Being Girlie, part 3

Today I went to buy a new pair of jeans.  I got a few pairs in different sizes, and as I walked back to the dressing room I found myself thinking, "I really hope the smaller size fits; I'll feel so much better about myself."

Really?

The size of the jeans I wear?  Is that what I should feel good or bad about?  Is that a measure of my self worth?  The respect I am owed, and that I owe myself?  Is it a way to judge the person I am?

The larger size jeans fit better, so I bought those.

And I feel great.

Unprintable

I just read this (h/t to Nick Kristof.)

If I ever meet Rupert Murdoch, I will punch him in the face. Seriously - what is his deal? It's apparently not even a business decision:

"What is puzzling to analysts and industry executives — including some within the News Corporation — is that none of this makes much sense as a business proposition to aid The Journal, especially at a time when newspapers are struggling through a long-term financial decline. But for Mr. Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of the company, these people say, profit is not necessarily what all this is about.

For him, newspapering is a blood sport...

...in the News Corporation’s planning discussions about the local New York section, the talk has been less about what The Journal would gain than about “killing The New York Times,” according to several people with direct knowledge of the preparations, who asked for anonymity to discuss what are supposed to be secret matters. “It’s not an economic decision,” one of them said. ..

...Alan D. Mutter, a media analyst and consultant, recently wrote on his Reflections of a Newsosaur blog that “no meaningful business advantage can be gained” from the venture, making it “nothing more than an expensive ego trip aimed at kicking the N.Y.T. while it’s down.” "

In other words, he's (something I refuse to print). He just wants to destroy The Times. No real reason - just malice.

What a (something I refuse to print).

Archy the Cockroach

When I took a poetry class in high school, one of the poems we read was "The Lesson of the Moth" by Don Marquis. Well, we humans claim it was written by Don Marquis. Don himself claimed he had a pet cockroach, Archy, who wrote free-verse poetry by jumping up and down on the keys of a typewriter.

Today, on a whim, I googled Archy's poetry. Here are two poems I found particularly interesting. They were written around the 20's (not entirely sure), but they could have been written yesterday:

the big bad wolf

what the ants are saying

And here's the webpage on Don Marquis.

Thoughts?

"Moral Hotness" - Part One

Here are the first three entries for "Guys Who Have 'Moral Hotness'". For info on what that is, see the previous post.

Name: Mr. Rogers

Why He's Awesome: I think this article in Mental Floss sums it up pretty well. From everything I've read, he was much the same person on-screen and off-screen. He genuinely cared about people, especially children, and went out of his way to make sure everyone knew that they were special.

Name: Fr. Hesburgh

Why He's Awesome: Fr. Hesburgh has an incredibly high degree of integrity. Perhaps my favorite story is how a bunch of people were invited to a rally initiated by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. A lot of them were afraid to go, but Fr. Hesburgh jumped right in his car and went to the demonstration. He's said that he didn't think twice about it - even though times were turbulent and it might have been a dangerous thing to do, it was the right thing to do. There's an awesome picture of him, arms linked with Dr. King, both of them singing at the demonstration.

Name: Nick Kristof

Why He's Awesome: In a world where the "news" often degenerates into celebrity gossip, one can always count on Nick Kristof to shine a spotlight on issues of importance. His editorials discuss human rights issues with anecdotes, statistics, and impassioned persuasion. This is a man who has been to the far reaches of the globe and wants his audience to understand how other people live. What I like best about his articles is that he also includes ways for his readers to help in a given situation. He'll provide information on organizations working to help those living in dire poverty, or suffering malnutrition, or whatever the issue of the day is. Through his writing, it's easy to see that he sincerely cares about people and wants to make the world a little bit better.

I've often said, "As long as there are people who care, I'll try not to worry too much." These men (and others like them) are the reason I sleep well at night. I know that there are men of integrity, compassion, and strong moral fiber who live the highest virtues. These men are an inspiration. And I'll take a Morally Hot guy over a Hollywood Hunk of the Week any day.

"Moral Hotness"

I was thinking the other day about how unfair it seems that people with good looks get all the good publicity. Shouldn't other traits be more important? Case in point: once a year, People Magazine dedicates an issue to the "hottest" men. But I think having integrity and moral fiber is more important than being "hot."

So, I think I'll do a blog entry on men who are "morally hot." And, I'm asking for submissions! (I have two of my own who are making the list.) Here are the rules:

1) For now, it's men only. I will probably do a post at some point in the future on morally hot women. But now is not that time.
2) The man you nominate does not need to be physically attractive! Don't feel sheepish about nominating someone because you know he's not particularly cute. That's not what this is about. Moral hotness is the key.
3) The man you nominate must be currently alive. Going through the annals of history for morally hot men would take far too long.
4) The man you nominate must be nominally famous. Maybe your next-door-neighbor saves orphaned kittens after his day-job performing heart transplants on refugee children from Franistan. Don't nominate him. (Bonus points if you get the "Franistan" reference.) What qualifies as "nominally famous"? It's kind of subjective. If your guy has a fan page on facebook, that makes him at least nominally famous. Ditto if the New York Times has mentioned him (however briefly). You can always provide a reason with your submission as to why your guy should be considered.
5) Include in your submission a brief explanation of why your guy is morally hot. It can be an anecdote, a brief biography, whatever. If you have a picture of him, include it.

