Dean's World

The Los Angeles Times article Next speaker enjoys broad support (3/2/08) details the rise of Karen Bass, the incoming leader of the California assembly and the first African American woman to be elected to lead a legislative house in the U.S. The piece was a nice example of the subtle and not-so-subtle societal bias against fathers and fatherhood. The article begins:

"Anyone who knew Wilhelmina Bass might understand why her daughter Karen Bass, the Los Angeles Democrat elected Thursday as the next leader of the California Assembly, has devoted her Capitol career to making the state a better parent to its 80,000 foster children.

"A former beauty salon owner who raised Karen and three boys in a well-appointed house in the Venice-Fairfax area, Wilhelmina Bass was a kind, poised, contemplative mother, and 'the notion that people would come into this world and not have loving parents has always caused Karen pain,' said Sylvia Castillo, Bass' district director and a friend for three decades."

We all know the script: heroic, overwhelmed black mother raises her kids herself, and now one of them has done mama proud by making good in the world. Yet, believe it or not, Bass actually had a father, too.

It is only much further down in the story, after we are already assuming that Bass was raised by a single mom, that we are told, "She credits her father, DeWitt, a mail carrier, for making her a 'news junkie' — Bass said she used to wake at 4:30 a.m. to listen to the radio with him before he began his route."

In fact, in the autobiographical information that Bass herself provided the Democratic Party, she wrote, "Karen has dedicated her life to improving our neighborhoods. Her father, DeWitt Bass--a letter carrier for 40 years--and mother, Wilhelmina, raised Karen and her three brothers in the Venice/Fairfax neighborhood."

In other words, Bass saw herself as being raised by both parents, and it even seems like she was at least a bit of a daddy's girl. Why did the Los Angeles Times choose to place far more importance on her mother than on her father?

To write a letter to the editor of the Los Angeles Times, click on letters@latimes.com. Nancy Vogel, the Los Angeles Times Staff Writer who wrote the story, can be reached at nancy.vogel@latimes.com.

[Note: If you or someone you love is faced with a divorce or needs help with child custody, child support, false accusations, Parental Alienation, or other family law or criminal law matters, ask Glenn for help by clicking here.]

The Boston Globe recently discussed Fathers & Families' shared parenting bill at great length in their editorial A fair role for fathers. While the Globe did not endorse the bill, the editorial essentially agrees with the main arguments behind shared parenting--to learn more, click here.

I don't know if anybody else caught it or thought of it, but I thought this paragraph from the Boston Globe editorial was particularly annoying. The Globe wrote:

"Charles Kindregan, a law professor at Suffolk University, soundly argues that a presumption of joint legal and physical custody could handcuff judges who should be free to consider the best interests of children on a case-by-case basis. 'You don't need a presumption when you have facts,' Kindregan says. The relevant facts include children's age, temperament, emotional development, and medical needs, as well as how parents get along and how far apart parents live from each other. A judge looking at an infant will have to make very different decisions than a judge looking at a teenage boy."

In case anybody missed it, what he said is code for "Dad can see the infant maybe an hour or two a week if he's lucky, and if mom allows it. However, we may be more solicitous of dad's time when his boy is a teenager. Of course, by then the boy will already be damaged from growing up without a father, but it's okay for dad to spend real time with the boy, as long as mom is not unhappy about it, and as long as they still live within 1,000 miles of each other."

The most irritating part of this is the presumption that an infant needs only its mother, not its father. From time to time I get letters from mothers of infant children who are outraged that the fathers want to see the children and — gasp — want to spend some time with the infants in their own homes.

I have been the primary caregiver for my daughter, now almost 10 years old, from the time she was six weeks old. Those first few years home all alone with her, before she went to preschool, were the greatest years of my life. She and I shared everything together, and we were as happy and close as any two people could ever be.

The only downside to it was that I worked in the evenings and my little girl would cry herself to sleep every night because she missed me and I was not there. I still believe that one reason my daughter and I are so close are those special years we had together.

