Do the Yak

Only in Boston would a photo of a baseball player getting a haircut make page 1 above the fold. It’s really rather cruel of the Globe. As a Sox fan living in the heart of Red Sox nation, I'm totally crushed by Damon’s defection but not surprised. My cynicism about baseball greed was cemented by Roger Clemens’ departure and the player strike, for which I blame everyone involved in the sport. I really don’t believe that it’s just about the money -- after the first few million, it’s just figures on a piece of paper, if you ask me. With 10 million a year, I can’t imagine there’s anything you would ever want to buy or do that you still couldn’t afford. I think it’s all about ego. Professional athletes are like movie actors or rock stars -- they struggle in poverty and obscurity for years, and then a lucky few make it to the top of their profession, when suddenly they’re mobbed by adoring fans, pursued by multimillionaire employers and flooded with money. But you know what? They get use...

A reader who saw my post on housework felt I was mocking her for paying someone to help her with scheduling, and stated her support for domesticity in general and Martha Stewart in particular. No offense, everyone -- we're all in this together! Let's all give ourselves a hand for doing at least two full-time jobs (parenting and running a household), in addition to whatever else we may occupy our copious free time with. Remember, it's WICKED HAHD . What I was trying to say was that, while maintaining some level of domestic cleanliness and order is important, we shouldn’t have to feel insecure because our homes aren’t as perfect as they could be, and we shouldn’t tie too much of our feelings of self-worth to how "nice" we’re able to keep our homes. And I do believe that a lot of these domestic-life-organization folks -- perhaps unintentionally, I admit -- play on our fears of inadequacy to sell their products. I was just trying to wring a little humor from the absu...

It's very easy to feel frustrated and inadequate about the state of our living quarters, especially when there are one or more little entropy machines running around. Some day our homes will look like the soothingly spotless and uncluttered homes of our older relatives. But not anytime soon. And it only makes you feel ten times worse if you try to get your domestic shit together with the assistance of a web site designed for that purpose (see Very Mom's post cited above). They're just like anything else in the retail world -- they're trying to entice you to get on board with their service or product by making you feel like a loser because you aren't on board. I refused to go beyond the initial retinal scan of Flylady because how can you trust someone to get you clean, serene and organized when their migraine-inducing web site is nothing of the sort? As for Motivated Moms (scroll down and click on the "free sample page" link), this just makes me mad beca...

It’s now official -- the Red Sox are going to suck next year, and we’re right back to where we were despair-wise before they won the World Series. I refer of course to the defection of Johnny Damon to the Yankees. The worst part isn’t that they gave him lots more money, which is SOP for Steinbrenner. It’s bad that, if you believe JD, the pathetically disorganized Sox management didn’t pursue him aggressively. It’s worse that JD we’ll have to see one of our favorite players in home whites in Yankee Stadium, quite possibly playing in another World Series while the Sox are catching up on sleep and golfing. We went through this before with Boggs and Clemens, though we didn’t love them as much as we love Johnny. The worst part is that he will, presumably with no qualms, adhere to the Yankee rule about hair: short on the head and none on the face. So now not only must we see Johnny in pinstripes, but also shorn of his very identity, willingly transformed into a girly-man for the sake of cash...

"The fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions." -- Judge John Jones, in today's ruling that shoots down the teaching of intelligent design in Dover, Pa. Way to go, judge. Some interesting posts on related topics: Answering your child's questions about religion when you're an atheist ( Tuckova ), and how sex messed things up right from the start ( Geese Aplenty ). Segueing onto the topic of kids and the provocative things they say... Sarah loves to threaten to poop on my head, while Becky has learned to use the word "diarrhea" with correct pronunciation and conversational context with her sister. It comes as no surprise that this theme is a favorite among the preschool set (see here and here ). Speaking of poop, when I forget somethi...

I just reread my earnest and tightly reasoned post on the complete retardation of intelligent design... well, that's my story and I'm stickin' to it, but I still have to remember that it's usually more effective to deflate something with a well-aimed humorous jab than blast it into widely dispersed bleeding shrapnel with an IED, and yesterday's Doonesbury did a great job, and so did The Onion a while back. I think Garry Trudeau and Anna Quindlen should have gotten together (I assume it's a bit late in the day for Anna) and populate the world with their descendants, and at least one of them would become a scientist and find a cure for stupidity, or maybe unleash a new disease that would infect greedy and overly aggressive humans and make them die in infancy.

