new blog

I’ve started a new blog. I’ve been enjoying this one so much, that I’ve launched another. The second one, called Flinked Books, is themed and just about books. It’s a precursor to a Web site I hope to create over the coming year for book lovers. I’m not lifting the veil on that idea yet. For now, feel free to check out my other blog sometime. That one may be fledgling for a while, since this one will still be my focus. I’m working on building up the word “flinked” as a book-related brand. Hence the second blog. Anyway, it’s all smoke and mirrors until I get a chance to launch the real site: www.flinked.com, which I own but is currently a pile of dirt until I get my shovel out and start building. (Can you be Web ADHD? I think I might be…)

Wish me luck!

One Speech to Unite Them All

First Lady Laura Bush speaks out on Egypt, but doesn’t it sound like she could be hinting about Iraq? Will hers be the voice of the administration that finally admits we’ll never accomplish what we want to there?

Looks like the speech is already written…

“To act like you can just go from here to there overnight is naive,” the first lady said. “And especially I don't want Americans trying to tell people how you’re going to go from here to here in no time, because we know that that's not easy and we know that it’s, in many cases, not even possible.”

Look Who’s (Not) Talking

Women, despite representing more than half of the U.S. population, are used as sources in media stories, on average, only 33 percent of the time, according to a report released yesterday by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The worse culprits were cable television at 19 percent and the PBS “News Hour” at 17 percent. Newspapers, with the best rate, still only quoted women 41 percent of the time.

I’ve heard too often (from men and women) that gender inequality doesn’t exist anymore. After an uproar last month that the number of female op/ed columnists was woefully low, this should now be considered a trend we can’t ignore.

So next time you read that newspaper article, watch that news show on television or read reporting on the internet, notice whether women were quoted. Was it as often as men? Were their contributions significant or used tangentially?

And if you’re a woman, I beg you, ask yourself if your opinion has been heard recently. Because we’ve got to speak up to be heard. This isn’t about getting “women’s issues” on the table. Every issue is a woman’s issue the minute one woman cares about it. This is about ensuring female comments are valued just as much as a male’s.

Got You on My Mind

Many topics have been weighing on my mind lately, including cybersecurity and antibiotic-resistant organisms. More on both later.

For now, here is the New York Times sentence that made me laugh out loud yesterday: “Medicare to Revise Guide: The Bush administration is revising the 2006 Medicare handbook to be sent to beneficiaries after discovering that many statements in the first draft were inaccurate or incomprehensible, even to people who work on the program.”

The Humor of Spam

The last thing I want to do is encourage more spamming, but I have to share some of the more humorous “people” who have written me lately:

• Barrenness T. Moonstruck, Saws E. Clover, Buttresses K. Saguaros and Erick V. Shunts have said hello.
• Thumped H. Commentated asks “Buenos ncahso?” (sic)
• Antony Snell’s subject line says he’s writing about “banjo Sudatuss-2” (the musical decongestant, perhaps?)
• Pedro Rosales questions “where did Bob go?” (Where, indeed.)
• Finally my favorite: Impossibility V. Morticians says “Good eevning” (sic again).
• No, I take that back. This is the best. Consummated B. Terrorism says “Stock is limited. Hurry!”

Someone needs to tell the insurgents.

Da-duh ... Da-duh ... Da-duh ...

Get out your theme music (I’m thinking Jaws) for this collection of news.

• Domestic terrorism: environmentalist zealots make a bad name for those of us who worry about PVC/dioxin, flame-retardants and Teflon.
• Domestic abuse: Should Amazon come down harder on this PA-based bookstore?
• Weigh in now: the Trump design or the old one? How about Lincoln logs. Ooh! I know! The whole thing out of Legos.

This Just In...

