Apt. 11D

Spreadin' Love

Depression cooking with Clara. Check out the video. She cooks depression era food and tells stories.

"...the primary qualification that Dushku brings to the part is that she graduated with honors from the Royal Academy of Cleavage. " That is pretty much what I thought about Dollhouse.

The Van Dykes

I'm thoroughly enjoying Ariel Levy's account of the Van Dykes and other lesbian separatists of the 1970s. They were part food co-op, part Jack Kerouac, part Black Panther. Really fun.

Spreadin' Love

The Bohemian Bourgeois are in trouble and so are their stores. Maybe I won't start the Artisanal pickle shop after all.

The Netroots use new tactics to push the Democrats to the left.

I showed this Kristoff video to my Media class this afternoon. We discussed the agenda-setting power of celebrities.

Can the PTA undermine school equity? 

We were also talking about this rape simulation video game that is produced in Japan and, until recently, sold on Amazon.

Brooklyn's Artsy Foods

I spent a long time yesterday studying this article from the Times on the Brooklyn's artsy food scene. The interactive map and the links were a huge time waster and a contributing cause of Wednesday's late night grading. 

Check out Urban Rustic. I'm a huge sucker for the anal retentive shelving, the awesome packaging, and organic foods. Wood plank floors and a chalk board menu, too! Yes, I am pretentious, but I have chosen to revel in it.

If I can't find a teaching job next semester, I might be the Queen of artisanal pickles of Northern New Jersey.

A Near Miss

I walked in the door at around 2:00 this afternoon. I gave three hours worth of lectures with very little sleep. Last minute paper grading had kept me up until very late the night before. I was downstairs putting the breakfast bowls in the dishwasher, when I heard a sound from upstairs. I stopped everything and listened again. I was about two seconds away from running out of the house and calling the cops, when I realized that the noise upstairs was coming from someone puking. Steve had come home from work with a stomach bug. He just missed a full body search from the thugs on the local police force.

Just Say No

The only part of Obama's presidential address that made both Steve and I vocally upset was when he said that he thought we should go back to college for a year. I think that eight years of grad school is quite enough useless education.

Open Thread about the Presidential Address

So what did you guys think? Good speech? Too ambitious? Too vague? Just what we need?

UPDATE: Bloggers and Pundits are all talking about how Jindal seriously bombed last night. Even Malkin hated it. Sullivan has a list of blogger reactions.

Political Engineering

Before I get to the post of the afternoon, let me just share my daily anecdotal story of economic doom.

My cousin, Eric, is the manager of a widget factory in Chicago. They either make rubber bands or plastic bags. I can't seem to retain that bit of information. Anyway, about five years, the factory and my cousin were transported to China. All the workers in Chicago were fired, and new, cheaper ones were hired in China. Well, that factory closed in China last week, and all those workers were fired. Nobody wants rubber bands or plastic bags anymore.

Since I'm on a roll irritating the libertarians, I think I'm going to keep going.

David Brooks today writes that Obama is about begin in the world's biggest political engineering project with his economic stimulus package and other policy proposals. While liberals think that government can fix things, conservatives think that human society is way too complicated and anytime that government gets involved, it makes a right mess of things. Welfare=welfare queens.

While Brooks hopes that Obama is successful, he's worried that he won't be.

All in all, I can see why the markets are nervous and dropping. And it’s also clear that we’re on the cusp of the biggest political experiment of our lifetimes. If Obama is mostly successful, then the epistemological skepticism natural to conservatives will have been discredited. We will know that highly trained government experts are capable of quickly designing and executing top-down transformational change. If they mostly fail, then liberalism will suffer a grievous blow, and conservatives will be called upon to restore order and sanity.

It’ll be interesting to see who’s right.

The conservative model has already been discredited. The hands-off approach meant that government turned a blind eye as stock brokers sold crap, people bought cathedral ceilinged monstrosities, and greed raced on without some necessary speed bumps. Now, we are looking at nationalized banks. And the banks are begging for it. There are no libertarians on Wall Street.

I don't know if Obama is going to succeed or not. I have no idea how he's going to create the demand for rubber bands or plastic bags. But the death match between political models has already been fought. The decision has been made.

UPDATE: Read Stephen Walt's reaction. And Tim Burke. 

Megan McArdle gives a sensible response.

The Backlash Against the Octo-Mom Backlash

For the past couple of weeks, the mom blogs and the feminist blogs have been slowly getting annoyed at the judgment and the scorn launched at the Octo-Mom.

Will Women Save Iceland?

According to the Observer, women are leading the financial revolution in Iceland (via Marginal Revolution). Young men have been blamed for economic crisis in their country, and they are turning to 40-something women to save the day.

The tiny nation, with a population of just over 300,000 people, has been overwhelmed by an economic disaster that is threatening its very survival. But for a generation of fortysomething women, the havoc is translating into an opportunity to step into the positions vacated by the men blamed for the crisis, and to play a leading role in creating a more balanced economy, which, they argue, should incorporate overtly feminine values.

They believe that women, specifically mothers, have experience and skills that will counter act the greed and the immaturity that led to the crisis.

...Waagfjörd and her Icelandic sisters talk openly about the womanly and maternal qualities they bring to the boardroom table.

"I don't have children - I decided that because I wanted to be free to pursue my career - but motherhood is a value for all women. Ten or 15 years ago I wouldn't have wanted to say that motherhood was something important, because that was not the rule of the game. But the value you bring as a woman is the maternal aspect, the strength that comes from motherhood."

Fascinating article.