I’ve long been intrigued by Karl Rove. Not his work, which is repellant in every way, but his face. It’s so squishy and soft and smooth, like he skipped purberty entirely and eats nothing but Peeps. He looks like the Pillbury Doughboy would look if he wasa real boy. In fact Karl looks just like a a blob of bread dough after it’s been rising, only pinker. No scars, no facial hair (just a few wisps of delicate head hair), no lines, just an uncanny fleshy, almost inflatable quality. For years all I’ve seen are photos cropped close around his face, so I was very surprised to discover he is not obese. I thought at least he was fairly tall or physically imposing albeit shapelessly gelatinous from the neck down, like the Horta or Jabba the Hut. My assumptions were shattered by a photo in Newsweek of Rove (all of him) standing next to Karen Hughes. I imagine Ms. Hughes is fairly tall, but Karl is definitely short. This explains a lot, actually. His unsavory inclinations may be due to a Napol...

...not the band, but something which should help us cope with small and highly infectious children. I might make one of these babies even when we’re all perfectly healthy. Becky is recovering from her first bad cold of the winter, which in her case often manifests itself in a scary-sounding croupy cough (or “barkies,” as we like to call it). We didn’t get medical attention this time because her breathing was still okay, unlike two years ago, when she had croup severe enough that she had, as the doctor termed it, “stridor at rest.” This meant that he could hear her trying to breathe from across the room and over the phone while I was talking to him. A steamy bathroom calmed down her parents a little but did bupkes for the croup. As anyone knows who’s been through this with a little kid, it’s pretty scary . So the doc did his hi-fi audio diagnosis and told us to take her to the ER in the wee hours, which is apparently when this illness is at its worst. A little epi-neb tr...

1. Vigorous exercise in a desperate attempt to regain my once-svelte figure. I realize only now that I’m lucky; since I’ve been pudgy all my life, I have nothing to mourn in the way of my long-lost pre-childbirth body, aside from some lower abdominal wrinkles that rarely see the light of day. So I don’t have to worry about not exercising, at least as far as looks go. Having a premature heart attack is another thing, so I actually signed up with two friends for a group intro to the glitzy weight room at our august institution. We’re all within shouting distance on either side of menopause and have nothing to prove to each other psychologically (i.e., subtle competition over abs or boobs), so we’re going into it with the attitude that if nothing else, we’ll get some laughs out of it. I might show up in pink fuzzy leg-warmers. To quote Breed ‘Em and Weep : “ I find it infuriating to read interviews with the celebrity mamas who say things like You just have to be committed to yourself an...

That magical time of year is here when I can do online shopping 'til I drop with no guilt whatsover (unless I do something silly like ordering from Brookstone's). Now that we have Amazon wish lists, it removes any embarrassment from stating exactly what you want and any uncertainty about what you'll get. Just as well I converted to Judaism. We buy the kids a few things and fire up the ol' menorahs (including the lumpy and dramtically multihued one that Sarah and I made together a couple of years ago). So we can just skip over the disturbing mall Santas, retail frenzy and other manifestations of Christmas, some of which are described by Mimi . As Wilma Flintstone says: "Doo doo doo doot do doooo... CHARGE it!" It's also the time of year -- actually before the time of year -- when we start expecting snow. We had about two inches a few days ago, which delights the kids but makes the grownups scowl because it refuses to melt. The reason is that it's been s...

Surreptitiously opened and sniffed containers of hairspray, deodorant, etc., so I can make my purchasing decision solely based on the scent of the product. I figure that effectiveness-wise, they’re all pretty much alike, but I’mthe one who's gonna have to smell the stuff all day, so it better not make me feel nauseous, cheap or tawdry. Been struck by the versatility of the female body and also my own lack of personal growth when I realized I was feeling the same mild embarrassment while purchasing nursing pads as I did the first time buying tampons. But not nearly as embarrassed as when I first acquired tampons, which involved casually depositing them into the shopping cart and hoping my father wouldn’t notice, or would at least refrain from ANY comment. Tried on the reading glasses, which I always thought were for poverty-stricken old people who couldn’t afford to go to an optometrist and get their glasses via prescription. Until last week, when my own optometrist recommended I...

Newsweek reports that a musical called "Infertility" is opening in New York. As one who went through all the exciting procedures implied by that phrase (which resulted in our wonderful Sarah), I'm sure this will be a major addition to the canon of theater. For some cheap laughs, check out the show's web site , which has cute little sperms to highlight your menu choices. I can't help it -- I immediately thought of a hit song for the show, to be performed by Cat Stevens (I mean Youssef Ibraham) in full Muslim garb: "Ovary Young." For real laughs, check out the novel " Inconceivable ." It's one of those books where people around me looked up in annoyance as I read it because of the snorts I couldn't stifle.