I learned about this yesterday, and I expect a number of news sources will report on it. Keep your eye out, because the blurb I read did not clarify if a causal relationship had been established and whether this is a problem for all women or just those with sexual dysfunction. I have lifted the following from a press release:

Hormonal changes induced by oral contraceptives are not immediately reversible after discontinuation of use, according to new research issued at the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists Fourteenth Annual Meeting and Clinical Congress.

Despite the benefits of oral contraceptives, their use has been associated with sexual dysfunction and androgen insufficiency. In the study of 102 pre-menopausal women with female sexual dysfunction, sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) values in the contraceptive group were seven times higher than those in the never-user group.

Oral contraceptives lower the free androgen index, in part, by substantially increasing SHBG levels. Despite a decrease in SHBG values after discontinuation of contraceptive use, SHBG levels remained continuously elevated for up to one year in comparison with those in the control group. The free androgen index may remain low for a prolonged period.

Different Kinds of Death in the Military

Did you know that April is the Month of the Military Child? The military may want to consider making that a year-round focus, after disturbing news was released from embargo today that deaths from child abuse were highest in North Carolina among children of military personnel.

The two counties in North Carolina that have military installations have more than double the abuse homicide rates for children (from a state average of 2.2 deaths per 100,000 children to 5.0 and 4.9 in the two counties with military bases).

“In this study period, the long-term patterns of child abuse homicides are not coincidence,” Marcia Herma-Geddens, DrPH, UNC adjunct professor, said in a press release. “They suggest problems in and around North Carolina military families and military communities that predictably result in a consistently higher number and rate of child abuse homicides than in non-military communities.”

It is important to note that non-military child abuse deaths were also higher in those two counties, indicating a broader problem. The military needs to act now to conduct comparable studies in other states (newspaper journalists should contribute as well) and bolster support services for parents in North Carolina.

Soft Pedaling the No

I’ve noticed a new trend in language recently. I call it the “yeah-no.” I’ve just realized that not only do I use the “yeah-no” rather frequently, so does everyone around me.

While I’d like to take credit for having inspired this new literary phrase (I had aspirations in high school of inventing the next synonym for “cool” that would spread across the nation), I really can’t. I’ve started hearing the “yeah-no” from everyone, not just people who know me well enough to want to imitate my brilliant, um, speech pattern.

The “yeah-no” is the literary equivalent of that perky friend in high school who would admire everything you did to your face and then tell everyone else what a rotten person you were. It’s linguistic diplomacy. The “yeah-no” is snarky.

That’s because the “yeah-no” is really a “no” that masquerades as a “yeah” for a split second until the speaker crushes it with the ensuing “no.”

“So are you going to make it to my party this weekend?” “Yeah, no, I’ve got a million things to do.” The respondent adds on a “yeah” to break the news easily.

I did some online research and learned that there are multiple ways to use it, including “confirming a generality but denying a specific” and as a bashful response to praise. One post dates it back to celebrity interviews on the late night shows in 2003. Another said the phrase has dominated in Australia for six years. At least one Canadian admits to having used it.

Not to confuse the issue, but I have started using the “yeah-no” when I actually mean “yeah.” Perhaps it’s because I’m already moving on to the answer that my brain doesn’t take the time to determine if I need to say “yes” or “no” to the questioner. This positive usage actually dates back to 1990 in Boston, according one online comment.

Anyone else ever heard the same speech oddity? (Pay attention! You’ll hear it more.) Any uses I’ve left out here?

Time, Time, Time … See What’s Become of Me

No time for any analysis or witticisms, but I will highlight three pieces of news I think everyone should read today:

Bush & his War Memo

Bolton & his Funny Mustache

Army & its Questionable Recruiting

Morality Police

Much to my excitement, my blog received a critical post today in response to my attack on a bill that passed the House of Reps in Texas that would forbid high school cheerleaders from delivering sexy cheers. Among other things, I argued that such a thing should be regulated by individual schools and not the legislature. The respondent, I believe, says the lack of morality hurting kids these days makes such bills necessary.

