baked into the paint and reappearing whenever it rained. And their marriage, too, survives, 60 years later, although the ballet dancer’s mind is fading.

I brought her pink ribbons for toeshoes as a gift, to see if she remembers, the color perhaps, a sensual memory from long ago, twirling and smiling in the sunlight.

The first time my son met Michael’s two boys they all nodded, “Hey,” and went off into the summer night to play basketball on a driveway down the street. When they came back sweaty, two hours later, I longed to ask the crickets what the boys had talked about. I scanned their tired faces, desperate for a sign. Did they like one another? Would it be O.K.?

The next morning I asked my son, “What do you think of the big boys?”

“Good,” he said.

“Their mother died,” I said.

“I know, but they got to know her until they were teenagers. At least they remember their mother.”

What would my future mother-in-law think of me, a New York girl?

“She might be very cordial when you meet and then five minutes later ask who you are,” Michael said.

“Oh,” I said quietly. I understood. Willem’s brain had unraveled before my eyes, and before the eyes of my son, who was 4 years old.

I have two fears:

1. Of learning to be a family again.

2. Of becoming a widow again.

I admit in the cold winters of the recent years, many nights I let my son sit on the radiator eating macaroni and cheese as we watched “Supernanny.” We were both entranced to see how she solved the problems of all these families, always a husband and wife with unruly children, screaming and carrying on. We were junkies.

Even though the children on the show were holy terrors, they always had two parents. We longed for unruly. In the days after my husband died, my son would march off to preschool and call out, “Get me a new Daddy while I’m at school.”

Then I wrote a book about my husband dying. Michael, who is a journalist in Baltimore, felt compelled in the wake of his wife’s death to read books on grief, which hadn’t been my response. It was all I could do in those days to make a cow costume for my son’s school play. But my publisher forwarded me a link to an essay Michael published about grieving, which included a review of my book.

I read it online at 2 a.m., sitting alone in my nightgown, barefoot and shivering, on a winter night last year. Reading it, I felt a complete love for his late wife, Nancy, who was an art historian, just as Willem had been.

In the essay, which included reviews of works by better-known widowed writers, Michael quoted a passage of mine about a widower I had met as a teenager who still had his dead wife’s clothes in his closet. I had been spooked at the time, never imagining that at age 46 I would have a closetful of my dead husband’s clothes, and that it would seem right.

I wrote to him: “Dear Mr. Hill, It’s an honor to be included with such wonderful writers. I am sorry for your loss.”

He wrote back, commenting on the passage in my book where I describe how I kept buying basil at the grocery store the summer Willem was dying, and how the smell of basil got me through those months. Since his wife died, he wrote, he didn’t think he could plant a garden again.
Soon we were exchanging e-mail messages with “re: grief” in the subject line. We corresponded for two months, starting with those first cold weeks when Michael would return to his empty home with his children off at college, and now Nancy gone, and struggle to shovel the icy driveway. Eventually the subject lines changed to “re: thumb-stack of pancakes” and “re: bolts of cloth.”

One night my son appeared at my desk at midnight, when I thought he was asleep, while I was writing restless e-mail messages.

“I see how you get, all flirty-flirty with Michael,” he announced.

Michael was coming to New York in a few weeks, to see Joan Didion’s play “The Year of Magical Thinking.” Did I want to get together for coffee? I agreed to meet him at the Morgan Library.
Two days later I panicked. “I have a middle school meeting all day,” I boldly lied. “Perhaps another time.”

But then a friend advised: “Go. You’ve been scared your whole life. Go.”

Another said: “A man married that long, 27 years, will never get over his wife. Aren’t you jealous?”

“No, it’s the opposite of that,” I said. “I love her. She would have been my friend. I don’t want him to let her go. The four of us would have been friends.”

I wrote Michael and told him I could get away for an hour. “How will I recognize you?” I asked.
“I’m 5-9 and need a haircut,” he replied. “I’ll be wearing a baseball hat. And you?”

I wrote, “Years ago, when I was in Oklahoma, I met a man who said: ‘You look like Bonnie, you know, Bonnie and Clyde. She was a little woman like you, with messy hair.’ ” I added, “Not Faye Dunaway.”

I waited nervously at the door of the Morgan Library until a man of Michael’s description walked in. I leaned forward and put out my hand. “Michael?” I said.

“Yes,” he said, shaking my hand. We talked for several minutes and then he said, “I’m sorry, but how do I know you?” And we realized he was not the Michael I thought he was. I was relieved and disappointed. This was a nice man, but I felt no magic.

Five minutes later another man in a baseball hat walked through the door. This was the man I had been writing to day and night for two months, who liked the words “bolts of cloth” as much as I did.

We did not look at any exhibits at the Morgan Library. I cannot even tell you what the exhibits were. Instead we sat side-by-side at computers, clicking randomly on virtual tours, and showing each other pictures of our sons.

