18 posts tagged “nyt”
I was reading this article and noting how creepy it was when my friend emailed me about it. Notably, we are both creeped out by this photo.
First of all, who takes a picture like this? Second of all, who SMILES while taking a picture of this? It's so strange and inappropriate.
And of course, Dan Savage says it the best. (For extra funness, look at comment #8 and then the reply at comment #10. Thanks for picking up on that, Al!)
I'd just like to second and third and fourth what Dan Savage is translating for these people who think they they are pious by letting "God do what He's going to do":
What? If you were gonna let God do what He's going to do, you shouldn't have sought out fertility treatments. Here's what God was gonna do: God was gonna make you infertile. God did that, actually, and then you thwarted God's plan for you—that you be infertile—and availed yourselves of the latest medical technologies and sought the help fertility specialists. Then you ignored the advice of your doctors and refused to reduce the number of fetuses you were carrying and now four premature infants have died in great pain and two more will very likely die—but, hey, you'll get another smug, self-satisfied, just-letting-God-do-what-he's-gonna-do photo op out of it, so it's not a total loss. And it's all material for the blog you're writing about "your journey," and there'll probably be a book deal in it for you when it's all over ("Thom & Amanda Minus 6").
Yeah, I would have felt bad for them. Would have.
My Flickr was super cute today:
In other news, here are some interesting links I'd like to share.
#1. THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS. These people are seriously unfit to parent. They deserve a harsher punishment. I know they are thinking of the kids, but seriously. Come on, now, Judge. Also, does this set a precedent? Oh, I just want to LET MY KID DIE, I'll just blame it on God and get off easy. Ugh, disgusting.
#2. Maureen Dowd's column from a couple of days ago has this GREAT gem in it:
HA! I HATE GLENN BECK.In an ideal world, bosses would refrain from sleeping with subordinates, so as not to cause jealousy and tension in the office. But we’re not in an ideal world. Otherwise, we’d already have health care for everyone and Glenn Beck wouldn’t have any influence over the White House.
#3. This NYT article talks about an interesting way that the brain may work. I like this section:
I think this explains so much...Researchers have long known that people cling to their personal biases more tightly when feeling threatened. After thinking about their own inevitable death, they become more patriotic, more religious and less tolerant of outsiders, studies find. When insulted, they profess more loyalty to friends — and when told they’ve done poorly on a trivia test, they even identify more strongly with their school’s winning teams.
#4. This has been all over the news, but I really like what Dan Savage had to say about it. This is probably because I have an unhealthy obsession with Dan Savage and I worship him. Reading stuff like this reminds me that at one point I want to try out begin vegetarian and/or vegan. I think it would be a good experience. I think my life is too crazy at this point to try this out, but once I become a real adult (read: graduate, move out, live life like a normal human being at age 29) I think I will do this. Not because I think eating animals is wrong. To be honest, I don't think it's THAT wrong. I just don't trust the food industry. Which, is probably the more sad reason.
In happier news, I made these cute wrist warmers for a friend in Paris:
This article is interesting. This section amuses me:
One scholar at the Notre Dame conference, who uses the pseudonym Christoph Luxenberg for safety, has raised eyebrows and hackles by suggesting that the “houri” promised to martyrs when they reach Heaven doesn’t actually mean “virgin” after all. He argues that instead it means “grapes,” and since conceptions of paradise involved bounteous fruit, that might make sense. But suicide bombers presumably would be in for a disappointment if they reached the pearly gates and were presented 72 grapes.
Grapes! Ha.
I saw this interesting article in the NYT. (It's just so easy to read NYT in between experiments.)
I just LOVE this part:
From a purely Darwinian point of view, expecting a young woman to sacrifice her reproductive fitness for the sake of career advancement is simply too much, and yet the structure of academic research, in which one must spend one’s 20s and early 30s as a poorly compensated and minimally empowered graduate student and postdoctoral fellow, and the remainder of one’s 30s and into the low 40s working madly to earn tenure, can demand exactly that.
I think I need a t-shirt that has that written on it in puff paint. It really goes along with this nugget from 30 Rock, which I randomly saw for the first time during the season opener:
JACK
We may not be the best people.
