first and last lines

From Guys Just Want to Have Fun

The intro:

When I was in college, I followed a simple strategy: Go where the boys are. Sure, that led me into many settings where inebriants flowed, but my reasoning was strictly practical. Men ruled the world, as anyone could see, so the trick was to do as they did. No girlie major like art history or French lit for me. I started in chemistry and then proceeded up the gender gradient to physics, finally achieving in Classical Mechanics the exalted status of only girl in the class.

[The body: see if you can fill in the blanks]

And the conclusion:

I'd still major in physics if I were doing it again, just because there ought to be at least a few Americans, of whatever gender, who know something beyond the technology of beer bongs.

eight troops

The 51st Battalion

Eight troops from Golani's 51st Battalion lost their lives on Wednesday during heavy fighting with Hizbullah operatives in the southern Lebanese village of Bint Jbail. Another officer was killed in a clash at Maron a-Ras.

Ro'i would have been 31 years old on Thursday...We tried all day to reach him, called his friends, the hospitals...Alex, 23, from Acre, had already registered for studies at Haifa University...Amihai wanted to serve in battalion 51 in order to follow in the footsteps of his friend, Shmuel Weiss...Asaf had a month left to finish his two-year army service...Idan, 21, from Jaffa, told only his father that he was in Lebanon. "He didn't want his mother to worry"...

mid-east conflict allegory

Sarah provides a dumbed down version of why Israel is at war (in case you didn't like Krauthammer's straight up version).

another one liner (on Jews)

From BOOKS IN BRIEF on Fabulous Small Jews:

But Epstein, always a graceful writer, also happens to possess a stand-up comic's gift for punch lines: "Psychotherapy is what Jews have instead of golf," one character says. "Gentiles try to improve their backswing, Jews their past."

tortilla reference

For my own reference mostly (from The Taco Joint in Your Kitchen):

if you roll the tortilla, it’s a burrito;
if you layer food on top of it, it’s an enchilada;
if you crisp it up and use it as a kind of plate, it’s a tostada;
if you cut it into pieces and bake or fry it, it’s a chip;

google fixed it!

Now when you discard a draft on gmail, there is the option to "undo discard." Yay!

(I complained about this a couple months ago here.)

one reason to fear a power outage in nyc

Stuck A train in Queens boils riders:

Dozens of subway riders were stuck for nearly two hours yesterday on a stalled elevated A train in Queens, sweltering in the searing heat before making a harrowing evacuation 40 feet above the street.

It doesn’t simply feel more polluted when it’s hot…

Severe weather alert from weather.com:

AIR QUALITY LEVELS IN OUTDOOR AIR ARE PREDICTED TO BE GREATER THAN AN AIR QUALITY INDEX VALUE OF 100 FOR FINE PARTICLES. THE AIR QUALITY INDEX...OR AQI...WAS CREATED AS AN EASY WAY TO CORRELATE LEVELS OF DIFFERENT POLLUTANTS TO ONE SCALE. THE HIGHER THE AQI VALUE, THE GREATER THE HEALTH CONCERN.

WHEN POLLUTION LEVELS ARE ELEVATED... THE NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH RECOMMENDS THAT INDIVIDUALS CONSIDER LIMITING STRENUOUS OUTDOOR PHYSICAL ACTIVITY TO REDUCE THE RISK OF ADVERSE HEALTH EFFECTS. PEOPLE WHO MAY BE ESPECIALLY SENSITIVE TO THE EFFECTS OF ELEVATED LEVELS OF POLLUTANTS INCLUDE THE VERY YOUNG, AND THOSE WITH PRE-EXISTING RESPIRATORY PROBLEMS SUCH AS ASTHMA OR HEART DISEASE. THOSE WITH SYMPTOMS SHOULD CONSIDER CONSULTING THEIR PERSONAL PHYSICIAN.

And this is because (source):

The stagnant atmospheric conditions of the heat wave trap pollutants in urban areas and add the stresses of severe pollution to the already dangerous stresses of hot weather, creating a health problem of undiscovered dimensions.

we're having a heat wave

Love this line from NYtimes article, Nation Sweats as Heat Hits Triple Digits:

In New York, people did what they always do: Complain. Endure. Live in fear of having a single centimeter of clothing brush the arm of a fellow subway rider.

middle east conflict in a toon

Citi card attempts to woo me

From a personalized letter from Citi:

Since becoming a cardmember on 2/15/2005, you have established yourself as one of Citi’s most valuable customers.

What can we offer you now? A lower rate on purchases? The opportunity to earn cash back as a statement credit on your everday spending?

P.S. We want to hear from you.

Even though they weren’t being completely honest with me (I’m one of Citi’s most valuable customers? Come on…), I’m a sucker for shameless flattery, so I gave them a call (yes, I know, it’s against The Rules, but I couldn’t help myself…). And I’m now getting 5% cash back on all my Citi® Dividend Platinum Select® card purchases for the next 3 months. Woo-hoo.

comical Op-Ed on ban of gay marriage

Too Good for Marriage

LAST week, New York’s highest court voted 4-to-2 that a legislative ban on same-sex marriage did not violate the state Constitution...

What’s noteworthy about the New York decision, however, is that it became the second ruling by a state high court to assert a startling rationale for prohibiting same-sex marriage.

