Apt. 11D

Happy, Fun Post

I've been multi-tasking conflict for the past two days.

There was the Yale future homemakers article that set off a controversy that ranged over three blogs. In fact, I lost track if we were mad at the Times for always talking about the world from the perspective of a few rich people, or if we were mad at society for creating inequities or if we were mad at freeloading rich chicks who were throwing off the great revolution in order to take their kids to Gymboree or if we were mad at rigid minded, aging feminists who have made women guilty for staying at home. Ack. This topic makes people nutso. A throw away article with no meat or facts to dig our teeth into made us froth at the mouth.

Then I've been having my own private battle with the Ian's special education teacher who refuses to tell me what happens in class on a daily basis. He can't tell me if he cried or if he had fun or if got frustrated or just about anything. It didn't really seem like a big deal for the teacher to stick her head out of the door and just give me two sentences of information. But she doesn't want to, so I've been researching my options and talking to my special ed. listserv.

So, too much conflict. No stomach for it today. Run away. Run away. Find a nice safe topic....

So, how about Kate Moss snorting up her H&M money? Shocked.

Another bit of breaking news from the Post. Tyra Banks proves her breasts are real on TV. Thank God, the world finally knows the truth.

And the Pitt/Jolie/Anison thing just gets better and better.

Smart Mothers

A couple of years ago, Lisa Belkin wrote a controversial Times magazine article about high powered business women who dropped out of the workforce after having kids. Well, the women of Yale read it and took notes. Today, the Times writes about young Yale students who are planning to stay at home and raise kids; unlike Belkin's mothers, they have no career aspirations.

At Yale and other top colleges, women are being groomed to take their place in an ever more diverse professional elite. It is almost taken for granted that, just as they make up half the students at these institutions, they will move into leadership roles on an equal basis with their male classmates.

There is just one problem with this scenario: many of these women say that is not what they want.

Many women at the nation's most elite colleges say they have already decided that they will put aside their careers in favor of raising children. Though some of these students are not planning to have children and some hope to have a family and work full time, many others, like Ms. Liu, say they will happily play a traditional female role, with motherhood their main commitment.

This morning, my mom called me to tell me about this article. I skimmed it and thought little of it. Women choosing to be parents? Sounds great. No big deal. Yet, apparently it is. Check out the hubbub at Crooked Timber.

UPDATE: Kieran said that I misunderstood his post. Fine. My mistake.

Blogs Versus MSM

A major discussion at our blog conference was the relationship between blogs and traditional journalism, aka old media, mainstream media, MSM, media monopoly. Hugh Hewitt's book came up several times.

Jay Rosen from NYU gave a fascinating presentation on his theory that blogging came around at a time when print journalism was particularly vulnerable.

Ethan Zuckerman took notes on the discussion.

Today, Kevin Drum writes that Rosen's argument was an example of "blog triumphantalism" and Rosen responds in the comments.

I'm middle of the road on this one. Part of our research shows that blogs are pretty dependent on the media, despite occassionally catching them making an error. We described bloggers and the media as having a symbiotic relationship.

By the way, Ethan's and Jay's blogs are excellent and worth checking out. Ethan blogs for Global Voices which is a one stop source for international blogs. I deeply admire the activist blogs out there and wish that there were more doing such work.

On his blog, Press Think, Jay Rosen does a great job of summing up debates in the blogosphere and of linking to a variety of sources. When I needed to find out more about the Blogher conference, I went there to get the dirt.

Blog Studies

Last Friday, I lit out for Chicago to attend an academic conference on the politics of blogging. Most of the participants were other bloggers, so we had a great time trading gossip and sucking the fun out of our hobby by writing papers on it.

Actually, it was quite excellent talking to people whose blogs are part of my daily consumption and who are just as freakishly obsessed as I am. We were all so excited to be part of something important. Why blogs are important and how we can prove that they are important and what aspects of blogs are important was up for debate.

Probably the most fun I ever had at an academic conference, though I did miss my kids terribly. I even had time for gin and tonics at Millennium Park with Toni afterwards.

More later. Read my dad's letter to the Times today. George is responding to the NY Times editor who said that the Times doesn't publish letters from blog readers.

September 26th is Blogging For Kids Day

A couple of months ago, we discussed putting aside one day to write about kids with disabilities. It's happening.

September 26 is Blogging For Kids Day.

A number of bloggers have kids with disabilities, including myself. We write about the issues involved with raising the kids from time to time. In order to get more bang for our buck, we are going to focus our attention on this topic for one day. The goal should be to raise awareness or propose actual policy changes or just brag about your great kid. We'll all link to each other and bug others to link to us. Don't be afraid to guilt your fellow bloggers into covering this topic. Guilt is good.

