You know how sometimes you go rooting through your closet and come across an item of clothing you forgot you had? Well, one Japanese man had something much more interesting than an ill-fitting suit hiding in the unused corners of his closet. After being called to check on a suspected burglar, police found a 58 year old homeless woman hiding in a shelf compartment in … Continue reading What’s in your closet?
Funny thing; today Deborah Howell at the Washington Post, Nicholas Kristof at the NYT and Rod Dreher over at Crunchy Cons all have stuff up about the lack of diversity among pundits. For good measure, Rod Dreher adds bloggers to the mix and links to an older Heather MacDonald column about blogging saying that women aren’t good bloggers and blacks and hispanics are missing because they are currently illiterate. There are all sorts of reasons thrown around for this lack of diversity, almost all of them pretty much completely off base. So I roll my eyes and move on until this afternoon when I came across an article by Laura McKenna called “Let’s Give the Mommy Bloggers Some Respect“. Ding! Ding! Ding! Let’s give the little lady a prize.
For those few of you not in the know, here’s Ms. McKenna’s explanation of the term “mommyblogger”:
the term have come to describe mothers (with the stray stay-at-home dad in the mix) who maintain blogs that chronicle and deal with raising their kids and their life after kids. These bloggers vary greatly in terms of tone and focus, but in general, they take a very intense and irreverent look at parenting. They discuss potty training in graphic terms. They talk about tossing back a beer with other parents. They show off projects that they are working on. They complain about the amount of homework their kids get and agonize over how many hours they are in front of the television or (ironically) the computer. They cheer on and encourage their fellow online parents. Some mommybloggers have particular niches, like parenting kids with special needs or moms with PhDs and form sub-communities revolving around those interests.
All well and fine you say, but what do women writing about dirty diapers have to do with the lack of women writers in newspapers? Well, as anyone who has bothered reading mommybloggers already knows, many of these moms are talking about their kids and families along with politics: Continue reading “What Women Write”
Over at Slate.com they have a bunch of articles devoted to procrastination up. I particularly liked Emily Brazelton’s attempts at Procrastinator’s Anonomous (they can’t get the meetings started on time). She also looks into the research on procrastinators: Ferrari co-wrote Procrastination and Task Avoidance: Theory, Research, and Treatment and co-edited Counseling the Procrastinator in Academic Settings. The portrait that emerges from these books is pathological. … Continue reading It’s Procrastination Day!
Richard Cohen at the Washington Post wrote an interesting column today titled “Words Heard Differently”. He starts by riffing off George Bernard Shaw’s observation that The USA and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language. Today, it’s white Americans and African Americans who are suffering that fate. How true that is. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned a story coming out … Continue reading Separated by a Common Language
“Getting what you want and doing what you want are two different, often mutually exclusive things.” – Me Continue reading Rebecca’s Word of Wisdom for the Day
As people who read this blog regularly know, I identify myself as conservative. This is because I hold traditional social views, I don’t trust our government to be able to do much of anything right, I believe that culture and individuals are more important and powerful than anything the government can do, I tend to be a “law and order” type of gal, and I … Continue reading Am I turning into a liberal?
John McCain has asked the North Carolina Republican Party not to run an ad which features a clip of Barack Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Wright making incendiary comments and the words “He’s just too extreme for North Carolina”. The North Carolina Republican Party is apparently going to run the ad anyways, but Sen. McCain has made it clear that he does not approve of the … Continue reading Republicans Could Do a Lot Worse Part II
The candidacy of Barak Obama has inspired a great deal of talk, some of it self-inflicted by Sen. Obama, about the idea of transcending race. However, as the campaign as worn on, it has become apparent that “transcend race” is one of those phrases which means different things to different people. It seems to be a Rorschach test of wishful thinking in which people see it as meaning what they want it to mean.
I want to address how this issue plays out on the conservative side. The conservative perspective is the one which is closer to what I identify with and I think we have suffered as a nation because of conservatives’ refusal to look at and think reasonably about issues of race.
In regards to transcending race, on the conservative side, I have heard a fair amount of talk which indicates a wish for “transcending race” to mean eliminating race as an issue to which we need to pay attention to or offer consideration for. Because of this, conservatives have often reacted to things like the fact that Obama attends an Afrocentric church as a betrayal of his claim to be someone who can help us move past race. However, this perspective is based on a host of completely erroneous ideas.
The first problem with this perspective is that it presumes that in order to “get past race”, we must embrace a sort of “color-blind” nirvana and assiduously pretend that we have already reached such a place. In large part, this seems to mean that we ought to reject anything which conflicts with the idea that we are and should be completely unaware of race. Continue reading “Transcending Race and Delusional Conservatives”
I have written before about my skepticism over the need for everyone to get a college education (here and here) as well as my extreme opposition to student loans and our current system of funding higher education (here, here and here). Today, via Joanne Jacobs, we find out that Charles Miller who led the Commission on the Future of Higher Education is now arguing that the earnings benefit for having a college degree is probably much less than has been previously stated.
Rather than being 1 million over a career, the number according to Charles Miller is more like $280K. Given that a private college education now routinely runs about $100K over 4 years with room and board and adding in the cost of interest on student loans, as well as the missed opportunity costs of having money which could otherwise be used to invest in a 401K or other investment vehicle going towards paying off student loans, this number really calls into question whether it makes sense to insist on a college diploma as a requirement for most decent jobs.
I have long thought that the credential inflation we have seen over the last couple of decades (requiring ever higher credentials for professional positions) is the result the failure of our high schools to adequately prepare students to enter into the workforce. Continue reading “Is college worth it?”
Those of you who have been coming to my blog for a little while will remember that my family has been going through a very challenging time due to my husband’s 3rd job loss in 2 1/2 years. Many of you even generously donated money to help us out, for which my husband and I are extremely grateful. So, I wanted to pass along the … Continue reading Update on job situation
The Upside Down World 