Lift Up Your Hearts!

Here's a scary article for you:  Emily Gould's Exposed, from the May 25, 2008 New York Times Magazine.  Andrew Keen (The Cult of the Amateur) would definitely appreciate this story of one woman's venture into a world of publishing unfettered by editorial oversight and subsequent free-fall into the Dark Side of Blogging.

I slumped to the kitchen floor and lay there in the fetal position. I didn’t want to exist. I had made my existence so public in such a strange way, and I wanted to take it all back, but in order to do that I’d have to destroy the entire Internet. If only I could! Google, YouTube, Gawker, Facebook, WordPress, all gone. I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed for an electromagnetic storm that would cancel out every mistake I’d ever made.

Another sad story about a naïve teenaged girl molested by someone she met on MySpace? Not at all. Just an imprudent adult woman seduced by the delights of seeing her thoughts in print.  Scary.

In a previous post, which was primarily about something else so I won't link to it here, I said:

Having experienced the higher-level coinage of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, and the European Union, I wish the United States had the sense to supplant (not just supplement) the dollar bill with dollar coins.  (And maybe the $2 and $5 bills while we're at it.)  But the mountain of paper used to print dollar bills comes from Massachusetts, where the Crane Paper Company has a stranglehold monopoly on the business.  The $1 bill has a lifespan of under two years and represents about 45% of the U. S. currency production, so it's no surprise that Massachusetts politicians don't like dollar coins.

I've mentioned the idea of getting rid of the lower-denomination bills in favor of coins, and while women generally don't seem to mind, I am likely to get a negative reaction from men.  I think this is because women's wallets almost always have a place for change, but men's wallets rarely do.  Porter carries his change in a small coin purse (something like this) which keeps the coins handy and protects his pocket.  But most men I've talked with tend to keep their change loose in their pockets and then dump them in a jar or on a dresser at the end of the day.  This system works because our coins are worth so little. (More)

My feminism tends to be of the on-again-off-again sort.  As a child—thanks to parents who encouraged me—I never considered any good character trait, activity, or occupation to be off limits because of my sex.  I didn't think much about feminism back then; I just acted, becoming the first girl to break the sex barrier in my high school's stage band, and the only or one of just a few girls in some of my science classes.  This sounds tame and silly from a 21st century perspective, but it was a big deal back then.

When Feminism became a movement, however, I soon had to distance myself from it, largely because it distanced itself from me.  I was (and am) all for equality of opportunity—as much as is physically possible; I don't ever want to see men getting pregnant—but when Feminism veered into being anti-man and pro-abortion, when it denigrated the role of homemaker and made the two-income family first common and then in some cases necessary, and when it invoked "political correctness" over the very words we speak and even started calling God "Our Mother," that's when I turned away.  Not from my beliefs, which hadn't changed, but from the movement and the label.  Women were now included, and succeeding, in nearly every possible opportunity; it was time, I believed, to give feminism a rest. (More)

The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture, by Andrew Keen (Doubleday, 2007)

It's past time to get this book back to the library; I actually finished it quite a while ago, but have been putting of this post because I haven't known quite what to say.  It's a complex book, probably an important one, but it covers so much territory I'll never do it justice.  The book is far more than a diatribe against amateurism, but I will skip over the sections on Internet gambling, Internet pornography, privacy concerns, and the demise of an iconic record store.  Except for Tower Records—it's hard to mourn the disappearance of something you never knew existed—I'm aware of the other issues and tend to agree that they are, indeed, serious problems.  Whether or not the proliferation of amateur voices is boon or bane is a bit more complex.  (More)

I like academia. I love college campuses, chem labs, and the smell of libraries with old books. Places and institutions dedicated to the advancement of knowledge, to study, investigation, and discussion. In an odd way, I feel more at home on a college campus than in most places. They feel exciting, challenging, and yet as comfortable as a pair of well-worn shoes. That my own college experience differed significantly from my theoretical ideal did not do much to diminish my belief that a college professor had a near-perfect job in a near-perfect setting.

Pausing to let my professor friends recover from their choking fits.... (More)

I recently finished reading a book called The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom.  That's not what this post is about, because while the author, David Kupelian, does have some important insights into how our culture got to be the way it is, his tone is too strident to allow me to recommend the book with particular enthusiasm.  However, he cites his sources well, and thus I am able to give full credit for what is perhaps my favorite part of the whole book, the following great quote from G. K. Chesterton.

Sex is an instinct that produces an institution; and it is positive and not negative, noble and not base, creative and not destructive, because it produces this institution.  That institution is the family; a small state or commonwealth which has hundreds of aspects, when it is once started, that are not sexual at all.  It includes worship, justice, festivity, decoration, instruction, comradeship, repose.  Sex is the gate of that house; and romantic and imaginative people naturally like looking through a gateway.  But the house is very much larger than the gate.  There are indeed a certain number of people who like to hang about the gate and never get any further.

— G.K.'s Weekly, January 29, 1928

It is a great tragedy of our day that we have been all but convinced that the gate is all there is, that the house and fields beyond it are, and have always been, no more than a romantic, imaginative dream—at best.  Perhaps we need a Puddleglum to stamp on the enchanted fire and clear our heads.

Perhaps the strident tone of Kupelian's book is, after all, just the un-enchanting smell of burnt marsh-wiggle.

Don't take my word for it; read about Our Big News in Janet's own words (and pictures).  For the really curious, you can find a link to Stephan's blog there.  Hmmm, her webmaster is going to have to make a change, and move thduggie up from Friends to Family on the sidebar.  And while I'm at it, will IrishOboe change to SwissHarp, or maybe SwissFiddle?  Stay tuned!

