Me in my post-9-to-5 glory. I feel exactly how I look: hot, sweaty, disheveled, and low resolution. Looking forward to AC and foot massages in Boston.
02 July 2008 06:42 pm
But I Look Damn Cute in a Pencil Skirt
02 July 2008 08:14 am
This is Where I Get It From
- Me: At this age, I’m already over the hill.
- Mom: Really? But you’re so young.
- Me: Yes. I’m in my most fertile years. I should already be having kids by now.
- Alex: Twenty is about the right age.
- Mom: So human fertility doesn’t look like t-distribution.
- Dad: No. It’s more like chi-squared.
01 July 2008 10:25 pm
It’s Not Paranoia If They’re Really Out to Get You
- Byrnes: You just randomly flipped to only being on Yahoo.
- Me: Wireless. But I think it’s the encryption really. The network was free for a while, and everything was fine. Then Dad put encryption back on.
- Byrnes: Well turn the damn encryption off! Seriously. Who’s gonna steal your wifi?!
- Me: The deer. In the backyard.
- Byrnes: They have 802.11n?
- Me: Dad: Gotta encrypt. Or someone’s gonna steal our bandwidth. Alex: Sure. If they’re sitting in a car in our driveway.
- Byrnes: Seriously. They’d have to be within 100 feet of the BASE STATION.
- Me: What’s within 100 ft? TREES. Those damn trees. They’re out to get us.
- Byrnes: The bloody deciduous. Those bastards.
- Me: And the conifers! They’re green YEAR ROUND.
- Byrnes: With their piney pine pines! They PINE FOR YOUR WIFI.
01 July 2008 10:46 am
People Are Not Crayons
I have a problem calling certain racial demographics “white” and “black”. It makes me feel like I should call myself “yellow”, and that’s absolutely ridiculous.
01 July 2008 09:54 am
You’ll Have to Do Without Me
This is the last scene of my favorite adaption of a favorite play. Some lines have been cut and rearranged for continuity. The ending has been changed. But the spirit of the scene has been left intact (mostly). I love Eliza’s transformation—how she stops asking for sympathy, stands up for herself, and walks out. Hiller’s performance couldn’t be better. (Audrey Hepburn can’t match.)
Also, Leslie Howard is absolutely dreamy. Forget Ashley Wilkes. Henry Higgins is one of his best performances.
But I wish Shaw had kept the original stage ending. In the play, Eliza walks out and doesn’t return, leaving Higgins looking very pleased with himself and the strong woman he created. The point is that a proper woman isn’t someone with genteel manners or speech; she is independent and isn’t afraid to stand up for herself. But people like romance, so in the movie (and many other interpretations), Eliza returns to Higgins, presumably to fetch his slippers—but sometimes, also, to throw them in his face.
30 June 2008 11:53 am
Runs in the Family
- Mom: Alex wants to go to graduate school for neuropsychology but he doesn’t know where to apply yet.
- Me: Once he figures out what about neuro that he likes, it’ll be easier to narrow down the choices. Cognitive, ev-bio, comparative ..
- Mom: I’ve noticed that you two have very similar interests.
- Me: We are your kids.
- Dad: That’s right! You and Alex are related!
27 June 2008 07:57 pm
Friday Leftovers
- Supreme Court overturns District’s ban on handguns. After thirty years, residents of DC are allowed to have handguns in their homes. The Court declared that a complete ban is unconstitutional, but some gun restrictions are reasonable, e.g. barred from felons and the mentally ill, and at schools and government buildings. Machine guns are still banned. Now the NRA plans to sue San Francisco and Chicago for similar handgun bans.
- Supreme Court slashes $2.5 billion of damage awards in Exxon oil spill. In 1989, one of the Exxon supertankers crashed, dumping 11 billions gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound. Wildlife and businesses were hurt. The Court ruled that punitive damages may not exceed what the company has already paid to compensate victims for losses.
- More Americans delay health care. A recent report shows that more Americans in 2007 than in 2003 delay health care due to rising costs and larger payments out of pocket. The insured are still more likely to delay health care than the insured.
- Medicare, surveillance bills delayed until after Fourth of July recess. The House passed a bipartisan bill that blocks a cut in Medicare payments to doctors, but the bill has failed to pass the Senate. Medicare cuts are not new, there can be devestating results. The bill that would provide retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that participated in the government’s wiretapping program is also postponed.
- Paris Hilton donates money to children’s hospital. Is she following in Daddy’s footsteps? (It’s interesting what you come up with when you do research on medical economics.)
- Bill Gates retires from Microsoft for philanthropic pursuits. Gates is going to work full-time for his charity foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, but he is still a chairman at Microsoft.
27 June 2008 06:11 pm
I Don’t Think We’re in New England Anymore, Toto - A Play in Three Acts, Act III
- Me: Finally back in Boston. Let’s get dinner.
- Byrnes: Unfortunately the only food we can get at this hour is pizza or hot dogs.
- Me: Sweetie, you know that I’m always up for some late night hot juicy sausage.
26 June 2008 12:47 pm
The Things I Do For You
The Battle: Getting unhappy cat out from under the deck while it was raining.
The Outcome: Happier cat indoors and drying.
The Spoils: Freshly-washed clothes covered in mud, grass, rain, and cat hair.
23 June 2008 05:16 pm
The Media on Media
CBS News Chief Correspondent Lara Logan on The Daily Show in a very open, honest interview about television news media today. She describes a phenomenon that Robert McChesney and John Nichols observed years ago.
More from McChesney and Nichols at the 2008 National Conference for Media Reform.
(via Deus Ex Malcontent)
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