The Globe editorial and the expert it quotes are wrong--there is absolutely no reason why a father should be kept away from his baby or toddler, even if mom and dad are separated.

[Note: If you or someone you love is faced with a divorce or needs help with child custody, child support, false accusations, Parental Alienation, or other family law or criminal law matters, ask Glenn for help by clicking here.]

man, it's harder and harder to get into a good scrap around here. I'm scanning threads but every time someone says something I want to really tear into, I realize that its someone like Scott or Martin who I then immediately think, "oh wait they probably meant THIS and not THAT based on their past history of being eminently reasonable chaps" and then all the fire is gone. Its like there isn't anything juicy to disagree about. Its all the same "well, I see what you mean but i disagree I guess" crap. Whatever happened to the good ol days where we could slag each other off as being unpatriotic evil unprincipled scumbags?

I blame the Obamenon.

I'd like to announce a relatively new blog venture of mine, called metaBLOG, where I blog about blogging It started out as a way to avoid cluttering up my geekblog with Meta posts and just evolved from there. I have been talking about things like folksonomy and monetization and wordpress plugins, but who knows where topic-creep will lead me. If you're interested in the meta of blogging, do stop by!

Snide Advertising Is Bad for Business and Society

Richard Rapaport at Ad Age

We had all better hope that the descent into snide is not a reverse indicator, welcoming us to hard times with ad campaigns based on a hardening spirit, a lack of tolerance and an egocentric meanness that characterizes so much of today's advertising. Ultimately, historians will look at TV advertising as an original art form, one that, for better or worse, helped shape the modern American mind. This being the case, it behooves marketing professionals to understand the difference between subtle irony and idiot snideness and aim for an advertising denominator cognizant of the maxim that expansive, confident consumers part with their cash far more readily than do angry, fearful ones.

Yup!

Probably because I’m online more now that I’m down to one job, I’m seeing all kinds of stuff happening as relates to men’s issues. Rather than go on for days about this stuff, I’m combining it all into one meta-post. It is both encouraging and distressing as you’ll see:

Wendy McElroy talks about why she left the men’s movement.

Glenn Sacks covers From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence, a conference held last weekend in Sacramento. I wish I could’ve been there!

Dr. Helen asks: "Is maleness worth fighting for, can the culture be “cured” of its malebashing nature, or is the fight just not worth the hassle?"

My answer to Doc Helen – a resounding yes. Maleness is worth fighting for!

Even now that we have instant communication, it still takes time for the larger society to change. People have been told a lot of wrong things over the past forty years, but the days when you had to accept what Walter Cronkite was telling you, because his was the only story out there are over. I don’t think it’s necessarily in the nature of society to be anti-male, nor do I think Doc Helen really meant to put it that way.

I do believe that some of the wrong concepts are being corrected. Just the fact the Sacramento conference was held at all is encouraging, not to mention that Glenn (not that other guy so much) and many others have put the advertising industry on the defensive. If you pay attention, you'll see here and there a blogger or a small-town newspaper editor mention that maybe all this negativity toward men is not such a good idea.

Now the challenge, though, is in providing some leadership and direction ordinary people can get behind. Glenn Sacks and Doc Helen are doing a lot to make these issues more approachable.

From Jonah Bloom at Advertising Age:

A loose coalition of these hombres against humor has formed in the past few years. Led by a guy called Richard Smaglick, co-founder of a group called Fathers and Husbands, they've attacked a few different ad agencies. In particular they spent several months "torturing," as one ad exec put it, Arnold Worldwide, which was considered guilty of "contemptuous depictions" of men in its ads for Fidelity Investments. The group even tried to persuade Volvo not to give its account to Arnold.

For the record, I have never heard of Richard Smaglick or his org before this, and if Bloom or anyone thinks there are only three people or a dozen who object to the nearly constant denigration of men in the media, then they are really out of touch with their target audience.