...straight couples may be less stable parents than their gay counterparts and consequently require the benefits of marriage to assist them...

But the New York court also put forth another argument, sometimes called the “reckless procreation” rationale. “Heterosexual intercourse,” the plurality opinion stated, “has a natural tendency to lead to the birth of children; homosexual intercourse does not.” Gays become parents, the opinion said, in a variety of ways, including adoption and artificial insemination, “but they do not become parents as a result of accident or impulse.”

(Reminded me of the argument my high school teachers used to present about how women are on a higher spiratual level than men and thus...)

Loss of Jewish Identity

Abigail Pogrebin interviewed “prominent Jews” asking them to reflect on what being Jewish means to them and compiled their words in Stars of David. So what does being Jewish mean to these 60 something celebrities, in short, nothing much. To most it’s limited to matzo balls and acknowledging Yom Kippur. To some it’s about their passions and/or attitudes, for instance when Gene Wilder was asked by his son if he’s superstitious, he replied, “Not in the least, but why take a chance.”

It is recommended that this book be read along side Dershowitz's The Vanishing American Jew: only (roughly) a handful of the 63 interviewed married within the faith…

the under-privileged sex

Lines extracted from several letters published under: Yes, College Women Work Harder (8 Letters):

The simple truth is that women work harder because we have to; men coast because they can.

Where are the legions of women dominating senior, high-paying positions? Women earn just under half of the doctoral degrees and make up only about 39 percent of the faculty in degree-granting institutions. The average salary of male faculty exceeds that of female faculty.

In general, men take risks, do not interrupt careers to bear and raise children, and tend to be confident. (Right so...if the women didn't take the time to bear and raise children, umm...who would?)

During the last three years, I have taught hundreds of students in introductory college history classes, and I can confirm that my female students usually perform better and work harder.

I'm all for going back to the traditional household (don't quote me on this, since I'm not really*), but if we're going to work, we should at least get treated fairly (payed equally for starters).

*I’m in this mode where if it were up to me, I would prefer not to work, or only very part time, or I think I just really might want to go back to school...But I wouldn’t want anyone telling me that I couldn’t if I wanted to.

the paradox of love

Spinoza renounces romantic love, writing that (quoted by Rebecca Goldstein in Betraying Spinoza):

Emotional distress and unhappiness have their origin especially in excessive love towards a thing subject to considerable instability, a thing which we can never possess. For nobody is disturbed or anxious about anything unless he loves it, nor do wrongs, suspicions, enmities, etc. arise except form love toward things which nobody can truly posses.

And Amoz Oz writes in his memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness:

Love is a curious mixture of opposites, a blend of extreme selfishness and total devotion. A paradox! Besides which, love, everybody is always talking about love, love, but love isn't something you choose, you catch it, like a disease, you get trapped in it, like a disaster.

Yet even the most rational of people crave this temporary insanity that takes an almost unbearable emotional toll on its victims (except maybe Spinoza, but it was speculated that that might have been because a girl broke his heart early on and he never really recovered). Seems almost counterintuitive.

is this another product of feminism?

Putting the Manly in Manicure

Gaza in short

Time Magazine essay by CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, Remember What Happened Here:

Israel Invades Gaza. That is in response to an attack from Gaza that killed two Israelis and wounded another, who was kidnapped and brought back to Gaza ...which, in turn, was in response to Israel's targeted killing of terrorist leaders in Gaza...which, in turn, was in response to the indiscriminate shelling of Israeli towns by rockets launched from Gaza.

...Before the eyes of the whole world, Israel left Gaza. Every Jew, every soldier, every military installation, every remnant of Israeli occupation was uprooted and taken away.

How do the Palestinians respond? What have they done with Gaza, the first Palestinian territory in history to be independent, something neither the Ottomans nor the British nor the Egyptians nor the Jordanians, all of whom ruled Palestinians before the Israelis, ever permitted? On the very day of Israel's final pullout, the Palestinians began firing rockets out of Gaza into Israeli towns on the other side of the border. And remember: those are attacks not on settlers but on civilians in Israel proper, the pre-1967 Israel that the international community recognizes as legitimately part of sovereign Israel, a member state of the U.N. A thousand rockets have fallen since.

the lonelier American

Socialists have recently estimated that Americans have less friends than ever. In Time Magazine, Robert Putnam discusses the issue in piece titled,“You Gotta Have Friends”:

Social isolation has many well-documented side effects. Kids fail to thrive. Crime rises. Politics coarsens. Generosity shrivels. Death comes sooner (social isolation is as big a risk factor for premature death as smoking). Well-connected people live longer, happier lives, even if they have to forgo a new Lexus to spend time with friends.

And Henry Fountain in the NYtimes writes “The Lonely American Just Got a Bit Lonelier”:

More people are working and commuting longer hours and have little time for the kinds of external social activities that could lead to deeper relationships...

"Sure, you might say, we've still got our wives or husbands or mothers," he said. "That's true. But gosh, the number of friends you have is a strong predictor of how long you live."

What struck me about both articles was the emphasis on how having friends prolongs life. Here they are delving into the decline of meaningful friendships among Americans and how it reduces the quality of life, one of the underlying messages they leave the reader with is that friends are important because they make one live longer?! Umm...Seems like living longer would be an odd concern for the lonely person…