In the meantime, I'm contemplating the complexities of having an international family. (More)

I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me.  It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: someone has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.

— Frodo to Sam, at the end of The Return of the King (J.R.R. Tolkien)

Thanks to Janet reminding me (she'll have to write her own post as to why), I was able to watch NASA TV live coverage of the landing of Phoenix on Mars (and at a much more reasonable hour than she did).  For obvious reasons (the view out our front door) I pay more attention to Shuttle launches than other NASA activity these days, but watching this excitement took me 'way back.  Back to 1969 and the Apollo 11 moon landing...stories from my cousin who worked in the space program...some of the first pictures of the Earth from the moon that were treasured trophies from a Boy Scout (Explorer) program I participated in with General Electric...and even 'way, 'way back to standing on the porch with my father, watching Echo I pass overhead.

Thanks for the memories, Janet and Stephan!

I actually enjoy airplane food, perhaps because I don't eat it all that often.  It's part of the adventure of flying, and something to break up the monotony of a long flight.  But maybe next time I should wave away the attendent with the tempting tray.  Recent research has shown that fasting for about 16 hours can reset the circadian rhythms and speed adjustment to a new time zone.

At least if you're a mouse.

I don't enjoy reporting bad news, really.  It makes me sound old and curmudgeonly.  Okay, so I am old and curmudgeonly, but that's beside the point.  So today I feature an exciting story from the Philadelphia Inquirer:  Midwife Diane Goslin has emerged victorious from a court case in which the State of Pennsylvania accused her of practicing medicine without a license by assisting at home births.  (See my previous post.)  The author of the article, Angela Couloumbis, and the headline writer who created the title, Birthing Women Win Legal Decision understand that this victory is not about one person's profession, but about one of our most basic freedoms:  choosing where and with whom we will give birth to our children.

I could point out that some of the rejoicing may be premature: the State is considering appealing the decision, and the court only dealt with the charge of practicing medicine, not with the problem that Pennsylvania is not among the 22 states in this country that recognize the Certified Professional Midwife license.  There is cause for joy, to be sure, but not for letting down our guard.  But we'll take our victories one at a time, and be thankful for daily bread even if we're not certain of next week's provision.

Anything less would be curmudgeonly.

I don't yet know how I'm voting in the upcoming presidential election, though I do know it will be a matter of the least objectionable candidate rather than some ringing endorsement. Frankly, I find them all objectionable; the question is, Who will do the least harm? So I'm not endorsing any candidate at this point, but as I've said before, Barack Obama scares me because he's so charismatic he might very well succeed in implementing some very dangerous policies.

Tim at Random Observations once again has a thoughtful post, this time on why Obama scares him. Check it out.

I'm chronically bad at making decisions.  Not that I usually make bad ones; actually, most of them end up being pretty good.  But whether the decision is big or small, buying a house or choosing from a restaurant menu, I agonize over each decision and often experience second thoughts as soon as it is made.  Porter tells an old joke about a man ordering dessert:  The waitress informs him that they are offering apple pie and cherry pie, and after considering the matter for a while, he chooses the apple.  A few minutes later she returns to his table and say, "I'm sorry, sir, I forgot to tell you we also have coconut cream pie."  "Oh!" the diner exclaims, "In that case I'll have the cherry."

The point of the joke is the man's irrational behavior in changing his mind after the addition of irrelevant information, but I understand him completely. Coconut cream pie has nothing to do with it.  He couldn't decide between apple and cherry, and when he finally closed the door on the cherry pie, it suddenly seemed the more attractive.  The waitress's return gave him a chance to change his decision.

With that in mind, you can see why I was attracted by the headline of a New York Times article by John Tierney called The Advantages of Closing a Few Doors. It seems I'm not the only one who likes to keep her options open:  In a series of experiments, MIT students playing a game chose to take what amounted to a 15% penalty in their earnings (cold, hard cash) in order to keep unnecessary doors from closing.

The researcher, Dan Ariely, is a professor of behavioral economics at MIT, and at his website, Predictably Irrational, you can find not only this game but others, and much more on the subject of how we often act contrary to our own best interests.  I'm sure some of his experiments violate a research code of ethics somewhere, such as the experiment in which male college students were asked questions about sexual behavior before and after viewing Internet porn sites.  Nonetheless, even that research revealed some unexpected and frightening results.   Ariely has a book by the same name, which I would order from the library if I didn't already have a backlog of five library books pining away in the not-ready-to-be-returned state.

The proper answer, at least as taught in elementary school, is "nothing."  Get yourself out as fast as you can; don't waste time taking anything with you.  Once past that simplistic answer, there are obviously exceptions:  adults, at least, are allowed to take their children with them.  People will take time to look for pets, and I know I would try to grab a few things, such as important papers, laptops, and family photos, even though I'm sure that's officially frowned upon.

Once out, with firefighters on the scene, one can pretty much count on not being allowed back in for anything, even children, as the professionals prefer to do the work themselves without adding another potential victim in need of rescue.

Unless one lives in Germany, where firefighters are currently battling a fire at the home of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.  This is Europe, where classical music and musicians are respected and understood more than in the United States.

Bassoonist Stefan Schweigert said the fire brigade had allowed musicians into the building to remove instruments that had been left in lockers overnight....

Prince Caspian, One Sentence Review:  Not a bad movie, but several times I had to wonder where the story line came from.

A few more thoughts:  (More)