The Mismeasure of Women

A professional with impeccable street cred waltzes out the truth.

I never expected that we would be in this predicament. My generation of professional women took equality for granted. When I was in college in the 1980s, many of us looked derisively at the women’s liberation movement. That was something that strident, humorless, shrill women had done before us.

Seduced and abandoned. By ourselves as much as anyone.

Web Site O' Teh Week

Let them sing it for you.
When I used it, it was little overwhelmed by traffic, presumably.
So revisit or wait or whatever, but it is cool.

About The Senate

Wonk From Wonksville Dept.
Good explanation of the minutiae of the legislative process. Pray for Harry Reid.

This isn't about whether to pass a public option or not.  It's about passing a bill through the Senate on the first pass.

Gaahgh!

Ad infinitum.
Okay, so maybe Andrew Sullivan and I are wrong, the White House really doesn't like the opt-out thingie. There is no Cavalry just coming up over the hill, at least not that Cavalry.

What they want, for reasons totally obscure, is Oympia Snowe no mattter what.
So triggers are on the table in the House. Although maybe not in the Senate.
Anyway, the kind of triggers Clyburn is describing might be a hard pill to swallow for those of us with hope, but we might be able to swallow with plenty of water (e.g. more Medicaid).
What I do know is we have to have a public option. Now.

With a hybrid trigger, you'd have a public option from day one -- the thing that would be triggered would be its reimbursement mechanism.

Just read this and weep.
And it sounds like the triggers Clyburn is talking about might get us there now.
I've read discussion that the public option can't be put in place that fast, which is why the bills all had a 2013 operational date. But then somebody probably got a sneak preview of 2012 and decided we all have to be covered before the earth comes to an end.
Suddenly, they think it can start tomorrow.

Jeez. I can hardly wait for the energy bill.

Frisbee Is A Hot Game

Luckily, I have this bath for my feet. Sometimes I let the birds use it.

Random Thought

A blog is like a piece of paper with words on it.
At its core, that's all it is.

From there it can be a recipe; a rant; an intelligent, well-researched and heavily sourced piece of information; or pure opinion. It can argue well or badly for its point of view.
Oh, and it often allows a conversation with readers, although not always, such as in Andrew Sullivan's blog, which invites emails but only selectively publishes them, and does not publish comments.

Ohoh, Obamas Release Official Portrait

Think now. Who else posed for official portraits? Ever hear of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Castro?
He's a Kenyan-born Muslim fascist socialist communist who wants to take away our freedoms and this proves it.

P.S. By Annie Liebovitz, who needs the money.

Obama's Position On Public Option

Rending of garments. Knashing of teeth. Keening of the wimmin.
It's all been going on for so long now among progressives who worry the public option won't make it into final legislation, or that it will be watered down too much to matter.
In another restatement of Obama's position to the press today, spokesman Bill Burton said this, which I hadn't noticed previously.

 And he will continue to ensure that it is achieved in the final health care reform legislation.

So at least there's that. What kind of public option we're still waiting to see, with rumors circulating that Nancy is pressing every member today and that so-called moderate — read conservative — Dem senators are falling in love with the opt-out provision, which I believe is genius.
I'd love to see us all surprised with  final passage in both chambers before the Thanksgiving recess. Then we can start complaining that the reconciliation process is taking too long and if we won't have a bill before Christmas, we're screwed and so on.
What I'm beginning to wonder is if my heart can take the same seesaw motions through the energy bill machinations.

Clawing Their Way Back To The Dark Ages

I guess I've read that phrase before, but it didn't resonate until Andrew published this outake from a reader, who included the last paragraph of a letter the Catholic Archdiocese of Guam put out regarding a gay marriage proposal put forth by a legislator who was victimized by clergy in his youth.

"Islamic fundamentalists clearly understand the damage that homosexual behavior inflicts on a culture. This is why they repress such behavior by death...It may be brutal at times, but any culture that is able to produce wave after wave of suicide bombers...is a culture that at least knows how to value self sacrifice."

I know it doesn't make sense for any number of reasons, but not only will many adults swallow this crap, but they pass it along.

Quote O' Teh Day

"I teach contract law at Harvard Law School, and I can't understand my own credit card. No, I am not kidding you."

Elizabeth Warren, chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the TARP program and advocate of strong financial consumer protection regulation.
For the parts of her Michael Moore interview not included in his film, go here.