This is no surprise to me. Most ad agencies are based in either New York or L.A., which have become culturally isolated islands with little or no awareness of society in the rest of the country. For years now, they've been scrambling to push their view of "cool" and "edgy" on the rest of us, with varying degrees of success. Out here in flyover country, I've been paying attention to what people of all ages are saying, and the general view for years now is that advertising – any advertising – is irritating and objectionable more often than it is cool or edgy.

To resort to creative that has to single out and attack any group of people simply illustrates the general lack of creativity and innovation afflicting the industry as a whole. There are plenty of ways to promote products that don’t involve making anyone look stupid, or slapping anybody around.

It seems to me that there are advertising professionals out there who’ve forgotten their purpose, and have decided they have some higher ability to dictate to potential customers what their standards and values should be. In fact, when the purpose of advertising is to sell products, companies that generate advertising should be not just responsive to potential customers, but should also be conscious of actual trends in the real world outside their little islands.

I really wonder who’s doing the whining here?

well, frak me.

it's hot in the south and cold in the north, duh. I investigate the delta in detail at Haibane.info.

A member of the ongoing conversation here at DW posted the following observation:

[rant]

A few commercials recently have been irritating the hell out of one of my pet peeves. It is one that I think is a determining factor in peoples health and well being. People instead of saying that they have this or that affliction they take ownership of it. My arthritis, my migraines, my ED, my insomnia, my etc etc.

WTF? Don't people realize that taking possession is the major part of ownership? Why the hell would someone want to own an affliction. If nothing else it doesn't do much for positive thinking, which is a known factor in mental well being. It can be said that we can be no healthier and well off than we think we are. That should (I believe) include physical health, not just our mental attitudes and self image.

Occasionally asthma bothers me, but it sure as hell ain't my asthma. NOT. It is not mine, I don't own it, I don't want it, something foreign to me. Something that has now and then has afflicted me. Were I to claim asthma as mine I would probably need to use an inhaler all day long instead of occasionally (maybe a couple times a week).

[/rant]

I am in 100% agreement with Sandi. These commercials bug me too.

Before I got into other things, I was a keen student of all kinds of alternative healing methods. Reiki, Healing Touch, naturopathy, all of those were in the books on my shelves and my most frequent interest when going online circa 1995. A major point of all of them was to avoid ownership. A disease or condition (as I recall) was not something you wanted to make friends with, and keep around, as these things are foreign invaders and not part of one’s natural state.

One of the first things I learned as a student of healing was that we always must get permission for applying any kind of healing method. For some people – not many, just a few – their dis-ease was the only thing they could see as uniquely theirs, and to remove it without their knowledge or permission could have severe negative effects.

I’ve seen this principle in action.

Two people I once knew were both severely allergic to something in their workplace. They were both dedicated to their work, and had deferred close personal relationships in order to pursue their calling. It was a long process to discover what it was that was making them so ill, requiring a couple of years of trips to doctors and hospitals in distant places, but at their employer’s expense.

Once the cause was discovered and removed (they’d both worked in the same environment for twenty years) one person made major changes and married for the first time at the age of 50. The other developed a borderline personality disorder, lost the job, and last I heard was living in the street.

When the illness came about, it was the first time either of them had ever had any special attention paid to them.

When I had that breast cancer scare last October, I found that some idiot had declared October as “Breast Cancer Awareness Month,” and the way I saw it was encouraging every woman to get cancer and be part of the elite. Have a party and run with your friends! Isn’t it wonderful to get sick and die!

Every time I got in the car and turned on the radio, there was a cancer message. There was even breast cancer soup in the grocery store. Good God. Stephen King couldn’t have invented an uglier scenario.

IMHO. Ike Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex has morphed into a medical- industrial complex. It is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid and reject these ideas that just because we’re all getting older, we should also be sick and buy their products. Simply being well and healthy without outside help doesn’t support Kaiser Permanente or Pfizer.