“Don’t you have to get back to the middle school meeting?” Michael asked over lunch, while I pushed my food around.

“No, somebody can tell me about it,” I demurred, staring at his wrists.

Our second date, I met him at Penn Station under what we’ve come to call the “flip-flip sign.”

Then we walked west and he took my hand. While buying tickets for the Circle Line around Manhattan, I confessed to him that there had been no middle school meeting. (As a wise friend had said to me: “There are no all-day middle school meetings. Couldn’t you have come up with something better than that?”)

As we filed onto the boat, a photographer took our picture. We sat on deck in the sunlight, with German and Japanese tourists seated next to us. The breeze was soft; the guide made garbled announcements about Henry Hudson and the Little Red Lighthouse, and Michael touched the back of my neck. When we got off the boat all the photos of the passengers were hanging up for sale. There we were, a middle-aged widow and widower, in love.

LAST week I met his parents. I gave his mother the pink toeshoe ribbons. She thanked me, taking them lightly in her fingers. I reintroduced myself to her each time I entered the room. When it was time for me to return to New York, Michael’s father hugged me and said in his South Carolina drawl, “Welcome to the family.”

I told his mother I loved her son.

“We enjoyed having you here. We’ll miss you,” said his mother, holding the pink toeshoe ribbons, although it was not clear to me if she remembered sewing similar ones to toeshoes long ago.

It is almost time for Michael to plant his spring garden. A button broke on the cuff of his shirt recently, and as he stood with the cracked button in the palm of his hand like an offering, I could see him missing Nancy.

I hesitated, then went into the back of my closet and pulled out one of Willem’s shirts. Although I’m no Betsy Ross, I retrieved my box of sewing things, full of threads and needles from Willem’s mother’s Dutch sewing kit.

Working carefully with the tiny scissors, I snipped a button off Willem’s shirt and sewed it onto Michael’s cuff.

Patty Dann lives in New York City. Her latest book is “The Goldfish Went on Vacation” ( Trumpeter, 2007).

Yet another reason to all just get along!

2008-03-28T13:00:00.001-04:00

Did you know that, according to Philip K. Hitti in his book A Short History of the Arabs,

"The parallels between the Old Testament and the Koran are many and striking. Almost all the historical narratives of the Koran have their biblical counterparts. Among the Old Testament characters, Adam, Noah, Abraham (mentioned about seventy times), Ishmael, Lot, Joseph, Moses (whose name occurs in thirty-four chapters), Saul, David, Solomon, Elijah, Job and Jonah figure prominently. The story of the Creation and Fall of Adam is cited five times, the flood eight and Sodom eight. Of the New Testament characters Zacharias, John the Baptist, Jesus and Mary are the only ones emphasized. ... Certain miraculous acts attributed to Jesus the child in the Koran, such as speaking out in the cradle and creating birds out of clay, recall similar acts recorded in the Apocryphal Gospels. ...

The girls impress me!

2008-03-24T18:58:00.000-04:00

Wanna take a peek at my...bookshelf?

2008-03-24T14:44:00.003-04:00

My youngest son--11--sent me an invitation to join him on Shelfari. I have and think the site's cool. You make a bookshelf of as many books as you wish--books you've read or want to read, own or wish for--and then you can share your bookcase with others, either just friends you choose or the Shelfari community. For a bookie, it's a great site!

one of my favorite things

2008-03-22T11:04:00.000-04:00

malarkey

2008-03-22T10:29:00.003-04:00

I use this word routinely--"You are full of malarkey if you think you're going to get out of unloading the dishwasher."--and wondered where it came from. It seems a bit Athena-like, having apparently sprung full-grown into the English language in 1922.

Say "I do" before saying "it's babytime."

2008-03-20T09:24:00.001-04:00

This column by Emily Yoffe is on the money. She argues persuasively for, imagine, getting married before having kids. One of her most salient points is that the trend to procreate without marriage is one that is rarely chosen by those who have a college degree.

"Hymowitz points out that all classes of Americans once followed the same life script of marriage before children. When divorce rates started soaring in the 1970s, everyone was fleeing their marriages. But then the classes started diverging. The Economist cites statistics that show among college-educated women married between 1990 and 1994, only 16.5 percent were divorced 10 years later. Among those with a high-school education or less who married in those same years, about 40 percent were divorced after a decade.

And to avoid the trauma of divorce, those with less education began forgoing marriage altogether. Better-educated women, who once upon a time were at a disadvantage in finding a mate, 'are now more likely to marry than their non-college peers,' according to the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. It turns out that outside Hollywood, there aren't too many Murphy Browns—successful, educated women who choose to have children alone. The Murphy Browns actually get married: Only 4 percent of college graduates have children out of wedlock."

so much for an educated electorate

2008-03-20T09:15:00.000-04:00

Today I learned that "only about 70 percent of the one million American students who start ninth grade each year graduate four years later."

Oh to be a flatworm. Or not.

