Culture
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If you haven’t got a ha’penny then God bless you!
From the John Denver/Muppet Christmas special, one of my all time favorites: Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat Please put a penny in the old man’s hat If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do If you haven’t got a ha’penny then God bless you! Which brings me, sadly, to the point of this post. I read yesterday, and then heard on NPR later in the day, that donations to charities are abysmally low this year.  The newspaper article was mainly talking about gifts of toys and clothing, both new and used. The radio story (from The News Hour) was about donations of food to food…
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Subprime Woes
I heard something on the radio yesterday that ticked me off. That’s nothing new, really, I listen to a lot of NPR, and there’s often news and politics involved, which often ticks me off. So of course yesterday the big news was the subprime ‘bailout’, a move by the Bush Administration to help a few of the folks out there who are destined to lose their homes because they will not be able to afford the higher payments once their mortgages reset into a higher interest rate. There’s an assumption among many that these people deserve to lose their homes, because they were gambling anyway, and took on more debt than they…
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Hold the Door…
This post, by Deb over at Punctuality Rules!, has had me thinking for a few weeks about holding the door. Back in July, I wrote a post about women who eschew the term feminist, because to them it divides us as women, or because they don’t like the stereotype of women who are unfeminine man haters, and wish to distance themselves from that idea altogether. I’m not sure why Deb’s post got me thinking again about my previous post, and the comments in that post, but it did. Whenever the issue of feminism comes up, the issue of holding the door open comes up. Some men were raised to believe…
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Once More, With Feeling
We had a bit of a Buffy-thon last night, watching several Buffy episodes, and I have to say, I miss Buffy. I wish there were something on TV now that I liked as much as I liked this show…something as funny and clever and poignant all at the same time. The last installment to any good Buffy-thon, if you want to end on a high note and you’re not going for closure (that would be the end of season 7, right?) is ‘Once More With Feeling’, the musical episode. I have this on my beloved iPod, actually, and I listen to it more often than I should admit. For you…
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An evening with the boob tube…
 First off, who amongst you goes out shopping on Black Friday? I have some family memebers who run out at 6am to get the best deals, and are home and toasty warm before we even get around to breakfast. It’s a fun tradition that they cherish. Other family members consider this a day to stay the hell home, safe from the hoards of crazed shoppers. Then there are others, like me, who could go out, maybe, if we take BART so I don’t have to park anywhere, but could easily be convinced to stay home with a good book or a few episodes of Buffy. Now, here’s a stupid…
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The North Karelia Project
Click to enlarge The other day I was coming home from donating blood (yay me!), and listening to The World on our local NPR station. They were discussing an experiment in North Karelia, Finland. In the 1970s, Finland had the world’s highest death rate from heart disease, and the death rate in North Karelia was even higher…40% higher. It was not unusual in the least for men to die from a heart attack in their 30s or 40s. Finland’s National Public Health Institute decided to launch a program focused on changing the eating habits in North Karelia, where the diet consisted predominantly of high salt-low grade pork, and dairy. It…
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R.I.P. Ming, World’s Oldest Animal
Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made: Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell ~ Shakespeare I learned via Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me the other day, of the sad tale of Ming, the world’s oldest animal. Ming, so named because he is believed to have been born during the Ming dynasty, was between 405 and 410 years old, and was old enough that he could have been served to Shakespeare himself, had he been dredged up a bit sooner. Hearing the story…
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Open Letter to Creepy Guy
Dear Creepy Guy, (Why say “Dear”? You are not dear to me. A better start would be, “Hey Asshat”) Hey Asshat, Just because you get some kind of creepy thrill from giving me the willies every morning on the bike trail doesn’t mean you’re going to stop me from walking my daughter to school. You ride by on your way to work (or wherever you’re going, I assume work because it’s the same time every day), and you stare at me, and sometimes you scowl, and sometimes you smile a skeezy smile, and once you blew me a kiss. Perhaps you think you’re sexy and charming, and I harbor a…
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Crisis of Faith
I know, that’s an odd title for a post written by an atheist, isn’t it? But it’s what I feel sometimes. And atheists have faith, too, as much as the next person. I don’t believe in a higher power, but I believe in the human spirit, in beauty and hope and love, in the miracle that is a baby being born, and the devastation that is a loved one lost. Some days, however, I truly should stay the hell away from the newspaper/TV, etc., because the real world has the ability to crush me, casually, as though it doesn’t even care that I exist. The evil that men do to each other…
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Stopping Abuse
I read over on Roc Rebel Granny about blog against abuse day, which was last Thursday. I didn’t read about it in time to do a blog post at the time. Coincidentally, I read about a study which suggests that teens with several close friends, especially same sex friends, are less likely than other teens to be in abusive relationships. Here is the article, in its entirety: Teenage girls who stick close with their circle of friends are less likely to take abuse from the boys they date, a new study suggests. The intricacies of the teen years include more than the physical sprouting and associated zits. Teenagers begin to…
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Why I Heart This American Life…
You may or may not know that I like to download podcasts of a few of my favorite NPR programs, which I then listen to on my beloved iPod while walking Genevieve in the morning. I download three shows from NPR. The first is Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me, which makes the people walking past me think I’m insane, because I just start laughing out loud to myself, seemingly at nothing. The second is To The Best of Our Knowledge, which I’ll admit is last in my queue, and sometimes I get to it, and love it, and other times it falls by the wayside. The third show I download…
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Calorie Restriction
A few weeks ago, the Sunday SF Chronicle had an article on people who practice calorie restriction as a way of life. I’m sure you’ve read the hypothesis by now…scientists have found that if they feed lab mice 25% fewer calories than their recommended daily intake, the mice live longer. In people who practice calorie restriction, also consuming 25% fewer calories than their recommended daily intake, the health benefits are evident: lower bad cholesterol, higher good cholesterol, healthier arteries, and lower levels of triglycerides. Other benefits include very low blood sugar levels and a very high response to insulin, indicating a very low risk for diabetes. So, if we take…
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On a wire between will and what will be
Have you ever woken up on a Saturday morning with visions in your head, scenes that tell you exactly how you’ll be spending your afternoon? You lay there, eyes not yet open, and you see a middle aged fat man, dancing in a bunny suit at a Halloween party. You hear the sleazy strip club owner call the failed comic in the alligator suit, “Izod”. You hear Alex calling for her elderly friend…”Hannah…Hannah…”, then the capable older woman bluntly says, “She died….yesterday.” Then you see Alex smoking cigarettes and picking at the threads in the holes of her 501s while Kim Carnes sings “I’ll be here where the heart is”,…
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Tasteless…
Back in December of 2006, a zoo keeper at the San Francisco Zoo was partially mauled during a public feeding of a tiger, a practice at the zoo since the 1940s (the feeding, not the mauling!). She lost the use of one arm, and had severe damage to the other. Updates have been made to the area, so that zookeepers now more safely feed the lions and tigers, and so that the public can safely witness the feedings. With the changes now in place, the area was recently opened to the media, before reopening the area to the public. This small quote, from SFGate: A steel barrier closes the gap…
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September 11
Last year, I participated in the 2996 project, which was an attempt to recognize all of the people who died on September 11, 2001. I was assigned a name, and I did a bit of research, and copied and pasted what I found about Mr. Abad. After that, I felt the need to write something more personal, and since I (happily) didn’t lose anyone that day, I wrote about my thoughts and feelings at the time. I was kind of proud of this post, so I’m repeating it for you today. Edelmiro Abad of Brooklyn at a wedding with his close-knit family: his wife, Lorraine, and in white from left,…