11D

Palin Resigns!

Palin resigns her position as Governor of Alaska. Jaw drop. Reactions?

Cool, Free Things Online

I linked to Gladwell's review of Chris Anderson's Free, and you guys mentioned the HP's downloadable craft projects. Awesome. I'll have to check it out.

I just signed up for Travelocity's Fare Watcher Plus, so they can let me know when the flights to Cananda go down. (Ugh. Should have bought my ticket last week.)

What other cool/free/handy things have you recently found online?

The Blogosphere 2.0

July 14th, Bastille Day, will mark my sixth year of blogging and quite a few of you all have been around for the ride. (Thanks!) I've had a comment section for five years, so you all have contributed quite a bit, too. A few years ago, I decided I wanted a hard copy of everything that I've written for posterity. But after copying a few months of posts over to Word, I gave up. It was using up too much paper.

What will happen to all these words in my posts and in the comment sections? Will anyone ever read it? Steve thinks that all these blogs will be most useful in the future for social historians, who will use all these thoughts to document ordinary life. I hope to polish up some of our better discussions and publish them elsewhere. We'll see.

But this morning, I just want to write about how blogging has changed in the past six years.

Spreadin' Love

I just returned from dragging Ian around to IKEA (and, yes, the picnic table would NOT fit in the back of the Toyota) and to Fairway for shrimp and spices (a dinner that was supposed to be served ON the picnic table tonight). We're beat, so just some quick links of things buzzing around in the Internets.

Malcolm Gladwell reviews Chris Anderson's Free: The Future of a Radical Price.

Ezra Klein writes, "Last month I sat down with Pollan, who consulted on "Food, Inc.," and Robert Kenner, who directed it. "The way farm policy gets made in this town is within a very tight group of people," Pollan said. "Industry, committees on the Hill, the USDA, and very little input from us."" My inner grad student is shouting,"Hugh Heclo! Iron Triangle!"

New York State politics are in serious mess right now. The Senate can't pass major legislation, so the Mayor lost control over the schools in Manhattan. Ugh. The worse-than-useless NYC Board of Education comes back to life. I have to do a corruption in state capitals post soon. 

One of my listservs is ranting about Twitter. One guy is complaining that he doesn't want to read what people are eating for dinner. He only wants links to research. OK, Boring McBoring. It is mildly annoying that a sociologist isn't interested in people's ordinary lives and that a media expert isn't interested in how people truly use social media.

Midweek Journal

This week, my mom has been babysitting Ian in the morning, and I've been hanging out with him in the afternoons. It has been perfect. It has been enough time to feel like I have made progress on my project. And you don't really need more time than that. After about four hours of solid work in front of a computer, you're really just playing around. It's best to be very efficient for a few hours, then walk away and have fun. Here are some of the fun things that we've been doing:

Media Whiplash

Last week, I twittered that I suffered from media whiplash as we careened from Iran to Sanford to Farrah to Jackson. The Pew Foundation has the summary of last week's media coverage.

Spreadin' Love

I would totally make this pasta salad.

A supposedly fun blog -- major political bloggers do a book club blog.

Changing attitudes towards homosexuality.

What is Burger King saying here?

How unpredictable are Supreme Court appointments?

Political Wives: What Do They Get Out It?

Ta-Nehisi Coates responds to a Double X post, which says that Jenny Sanford's efforts to raise her kids and support her husband's career was mis-directed energy. Sanford is apparently an extremely bright woman who had a major job in finance before she started her family. Coates says there has to be something more to Sanford's decisions than simply being a doormat.

Coates isn't buying the simplistic and judgmental reasoning of Double X, but he still doesn't understand Sanford and others. He asks,

My question is why would a woman so willingly throw herself into her husband's life work? There must have been some sort of light there, something that she got out of it. I don't say that to be caustic, or mean. But the narrative of put-upon housewife always leaves me unsatisfied, because while it says a lot about the husband, his proclivities, and his selfishness, it really says nothing about the wife. Who is she? Why would she enter into such an arrangement? What is the trade-off? Where is her agency in it all?

I don't know Jenny, but I can throw out some guesses on why she quit her job and supported his career.

She probably hated her job. I know, who would believe it? Most people hate their jobs and would quit as soon as the balls fell the right way on Lotto. Finance jobs, in particular, aren't that fun. People do it for the money and quit as soon as they feel that they have enough money. Of course, having enough money varies from person to person. When Steve goes to work, he sometimes hears the stock brokers puking in the bathroom from the stress. Steve would quit his job the moment I made enough money to cover the mortgage. For us, enough money = paying the mortgage.

She probably loved her kids and wanted to raise them herself. She has four young boys. I bet that they had a nanny, but still, managing four kids is a lot of work.

He probably worked 16 hour days and traveled a lot. Jobs in finance are 12 hour jobs. I'm sure she thought it would be nice if her kids saw one parent once in a while.

High end jobs assume that there is a stay at home parent. Steve can never take off for sick days or parent-teacher conferences or for school holidays. They assume that I'll take care of it. It is assumed that he can work after hours whenever he is needed. He came home at 9:00 last night without worrying about the babysitter or the daycare. It is highly annoying that his job makes that assumption, but that's a rant for another day.