2008-03-18T13:47:00.002-04:00

In the animal world, fidelity is a fiction.

A very funny article in today's NYT points out that:

"Yet as biologists have discovered through the application of DNA paternity tests to the offspring of these bonded pairs, social monogamy is very rarely accompanied by sexual, or genetic, monogamy. Assay the kids in a given brood, whether of birds, voles, lesser apes, foxes or any other pair-bonding species, and anywhere from 10 to 70 percent will prove to have been sired by somebody other than the resident male.

As David P. Barash, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle, put it with Cole Porter flair: Infants have their infancy; adults, adultery. Dr. Barash, who wrote “The Myth of Monogamy” with his psychiatrist-wife, Judith Eve Lipton, cited a scene from the movie “Heartburn” in which a Nora Ephronesque character complains to her father about her husband’s philanderings and the father quips that if she’d wanted fidelity, she should have married a swan. Fat lot of good that would have done her, Dr. Barash said: we now know that swans can cheat, too. Instead, the heroine might have considered union with Diplozoon paradoxum, a flatworm that lives in gills of freshwater fish. “Males and females meet each other as adolescents, and their bodies literally fuse together, whereupon they remain faithful until death,” Dr. Barash said. “That’s the only species I know of in which there seems to be 100 percent monogamy.” And where the only hearts burned belong to the unlucky host fish."

Ouch!

2008-03-18T13:38:00.000-04:00

I'm also wondering about masterbation. Clearly, for the Lutherans, it's bad news.

2008-03-13T13:52:00.000-04:00

The Lutherans have released a document about human sexuality which, according to the NYT, "...repeatedly states that sexual intimacy should be reserved for married couples, and condemns sex for personal gratification alone." Does that mean that sex, in married couples where the wife can no longer (or at all) have kids, is wrong? Or does it imply that sex is a part of marriage and only in marriage does sex exist in the larger relational context that implies more than just "personal gratification?"

Who knows whether or not someone has been hazed?

2008-03-11T15:48:00.000-04:00

This line, in article about hazing in Salon.com, gave me pause.

"However, nine out of 10 students who reported being subjected to behavior that constitutes hazing didn't believe they had been hazed, the professors said."

What does that mean? I always worry when outsiders--researchers, administrators, etc...--tell the subjects of scrutiny that they, the subjects, don't really understand their own experiences.

Not me. If you can run the state, and you're having consensual sex, bang whomever you choose.

2008-03-10T19:51:00.002-04:00

Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com: "Who cares if Eliot Spitzer hires prostitutes?"

Here's an idea....

2008-03-10T15:55:00.003-04:00

This editorial is in this week's Time magazine. I found it compelling.

Wednesday, Mar. 05, 2008
The Wire's War on the Drug War
By Ed Burns, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, David Simon

We write a television show. Measured against more thoughtful and meaningful occupations, this is not the best seat from which to argue public policy or social justice. Still, those viewers who followed The Wire — our HBO drama that tried to portray all sides of inner-city collapse, including the drug war, with as much detail and as little judgment as we could muster — tell us they've invested in the fates of our characters. They worry or grieve for Bubbles, Bodie or Wallace, certain that these characters are fictional yet knowing they are rooted in the reality of the other America, the one rarely acknowledged by anything so overt as a TV drama.

These viewers, admittedly a small shard of the TV universe, deluge us with one question: What can we do? If there are two Americas — separate and unequal — and if the drug war has helped produce a psychic chasm between them, how can well-meaning, well-intentioned people begin to bridge those worlds?

And for five seasons, we answered lamely, offering arguments about economic priorities or drug policy, debating theoreticals within our tangled little drama. We were storytellers, not advocates; we ducked the question as best we could.

Yet this war grinds on, flooding our prisons, devouring resources, turning city neighborhoods into free-fire zones. To what end? State and federal prisons are packed with victims of the drug conflict. A new report by the Pew Center shows that 1 of every 100 adults in the U.S. — and 1 in 15 black men over 18 — is currently incarcerated. That's the world's highest rate of imprisonment.

The drug war has ravaged law enforcement too. In cities where police agencies commit the most resources to arresting their way out of their drug problems, the arrest rates for violent crime — murder, rape, aggravated assault — have declined. In Baltimore, where we set The Wire, drug arrests have skyrocketed over the past three decades, yet in that same span, arrest rates for murder have gone from 80% and 90% to half that. Lost in an unwinnable drug war, a new generation of law officers is no longer capable of investigating crime properly, having learned only to make court pay by grabbing cheap, meaningless drug arrests off the nearest corner.
What the drugs themselves have not destroyed, the warfare against them has. And what once began, perhaps, as a battle against dangerous substances long ago transformed itself into a venal war on our underclass. Since declaring war on drugs nearly 40 years ago, we've been demonizing our most desperate citizens, isolating and incarcerating them and otherwise denying them a role in the American collective. All to no purpose. The prison population doubles and doubles again; the drugs remain.