Which got me thinking: who said there’s a lack of morality today? On a Website describing Measure of Moral Orientation for college-age kids, nothing related to hip shaking comes up. Instead, it focuses on tough questions like if your roommate has AIDS, do you deserve to know? But that’s not so much a scale for how much morality these students have, just the kind.

So we must look elsewhere, to the “F word” being said on the radio. Or to the fact that we’re seeing more and more journalists get publicly humiliated for inaccurate reporting (Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass being just two). Or that we’ve had back to back presidents who have lied (one about sex, one about WMDs), with a startling lack of public humiliation for the second.

But none of these truly tell us the moral state of our nation. For every publicized tale of immorality, there are hundreds of stories that go unmentioned about the guy who broke up a fight on a public street or the girl who visited a dying woman.

But I’m getting off topic. You see, it’s not the overall morality of the nation that is under attack most days. It’s the sexual morality parents worry about. We’ve got Nipplegate and MTV. Michael Jackson and Desperate Housewives. We’ve got the pregnant twice-married Britney Spears and gay marriage.

But we also have Jessica Simpson, who told fans that she was waiting until marriage to have sex. And we have musicians who don’t take off their clothes at halftime, men who don’t share beds with children, television stations like The Food Network and the incredibly popular Extreme Home Makeover.

Where does this leave parents, who want to raise kids with a moral compass? The same place they were before: making choices about what they watch, what movies they should see, what Internet sites they can visit.

If they believe their high school’s cheerleading is too lascivious, they should bring it up with the school board, not waste the time of the state representatives, who should be focusing on more important things like how Texas is below average for reading and science and at the average for writing. Only in math do students perform better than the national mean.

Schadenfreude

For a little bit of Schadenfreude (happiness at another’s misfortune, such as when you’re racing along on the Autobahn and traffic in the other direction is stopped up), take a look at the arrest record for Ada County in Idaho.

Nixon, Nancy & the Psychics

Perhaps this explains why crazies seem to be running our country half the time. Think Bush’s psychic is on speed dial?

I got tipped off on this story from my new competition (though it is hardly fair to call them that).

To Every Thing There is a Season

Let me share something with you I just read:

“Every American should be forced to live outside the United States for a year or two. Americans should be forced to see how ridiculous they appear to the rest of the world! They should listen to someone else’s version of themselves—anyone else’s version!” and

“The White House, that whole criminal mob, those arrogant goons who see themselves as justified to operate above the law—they disgrace democracy by claiming that what they do they do for democracy!”

Though it could have been an op-ed in today’s paper or a rant from one of many angry Democrats, it’s actually a passage in A Prayer for Owen Meany, published in 1989, lamenting the arrogance of the political scene in the United States. Guess history does repeat itself. Oh! Or maybe it never went away.

Your Ex-Lover is Dead! (just a song title—didn't mean to scare ya)

I think I might actually be one of the first to know this time! (Feel free to prove me wrong, except Dan because your blog tipped me off.)

Go listen to the Stars and the song “Your ex-lover is dead.” Just the first line, which isn’t even sung, makes it a winner for me. Then a sweet, tight song follows. Enjoy!

Hidden Prejudice

The FDA has gotten sneaky. They say one thing but really mean another. Ooh! They’ve turned into full-fledged politicians. That can’t be good.

And it’s not good today, when the FDA is asking for something outrageous: that men who have had gay sex in the last 5 years be banned from donating to a sperm bank. They claim it’s because the risk of AIDS runs higher in this group.

But current guidelines bar heterosexual men who have had unprotected sex with an HIV-positive prostitute from donating for 1 year.

Double standard? Of course! But the real secret is something the FDA will never say: “We don’t want gay men reproducing because if it is hereditary, that might make more gay men. Politics doesn’t like gay men.”

The closest they come to honesty is an FDA document quoted by CNN: “The FDA is very much aware that strict exclusion policies eliminate some safe donors.”