And there’s the end of my rant! ;>)

Texas was COLD!

I planned for it, and brought lots of warm clothes, so I wasn’t as miserable as some of the others from warmer climes. On top of that, it was a non-smoking facility due to some local nanny ordinance. Other Hiltons I’ve stayed at have smoking floors. The carpeting is filthy, don’t walk around barefoot if you don’t want black feet! But you can at least smoke.

People don’t stop smoking just because they’re attending an event, even if it’s a week long thing they have to be at for work. There’s no “out” as simple as going to another hotel, because often people don’t have a choice, especially if their company is paying the bill.

Trainings and conferences and etcetera are all stressful events to begin with. Then add in the factor of extra stress for somebody who smokes and cannot, and you may have a real problem on your hands. There’s something here that I’ve never seen addressed, and that is that people who smoke and are suddenly deprived of it get weird.

It doesn’t seem that those who are passing all these anti-smoking laws are thinking this through. On one hand, they’re trying to make things comfortable for non-smokers, but at the cost of making life miserable for smokers. As a frequent traveler exposed to all sorts of non-smoking situations, I’ve learned to deal with it, but there are always first-timers in any group, who have not experienced the really awful effects of not having a cigarette for x number of hours.

The kind of weirdness deprived smokers exhibit is often not even clear to themselves, because they think that if they really had to, they could go for a long time without a cigarette. Sometimes they do go without, thinking it’s only a bad habit like biting your nails you can just stop. Believe me, it’s not!

I really feel sorry for whomever had their job on the line to make this last training I attended work. It was a disaster from start to finish. Their software didn’t work; the training materials didn’t agree with the manual.

We had an incident of group hysteria early on. One lady got sick and swore it was the food. 15 or 20 others heard about it and dutifully got sick, too. One of the secondary sickees made her supervisor file an incident report. I’m willing to bet Patient One was a smoker unused to extended periods without a cigarette. Yep, you can get explosive diarrhea and even projectile vomiting during smoking withdrawal in a highly stressed situation.

I knew there was nothing wrong with the food; (169 people were eating the same things) it was just stress and/or nicotine withdrawal. Somebody always gets sick on these things. It’s the way it goes. Beyond local ordinances forcing them to run their business in a way they wouldn’t choose, I would think that hoteliers and those planning events really need to consider seriously the impact a non-smoking policy can have on a large group event. Those who smoke cannot simply choose not to smoke for the days of their stay. In cases of inclement weather, it is beyond rude to force these paying guests outside because they smoke. I’ve had to stand on a street corner in a large city at night without any support or security nearby just because I smoke.

As a frequent traveler, I do NOT choose non-smoking hotels when I have a choice, but I don’t always have a choice, if my employer is footing the bill.

Many thousands of other smokers have the same situation.

As a parting note, I did want to mention that on the last day of my six-day training session, one of the ladies fell – or was pushed – down an escalator. With the stress level as high as it was, it could have been anything, but if it was a freaked-out smoker looking around at the wrong time, startled by something...Geez.

What are these people making these stupid laws and policies thinking?

I think that this comment to an earlier post was rather overwrought:

You're position is basically shitting in the face of men who always wanted children, but can't because they are sterile. So when he takes his wife to a fertility clinic and gets her fertilized with someone else's sperm, are you telling me his is NOT the father? He's nothing?? What the fuck kind of bulls^&t is that?? Get off the fence. Either Fathers (step or bio) are good or they are S^&T. There is no in between.

As far as I could tell, at no point in the original post was an argument made that non-biological fathers are "nothing". Interpreting it as such struck me as a very dogmatic desperation to take offense, any offense.