Our leaders? There aren't any politicians — Democrat or Republican — willing to speak truth on this. Instead, politicians compete to prove themselves more draconian than thou, to embrace America's most profound and enduring policy failure.

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right," wrote Thomas Paine when he called for civil disobedience against monarchy — the flawed national policy of his day. In a similar spirit, we offer a small idea that is, perhaps, no small idea. It will not solve the drug problem, nor will it heal all civic wounds. It does not yet address questions of how the resources spent warring with our poor over drug use might be better spent on treatment or education or job training, or anything else that might begin to restore those places in America where the only economic engine remaining is the illegal drug economy. It doesn't resolve the myriad complexities that a retreat from war to sanity will require. All it does is open a range of intricate, paradoxical issues. But this is what we can do — and what we will do.

If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun's manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.

Jury nullification is American dissent, as old and as heralded as the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger, who was acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, and absent a government capable of repairing injustices, it is legitimate protest. If some few episodes of a television entertainment have caused others to reflect on the war zones we have created in our cities and the human beings stranded there, we ask that those people might also consider their conscience. And when the lawyers or the judge or your fellow jurors seek explanation, think for a moment on Bubbles or Bodie or Wallace. And remember that the lives being held in the balance aren't fictional.

The authors are all members of the writing staff of HBO's The Wire, which concludes its five-year run on March 9

I know, I know, you're tired of my Wire love.

2008-03-10T12:31:00.000-04:00

Slate.com nails what made The Wire so amazing.

"Think about this: HBO, a division of the putatively soulless Time Warner, funded, for several years, a barely watched television series with nonfamous, mostly African-American actors that confronted two interconnected subjects, the collapse of the American city and the predicament of inner-city black people, that most premium-cable subscribers, and most everyone else, ignore with great equanimity. Astonishing, when you think about it."

The Wire. R.I.P.

2008-03-10T12:25:00.000-04:00

Here's a great sum up from Salon.com. Their words say just how I feel about David Simon's incredible show.

"You know, I never could watch 'The Sopranos.' It was too cartoonish for me. And so what drew me to 'The Wire' from the beginning was its commitment to authenticity. It was the real deal. 'The Wire' taught me about street life, about politics, about inner-city schools -- and, of course, about the murder police. Television is a land of fantasy, of soft and fuzzy details. But 'The Wire' checked and doublechecked its facts; it gave a shit about getting the story right, and it dared to be a show respected by the people whose lives it was depicting. Meanwhile, on 'House,' someone's eyeball popped out of an anus."

At the end of the day, the geeks do get the girls.

2008-03-09T20:47:00.001-04:00

I loved this editorial. However, the book it swiped its title from, Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, well, not so much. I think of Geek Love as the evil spawn of What To Expect When You're Expecting--both books made me fear pregnancy and its resulting progeny.

BSG in nine minutes or less!

2008-03-06T09:05:00.000-05:00

The headline says it all

2008-03-06T09:01:00.000-05:00

Men Who Do Housework May Get More Sex

please, no muffy jokes

2008-03-05T18:25:00.000-05:00

death comes to my neighborhood

2008-03-05T16:00:00.000-05:00

Why, naturally, are there 105 boys born for every 100 girls? What's the biolgical reason behind that?

2008-03-05T15:48:00.001-05:00

Coercion, money, and the rise of reproductive freedom. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine:

"The one-child policy has also warped China's male-to-female ratio. If you live in a traditional, sexist society, you probably want a boy. If you're allowed only one child and you find out you're carrying a girl, things get ugly. At birth, the normal boy-girl ratio, if you let nature take its course, is about 105 to 100. In China, it's 118 to 100. Leaving aside the fact that it's just plain wrong to abort girls for being girls, a ratio of 118 to 100 leaves 18 boys without a girl. Even a Communist knows that's a social disaster. To avert it, Zhao says the government is trying to persuade the public that girls are valuable. It's also subsidizing rural areas that have regarded sons as financial assets and girls as liabilities."

I learned two new words this week!

2008-03-04T11:02:00.001-05:00

nocebo (no-SEE-bo) noun

A substance producing harmful effects in someone because it
is believed to be harmful, but which in reality is harmless.
[From Latin nocebo (I will harm), from nocere (to harm).
Modeled after placebo (I will please).]

immure (i-myoor) verb (used with object), -mured, -mur·ing.
1. to enclose within walls.
2. to shut in; seclude or confine.
3. to imprison.

By Thor! A religion I've never heard of....

2008-03-03T21:31:00.000-05:00

The Asatru Alliance

Boom! Boom! We're morons!

2008-03-01T18:23:00.002-05:00

Amen to the NYT's excoriation of our political leaders:

"...neither the absence of a perfect solution nor opposition from the powerful gun lobby is an excuse to do nothing — not when some 30 people are killed with guns every day in America. The rampage at the Northern Illinois campus was at least the sixth multiple murder in this country in just the first two weeks of February."