Bloggers who are already on board:
Sam Crane
Elizabeth Carnell who tells me that its ADHD day
Big Balagan
Tamar
Liz Ditz
Jeannette
Ancarett

GIVE ME MORE NAMES!!

To Serve and Protect

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Washington, Madison, Jefferson sweated it out in Philadelphia at Wigstock to put together the constitution for several reasons. One was to form a more perfect Union, because the confederacy wasn't working out so well. The other reasons for the constitution were the BASIC purposes of government: a system of justice, law and order, secure liberty, and to defend the citizens.

Government's most basic job is to protect its citizens. I'm not talking welfare or education. I'm talking protection. If government can't do that, then it's time to close up shop in DC and move to Montana with a shotgun.

Yes, government failed last week. And failed bigtime.

To say that government can never protect its citizens and to shift blame to poorly prepared citizens is ludicrous. I think that 9/11 was an excellent example of when government works properly during times of disaster.

In the coming months, I would like to see more comparing and contrasting of the two situations. I think that one key different (there are others) was that in NY, there was a mayor on the ball with an excellent team. Pataki followed Rudy's lead, instead of wilting like Blanco. The NY Senators did their job milking the federal government for money, instead of patting them on the back. They NY Senators got the help from DC, so that Rudy didn't have waste time screaming help into the TV camera like the New Orleans mayor. Every layer of our federal government did its job.

Government must defend and protect the public not only against looters, but against natural disasters and foreign terrorists. It has to be the first order of business to see what went wrong and rectify things. Has FEMA been devastated by Congressional pork and insufficient oversight? How do you manage disasters in a federal system of government? Who should do what? What do you do when a major player has a nervous breakdown in the midst of all this? These questions need answers.

If all this self-examination produces no results, if you are quite certain that the government is unable to improve its ability to protect its citizens, then I will take that one way ticket to Montana and a shotgun, please.

All Work And No Play Makes Laura ...

... a bad blogger.

Sorry for ditching you all for a few days, but I have been working on a paper that I will present on Saturday. It's a paper on blogging, and I will tell you all about it when I come back. The conference will be attended by other scholar/bloggers, some of whom read this blog. So, don't worry, guys. It's almost done. She says with a frozen smile.

The final survey results trickled in a couple of weeks ago, so we're pulling this together very quickly. Not much time to clean the data or revise hypotheses. It's fine. I actually get off on crunch periods. As long as they don't go on for too long.

Crunch periods are made more interesting when you're working at home and not in a hermetically sealed office. At the risk of seeming less than professional to colleagues, let me tell you about my afternoon.

I was able to work for a time in the morning, while the kids were in school. If I skip the shower and leave the dirty dishes, I can get around 2 hours of writing done in the morning. After I picked up Ian from school, my mom took him to Burger King. She had him playing in their indoor playland for two hours, so that I could write in peace. Kiss for the grandma. At 3:00, Ian returned and Jonah got off the school bus shortly after. Then hell broke lose. I bargained with them. If you leave me alone, you can watch a video and play computer games for as long as you like. (Yeah, nice parenting.) I wrote, negotiated changes with the co-author, and settled disputes over video games. At the same time. A copy of the paper was sent to my husband, so he could proof read it on the bus ride home.

At one point, I was on the phone, debugging a video game, sending a file on the other computer, and at that moment I noticed that two neighborhood boys had walked into our garage filled up an entire bin full of our toys and were marching down the street proudly with their booty. HEY! This isn't Toys R Us! Put those toys back right now! I think I hung up on my co-author at that moment. I forgot to eat until after Steve come home.

So, things are a little crazy around here. I'll be back soon. Maybe tomorrow.

Read This. Then Go Away.

Harry Brighouse writes that the Department of Education is considering relaxing requirements for No Child Left Behind, because so many school are now taking in new children displaced by Katrina.

Harry thinks this is a bad idea and proposes a reward system for those who take on the new students, as well as those who meet NCLB's testing and certification requirements.

Oh, and read David Brooks today, because I'm going to go ballistic as soon as I get a spare minute.

Go Away, I'm on Deadline

OK. Just some quick links. Don't miss Nicholas Lemann talk about New Orleans, his hometown, in the New Yorker. 

Funny column by Dowd who writes: I understand that politicians are wont to put cronies and cupcakes on the payroll. I just wish they'd stop putting them on the Homeland Security payroll.

Question of the Day

A major work deadline looms, so just a question for the readers.

Are you prepared for a disaster? Do you have a bag packed with essentials? Is the camping gear handy? A full tank of gas and a case of beans? An escape plan?

I'm not. I believe I could locate a year old Trader Joe's burrito in the back of the freezer and a jar of capers in the cupboard, but not much more than that. I never have more than a buck in my wallet. Good thing that I'm invincible.