Do the Yak

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...