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August 31, 2006

Guess Who?

Guess what? I'm resurrecting the "Guess Who?" game! Try and guess who is described below, without resorting to Google. I'll post the answer ... some time.

The former [title held], who is considering running as a Democratic candidate for [office], also said Democrats have concentrated too much on criticizing President Bush in the last two years instead of focusing on what they can do to improve things in the country.

"So [Democrats] spent the last two years criticizing him instead of saying, 'Some things aren't right. This is our game plan.' And now we're two years away from the election, and we have no solutions and no front-runner."

[Mystery person] was a Republican until recently, saying he switched parties when the Republicans "lost their minds." He said he is troubled by some of the actions of people in the United States in the name of religion.

"Religious people in general are so discriminatory against other people, and that really disturbs me," he said. "My idea of religion is we all love and respect. We all sin, but we still have common decency and respect for other people. So right now I'm struggling with my idea of what religion is."

He also said he supports gay marriage.

[ ... snip ... ]

"I don't know anything about a lot of things, but I would ask somebody and try to make a fair, honest decision for the majority of the people. Not the rich, not the poor, not the black, not the white," [Mystery person] said. "When you get elected to public office, you're supposed to represent everybody. Your job is not to take care of the rich or the poor or the black or the white. Your job is to take care of everybody."

Update: Answer below the fold.

The missing fields are:

[ NBA All-star ]
[ Governor of his home-state of Alabama]
[ Charles "Cee-Lo who?" Barkley ]

Posted by todd at 9:09 AM | Comments (1)

August 30, 2006

Don't Marry Career Women?

Last week, one of my coworkers sent me an article on Forbes.com titled Don't Marry Career Women, by Michael Noer. I thought it deserved a more considered post than "hey, check out this yahoo," so I tucked the URL away for later. By the time I checked back today, they had apparently gotten a lot of flak, because the page had become a two-sided "point/counter-point" with the less interesting title "Careers And Marriage."

The counter-point is courtesy of one Elizabeth Corcoran, who I am told also has the cover story on Forbes magazine this month. She handles things pretty well, making my commentary superfluous. But here goes anyway.

A recent study in Social Forces, a research journal, found that women--even those with a "feminist" outlook--are happier when their husband is the primary breadwinner.

Here we are, just two paragraphs in, and we have feminist in scare-quotes and "research jourrnal" invoked as mystical force. "Holy shit, if this some guy at a magazine makes a claim and says a research journal said it, I can't question that."

Moving on:

Not a happy conclusion, especially given that many men, particularly successful men, are attracted to women with similar goals and aspirations. And why not? After all, your typical career girl is well educated, ambitious, informed and engaged. All seemingly good things, right? Sure … at least until you get married. Then, to put it bluntly, the more successful she is, the more likely she is to grow dissatisfied with you. Sound familiar?

Uh... no, no it doesn't sound familiar. Is there something you want to talk about, Mikey?

Not only are these good things, but there is no way that I would consider marrying a woman who wasn't these things. I would rather die cold and alone. (An idea which Noer will get to eventually.)

Corcoran has this to say, in a slightly different context:

Say you marry your college heartthrob. Ten years later, he's working with some good-looking gals--nymphets just out of college, or the more sophisticated types who spent two years building houses in Africa before they went to Stanford Business School. What do you do? A: Stay home, whine and eat chocolate. B: Take up rock climbing, read interesting books and continue to develop that interesting personality he fell in love with in the first place.

I don't know what you'd do, but I do know what I would want my wife to do. And, while it may involve wine and chocolate, it isn't choice A.

Meanwhile, Noer digs his hole deeper:

To be clear, we're not talking about a high school dropout minding a cash register. For our purposes, a "career girl" has a university-level (or higher) education, works more than 35 hours a week outside the home and makes more than $30,000 a year.

Wait, I thought you said you weren't talking about a high school dropout minding a cash register. Because, by these standards, that's all you're left with. Does anyone really want a partner who didn't finish college? Or who doesn't leave the house? Think of the conversations you'd have over dinner -- what would they involve, after you told a few stories from work and she caught you up on the latest Days of Our Lives gossip?

Getting to the meat of the argument, Noer says:

In classic economics, a marriage is, at least in part, an exercise in labor specialization. Traditionally, men have tended to do "market" or paid work outside the home, and women have tended to do "nonmarket" or household work, including raising children. All of the work must get done by somebody, and this pairing, regardless of who is in the home and who is outside the home, accomplishes that goal.

Aha! Classic economics! Economists are really excellent at telling people how to live their lives; this is going to be great. But it is interesting that he says, "regardless of who is in the home and who is outside the home," but doesn't urge career women to avoid career men. Indeed, he never seems to consider the notion of a non-career man.