Journey lives on..and the hip thrusts enchant another generation

2008-03-01T10:04:00.002-05:00

Here's another video from that stellar class at my kids' high school. I love the idea of Journey reconfigured as a band with a black drummer who plays the cement post.

still the memory of laughter and spark

2008-02-29T23:42:00.003-05:00

I've been listening to my "I love these songs" play list and making jewelry this evening, all the while thinking about people I love despite their palpable absence in my life:

Tracey, my deadly dangerous friend from tenth grade whom I always assume is dead.
Mike, the almost love of my life whom I never really got over.
Anne, the college soul mate for whom faith and hickeys trumped friendship.
Mr. Jones, the teacher whose reading of "The Crucible" made my thighs shiver.
Jim, the friend I treated so poorly it still makes me squirm.

The list goes on.

I wonder if the love I feel for those I've truly moved past is different from the way I love those in my life. Certainly love stuck in memory like a crustacean in amber has a pained easiness to it. I've never had to worry if I would be a good friend to a befouled Tracey in the present or whether Mike's elliptical passion would have faded in the face of time. I suspect that loving others in such a one-way street way creates a space to love during the times when those actually sharing my current life feel too far from me. I am free to change while still holding fast to the Polaroids of my past...as I listen to Joanie Mitchell sing about that car on the hill.

1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars

2008-02-28T15:01:00.000-05:00

Just say jail.

There are 11 planets now! Here's how to remember them.

2008-02-27T14:50:00.000-05:00

"My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants"

for

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Eris.

Ceres? Eris?

This video rocks!

2008-02-26T19:37:00.002-05:00

This video was made in a videography class at my kids' high school. It's amazingly good and, before anyone jumps in and says it's homophobic, let me say "I don't think so." The culture has come so far if young men are comfortable playing these roles for the whole school and, to a lesser extent (for them), the whole world.

Lovely poem by Michael Chitwood

2008-02-26T11:37:00.002-05:00

"The Room" by Michael Chitwood

One way or another, we must all leave
I said to a room, a room empty of people,
save for me. There were two doors to the room,

ample avenues of departure. A small town.
A family. A faith. A marriage. A career.
The dailiness of days' work done for years.

We are leaving even as we speak I said to no one
in the room with me. To whom did I speak?
To ones already left, though left can mean

both to remain and to depart? Dearly departed
you remain here with me in this empty room,
room enough for you, empty in my aching thought.

Leavings are that scatter, those remaining remnants,
our language littered with what can't be gotten rid of,
our thoughts, our bodies ghosted, the leavings remaining.

The image of the US "driving drunki around the globe with no panties" is riveting.

2008-02-25T14:25:00.000-05:00

In Salon.com today, Cintra Wilson, whilst trashing the Oscars, harshly and hilariously summed up the state of our great land:

"After shaving its head and driving drunk around the globe with no panties, calling itself the Antichrist, and finally abandoning its children, totaling its SUV and getting its ass kicked in the parking lot of the Persian Gulf, America is realizing that it is internationally loathed, broke, soulless, tasteless, fat, drunk, malicious, greedy and stupid, and has been generally behaving like a lousy excuse for a world superpower for long enough to lose all its friends and position."

Driving at 18 makes sense to me

2008-02-25T11:53:00.003-05:00

It's always nice to be validated. I read today in the NYT that: "The national rate of licensed 16-year-olds dropped to 29.8 percent in 2006 from 43.8 percent in 1998, according to the Federal Highway Administration." In my house, teens can't get a driving license before 17 and, once they do, they will drive in the state of North Carolina which has some of the most restrictive teen-driving laws in the country. Our eldest, now 16 1/2 just got his permit--which in NC a teen must have for a year before he or she can get an unrestricted license--and only practices driving because I make him. My next son is 15 and starts the 32 hour classroom course Driver's Education offered in his high school this afternoon. He may get his permit before his brother got his, but he too will have to be 17 before he'll be able to get his license.

This no-driving-16-year-olds policy seems to me quite sane, perhaps even smart, given that as the NYT points out: "teenage drivers have the highest crash risk of any group. Car accidents account for one-third of all deaths of 16- to 18-year-olds, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration." I love my children dearly and, given that my sons often have a hard time navigating their backpacks, I'm in no hurry for them to take the wheel of our mini-van.

If you ask me, 18 seems like a great age to start drinking and driving, just never, never together.

Jesus wasn't a myth...sorta.

2008-02-24T19:09:00.000-05:00

Told You So...

2008-02-07T20:51:00.000-05:00

Who Is More Electable? - New York Times: "“During extensive interviews in recent weeks in Republican-leaning states, Politico found widespread belief among current and former Democratic statewide officials that Obama is the more electable candidate with their electorates. These politicians also frequently registered a fear that Clinton’s personality and past history make her too polarizing to win independent and Republican-leaning voters.”"