Leland Traiman, the head of a donor clinic in Alameda, CA, offers what appears to be a safe and non-biased alternative: conduct HIV testing upon donation and again 6 months later before using the sperm. Ah! But that would not be sneaky. And we can’t be having that. Not if we’re in politics.

Let's Make the Kids Dumber

One day, Galileo announced that the Earth revolves around the sun. Heresy! Outrage! Denunciation! Consequently, Galileo was excommunicated by the Pope for his heretical ideas. Hundreds of years later, Pope John Paul II asked for pardon for the church’s trial of Galileo.

We have hit another such situation going on in Kansas and other parts of the south, only this time scientists aren’t fighting the Pope, they’re fighting the Bible, or at least proponents of a fundamentalist interpretation of it.

Religious advocates are trying once again to discourage the teaching of Darwin’s evolutionary theory in schools, saying it conflicts with the biblical idea of Creationism.

These fundamentalists wrap their whole belief system around the idea that God created the world in seven days. I have to wonder if, when the story of Genesis was first written down thousands of years ago, they could conceive of numbers like 10,000, a billion or beyond.

Many scientists (including many Christian ones) have confirmed that some sort of evolutionary process has taken place. Only one side will be heard by the state’s Board of Education in Kansas, though, because the scientists have boycotted meetings, opting instead to hold daily press conferences outside.

Interestingly, a compromise that would allow both views to be taught side by side is not an option thanks to a 1987 Supreme Court ruling barring the practice.

My source of comfort: If they don’t already, these fundamentalists will someday look like fools—just as the Catholic Church did for its actions against Galileo. But that will be long after my time, and I hardly expect anyone to ask for pardon.

No Booty for You

There may not be “booty shakin’ all around” for Texas high school cheerleaders much longer. The state’s House of Representatives has passed a bill 85-55 “that would forbid sexy cheers and give the Texas Education Agency authority to punish schools that allow ‘overtly sexually suggestive’ routines at football games and other events,” CNN.com reports.

Democratic state rep. Senfronia Thompson, an opponent of the bill, told legislators: “I think the Texas Education Agency has enough to do making sure our kids are better educated, and we are wasting our time with ‘one two three four, we can’t shake it any more?’”

The bill, which doesn’t define “overtly sexually suggestive,” has moved on to the Senate. Hmm... back to the pre-Elvis days I guess. Ah, pleasantville...

But wait! The sponsor of the bill says sexy cheerleading leads to pregnancy and dropouts (uh, no, that would be caused by having sex, getting poor grades, and needing an extra income at home).

I put this kind of thinking in the same category as people who say girls wearing tiny tanktops are asking to be raped and that women must cover their heads to avoid being a temptation to men. Blaming the woman for being a woman (or the girl for being a girl) is not okay. There was a day when a woman showing her ankle was considered risque. Do we really want to head in that direction again? Sure, there are some limits to the sexuality a 16 year old should exhibit at a school event, but is that worth legislating?

Oil Discovery Big But How Helpful?

An oil company in Utah claims it has found an oil repository that could yield a billion barrels of oil, the biggest discovery in 30 years.

That would last the United States 45 days.

Fortunately the oil that is looking more and more like it will be opened up in Alaska at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would yield ten times that.

That would last us 450 days.

Left Hand Doesn't Know What the Right is Doing

In addition to losing troops and radioactive material, we now can’t find $100 million earmarked for reconstruction. Quite a triumvirate of loses.

Is Italy in or out?

“The key for us this year is to transfer more and more responsibility to the Iraqis in taking the counter-insurgency fight to the enemy, and I’m confident we can do that.” —Gen. John Abizaid, March 2, 2005. Translation: “We want Iraqis to die instead of the citizens of our country.”

Kent State Revisited

It’s been 35 years to the day since the infamous moment in Kent State and our nation’s history when student protestors were gunned down. The picture of a girl screaming over her dead schoolmate galvanized a nation of protestors and remains to this day a picture of the horror caused by a nation at odds with itself.