Reading Rainbow

Reading Rainbow is going off the air. This makes me both sad and angry. Sad, because I have very fond memories of Reading Rainbow, and I always figured my kids would watch it. Angry, because of the reasons given for the show ending.
"According to research," what kids really need is to learn phonics. But as I recall, Sesame Street does a pretty good job of at least starting that process. My mom told me that when I was very small, I pointed to her "Hershey Chocolate" pillow case and said, "R." She looked, and I was indeed pointing to the letter R. Excited, she ran downstairs and gathered all the alphabet magnets from the fridge and brought them back to me. "Do you recognize any others?" she asked. I knew R, S, and W.
She hadn't started teaching me the alphabet yet (I was really young), but I knew a few letters from Sesame Street.

But Reading Rainbow filled a different void. It inspired a love of reading. Even the opening sequence was thrilling. Open a book and become an astronaut! An explorer! Open a book and open your imagination!
When I was a kid, the local library had a display in the children's section for "Books Recently Featured on Reading Rainbow." It was the first place to go every time we went to the library.
It seems that these days there's so much focus on standardized tests. When I was in school, we'd have a standardized test maybe every three years, and the test would last one or two days, maximum. And it wouldn't take up the whole day - just one or two periods. Now, it seems like there's a test every year, and they can take an entire week. All day, every day.
I understand that there's a need to measure students' learning, and that we need to make sure kids attain a certain level of aptitude. But I think all the additional focus on testing is superfluous. Teachers can't do anything but prepare students for the next test, and there's no time to instill a love of learning.
I don't really know if there's a solution to this. Can we measure student performance while still leaving room for inspired tangents in the classroom? Leave your thoughts in the comments (as well as your favorite Reading Rainbow memories).

A False Choice

I'm very annoyed at my congressman today.

A little background: I try to stay informed as to what my representatives are doing. One of the easiest (i.e. laziest) ways to do this is to sign up for electronic newsletters from my representatives. Obviously, they're going to try to spin things in their favor as much as possible, so I read the newsletters with a healthy amount of cynicism.

So I get the latest newsletter from my congressman, and he has a (fairly lengthy) article on why he opposed the current climate change legislation. Now, I understand there are legitimate grievances with this particular legislation (a lot of pork got stuffed on right at the end), but as far as I'm concerned that's normal politics. If you can find a piece of legislation that doesn't have pork stuffed in it, I've got some wonderful marshland in Texas you might be interested in.

Anyway, like I said, I understand some legitimate concerns with the legislation, but that's not why I'm upset. The major point my congressman was making was that he voted against the legislation because he wanted to protect his constituents from increased energy costs and business competition from overseas. I can understand why, as an elected representative, one might want to protect one's constituents (that's kinda the whole idea behind elected representatives...) but his article offered a false choice.

The choice is NOT "implement climate change legislation" or "protect constituents financially." One way or another, climate change legislation must be implemented; if not now, then later. And the longer we wait, the worse the pain will be. So the actual choice is "make constituents pay more now" or "make constituents pay a LOT more later." There will never be a time when climate change legislation is convenient or painless. (And, let's face facts, no one's going to save up for increased energy costs if we defer the change till later.)

There will never be a time when businesses will not suffer because of climate change legislation. Yet, it is necessary. The fact that my congressman does not see this (or at least pretends not to see this) demonstrates to me that he either 1) does not truly understand my interests or 2) does not particularly care about my interests. In either case, he will not get my vote.

Driving rant

Let me say upfront: I do not like driving. If I could move to NYC and never have to drive again in my life, I'd be pretty happy about that. Overall, however, I just kinda deal with it. But sometimes things happen that make the experience pretty...horrible.

Now, I'm not sure if this is just my township or if there's some sort of traffic-sign-makers' strike going on, but there are three (count 'em, THREE) places nearby with road work, but no indications of said road work beforehand.

One of these places is a bridge that's out. I know that the bridge is out; my fiance and I have talked about how annoying it is to have to drive way out of the way to get around it. But one day I was driving and was distracted and so forgot to avoid that route. Until I saw a sign saying "Road ends in 500 feet" and a giant barrier. No warning at the previous intersection; no real way to turn around; just a dead end.

Today I stumbled across two more of these beauties. I was driving to school when traffic suddenly stopped. People were moving in the other direction, but going East was just stuck. Finally I (and a lot of other drivers) started pulling into shopping centers and turning around. (Luckily there are shopping center entrances about every 20 yards on this particular stretch of road.) As I turn around, I notice that there's road work blocking both lanes of traffic less than a block away. And this particular area has a pretty even gridwork of roads; it would have taken minimal effort to set up "Detour" signs at the previous intersection and routed traffic around the mess. But no; instead everyone got stuck.