But political jobs are even weirder. Not only do they assume that there's a full time parent at home, but they also expect that the spouse will show up at events and give speeches. People give Michelle Obama a hard time about quitting her job, but as far as I can tell, she's working a lot. She's in front of the camera every day giving speeches and reading to school kids. That looks like a job to me. Political office is the only job that employs the whole family.

Also, Jenny probably believed in her husband's political message. She ran his political campaign because she liked his platform. Whatever.

Marriages involve trust and compromises. The Sanfords probably made a series of decisions based on who loved their career more, who really wanted to care for the kids, and a host of other factors. She probably didn't look at her role as mom and political wife as a sacrifice. Maybe that was an error, but if a marriage is going to work, you have to somewhat trust the other person.

UPDATE: BitchPhD has a good response.

Who Gets the Kids?

I admit to watching a lot of coverage of Michael Jackson's death. Though his songs were always in the background when I was growing up, I was never a huge fan. So, I'm skipping all the life retrospectives and zeroing in on the sycophants drugging him up and his stomach pumpings.

The child custody angle led to some discussions among friends this weekend. All of them had worries about who would get their kids, if they should push off unexpectedly. Which relatives would be able to handle a disruption in their lives? Who would gladly welcome new kids, and who would perceive it as a burden? One friend was bypassing all the relatives, because they were either crazy, sick, or too involved in sports. Our solution is to be heavily insured; enough money and even the most rigid relative will loosen up. 

Predictable Affairs

When I first moved to NYC after college, I sought out friendships with goths and relationships with tortured artists. I figured that if they looked interesting, they must be interesting. Turned out that the vintage dressed people were actually boring and dumb. And the tortured artists were just big drunks. It took me a distressingly long time to learn that lesson.

Ross Douthat covers most of the articles and issues that we discussed last week. I'm not sure what Douthat's point is, but he does match up Kate Gosselin with Sandra Tsing Loh's husband. A thoughtful combo.

Last week's chatterers wondered if we are thirsting for something more exciting than middle American conformity. I was at a suburban swim club yesterday, so I get this. But the very public affairs of last week don't seem to be the way to go. There's nothing more predictable than an affair. It's been done so many times. Sanford's love letters are cliche ridden and pathetic. 

So, what are thrill seekers, adrenaline junkies, and those with a very short attention span to do?

Weekend Journal

It was a perfectly lovely weekend, so Steve and I went in different directions.

Spreadin' Love

Sam Crane continues to make fine parallels between Iran and China.

Flashback -- This post was one of the best "Questions of the Day" that we've had on 11D.

"Determine never to be idle." (Except when Lost is on.) Check out rooms like this and more. I need that paint color. It's the perfect grey.

Sanford's wife is no Silda.

BLTs

The kids and I went to the local farmer's market yesterday and scored fresh tomatoes, lettuce, garlic, radishes, mozzarella, and pickles. 

Question of the Day -- Michael Jackson

Question of the Day -- What was your favorite Michael Jackson song?

The Kissy-Poo Governor

I've neglected my duties on 11D and haven't done a post on the SC Governor. I've been too busy reading snark on Twitter about him and laughing my ass off. My contribution to the erudite Twitter conversation was "Steve said he wants to go for a hike this weekend. This hike better not be anywhere near Argentina." Other Twitter gems are here.

His press conference and the leaked love letters are just plain embarrassing. The governor was in lurve. Ew.

So, what's the angle on this one? The narcissism of politicians? The backslide of state government?

The angle that I'm seeing most often is the narcissism of politicians. Kristof just twittered, "Why do politicians repeatedly dive into beds and self-destruct? I think they're a self-selected pool of nat'l risk-takers." Last night, Larry King had on the usual talking head shrinks, including that Drew Pinsky, who made the similar conclusions. The talking head shrinks were really pro-family and scolded Stanford and other philanderers. Loved it. 

When these things happen, it's always good to revisit this classic Seinfeld episode.

Midweek Journal

This is the last day of school for the kids. Now the fun and games begin.

Foodie, Alert!

Ezra Klein is starting a new blog at the Washington Post devoted to the politics of food.

Skills Matter

One of the worst possible, most horrific thing that can happen to an academic is that someone else independently comes to the same conclusions as you do, but publishes them more quickly. It's actually not a terrible thing, because the important thing should be that the good idea comes to life, but there are big egos involved here and my ego really needs its own house.

I'm watching Eszter Hargittai's fantastic talk on internet skills at the Berkman Center at Harvard. Small vomit in my mouth at first, because it seemed she wrote my paper and did a much better job, but we're different enough to complement each other, rather than compete. Whew.

Old Man and the Book

I've ended up at John Scazi's blog a couple of times in the past week. Megan just linked to his post on why it takes a long, long time to write a good novel. It takes a long, long time to write anything. [insert dissertation stories in here]. Good stuff at Scazi's blog. Note to self: Add to Google Reader.

Keys Issues in Politics and Parenthood?

I'm going to guestblog at Feministe in September. I am going to concentrate on the intersection of parenthood and politics. It will be fun to take our discussions here and bring them to a new audience. I have a few ideas about what I'll write about there, but I would like to get input from you all. What policies and reforms do you think would help you the most?