Thanks to my friend Nina for this amusing bon mot.

2008-01-26T17:02:00.001-05:00

Electile Dysfunction : the inability to become aroused over any of the choices for President put forth by either party in the 2008 election year.

Nice!

2008-01-24T18:15:00.000-05:00

Broadsheet: Women's Articles, Women's Stories, Women's Blog - Salon.com: "Notorious Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone has launched a 527 political organization called Citizens United Not Timid (aka CUNT) to educate the public about 'what Hillary Clinton really is.'"

I have made this claim before. Best ever.

2008-01-20T22:08:00.000-05:00

Suzanne Pleshette, 70, ‘Newhart’ Actress, Dies - New York Times:
"Arguably Ms. Pleshette’s most memorable television moment was not in “The Bob Newhart Show” but in the final episode of “Newhart.” On May 21, 1990, Mr. Newhart’s character, Dick Loudon, was hit in the head by a golf ball and woke up to find himself in Dr. Robert Hartley’s bed, with his beautiful, unfailingly sane wife, Emily, at his side. The whole second sitcom had been a nightmare.

The episode was considered one of the most successful series finales in television history, partly because it managed to remain a secret until it was broadcast."

Unhappily married women are more likely to get a job.

2008-01-16T14:12:00.000-05:00

More interesting stuff from The Logic of Life.

"Even today, when so many women work for fun or the enjoyment of spending the cash, women tend to work more when they face a higher risk of divorce. There are several ways to guess at that higher risk: you can look with hindsight at who did get divorced and assume that the woman involved might have seen it coming beforehand; you can look at variables such as age, religion and whether parents went through a divorce; or you can ask women how happy they are with their marriages. Whichever way you slice it, women at risk of divorce are more likely to head out for work. The increase in divorce is not because of a change in the psychology of love: it is a rational response to changed incentives."

social conservatives are right--birth control causes premarital sex

2008-01-16T08:30:00.000-05:00

Today, in Slate.com, is a great excerpt from Tim Harford's book The Logic of Life. It's worth reading the whole article.

The contraceptive pill also makes it easier for men to get sex outside of marriage. The logic of evolutionary psychology says that women should be choosy about who they have sex with, because pregnancy in the wrong circumstances is extremely costly—but the logic of a woman who has control of reliable contraception is quite different. The preferences that evolution has shaped still exert powerful influence on our instincts, and many women remain extremely choosy and refuse to have sex outside marriage. But others, once armed with the pill, decided they could afford to have a little more fun.

The choosy ones are unlucky: the existence of other women who are a little freer with their favors weakens the bargaining power of the Madonnas, and means that men have less incentive to marry. Some men will not bother at all, feeling that they can get all they want from a playboy lifestyle. Or they may delay marriage until middle age, cutting down on the pool of marriageable men and increasing male bargaining power.

As we have seen, the rational response is for women to go to college, bringing them both better prospects in the job market and better prospects in the marriage market. Meanwhile, the more capable women become of looking after children by themselves, the less men need to bother. It's a textbook case of free-riding: with highly-educated women in excess supply, men have realized that they can get sex, and even successful offspring, without ever moving too far from the La-Z-Boy chair and the potato chips. Statistics seem to bear this out. There are nowadays four US women graduating from university for every three men, and this is not a particularly American phenomenon: in 15 out of 17 rich countries for which the data are available, more women are graduating than men. The most educated men in the United States were born just after the second world war and graduated in the mid 1960s—male graduation rates dipped after that, and have not yet returned to that peak. The rational choice perspective suggests it is probably not coincidental that this decline set in roughly when women got hold of the contraceptive pill.

a compassionate plea--to me, anyway--for birth control for teens

2008-01-13T11:43:00.000-05:00

we must all face up to the fact that The Black Pearl is a myth

2008-01-09T14:04:00.000-05:00

gotta love the Onion once again

2008-01-06T11:36:00.000-05:00

Giuliani To Run For President Of 9/11

I think it might be true.

2008-01-03T21:08:00.000-05:00

This Sunday, on HBO, the last season of the Wire begins. I'm with Salon.com's critic, Ms. Havrilesky who says:

"Just in case you're from Jupiter and haven't read it 50 million times before, 'The Wire' may be the single greatest show to ever appear on television."

Yikes! The RIAA is nuts. And mean.

2008-01-02T14:05:00.000-05:00

Chris Rock's rule for comedy make sense to me

2008-01-02T10:30:00.000-05:00

(as paraphrased by the NYT)

"White people aren’t allowed to mock black people; rich people aren’t allowed to mock poor people; skinny people aren’t allowed to mock fat people; and so on. The more stuff you have, the less stuff you’re allowed to say."

2007-12-31T12:55:00.000-05:00

I'm back! I've been in Whistler and Vancouver for the past ten days. It was so cool to see snow again--especially from the hot tub!