The word used for the Ohio guardsmen who did the shooting, at least in one report of the events, is “ill trained.”

It’s the same problem Italians point to in their report on the accidental March 4th shooting of Nicola Calipari in Baghdad.

As it was the issue in Somalia yesterday when a security guard reportedly dropped his grenade launcher, setting off a grenade and killing at least 8 during a speech from the prime minister.

And it was the problem in Abu Ghraib, so aptly described by Bob Herbert.

When does it end? When do we stop handing people guns and power? How about when we recognize the mental effect holding a weapon has on anyone—particularly those who are young.

If we had wanted to improve our image in the world, convince radical movements that the United States is not the enemy, we shouldn’t have reached out for a handshake with a hand holding a gun.

The Oops Report

A collection of blunders admitted and suspected.

Bride gets jitters then calls her man saying she’s been kidnapped but then later recants. His response: “Haven’t we all made mistakes?”

New washing machine uses fingerprint technology to force a husband and wife to take turns cleaning the clothes. But what if one spouse is out of town for two weeks and can’t place their fingerprint on the machine? No clean underwear for you!

Whether oops or just plain cute is your call. A zebra and donkey are now mom and pop to a zonkey. Or maybe a deebra. Or a zebkey... Or a donkbra…

Sperm Down for the Count

That’s right. I’m bringing up sperm count in my blog (no pun intended). Bit risqué, I know, but somebody’s got to speak out on the alarming number of news items related to the matter. (Plus, it’s only fair that I focus on men after my last post.)

Round One: a new report that pollution may affect the sex of men’s sperm. Researchers in Sweden aren’t quite sure how, but men seemed to have more Y chromosomes (the kind that make little boys) than X with greater exposure to persistent organochlorine pollutants (ironically, the acronym is POPs).

Round Two: Perhaps scarier for men is the idea that their laptop might lower their count because of the heat it emits. May be a good idea to keep the computer on the desk, gentlemen.

Round Three: Cannabis is also shown to have a deleterious effect by making sperm less likely to reach the egg or to break the protective coating around the egg. Who would have thought pot would make you lethargic?

Knockout Punch?: But sperm is now more available digitally thanks to a fly-by-night Internet sperm supplier in Reading, PA. Despite a misleading Web address (spermdirect.co.uk) and a London street address, the Reading Chronicle has reported that the business is operated by a print repair engineer in the Keystone State.

Trouble for Women Means Trouble for All

Things aren’t looking good for women in the news these days, facing attacks, abduction and arrest. At the root of this violence, I believe, is a conception of women as unable to make choices, so choices are made for them—in the most brutal of ways. But how do you convince an entire society that women have a right to individuality? Sadly, women are equally capable of horrors when we remember the third story below.

UN Peacekeepers (could a title ever be more inappropriate) “abused and exploited” women in Liberia. Why is this only one paragraph in the NY Times? Too bad this isn’t the first time either.

In much more thorough coverage, The Times does explore the traumatic marriage rituals of Kyrgyzstan where women are abducted and forced (sometimes by their own family members) to marry against their will. As if brainwashed, many later comment that they’re glad it happened. All women should read this to understand that the fight for women’s rights isn’t over.

And yet, unfortunately, the so-called “fairer sex” failed to act nobly at Abu Ghraib, based on accusations against Pfc. Lynndie England, Brig. Gen. Janis L. Kapinski and Megan Ambuhl. Could they all have been under the power of Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr? One had his child and another married him. But more importantly, perhaps, are they getting lighter sentences (like England’s new plea deal) because they are women? Equality needs to work both ways.

Finally, my favorite empowered woman story from the weekend. A woman was paid four cents in tsunami aid because of damage to her coconut groves so she angrily returned the check to the local government. Her case and others are now being reviewed on her island. Let’s hope change (and more than 4 cents worth) comes of it!