Whew. Made it through another Thanksgiving of seemingly endless driving -- though it was very much worth it to see all Ben’s relatives, of which there are dozens and dozens, as opposed to the WASPy Thanksgivings of my childhood, when we considered it a crowd if attendance hit double digits (by contrast, a Delaware/Jersey Thanksgiving is considered sparsely attended if there are less than 30 people there). Anyway, a good time was had by all, especially Sarah and Becky, who zoomed around at a rate that would exhaust a cheetah for three days and never napped outside of a car -- though they were incoherent and sobbing with fatigue when we finally got home, woke them up and unloaded them into their own beds. It’s that leftovers-in-the-fridge time of year, so the garbage cans and recycling bins were full this week, which turned my attention to recycling since my brother-in-law was tossing all manner of cans and bottles into his trash compacter. He says they have to pay extra for recycli...

My favorite blog quote of the day: "I looked in the mirror and realized that I have no business wearing red, especially now that I am older and color is oozing out of my skin like soy sauce out of a block of soggy tofu." -- Gwen Zepeda (scroll down to "God please help me..."). This is even more hilarilous when you find out later in the same post that she's only 33. I have to mention Charles Krauthammer's pithy op-ed about intelligent design in today's Washington Post. His point: ID " is a self-enclosed, tautological 'theory' whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge -- in this case, evolution -- they are to be filled by God. It is a 'theory' that admits that evolution and natural selection explain such things as the development of drug resistance in bacteria and other such evolutionary changes within species but also says that every once in a while God steps into this world of constant and ...

Perhaps crisis is too strong a word -- though a catchy headline always pulls in readers. The recent micro-crisis was Becky’s difficulty in sleeping last night because a) we couldn’t find her last remaining binky, b) she finally fell asleep but a couple of hours later wet the bed, which she hasn’t done in many months, and c) wound up in our bed at some indeterminate point due to a bad dream. Not that I’m complaining. It beats colic, or waking from a deep sleep twice a night for nursing sessions, or taking her to Children’s Hospital one croupy midnight because her breathing sounded like Linda Blair in “The Exorcist,” even from across the room and over the phone to the pediatrician. That happened almost two years ago -- I brought her in, they gave her an “epi-neb” treatment and admitted her. so I got to sleep in that comfy hospital-room chaise that Ben used after I gave birth to Sarah. Of course epinephrine is a stimulant, so she was toddling energetically down the hall in a teeny-tiny jo...

Ben got a job -- yahoo! (no, not with that company -- with an Esteemed Educational Institution, meaning everyone’s impressed but you don’t make as much money as in private industry). Speaking as another person who’s worked in non-academic academia for many years, I can attest that you get the best of both worlds: you’re surrounded by interesting, intelligent people and you get great benefits, with almost none of the pressure that comes with being a faculty member or student. He was touched to get CC’d on the e-mail announcing his appointment to the staff, as well as being consulted as to where he’d like to sit. The same thing happened to me when I started this job; my e-mail account had already been set up, my office was vacuumed, I had buddies and lots of help, and even a chrome coffee mug. This kind of northern hospitality (in the workplace, anyway) was distinctly absent from the joint where we both last worked, which I will refer to only as the Southern College of Art and Money, or ...

I can't post a link to a depressing web site without including a humorous one to balance things out, so have a look at PostSecret and then this sophomoric yet irresistably entertaining site (especially for parents of young children): Richard Scarry covers we'd like to see . On second thought, PostSecret isn't depressing except in a global sense; I imagine it actually makes most individuals feel better after they see that other people's secrets and problems are the same as theirs, or quite possibly worse. A couple of really good writers have artfully voiced some general suspicions about Bush and Cheney. E.L. Doctorow have his opinion earlier in the course of this war that Bush is essentially an emotional cripple. And James Carroll in the Boston Globe (Nov. 7) spells out the ways in which Dick Cheney is -- all hyperbole aside -- really one of the most evil people to hold high government office in American history. I would love to be a fly on the wall during his psychoa...