But taking the comment on its merits, it appears rather disjointed. There are several issues being mixed up here. One is whether fertilization of your wife by another man's sperm at a clinic is "real" fatherhood. I may be naive here but that scenario seems fictional and contrived to me. Usually the point of fertility clinics is to get the couple's own sperm to implant in their own ovum, in vitro, to get viable embryos of their own for reimplantation (I have several friends and family who've been through the process with varying success). If the process fails, usually adoption is the next recourse; I guess I am old fashioned ut I dont see why a woman would want to go through the hell of pregnancy to carry any baby but one that is unambigously hers and her husband's to term. In fact the idea verges on obscene in my mind. Adoption is an obvious alternative with zero moral complications, in fact a highly honorable and much less risky alternative at that.

The second issue is whether a step-father is better or worse intrinsically than a biological father. The answer here also seems obvious; the value of a father is how they parent, not who they are. That said, it's also rather obvious that all else being equal, of course a biological father is preferable. Pretending that the value of genetic inheritance, kin, and blood is ridiculous.

Finally, I take issue with the idea that a father is "either good or s^&t" with no in-between. Maybe the less said about that, due again to it's overwhelming obviousness, the better.

Or maybe I am just totally wrong on all counts. Still, I don't think that the comment in question was motivated by a genuine desire to discuss the merits of fatherhood in the abstract, but rather is yet another example of a pattern of abuse being leveled at this blog community as a whole. Rather than simply accepting the abuse, but also without responding in kind, I think the best approach is to simply respond on the merits of their arguments, such as they are.

So, the deadline came and went, and Scrabulous still lives. Anyone up for a game? To be honest I was pretty sympathetic to Hasbro since the game is so transparently out to infringe copyright. Scrabbing is my favorite (well, only) pastime on Facebook, but the games makers are not exactly victims here.

The view from the Bohra masjid in Colombo, near Bambalapitiya Station, on the shore of the Arabian Sea.

It was a great trip, and I'm back safe and sound :) I will have a travelouge and photos up later this week.

For a preview, see a few photos up at Haibane.info.

Heading out for Dallas for a week, to train for another job. There’s another lady from the area also going, which is the first time in over a decade that I’m flying with somebody.

Looks like it’s going to be cold! That’s OK, as the training is right in the hotel, so no freezing on the way to the subway like I did last year in DC.

Of course, the hotel is right across the street from two major malls, so maybe we won’t be huddling around the heat the whole time…after all, those MLK Day sales are calling!

I’m also planning to beg some hotel soaps and etc. from my colleagues for the kids in Afghanistan. I know a lot of people just don’t use the provided toiletries, so let’s hope for a big haul!

hey everyone,

My flight to Colombo, Sri Lanka (via London) leaves in about two hours so wish me luck. I will be mercifully absent from DW in the interim, however I have recruited some really interesting guest bloggers at City of Brass and at Haibane.info, so do keep an eye on them!

See you in two weeks, inshallah!

A number of people online are debating the level of feminism of Benazir Bhutto.

Um, I’m not clear here – did she ever identify herself as a feminist, or is it now presumed any woman in or aspiring to high office must be a feminist?

Wouldn’t it be refreshing to see a woman running for elective office to declare herself egalitarian instead?

That's pretty much it. This thing is rad. I'll know more in a month. Kinda like the primaries, really.

Go Obama go!

Well, you know it’s cold up there, and that’s the only reason I can think of for La Crosse County’s new plan to let all its female prisoners out of jail. It must be brain freeze.

The article outlining the program, in the La Crosse Tribune, quotes a local defense attorney as saying  in 15 years he’s never represented a woman who was put in jail because she’s dangerous.

“I’m not saying there won’t ever be a woman in La Crosse County who’s dangerous and needs to be locked up for the safety of the community,” said Belzer. “I will say that would be the rare exception rather than the rule.”

He also says women are almost always in the system “because of some kind of relationship with a man.” 

Of course he’d say that – he’s a defense attorney!

There are so many problems with this issue, both legal and moral, I hardly know where to begin.