I am praying he doesn't have a chance in hell--or here--of being President.

2007-12-19T11:50:00.000-05:00

Huckabee touts ‘the celebration of the birth of Christ’ in ad - The Carpetbagger Report

I had to buy the album

2007-12-17T15:04:00.000-05:00

This bit, taken from a slate.com column about the year's best records, written by Ann Powers is so lovely, I had to share it.

Another favorite listen this year came from unrevolutionary country gal Patty Griffin, who released the quiet genre-buster Children Running Through in February. Griffin's not a Young Turk, like Miranda Lambert (whom I like, too), nor a firebrand, like fellow redhead Neko Case. She's just a really good songwriter whose own albums get stuck in the "Americana" category that nobody thinks is sexy anymore. (Oops, I see a theme emerging: middle-aged critic defends middle-aged artists who don't make the "hottie" grade. Sorry to be solipsistic. I promise to write about Lil Wayne's bodacious rhymes in my next post!)

I'm a seasoned critic, skilled in tracing influences, trained to dig crafty sonic amalgamations and virtuoso turns. But when I listen to Griffin's song "Burgundy Shoes", I cry. I mean uncontrollably—the minute the music-box piano kicks in and she starts the simple verses.
In the song, Griffin finds the voice of a little girl riding the bus with her mother on a potentially scary, maybe wonderful journey to Maine. Her mom hums a Beatles tune, and the girl reflects on how great it is to be in the sun, without her big boots on, next to the most pretty lady in the world. I have a daughter, and in the four years that I've been immersed in the sentimental crap surrounding motherhood, I've never heard such a pure evocation of the volatile, relentless love mothers and daughters share.

When I hear it, I think of my 83-year-old mom, who had to enter an assisted-living facility this year but still wears coral lipstick to supper and wants to go to Wisconsin to visit her sister. I think of my 4-year-old girl, who tells me that I'm not very nice and that I'm beautiful in the same breath.

I think of my daughter's birthmom, who misses her spitting-image child fiercely as she builds her own young life. And my sister-in-law, with three girls, trying to not interfere when the oldest gets rejected by her best friend and the middle one wants to wear the craziest outfit ever to her first day of kindergarten. And I can't help it. I'm lost in the memory Griffin constructed, as it makes a bridge into my own life. I'm gone.

Donald Fagen writes a stellar obit for Ike Turner. Read it!

2007-12-17T14:36:00.000-05:00

my country is doomed

2007-12-14T18:45:00.000-05:00

This article about a kinder, gentler, no rough-housing, no competition recess is so alarming, I can barely type. Just read the first two paragraphs:

Children at the Oakdale School here in southeastern Connecticut returned this fall to learn that their traditional recess had gone the way of the peanut butter sandwich and the Gumby lunchbox.

No longer could they let off their youthful energy — pent up from hours of long division — by cavorting outside for 22 minutes of unstructured play, or perhaps with a vigorous game of tag or dodgeball. Such games had been virtually banned by the principal, Mark S. Johnson, along with kickball, soccer and other “body-banging” activities, as he put it, where knees — and feelings — might get bruised.

When the principal of this school is described as:

Acknowledging that the changes caused “quite an uproar,” he defended his policy as a way to build skills and camaraderie rather than competition and conflict, and said that it had nothing to do with insurance costs. He said he had seen too many recesses where children “want all the good kids on one side and they want to win at all costs, and kids are made to feel badly.”

I just want to find a dodgeball and whip it at him!

so much for that downer, the separation of church and state....

2007-12-13T08:56:00.000-05:00

Glenn Greenwald - Political Blogs and Opinions - Salon: " the Democratic-led House was able to pass an extremely important bipartisan resolution yesterday -- by a vote of 372-9 -- which 'recognizes the Christian faith as one of the great religions of the world'; proclaims that Christmas is 'a holiday of great significance to Americans'; decrees that 'Christians and Christianity have contributed greatly to the development of western civilization'; explains that 'on December 25 of each calendar year, American Christians observe Christmas, the holiday celebrating the birth of their savior, Jesus Christ'; and 'expresses its deepest respect to American Christians and Christians throughout the world.' "

Fox News is fracked

2007-12-05T20:53:00.000-05:00

gotta love the Onion

2007-12-04T23:34:00.000-05:00

Underfunded Schools Forced To Cut Past Tense From Language Programs

But not what music I am listening to...yet.

2007-12-04T22:32:00.000-05:00

What the police can learn when they run a background check on your name. - By Brad Flora - Slate Magazine

You, you, Blast Ended Skank!

2007-12-04T15:21:00.000-05:00

Some loves you never get over

2007-12-04T14:39:00.000-05:00

I prefer Jane to Charles

2007-12-03T20:58:00.000-05:00

Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other or ever so similar beforehand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.
Jane Austen , Pride and Prejudice, 1811English novelist (1775 - 1817)

Interesting.