At the risk of boring the hell out of everyone (including myself), I have to put down some thoughts about the "intelligent design" debate and how it pertains to religion. A big topic, to be sure, but also the most important issue of our time. It’s frightening to me how much attention and acceptance ID has gotten, and ID is even more frightening than other silly ideas like UFOs because its goal is imposition of religious belief on an entire country, starting in public school. For an intelligent, in-depth and even-handed explanation of the “intelligent design” theory and debate, see this New Yorker article . Also see this article at livescience.com with simple explanations from the scientific viewpoint.First of all, ID is not a scientific theory of any kind, including a theory of evolution. We already have one, and many IDers actually agree with it -- they just think a higher power got the life-on-Earth ball rolling, so to speak. ID is about religion. It is a justification for...

I haven't posted in a few days because I started writing about Intelligent Design and it's mushroomed into a still-unfinished blather of thoughts on religion and life in general. In the meantime, I've found more proof that an awful lot of people have too much time on their hands (courtesy of dribbleglass.com).... Ten-HUT! Also, bzzzzzz... ARF! Maintain your paranoia even when you're unconscious! Paging Gen. Jack D. Ripper... And just in case you can't get enough juicy fax and pix about iron oxide ... Has anything even slightly puzzling ever happened to you? Do you feel special? Sinusitis? Ringing in your ears? Sore genitals? Relationship problems? Fear of the closet? Relax -- you are not alone . Hubba-hubba !

1. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, which I'd never even heard of until a couple of years ago. Because of the title similarity, I guess I assumed it would be something like Cold Mountain, but actually it's more like Oscar Wilde meets Wuthering Heights. A phrase that sticks with me is the characterization of one of the characters as a "trying female." Such a useful description. 2. Jagged Little Pill , the Alanis Morissette album from several years ago that I recently rediscovered thanks to my iPod, which I've been listening to on my commute, since there's only so much NPR you can take at rush hour without getting bored and/or depressed. Lots of cool songs in addition to the familiar singles. That woman has a way with words. I can't help but wonder how many different men she's trashing, how people manage to careen from love to hate, and about the success of her future relationships given her apparently poor track record (and the potential intimidati...

How closely can we follow current events? Try taking this quiz from the New Yorker. It's masochistic, really. I don't know why I keep ranting here about Bush et al when it does no good and only bores people who most likely already agree with me, but I can't help it -- I guess it's somehow cathartic. Maybe this blog is a valve through which huge quantities of otherwise harmful noxious gases must be vented. Not that there aren't enough parodies running around the web, but check out this item in the tragicomic vein of "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." To keep things in perspective, tonight is Halloween, so I'll have the pleasure of seeing the kids dressed as a bumblebee and a furry doggie and watch them giggle and collect candy and have weird extrovert-type fun while I think about tooth decay and web site architecture. I try to live in the moment...

1. I'm happy to have girls rather than boys, especially after reading Laid-Off Dad's latest . And you have to love his take on kids' book titles . Reminds me of my favorite compilation of children's book titles you'll never see . 2. Becky after I correctly answered a question she'd asked me: "Smart brain, Mommy!" 3. A great new formulation and marketing plan for mayonnaise . 4. "Like everyone else, we like a good laugh," says White House spokesman Trent Duffy, about how some of his fun-lovin colleagues enjoy reading The Onion, even though the publication has been ordered to stop using the presidential seal in illustrations accompanying its parodies.

Wal-Mart: savior or scourge? (lots of jobs and low, low prices for all, but horrible labor practices). Not surprisingly I tend to lean toward the Satanic view, mostly because of the labor issue but also because they’re a leader in the fight to homogenize America. But my antipathy on the labor front got a boost from this article (CNN re-reporting the New York Times), which notes that like many companies, Wal-Mart is struggling with rapidly increasing health-benefit and pension costs. However, it’s taken a somewhat novel approach to the problem: don’t hire anyone sick, old or even mildly infirm. Or anyone who might get old. Or anyone who might get sick. Or anyone who might put up with working there long enough to earn full health benefits or a pension. One proposed tactic is to have "all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering)." OK, so for example: “Flo, I need you to take a break from the register and bring carts in from the parking ...

I love this country, especially its forms of play, which are often fun and aggravating at the same time. I mean, you can enjoy drinking Budweiser and have a happy history of beer pong, yet still be amazed and mildly appalled at the transparent cynicism of Anheuser-Busch , which is shocked -- SHOCKED! that people are using beer rather than water to play the"Bud Pong" game it was marketing. And you can revile Barbie dolls for all the usual feminist reasons and still be amused by the decades-long effort to craft the life of Ken , the longtime love doll she dumped who's now getting a fashion makeover so he can get his baby back. (The hilarious photo captions might have been written by Wendy McClure .) If you're an employee of Anheuser-Busch, Mattel, Ronco or any of a thousand other American companies, how can you put in years of your life on campaigns like these and keep your sanity? As Abraham Lincoln said, "If I didn't laugh, I would have to weep?" Perhaps...