Late Night Phone Call

Briing, briing.
Hello?
Hi. Is this The Onion? Hey, I've got this great story idea and it's actually true.
Sorry, we do satire.
Yeah, I know.

Study: McCain Voters Lost Testosterone

What Did I Tell You Last Week?

Genius, pure genius.

Again, the opt out is gaining steam politically, but it's still very young from a legislative perspective, so it would be easy to overinterpret statements like these. Let's just say that we probably haven't heard the last of it.

Rope-a-dope, rope-a-Ben fucking Nelson!

I posted this Oct. 8.

What Is Our Place In The Universe?

I love John Hodgman. And I love TED.
16 minutes

View From My Window 12:05 p.m. Oct. 20, 2009

Andrew Sullivan's blog will probably never accept one of these because I don't know what to do about the reflection. But I accept everything I submit.

Okay

She's in the shower, might as well settle in.

Ball, check. Bone, check. Slipper, check. Where'd I put the Frisbee?

Slipper, what slipper?

You Never Know

When you're going to run into something really cool in a comments section of a really cool blog.
This from one of DeLong's:

Vegetarianism is unhealthy.
Had we evolved to be vegetarians, we would have huge stomachs, massive jaws, and have pointed head because a crest on the skull is required to anchor the massive jaw muscles required to be a vegetarian. We would, on the whole, look more like gorillas than humans. And function like them too.
The last all vegetable eating human precursors were A. robustus and Ramidus (if I am recalling correctly). They did not survive. Their brains could not enlarge because they had too little long chain fatty acids and protein. They had to eat all day, had large stomachs, small brains, and little mobility, rather like the gorilla, a vegetarian primate.
A baby raised as a vegetarian will have an underdeveloped nervous system and a small and poorly functioning brain.
A vegetarian diet forces excess reliance on high carbohydrate, high glycemic foods. There is no there way to obtain adequate calories but to eat this way. Otherwise, you have to eat too frequently and too much bulky vegetables to be active. So, you are almost forced or induced to be inactive.
Countries like India where vegetarianism is widely practiced are undergoing an explosion of Type 2 diabetes. Of course, there is a linkage because they consume large amounts of rice and other simple, high glycemic foods, destroying their metabolism and sliding into insulin resistance, accelerated aging, and diabetes.
Ultimately, I ponder over how gene expression is altered in veganism and its diet variants. Remember, the model is DNA makes RNA makes protein. That is all the genes do; they make proteins. How is their expression altered when there is either too little protein in the diet or when certain proteins cannot be made given the nutrition. Virtually all the messengers in the body are proteins. So are all the catalysts. I could go on, but you get the idea. Don’t do it.

I have no idea if this guy's even close to accurate, but it was fun to read.

Superfreaks: For The Last Time

Berkely economist Brad DeLong edits the climate change chapter. For free.
And promises his readers that this is the last time SF will be his topic. As do I.
Let's hope L&D use his suggestions because apparently, as one commenter notes:

So what you're suggesting is that they remove every selling point of the book and make it, uh... correct and well-written?

Guess I should visit DeLong more often. (Don't give me any more of that Kolko stuff, anon.)

(Wow. Last four from Weeds Season 4 just arrived. So long good intentions.)

Superfreaks Now Super Irrelevant

Say, gadzooks, real climate scientists!
Although book sales will be through the roof.

Welcome, The Yes Men!

Forget Balloon Boy. Oh, you already have?
This is really good.
I so love that not only the U.S. Chamber of Commer, but Reuters, the NYT and Wapo got punked.
I so love it. What more to say?
What Do We Want? More Punking.
When Do We Want It? Now!
Coming to a theater near you.

I Said This Last Week

 Obama knows the public option, insofar as most Americans understand it, is popular. So why not get his opponents to fight it in their states where they can be hurt, rather than nationally, where they can tar Obama as a “socialist”. Sneaky.

So does that mean I can have a column in The Times of London, too.
Nah, didn't think so.

I Like The Mouse Colon Best Just Because Of The Title

But the images of winners past and present in the Nikon microphotography contest help a lot on this Sunday, when "it's all in the oneness" is much on my mind.
I, for one, am glad Andrew Sullivan is a religious person. It helps me to be led there at times.

Random Thought

Will I ever get over the need to believe that when it comes to important matters, there are adults in charge who know what they're doing, when clearly my experience tells me otherwise, primarily having at times been an adult in charge?
Ans. No.