Maybe the worst of it is that the county is acting on the advice of The Carey Group, which according its website, is a real estate development consulting firm. Huh????

I’m at a loss for words.

I'll never trust Slate again:

After passing a background check and receiving their mall assignment, Noerr Santas receive a list of dos and don'ts. Breaking character is a no-no.

I showed up to mall wearing all black and had chains dangling out of my pockets. On a whim, I asked if they needed an elf. 20 minutes later I was in the chair with a kid on my lap.

Ho Ho Ho

I had a lot of fun those 2 years...

When I lived in Detroit, every so often we'd join forces with our Polish neighbors next door and make a zillion pierogies. We would eat, and freeze pierogies, and put down many Labatt's Blue beers in the meantime. (Judy was Canadian.) Two kitchens going full blast is the best fun ever!

One time we even lost both of our kids. That's how focused Judy and I were on those pierogies. (Turned out, they were at Pat's house, three doors down.) Of course, once our husbands came home, we shaped up and SERVED! ;>)

In those days we'd use Grandma Skazalski's recipe, which I've since lost, so I'm itching to try Rosemary's, once the Xmas baking abates. ;>)

Judy and I also had pasty parties, which have nothing whatsoever to do with exotic dancing. Read: meat turnover product, with roots in Cornwall (England) mining culture. Imagine stew with a crust. Hot Pockets before they went commercial. Big deal in Northern Michigan.

Oh, gosh. There is something so lovely about cooking with friends. Thanks, Rosemary!

Ever have one of those mornings where you can’t wait to get out of bed and address the day?

Today this is me.

It’s 39° outside, here in the Arizona desert, and our cranky old heat pump has kicked in, sounding like a distant Osprey tiltrotor warming up. ;>)

Outside my house, the harvesters are warming up their trucks and what all for the day’s sweep of the broccoli/cauliflower fields. With all this racket, I couldn’t sleep if I wanted to, and fortunately I don’t.

Cold/flu season has kicked in over at the Station Library, and since I’m the one with no little kids, I’m available for extra duty, which of course also means extra pay. So in a couple of hours, I’ll be going over to open up, since our usual daytime lady has kids down with strep throat, and the boss has meetings and etc. to attend.

I’ll stop at the drugstore along the way for some cough drops to hand out to coughing Marines, in hopes they won’t spread their germs, and maybe feel a little better.

I am so glad I quit the other job. Sure, it was good money, but no happiness points. (If you’ve ever played the game, Careers, you knowhwatImean.)

Meanwhile, yesterday I figured out some stuff in MSWord that I didn’t know that I knew, and so will shortly be publishing three of my books thru Lulu. Just waiting to hear back from LOC on details.

I was also able for the first time, to send a Christmas gift to a neighbor, (as opposed to carrying it over) like I’ve been wanting to do for like, forever. Never could afford it, before.

Also re-established an old friendship that had been neglected. This is important. My old buddy has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She’s only 60, and yet it seems her kids have written her off. What I can do is drop in for tea, like we used to do. Go shopping once in a while. Get lunch somewhere.

I remember from dealing with my dad at age 90+, he got nasty and violent to the point where I thought somebody might get arrested in a restaurant situation.. I seriously doubt this will happen with my female friend. If it does, well, I’ve done this before…

A Different Christmas Poem

The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
My Daughter beside me, angelic in rest.

Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.
The sparkling lights in the tree I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.

My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep.
In perfect contentment or so it would seem,
So I slumbered, perhaps started to dream.

The sound wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t too near,
But I opened my eyes when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn’t quite know,
Then the sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow,

My soul gave a tremble; I struggled to hear;
And I crept to the door just to see who was near.
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.

A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old,
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, my wife and my child.

“What are you doing?” I asked without fear,
“Come in this moment, it’s freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!”

For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
Away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts…
To the windows that danced with a warm fire’s light
Then he sighed and he said, “It’s really all right.”