LIZ
But we're not the worst.
BOTH
Graduate students are the worst.
I love my life! Well, at least I love the fact that W is hopefully going to be sequestered in Texas and Obama is going to be large and in charge.
There's a pretty cool article in Nature right now about love and the science of love. They pretty much agree that love is like a drug and that there is a scientific basis for the obsession with females with big boobs. Here are some choice excerpts:
A female prairie vole rapidly becomes attached to the nearest male if her brain is infused with oxytocin. The hormone interacts with the reward and reinforcement system driven by the neurotransmitter dopamine — the same circuitry that drugs such as nicotine, cocaine and heroine act on in humans to produce euphoria and addiction.
On boobs:
Did you get that? Boob groping is just like doing cocaine. So any guys who are into ogling racks are basically drug addicts.
The notion that pair bonding in humans may have evolved through a tweaking of the brain mechanisms underlying maternal bonding could explain certain unique characteristics of human sexuality. For example, female sexual desire may have become decoupled from fertility, and the female breast may have become an erotic stimulus for males, to activate ancient maternal-bonding systems. The stimulation of the cervix and nipples during sexual intimacy are potent releasers of brain oxytocin, and may function to strengthen the emotional tie between partners.
Men are different:
Pair bonding in males involves similar brain circuitry to that in females, but different neurochemical pathways. In male prairie voles, for example, vasopressin — a hormone related to oxytocin — stimulates pair bonding, aggression towards potential rivals, and paternal instincts, such as grooming offspring in the nest.
I love him. I love him and his...nasal spray?
The view of love as an emergent property of a cocktail of ancient neuropeptides and neurotransmitters raises important issues for society. For one thing, drugs that manipulate brain systems at whim to enhance or diminish our love for another may not be far away. Experiments have shown that a nasal squirt of oxytocin enhances trust and tunes people into others' emotions.
There is neat follow up article with an awesome illustration in the NYT. Apparently there is also a love vaccine:
“If we give an oxytocin blocker to female voles, they become like 95 percent of other mammal species,” Dr. Young said. “They will not bond no matter how many times they mate with a male or hard how he tries to bond. They mate, it feels really good and they move on if another male comes along. If love is similarly biochemically based, you should in theory be able to suppress it in a similar way.”
And I guess this is...related? Good thing Valentine's Day is coming up. Bring on the nasal spray!
I hate this article.
It makes me sad. Then, very very very angry. THEN, I bask in the glory and say GOOD RIDDANCE.
From the NYT:
“It would be difficult for an African-American to be elected president in this country,” said Cornell Belcher, a pollster who worked for Mr. Obama’s campaign and studies racial voting patterns. “However, it is not difficult for an extraordinary individual who happens to be African-American to be elected president.”
From another article:
"The boomers didn’t win any wars and that business about being self-involved was not entirely unfounded. On the other hand, they made the nation get serious about the idea of everybody being created equal. And now American children are going to grow up unaware that there’s anything novel in an African-American president or a woman running for the White House."
"The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults," - Alexis de Tocqueville.
She's a BOOK BANNER!!!!! UGH!!!
Read this article from the NYT about Jon Stewart.
Watch this video of him on September 20th, 2001.
I was really this very seasonal and cutesy article about ice cream trucks and how they are already out in full force and in heated competition for all the fat diabetic kids out there--and it's only spring! But then I read this part:
There have been harsh words, hurt feelings and even bloodshed between competitors. In 2004, a couple in their 60s who owned and operated two ice cream trucks were ambushed in the Bronx and beaten with an oversized wrench. The motive, the police said, was the couple’s ice cream route. A rival ice cream salesman was charged with assault and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
While disputes between drivers of ice cream trucks rarely become that violent, they can be cutthroat.
Um, WTF? An old couple who sold ice cream to kids were each bludgeoned with a wrench over ice cream truck territory issues?? I mean, I hope this is one of those things that is restricted to New York City where space is limited so that it leads to gang wars and fighting, but man. Makes me think twice about running after the ice cream truck. I'm not sure if I want to be served ice cream by a psychopath.
