November 26, 2008
I came across another intriguing quote just now, this time not in a song (the one on my iPhone at the moment is instrumental :-), but in a New York Magazine article online....
September 8, 2008
This headline and blurb in today's NYT e-mail blast caught my eye, partly because my thoughts on Sarah Palin finally crystallized over the weekend (blog post coming soon, hopefully), and partly because of Al's enumeration of the issues that were important to him in the coming election:...
November 13, 2007
I found this New York Times article, Bad Behavior Does Not Doom Pupils, Studies Say, interesting, not so much because of any implications it might have for the Beaner's school career, but because it highlighted something I'd already been thinking about: emotional maturity. The quote that stuck out for me:...
May 8, 2007
So a few weeks ago, when I was in San Francisco (i.e., away from my normal personal laptop with its handy mail filters), I got an e-mail from someone wanting to know if I wanted to help NPR. I deleted the message as spam without reading it. A week later, I got another e-mail with the same subject (prepended this time with Re:)... and from the same sender. This time I decided to check out the headers and maybe...
April 30, 2007
Nothing is more frustrating than being behind in your blog reading and coming across a reference to a New York Times article that sounds REALLY INTERESTING... only to find that when you click on the link, you can only see the first 40 words or so of the piece. This need not be! The New York Times provides a permalink to each article so that it will remain available to blog readers even after the article has gone "into...
February 15, 2007
Al and I cannot stand the local news. We do not want to hear the gory details of all the murders, rapes, drive-by shootings, hit-and-run accidents, and drug transactions that afflict Philadelphia. We hate the hyperbole, the non-news, the on-location reporting when being on-location adds absolutely nothing (look, here's a shot of the street where the water main broke! you can't see anything now, but a few hours ago there was water here!)....
December 14, 2006
Eden was just talking about the burden of being named Eden, and how her husband trumped her by being named Jack Kennedy. From Fussy I cruised over to the NY Times website, where I happened to find this quote in an article about how circumcision can cut the risk of getting HIV from heterosexual intercourse in half:...
November 29, 2006
In a full-page ad in the Sunday New York Times, no less. Hello, History Channel? Hire a proofreader!...
September 21, 2006
Al and I have noticed that gas prices are dropping in the area, especially in New Jersey (which is a 10-minute drive away). We've actually been kinda dismayed by this news; kinda dismayed, and kinda torn. On the one hand, it's nice that our expenses are dropping, and we recognize that lower oil and gas prices make a huge difference to people with incomes significantly less than our own. On the other hand, both of us think gas prices...
September 11, 2006
There's a fire alarm going off in my husband's building. An announcement over the PA has indicated that the alarm is on the 35th floor, and that the Fire Department has arrived to investigate... but in the meantime, employees are not to use the elevators or the fire stairs. In other words, remain at your desks. Do not leave the building. Everything's fine....
August 30, 2006
From Al: RadioShack lays off employees via e-mail...
July 17, 2006
Israeli warplanes keep up Lebanon barrage Bombs Fall, Missiles Strike, and Death and Life Go On When does "escalating violence" become war? I wouldn't necessarily say that the use of missles, warplanes, and ground troops alone constitutes war, since the U.S. has been known to use all three in numerous non-war contexts over the past 20 years, but the fact that both sides in this conflict are using them makes me think WAR....
February 3, 2006
From my washingtonpost.com e-mail update this morning, this shocking news of insurgent activity RIGHT HERE IN THE U.S.:...
January 23, 2006
I was just reading Saturday's washingtonpost.com news summary, which was topped by the following entry:...
January 9, 2006
I'm listening to a Fresh Air program on Reconstruction at the moment, and it's fascinating. Great review of this period in history, as well as Constitutional issues in general. Eric Foner is surprisingly mesmerizing. [Downloadable audio should be available on the WHYY site shortly.]...
December 13, 2005
From an editorial in today's New York Times about the Bush administration finally agreeing to send delegates to the climate change talks in Montreal, as long as any agreements made were non-binding:...
December 7, 2005
I've been thinking a lot lately about how Christians in this country seem to feel that they're under attack, and how to mitigate some of that feeling. I think it's important to maintain a secular government—and given that so many of the founding fathers were deeply religious it's all the more remarkable that we got a secular government at all—but that those of us who are not particularly religious sometimes take things too far when we insist on separation...
November 27, 2005
Two headlines in my daily news e-mail from washingtonpost.com:...
November 15, 2005
Arrrrrrrrrrgggggh! Why is the fact that Rumsfeld is spouting Bush administration talking points NEWS? Just because Rumsfeld says the same thing Bush said yesterday (or last week) doesn't make it news. Or true, for that matter....
October 17, 2005
When I checked my e-mail this morning I found this, forwarded from a (then-wildly liberal, now-conservative) friend from college. Needless to say, I groaned louder than I do when he attaches several 2MB photos to e-mails sent to me and several other friends. Dude: Flickr. Ofoto. Smugmug. yournamehere.com. And to the following e-mail: WALK. Ride a bike. Consolidate trips. Drive something that gets more than 9 mpg. Oh yeah, and a Halliburton employee as the source of an idea...