I’m out here by choice. I’m here every night.
It’s my duty to stand at the front of the line,
That separates you from the darkest of times.
No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I’m proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at Pearl on a day in December.”
Then he sighs, “that’s a Christmas Gram always remembers.”

“My Dad stood his watch in the jungles of ‘Nam,
And now it is my turn, and so, here I am.
I’ve not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he’s sure got her smile.”

Then he bent and carefully pulled from his bag,
The red, white and blue…an American flag.
“I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home.

I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat.
I can carry the weight of killing another.
Or lay down my life with my sister and brother…

Who stand at the front against any and all,
To ensure for all time that this flag will not fall.
So go back inside,” he said, ”harbor no fright.
Your family is waiting and I’ll be all right.”

“But isn’t there something I can do, at the least.
Give you money,” I asked, “or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you’ve done,
For being away from your wife and your son.”

Then his eyes welled a tear that held no regret,
“Just tell us you love us and never forget.
To fight for you rights back at home while we’re gone,
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.

For when we come home, no matter standing or dead,
To know you remember we fought and we bled.
Is payment enough, and with that we will trust,
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us.”

Please send this around to whomever you can. Christmas will be coming soon and some credit is due our US servicemen and women for our being able to celebrate these festivities. Let’s try in this small way to pay a tiny bit of what we owe. Make people stop and think of our heroes, living and dead, who sacrificed themselves for us.

LCDR Jeff Giles, SC, USN
30th Naval Construction Regiment
OIC, Logistics Cell One
Al Taqqadum, Iraq

 Kelly is talking about feminism

In the days when I thought it was still possible to have an open discussion with feminists, I used to say, “Maybe you think you don’t hate men. So why can’t you stop acting as if you do?”

Of course, that was always the end of any communication. Today’s feminists refuse to even entertain the idea their “philosophy” may be flawed.

There are gaping holes of logic and even of comprehension, when you consider all the things feminists want the government and white men to do for them.  If you read such books as Melanie Phillips’ The Ascent of Woman: A History of the Suffragette Movement and the Ideas Behind it

And Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-75

What you find is a group of emotionally disturbed women who cannot even agree among themselves what they believe.

Feminism is not now, and has never been, about equality. It has always been about female supremacy; taking rights away from men and allowing women to prevail. If it had ever been about equality, then the term, “feminism,” would never have been invented. They would have called themselves egalitarians.

They have not done that.

Because I work in a library, I’ve been able to access otherwise hidden sections of websites, such as that of the Feminist Majority org. There I found some of the early works of Shulamith Firestone. I must apologize here, because due to the poor writing skills of this woman, and the things she said I had thought she was an African-American raised in poverty.

Nope. She’s one of those Jewish American Princesses my first husband, Steven Silberberg, warned me about. Whine, whine, whine. Not just a yenta, but worse.

I lived in the Detroit area for the first 38 years of my life. There is a huge A-A population there, and of course some people of color were friends of ours. Duh. You live down the street from a lady whose kids are the same age, of course they all play together and you borrow the occasional cup of sugar. We were friends and didn’t think about race. When we were changing diapers, all our babies pooped brown ;>)

So I am particularly outraged that feminists chose to piggyback on the Equal Rights Movement of the ‘60s and still do. The Black people had something concrete to attain; nobody ever tried to stop a woman from voting after 1920 and nobody ever tried to keep a woman from buying a house in an area she liked. Of course there’s more to all of it, but my point is that women have never been treated as badly as African Americans, and I find it shameful that these spoiled white girls have chosen to draw a parallel. If you read Alice Echols you find that the black women of the equal rights movement rejected feminists in the 60s, and for good reason.

Feminism has always been about bullsh*t. It is the cultural tragedy of the 21st Century.

I’m sure that at this time of year, when parties beckon and the cocktails flow, most people know the basics. You don’t drink on an empty stomach, or if pre-dinner cocktails are involved, a tablespoon of olive oil taken before you head out is a good idea.