The news just keeps getting worse for Bush, thank God. What with Miers, DeLay, Rove/Libby/Plame, FEMA, the transparently choreographed video chat with soldiers in Iraq, etc., people may finally be taking notice. Though there's nothing we can do to the bastard for three more years, since impeachment is NOT an attractive option given who's next in line. Hopefully Bush won't slime his way out of his messes before 2008, a hope I hold mainly because his chief slimers are the ones in trouble, and the press is finally reporting on the crap they've been pulling , as if it's a surprise to anyone who's been paying attention. Meanwhile, as Hyrricane Wilma meditatively eyes Florida, we hear that disgraced political hack former FEMA head Michael Brown was even more incompetent than we realized , even as he tried to blame everyone else for his incompetence.

It's autumn, a season of many holidays and seasonal traditions. And here's one you may not have heard of: Grobnachakkel hunting season has begun! (third item down on the left). Sarah likes to sing, and she doesn't want anyone else to sing, either alone or along with her. She has perfect pitch, by the way. Yesterday I protested that I know songs and like to sing them as well. Her response: "I have all the voices in my body, so only I can sing them." Earlier that evening, on the swings: "What's a snail on a boat? A snailor!" And by the way, Interrupting Cow is tops in our house right now. We're halfway woken up almost every morning just before NPR kicks in around 6:45 by Sarah, who climbs into bed between us to snuggle (usually with thumb in mouth and other fingers clutching Peeper). She still power-sucks as she falls asleep. Becky prefers snugglage in her own bed, which is just fine, especially when she throws her little arms around my head or a...

A Sarah comment out of the blue that stopped me in my tracks: "Life never ends." She's five. A terrific James Carroll column (Boston Globe, 10/17/05) eerily echoes a piece that Ben read in our synagogue on Rosh Hashanah about God being not unknown, but by definition unknowable, so therefore we must say... Attention religious zealots: don't waste your time and irritate everyone else by claiming to know what God wants people to do, why he causes things, etc. -- or more to the point, don't even assume God is a sentient being who causes anything or wants anything, period. Please note once again: the Bible is not literally true nor the word of God. Why do people have so much trouble with the concept of METAPHOR? Your life is your own, so do whatever you want, or think you ought to. It doesn't matter to anyone but your own conscience and people whose lives you directly affect. So please keep your simplistic concept of God to yourself and try not to impose it on the...

First, a word from my favorite recent blog entry: unintentional vegetarian propaganda (click on the mysterious one-word links). Now then. About the Red Sox. Great column by Thomas Boswell in the Washington Post saying that the Sox-Yankees era of dominance is over (debatable) but, more to the point, that Steinbrenner's high-priced players made a deal with the devil to go to a team dripping with fame and money that gives them a chance to win the World Series with no heavy lifting required. But it didn't work this year, and definitely not last year (HA!). Now his unrelenting egotism and unrealistic demands have driven away his pitching coach after already driving away his bench coach a couple of years ago (Zimmer), and maybe his GM and manager are sick of the bullshit as well. It's so gratifying when even an unlimited budget, apparently talented GM and maybe the best-ever manager are not able to make Steinbrenner happy ("Win me a World Series championship or you all SUC...

Remember that family with 15 kids I mentioned a couple of months ago? The link goes to a news story from May 2004 right after our heroic mom delivered #15 (all home-schooled and with names beginning with J). Well, she's done it again, folks -- #16 just arrived , and Mom rarin' to go for more. She's 39 and obviously healthy as an ox, so why not? Hell, I didn't even get started until I was two weeks shy of turning 39. I guess I have a lot of catching up to do. Most disturbing is the video interview on today's CNN home page. There are 16 children (the oldest is 17) arrayed attractively on, behind and in front of an overstuffed couch, with the proud parents in the middle. The video clip almost five minutes, so figure around half an hour before editing. The scary thing is that the kids NEVER MOVE. The girls on either end have their hands decorously and symmetrically crossed in their laps, the boys are standing or sitting at attention, and no one breaks their pose the wh...