2007-12-01T14:06:00.000-05:00

This story is so sad AND it strengthens my conviction that teens should stay the hell of MySpace.com

2007-11-29T19:34:00.000-05:00

This site is alarming beyond belief

2007-11-29T19:30:00.000-05:00

Locate, Rate, and Share Good and Bad Neighbors Before and After You Move

the Spanking question

2007-11-29T19:17:00.000-05:00

This is a no-brainer. ER's, teachers, social workers all have rubrics to judge child abuse. If you venture into the area of child abuse, you shouldn't be able to whack your kid. If your child is being such a brat that you loose it and thwack your hand on his or her clothed rear, and that's the end of it, the courts should stay the hell away from your family.

For 7000--I wish the NTY was kidding me!

2007-11-29T19:12:00.000-05:00

The New Collectibles - New York Times

Sleeper, circa 2035

2007-11-28T20:49:00.000-05:00

story songs

2007-11-28T12:43:00.000-05:00

I do...agree with this view

2007-11-26T13:40:00.000-05:00

Taking Marriage Private - New York Times:

"Possession of a marriage license is no longer the chief determinant of which obligations a couple must keep, either to their children or to each other. But it still determines which obligations a couple can keep — who gets hospital visitation rights, family leave, health care and survivor’s benefits. This may serve the purpose of some moralists. But it doesn’t serve the public interest of helping individuals meet their care-giving commitments. "

sane words on IQ, part 2

2007-11-20T08:49:00.000-05:00

the scary place for science

2007-11-19T09:57:00.000-05:00

I have long argued that race, prejudice, and racial disparities all have some basis in human genetics--they're not just a function of nurture. Columns like this one written by William Saletan back this belief up. The answer to how to shape a just and unbiased society does not lie in silence. There are way too many who, when confronted with the conundrums of race, yell "You can't say that!" That approach is taking us to an even more racist society where whites whisper amongst themselves and people of color feel, naturally, excluded. For liberals to discount genetics is as egregious as conservatives discounting evolution. If we want to move forward, both intellectually and morally, we need to base our beliefs and policies on facts as well as on dreams.

How dry am I?

2007-11-18T22:00:00.000-05:00

Drought Score

teen reads

2007-11-14T15:10:00.000-05:00

For those of you who occasionally check out my book blog, the passionate reader, I've recently been writing about books for teens. I've a new list out today based on reviews from this week's NYT special book review on children's books.

Maybe Jon Stewart is God

2007-11-14T14:34:00.000-05:00

Can u read this?

2007-11-14T14:11:00.000-05:00

Today in slate.com, Chad Lorenz writes accurately about how today's teens stay in touch.

"Let's think about this from a teenager's perspective. First, you'd never send an e-mail to 200 friends saying, 'It's Friday and I'm ready to party!!!' But with a Twitter tweet or a Facebook status update, you can broadcast such a message to all of your buddies without seeming like a total dweeb. Need to make your party plans for Friday night? You'd be a fool to send an e-mail and twiddle your thumbs waiting for responses; it's speedier to exchange IMs with your friends. If you then need to tell those friends how awesome they are for joining you, post a message on their Facebook or MySpace page so the world can see. And mobile phones take instant—and constant—contact into a whole other realm. You can argue with your girlfriend all night without having to leave the party. Then, the next morning, you can change your Facebook relationship status to 'single.' And there you have it—a whole weekend of social drama lived and publicized without a single e-mail."

This is so goofy!

2007-11-14T14:09:00.000-05:00

Slate magazine is not making this up. Today,

"The governor of Georgia held a public prayer vigil and asked God for rain to relieve the state's drought. This is at least the third time a Georgia governor has tried it. Governor's quotes: 1) Georgians haven't conserved water enough, so the drought is God's attempt to 'get our attention.' 2) 'We come here very reverently and respectfully to pray up a storm.' 3) 'God, we need you. We need rain.' 4) 'God can make it rain tomorrow, he can make it rain next week or next month.' "

Evolution--it's the real deal. But don't tell that to the ID-ers.

2007-11-14T14:04:00.000-05:00

A smart column on the new face of creationism/intelligent design in Salon.com ends today with this paragraph:

"No, the battle between creationism and evolution is hardly over. The true believers in intelligent design and other forms of creationism aren't about to lay down their worldview for a federal judge or anyone else. And polls show that about half of America is on their side. 'Evolution remains under attack,' says Eugenie Scott, an anthropologist and a director of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit dedicated to teaching evolution in public schools. 'If creationists have their way, teachers will eventually just stop teaching evolution. It'll just be too much trouble. And generations of students will continue to grow up ignorant of basic scientific realities.' "

If I believed in God, I'd pray for this not to be true.

Looking for books for teens?

2007-11-12T22:00:00.001-05:00

Someone asked me to come up with a list of good books for teens. This list comprises my first response. I'm sure there will be more to follow.

See now this, this is helpful.

2007-11-07T21:00:00.000-05:00