Everybody also knows you never drink when taking medication.

Only, last summer I forgot. I’ve been taking Claritin for awhile, due to one of those weird allergies it’s hard to pin down. A friend makes a really yummy Bloody Mary, and so I couldn’t resist. Of course, later I thought OMG! Also expected to wake up with a headache and general lousiness the next morning.

It didn’t happen. I was perky and alert as ever. I’ve tried it again since, and yep, it was the Claritin.

Of course, I have no idea if this would apply to a major bender, or somebody who drinks a lot, all the time, but for one old lady and 5 Bloody Marys it did the trick.

I guess I’ve been hanging around with Ron too long, but I’ll also say: don’t try this at home, and I am not a doctor. This is just something that happened to me. :>)

From the SF Examiner
Experts and therapists attending a conference in The City this week, co-sponsored by the Archdiocese of San Francisco, say men who have been traumatized by abortion have few places to turn to be healed.

Titled “Reclaiming Fatherhood,” the two-day event has been touted by organizers as the first of its kind in the country.

Little research has been conducted exploring the effect of abortions on men, conference organizers say.

First, let me say I have no opinion on abortion. Both sides seem to have valid points. Seems to me if the lawmakers hadn’t gotten involved, it would’ve been a different issue.

Anyway, it is nice that somebody is thinking about the other party in the situation. It’s been all about the woman for far too long.

Having said that, I still wonder why it is that so many domestic violence programs sponsored by Catholic community services are run by hardline, “men are pigs, women are idiots” feminists. I don’t mean to single out the Catholics here – the Episcopalians, Lutherans, Baptists, Jews, etc., are just as bad when it comes to DV programs they run as part of their larger charitable efforts.

I guess a little bit of hypocrisy comes with the territory of organized religion ;>)

Last Thursday, I woke myself up early, headed down to St. Vincent DePaul (a local homeless shelter/soup kitchen), and said "I'm here for my shift! What do you need?" I was told that they had too many volunteers, and I should just go home to enjoy my Thanksgiving.

Sometimes I love humans.

It was on my way out of the car when I hit my head on the roll bar. It wasn't a car accident or anything, just a simple exiting the car bit of mishap.

I believe that good works are private-- that talking about them is bragging and cheapens the experience. On the other wrist, by talking about them, by making it clear that helping other people is the expectation norm for an adult member of society we make such works more likely. What are your thoughts on the subject?

Thanksgiving has come and gone and, like many, I took part of the Black Friday festivities. No, I didn’t get to some store at 6 PM on Thursday to get in before everyone else. I showed up at the Best Buy in Traverse City a bit after noon. I had planned on being there at 5 AM but couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Every year Best Buy has a number of new games half-off and this year I wanted to snag Bioshock and The Orange Box, both for the PC. They sold out of The Orange Box but had plenty of copies of Bioshock available. I called a friend back at home and he grabbed The Orange Box for me at another Best Buy.

The wife and I then had lunch at BD’s Mongolian Barbeque and spend the rest of the day at the mall and hit a Border’s (where I grabbed the Battlestar Galactica RPG and Firefly: The Official Companion - Volume 2) before heading back to her mother’s house.

So, did anyone else do any shopping on Black Friday? Snag anything good? See anything interesting?

Tablet UML News is a techblog run by our very own Martin Shoemaker. Rather than let the link be buried in a comment thread, I think it deserves some frontpage rotation. Few of his fellow esmaylanders may realize his technical background, so check it out!

Who else around here has a technical background? Some of you may know that I am am medical physicist with a specialty in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). I've got a (dormant) blog about it, too, called Reference Scan.

Does anyone else have a technology-relevant field? And blog about it? Even if you don't blog, please do chime in on comments and mention what tech-related work you do for a living. I imagine that we have a deep pool of talent here. Let's get acquainted.