Of course, I'm only joking. Everyone knows that all men are career men. Moving right along.

The other reason a career can hurt a marriage will be obvious to anyone who has seen his or her mate run off with a co-worker: When your spouse works outside the home, chances increase that he or she will meet someone more likable than you.

Indeed, men! Stay away from the career women, because they are all hussies! And, if you have already married, best to keep your chattel wife locked away, safe from smarter, hunkier men.

This, to me, is the most confusing part. Noer seems to expect that if we let women out of the house, they will seek out the most interesting men, and he doesn't seem to believe that they shouldn't. And his solution is for us to ignore depth and character in favor of dull-but-happy homemaking. I, for one, remain unconvinced. If a happy marriage requires me to my life with a woman who is uneducated, never leaves the house, and is poor, then I think I'll pass. And, as I mentioned, Noer is way ahead of me:

So why not just stay single? Because, academically speaking, a solid marriage has a host of benefits beyond just individual "happiness." There are broader social and health implications as well. According to a 2004 paper titled "What Do Social Scientists Know About the Benefits of Marriage?," marriage is positively associated with "better outcomes for children under most circumstances" and higher earnings for adult men, and "being married and being in a satisfying marriage are positively associated with health and negatively associated with mortality." In other words, a good marriage is associated with a higher income, a longer, healthier life and better-adjusted kids.

A word of caution, though: As with any social scientific study, it's important not to confuse correlation with causation. In other words, just because married folks are healthier than single people, it doesn't mean that marriage is causing the health gains. It could just be that healthier people are more likely to be married.

First thing's first: what the hell does "academically speaking" mean?

Secondly, what's the deal with the caveat? He was completely gung-ho about the articles from "research journals" at the beginning of the article. You remember, the ones that supported his thesis. Now he's giving us lessons on correlation and causation? How about this "it could just be" for you: it could just be that women who didn't go to college, who have too many kids to work more than 35 hours a week, and who make less than $30,000 a year are too dependent upon their husbands to seek divorces. Maybe they're from families where divorce is still seen as a Very Bad Thing. Maybe they report themselves as happier because they don't know what they're missing. I honestly don't know. But I don't think Michael Noer knows any better.

Posted by todd at 3:46 PM | Comments (3)

August 29, 2006

Well, this dude's like that, only he's Russian

Check out these awesome letters from Don Fagen and Walt Becker (aka Steely Dan) to Luke Wilson and Wes Anderson. In the former, they attempt to persuade Luke into getting Owen to show up at a show in Irvine to apologize to the audience for You, Me, and Dupree. They point out that the title character is obviously lifted from their song Cousin Dupree, and that "when it came time to change the character's name or whatever so people wouldn't know what a rip the whole thing was, THEY DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER TO THINK UP A NEW NAME FOR THE FUCKING GUY!"

Posted by todd at 10:10 PM | Comments (1)

August 28, 2006

It does Consistently Out-Sell "The Berenstein Bears Meet Uncle Marx"

Everyone should rush over to OakLeafPublishing.biz ("Books with Meaning") to buy An Island Called Liberty. Here is the description:

This book is a cross between Dr. Seuss and Ayn's Rand's [sic] Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand would be proud of the message and Dr. Seuss would be proud of the beautiful illustrations and rhyming verse in this lively tale of free-markets versus excessive government regulation.

This awesome excerpt is best if read outloud, with an audience:

Inside is the story of a right friendly land, Where people were quick to lend a free hand. With the best of intentions they passed many laws, To fix what they felt were quite fixable flaws. But the fixes, they found, were too much in the end, For the bureaus and programs and taxes they penned. Once the lessons were learned, here's what they knew: The contentment of many can't come from the few.

I'm pretty sure that "the URL ends in .biz" is a 95-percent-accurate predictor that a given company's product is ripe for mocking. Throw in the awesome motto ("As opposed to books by larger publishers, which are meaningless") and Oak Leaf definitely deserves our support.

Posted by todd at 1:37 PM | Comments (1)

August 27, 2006

OMG!! Best Week EVAR!!!

I'm not sure if anyone else is crazy enough to try and read every post in the YLTLSWC. Honestly, I hope not. But, since I am, I thought I'd round up the ten best posts from the week that were:

Posts With Links
1. Boris reports that a federal court says the FBI must learn to use Google.
2. Asif brings us How the New York Times looks to the Right Wing.
3. Boris again with a description of an incredible sounding meal. Personally, I think a trip to Barcelona to eat there would make an awesome honeymoon.