Here's a shocker: Bush nominated Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court in large part because she's a fellow fundamentalist Christian . Don't forget the other reason: that she's an old Texas buddy. Obviously we've learned exactly zero from the Michael Brown cronyism brouhaha. Also she's a token woman, meaning she's biologically female but would never do anything unladylike such as making waves about the rampant sexism she's personally encountered throughout her career. Sort of like Clarence Thomas is a token African-American. Not that there aren't politically conservative African-Americans, but to think that Clarence represents the legal views of the majority of that group is absurd -- and that's the only reason he was nominated. Bush Senior: "I gotta nominate a black. Find me one who has a law degree and is conservative." Sweating aide: "OK, we found two. One of them smears feces all over his cell, and the other one has a room-temper...

1. A wedding held at the fabulous deCordova Museum uniting two artistic philosophy majors -- with great eats, a cool band that did NOT offer a rendition of "Shout" or "The Hokey Pokey," and a groom who played and sang a funny and touching song he'd written to his new wife. 2. God Shuffled His Feet (Crash Test Dummies) 3. A friend's demo of the latest iPhoto on a big honking monitor. Yes, chimney-pot photos CAN be beautiful! (And he's an excellent photographer of lots of other subjects as well.) Anyone who prefers Windows to Macs has a screw loose. Run, do not walk , away from your unreliable and derivative PC to the incredibly easy to use and elegantly designed Apple product. 4. Rediscovering the site of Mahir , the Turkish love-monkey. 5. The Child in Time by Ian McEwan.

1. The Red Sox are doing it again. Tony Graffanino is the new Bill Buckner. So now they're down two games to none and must sweep the next three to stay alive. Sounds improbable, except this same team accomplished the feat in 1999, 2003 and 2005 (four straight against the Yankees, which is still SO SWEET!). If they can pull out just one win, I won't feel so bummed. But hey, the Red Sox losing late is normal, and as Boston fans, we live for this, as Jose Melendez points out in wallballsingle.com. 2. Sometimes I read the "offbeat" news stories and find it not worthwhile, but today's featured item had me slack-jawed with amazement. How can a snake even think he could swallow a whole damn alligator? What hubris! It would have behooved him to wait until the gator was dead or pert-near dead, snacking on some loudly dressed tourist hors d'oeuvre in the intreim. Well, he paid the ultimate price. Next time, listen to your mother.

When I was growing up, a conservative was someone who wanted less government regulation and less government spending, especially on social programs, but generally advocated fiscal restraint and a balanced budget if at all possible, as opposed to "tax and spend liberals." But something odd has happened; our most recent Democratic president inherited a huge deficit but turned it into a surplus by the time he left office. Now the current GOP gang has run up another huge deficit and has no plans to actually pay for anything, other than suggesting maybe people should try to conserve fuel a bit. So... if I avoid jackrabbit starts and turn down the thermostat a degree, that'll pay for New Orleans, Iraq and tax cuts? Yeah. As Joan Venocchi pointed out in today's Globe, Bush's philosophy is even worse than tax and spend -- he wants to spend WITHOUT taxing, so we're REALLY going into the fiscal crapper. And don't even get me started on procurement, Halliburton, etc...

Wouldn't it be nice if all moms and dads -- all adults, actually -- had the freedom to choose whether they wanted to work, and for how many hours per week? I was reading a Boston Globe column about the feminist pendulum swing to the so-called "mommy track" that described how some women are now freely choosing to be stay-at-home moms even though they have challenging and well-paying careers, or at least career options (i.e., education). I think it's great that women have progressed from Point A (get married, stay home and raise the kids or don't get married and get one of the few appropriately "womanly" jobs) to Point B (have the legal and societal ability to get the same jobs men, but if you work full-time, endure guilt and Supermom burnout) to Point C (decide to be a full-time mom as in days of yore, but consciously choose to do so). What would be really great is if, #1, men had the same options financially and socially (I think there's still a fee...

I have a lot of frustration with the "intelligent design" crowd. I'm not a scientist (political or biological) and I don't play one on TV, but it seems more than coincidental to me that this renewed debate comes in an era of religious revival, political conservatism (survival of the fittest, anyone?) and stupidity at the highest political levels. But I digress. To spare you the ensuring rant, you can read what's inspired my current train of thought -- a Washington Post article that offers the best explanation I've ever read about evolution and the whole debate. So here's my two cents to the ID crowd. Folks, just because something is too complicated and beautiful for YOU to understand, or even for any of the people you know who are smarter than you, this doesn't mean GOD did it. Number two, just because things seem perfectly designed and adapted at this point doesn't mean there weren't a whole lot of screwups along the way, which is how it work...