August 1, 2005
I just had to give a post here that title, since Al and I have taken to saying it to each other all the time now. (It was Al who pointed out to me that an amazing number of sentences in the Harry Potter series start with, "Harry, Ron, and Hermione", but J.K. Rowling also acknowledges it in her recent TIME Magazine article.) We've been listening to the books on the iPod (with a Y-adapter to accommodate two sets...
July 20, 2005
This whole nanny blog thing just creeps me out. (The nanny in question's actual blog is here.) Possibly because I had a dodgy babysitter experience; possibly because another potential babysitter happened to include her blog link in e-mail correspondence, and I had to fight not to be unnerved by what I read; or possibly because I myself am a regular blogger (and I've posted about the vomitous feeling the dodgy babysitter inspired), I've been thinking a lot about the...
June 27, 2005
I had the opportunity last week to join a conference call between the Live 8 organizers and Philadelphia bloggers (of which, apparently, I am one), but I chose not to dial in. My main reason for not participating was that, as someone whose second thought (after "why?"), upon hearing that Live 8 would be taking place in my neighborhood, was "oh my god, we've got to get out of town", I'd feel like a fraud. The other big reason...
June 22, 2005
Dear Congressman Fattah, Senator Santorum, and Senator Specter: Oh, my god. Are you seriously considering eliminating funding for Sesame Street just when my 7 month-old has discovered the delights of Elmo and Grover? Please don't let the only alternative be commercial television with its endless pitches for sugary sweets, needless toys, and fattening fast food. I happily support public television (and public radio) with individual contributions, and I want to support it with my tax dollars, too. Save PBS...
January 20, 2005
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/01/19/brazil.big.baby.ap/...
January 14, 2005
I mentioned in a post a couple weeks ago that the weather in Philadelphia had been quite balmy lately, but in the past few days, it's been positively screwy. On Wednesday Austen and I left the house at 10:24am (I was timing us) en route to my six-week post-partum checkup (I'm fine, all systems are go). I was wearing my fuzzy-collared winter coat, but I didn't bother donning my hat and gloves. Soon I even had to unbutton the...
October 29, 2004
I love that Wolf Blitzer just said [paraphrasing here], "this isn't the October Suprise everyone was expecting."...
There's an article in the New York Times today (Video Shows G.I.'s at Weapon Cache, free subscription required to view) describing a video shot by a Minneapolis-based TV news crew that purports to show intact IAEA seals at the Al Qaqaa munitions complex, as well as the now-missing crates of HMX explosives. When was the video shot? Nine days after the fall of Baghdad. I was a bit frustrated by the article; in an apparent attempt to be balanced,...
October 17, 2004
I saw this interesting item on Suburban Guerrilla about the difference in the British and American responses to the Chiron debacle, but I wasn't sure how reliable the source was (especially given the dodgy editing, the lack of attribution, and the numerous server errors I got on my first visit to the site). It seems the story's accurate, if the Washington Post is to be believed. What's interesting to me is that this could be yet another example of...
October 12, 2004
Slate magazine has an interesting analysis of how Kerry blew the second presidential debate by William Saletan (link via nj). As much as I think Bush is an idiot as a debator, I have to say I agree that Kerry is even worse at taking advantage of what Saletan calls hanging sliders (and what I called pucks flying through the slot after the first debate). Kerry gave interesting responses, but they often weren't the ones I expected. WHY, oh...
June 20, 2003
Ooooh, this makes me so MAD!! Everyone keeps talking about the lack of adverse health effects of genetically-modified foods, when they should be talking about their impact on the diversity of ecosystems. GMOs are a global environmental issue, not an immediate-term health issue. I also find the idea that Europe is boycotting American biotech foods because they disagree with the Bush administration's policies in Iraq ridiculous. Europe is rightly suspicious of American companies' efforts to control the world's food...
June 19, 2003
From the New York Times (free registration required to read article): Report by the E.P.A. Leaves Out Data on Climate Change More information on climate change from the World Wildlife Fund (aka "The All-Too-Real WWF"). And in other news... ---------------------- "The difference between being black and being gay," said one gay activist, "is that you don't have to come down at breakfast one morning and break it to your parents: 'Mum, Dad, I'm black.'" from Gay is the New...
May 27, 2003
There was an article in Sunday's New York Times called Prospecting for Gold Among the Photoblogs; I read it with interest, hoping to see some of my favorite sites mentioned and to learn about a few new ones. Unfortunately, the article focused mostly on the photos that the author didn't like rather than the ones she did. Am I wrong in thinking that the NYT takes more pleasure in pointing out the dangers/idiocy/banality of blogging than blogging's pearls of...
March 21, 2003
Got up extra early this morning so I could do my step workout and then catch the train to work. I worked out longer than usual, but I still had time to lollygag around the house for a bit. I like doing that in the mornings. I had the car yesterday, so I listened to NPR's war coverage on the drive home. I'd like to revise my earlier statement that NPR was no better than the television news stations;...
March 20, 2003
What he said. Al and I have been talking about this since I switched from the Weather Channel to MSNBC yesterday morning and heard Brian Williams say, "now we have two things we want to show you: first, a live shot of downtown Baghdad. And as you can see, nothing's happening there. Second, the podium in the White House press room, where we're waiting for Ari Fleischer to make an appearance. And of course, as soon as he does,...