Conversations You Weren't There For
1. Jared quit today.
2. Also the best post about threesomes.

Actual Interesting Writing
1. Ben Popik reminding us all that he tells stories better than we do.
2. Brendan 's permalinks don't work, so scroll down to the one about MLK.

Miscellaneous
1. Unidentified Casual Hall
2. I wish more people would answer this question, as it is a good one.
3. The picture in this post makes me wish I had more time for vacation before school starts.

Posted by todd at 11:30 AM | Comments (5)

August 26, 2006

Not Where, but Who You're With

Last week I read a couple of posts by Erin in which she expressed her reservations about leaving for the PhD program at Johns Hopkins. I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about until last night, when these jokers threw us a little going-away party.

The going-away party was exactly as it should have been: just like every Friday dinner party over the course of three years at Bard. Fish and wine and dueling ipods. Also, they gave me a sweet-ass shirt, which I fully intend to rock at my first lab meeting.

I never got all that misty when it was time to leave Bard. Four years there had been about all that I was interested in, and I knew the odds were good that I would be close to Boston this year, and thus close to all of the Bardians I cared most about. Even as I've spent the last couple of months getting excited about a change of coasts, it never occured to me that I might miss anyone here, until Ruth and I were in the car on the way home at 2:30 am.

I'm going to have to work on a way to bring teleconferencing into the realm of Sunday morning pancakes, coffee, and Times crosswords.

Posted by todd at 5:59 PM | Comments (4)

August 25, 2006

It Works, Bitches

Some science-y links for the kids:

1. Carl Zimmer on evidence of recent evolution in egg-flys.

   But if Wolbachia should find itself in a male, it has reached a dead end. It cannot infect sperm cells, and thus it has no escape from a male host. When a male host dies, Wolbachia dies as well.

   [...]

   Male-killing is not the only weapon Wolbachia uses on its hosts. When some strains infect wasps, they alter the females so that their eggs start spontaneously turning into embryos without any need of sperm. All of these sperm-free embryos become females, which can also produce female offspring without the help of males. In other species, Wolbachia allow males to be born but alters their hormones to feminize them and make them produce eggs. And in other cases, Wolbachia decides which males and females may mate with one another.

   The article goes on to talk about evidence for changes in some species of insect to protect the males. Which is my kind of evolution.
2. The Disgruntled Chemist taking down some anti-science Republican. Worthwhile just for the astonishingly vacuous claims encountered. Gems such as:

   Be that as it may, the whole [blogospheric debate over Intelligent Design] got me thinking, and today ii occured to me: science is dead. We have reached the end of the Age of Science - what will come after, I don't know, but I don't think that we'll ever again have a time when Science is enshrined as some sort of god-like arbiter of right and wrong.

   You know, I was sitting around the other day, and I got to thinking. Some people are fucking ridiculous. Has that ever occured to anyone before? How monumentally absurd some people can be? It's really just astounding. Think about it sometime.
3. A post about dark matter at Cosmic Variance which has been open in my browser for a week now. Need to finish that.
4. I did this. I am very excited.

Posted by todd at 7:37 PM | Comments (2)

August 24, 2006

Look, You. I Decide When You Let Me in, and that Time is Now.

Don't let the Friskies (Gourmet Poultry Flavors!) fool you. This cat is not ours. There is, however, some indication that we may belong to the cat.

Kitty has no name, and we don't know if it's a he or a she (we call it both). It started showing up in our basement a month or so ago. It jumps in an open window, climbs the stairs, and mewls until it is granted admittance. The first time, it brought us a present: a chipmunk, which we mistakenly took for dead. Then it dropped the critter at Ruth's feet, and the chipmunk scurried for cover. It did not get far before it was recaptured, and both cat and rodent were tossed outside.

The kitty kept coming back, though. And it kept looking thinner and thinner. And, since it its appearances didn't seem to depend upon whether or not we fed it (we didn't), we caved and gave it a couple of cans of tuna. Yeah, we're suckers. Our roommates, who will be living here after next week, do not think this is a great idea. But the cat has killed a couple of mice in the last month, which may be just enough for them to keep letting it in.

Posted by todd at 11:27 PM | Comments (0)

August 23, 2006

Book Bag Bleg

One of the many things I need to acquire before school starts in September is a new bag. I'm hoping that someone can suggest a nice one. Here are the requirements:

1. Must be a safe place to put a nice laptop. This includes bags which will comfortable fit a laptop inside of a nice laptop sleeve, but that's not what I prefer.