As I was driving back home, I approached a green light and watched in wonder (horror?) as an SUV made a left into the intersection while he had a red light. Luckily I was paying attention and didn't hit him. But as I went through the intersection thinking "What the...?" I noticed yet another big "ROAD CLOSED" sign. The poor guy probably had no warning that his road was going to suddenly stop.

Nothing but Nets

OK, so it's been a little while since I blogged. But today I read this article in the NYTimes and had to share. =) A good cause, and not much money required to make a difference.

Cool, no?

Science and Religion

"...what can be more important than science and religion? Science gives us knowledge, and religion gives us meaning. Both are prerequisites of the decent existence.”

Congratulations, Professor Heller! I'm really glad to see someone working to reconcile science and religion for once, rather than trying to drive them deeper apart. It's like that moment at the end of "Inherit the Wind" when Henry Drummond picks up a copy of "Origin of Species" in one hand, a Bible in the other, weighs them thoughtfully for a moment, then shrugs, snaps them together, and puts them both in his briefcase. (If you haven't read or seen the play, I highly recommend it. Reading it was the catalyst for my own reflection on the relationship between science and religion.)

Anthropic Principle

This article made me really happy. Because few things annoy me as much as the anthropic principle. In the first X-Men movie, Prof. X tells his students to write the difference between the weak and strong anthropic principles for homework, then explains to Logan that he's teaching physics. I wanted to throw something at the movie screen.

I think this sums it up nicely:

“However, we shouldn't assume that no explanation exists just because we don't yet know one, and, consequently, we should keep looking for an explanation at least until we have a convincing scientific theory that explains many other things and within which one can show that it is impossible to provide an explanation. The most interesting thing is that – unless we do discover a theory of everything – we will not know what is left to discover, which makes the search exciting.”

Being Girlie, part 2

Here's another article on the same topic as before. Two points I found interesting:

1. Being attractive is detrimental. "Beautiful applicants received lower ratings, apparently because they were subconsciously pegged as stereotypically female and therefore unsuited for a job as a boss." Well that sucks. On the one hand society is telling women, "If you're not physically ideal, you're doomed to loneliness your entire life." And now there's a study saying if you are attractive, you're doomed to an unsuccessful career. I would argue the point a bit; I think it's possible to be both pretty and successful, but it does take more work to prove that you're more than just pretty. I was told in engineering school that while it might be easier to get a job as a woman engineer, it would be much harder to prove to my coworkers/superiors that I deserved the job due to the assumption that I only got the job to boost the equal opportunities numbers.
On the other hand, I think it would be great if more bosses thought like Dr. House:

Dr. House: Would that upset you, really? To think that you were hired because of some genetic gift of beauty, not some genetic gift of intelligence?

Dr. Cameron: I worked very hard to get where I am.

Dr. House: But you didn't have to. People choose the paths that grant them the greatest rewards for the least amount of effort. That's the law of nature, and you defied it. That's why I hired you. You could have married rich, could have been a model, you could have just shown up and people would have given you stuff. Lots of stuff, but you didn't, you worked your stunning little ass off.

2. Can't have it both ways. "A woman can be perceived as competent or as likable, but not both." I've heard this before, and I've also seen it in action. When a man expresses emotion in the workplace, he's being "forceful" or "assertive" or "passionate." When a woman expresses emotion in the workplace, she's being "emotional." On the flip side, if she shows no emotion, she's "cold." Again, I do have to pick a bone a bit and say that I don't think it's impossible for a woman leader to be perceived as both competent and likable, but it's certainly difficult. That's why, when I meet a woman who has risen through the ranks, and who I think manages to walk that very fine line, I try to analyze exactly how she does it. How does she manage to be firm but not bitchy, polite but still assertive, encouraging but not naive?

This is why I like to watch "Voyager" (yes, I'm a Trekkie, I'm not ashamed.) Capt. Janeway has to look after her crew almost like a family, but no one would ever claim she's not tough enough. I'm always fascinated how the writers managed to make this character both competent and likable...and then try to figure out if how she acts would work when applied to the real world.

Comments welcome =)

Vegetarianism

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Best food advice I've heard in a while. Here's an article with more reasons to eat mostly plants.

Leaking Electricity

Well I knew that many electrical devices consume energy even when turned off (some up to 40% of their active energy use!) And now the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory has compiled a chart of various devices and the amount of energy they use while in standby mode. It seems like audio compact systems, cable boxes, and tv's are the biggest culprits...may I suggest unplugging these when not in use?

Being girlie

Sometimes I really hate being a girl.


Grr.
Oh wait, that's too aggressive. I didn't mean "grr" I meant "(sigh)".
Oh no, that's too weak.

How about "meh"? Nah, too apathetic...

Economical Driving

Here's an article from howstuffworks (the best website ever!) that everyone should read.

Highlights: keep your tires properly inflated and put the car in neutral when you're at a stoplight. And try not to go above 3000 rpm. :-)

Vivoleum

I just read this. Wow.

(Thanks to Reuters for the laugh.)