2. Must hold books. Several at a time.


3. Must be comfortable walking, and on a bicycle. My (limited) experience with a (crappy) messenger bag on a bicycle was thoroughly unpleasant. But I think messenger bags look nicer than backpacks in a lot of ways, so I'm open to ideas


4. Must not look hideous.


5. Room for things like gym clothes and a thermos of coffee a plus.


6. May not be the Considerable Embarassment. Ruth's getting one of those.

Please help! If no one helps, terrible things happen to these bunnies. I'm also interested in advice about which bags to steer clear of, if you have had very bad luck with one.

Posted by todd at 2:22 PM | Comments (3)

August 22, 2006

Well, Thanks for Putting it Back in the Baggy, Anyway

One day last week I returned to the refrigerator at 11:30 to retrieve my lunch, and I found this:

My first thought was, "Hah! It looks like we have huge mice. That's funny."

Then I figured out that someone had taken one enormous bite out of my sandwich, realized that it was not their own, put it back in the baggy, and replaced it in the refrigerator as though nothing had happened. No note which said, "Whoops, sorry about that, let me buy you lunch." Or even, "I took someone's sandwich, and left mine for them instead. Sorry about that." Hell, I would have settled for, "Dear whomever -- took massive bite from your sandwich by mistake. Sorry."

But I got nothing. No note, no email to the fifteen people in the office hoping to make amends, and worst of all nothing to eat for lunch that day.

I felt so bad for myself that I treated me to an Indian buffet.

But I still wonder -- who is this person? Who among my coworkers is callous enough to discover his (her?) own mistake and think, "This isn't mine! But, now that it's ruined, I guess I will also eat my own sandwich. Sucks for this guy." I probably help this person solve technical issues every day, thinking that we are comrades. But this is obviously a farcical pretention on the part of the traitor.

---

Also: The pictures of Maine are back up. They've been down for a while, because I'm lazy about keeping MySQL+Apache running on the box in my bedroom. But now I've moved the gallery program to tonguebutnodoor's new host, so it should be pretty stable.

Posted by todd at 1:14 PM | Comments (6)

August 21, 2006

Four Dates in Boston

This post is mostly for Jurvis.

One day, Jurvis wil get a job. This day will be a day for celebration. A day for taking his lovely girlfriend out for a nice dinner. On this day, Jurvis may say to himself, "Boston is a big place, full of restaurants! How shall I choose one?"

(Of course, he might also say, "I know just the place! I am from a place not too far away, so that's reasonable." But for now, we assume that he needs help.)

This is where I can help! Ruth and I are pretty lame; we only go out for movies and to spend way too much on food. But, our weakness is your good fortune, because I bring you now reviews from several nice dates that we've had in the last few months.

Posted by todd at 11:59 AM | Comments (6)

August 20, 2006

When We Open the Lab Each Morning, We Tell the Robot to Kill

A couple of weeks ago, several of the blogs I read all posted the same comic. Now, in addition to being hilarious, it is the height of fashion.

However, I don't even think it's the best edition of this particular webcomic. In fact, every time I decide on my favorite, I find something better. For instance, which is better, the spot-on parody of A Softer World, or that of Dinosaur Comics? Is either as meaningful a commentary as the biggest problem with blogging? What about a joke with like 17 layers of funny? And then there's this, which encapsulates so many awkward moments in my own life that I can't count them all.

Posted by todd at 12:29 AM | Comments (2)

August 4, 2006

He had Two on the Vine

Washington, Washingon
Six foot twenty, fuckin'
killing for fun.

(Via The Disgruntled.)

Posted by todd at 9:13 AM | Comments (4)

August 2, 2006

$9,744

My current net worth?

The price of my first car?

The value of my student loans?

No, no, and no. That would be nice, who can afford a car, and I wish. In fact, it's the amount of money I've spent on dental work this summer. If you think my kids aren't going to brush six times a day, you're crazy.

Posted by todd at 11:33 PM | Comments (8)

August 1, 2006

I <3 Functional Programming

Joel Spolsky often gets on my nerves, but he's also often very insightful. Lately, he's just been on a roll. Today, he says things I can't help but enjoy.

Posted by todd at 11:42 PM | Comments (1)

Pictures of Maine

Here are some pictures from our trip to Maine a few weeks ago. I wrote the gallery program from scratch as a way to play around with Ruby and Rails. It (like my Ruby code) is still pretty rough around the edges, so expect it to break. Also, I don't have a Rails-ready host at the moment, so I'm serving it off of the box in my bedroom. This means two things: 1) it will be slow, and 2) my box will get hacked and by someone more 1337 than me.

In the meantime, please enjoy.

Posted by todd at 12:03 AM | Comments (5)