From News 14 Carolina:
The National Retail Association reports in 2003 single women bought one in five homes. That’s close to two million homes.
The share of homes bought by single women has increased about 33 percent over the past decade, making single women the fastest growing segment of the home buying population.
Kim (basement variety) emailed me this USA Today article.
The paychecks of obese workers are, on average, about 2.5% less than the paychecks of their thinner counterparts in the same professions, a new study says.
And the wage penalty is much greater for overweight women … as much as 6.2% … according to the study submitted to the journal Health Economics.
Obese workers who are paid $1.25 less an hour over a 40-year career wind up with $100,000 less before taxes, says co-author William Ford, an economics professor at Middle Tennessee State University and a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
“It’s very clear that significantly overweight people are paying a huge price,” he says.
Obese workers overall suffered a wage penalty in the range of 1.4% to 4.5%. The penalty for obese women ranged from 2.3% to 6.2% vs. a range of 0.7% to 2.6% for men.
Obese men face discrimination, but it typically doesn’t kick in until they are very obese, says Miriam Berg, president of the Council on Size & Weight Discrimination. Women encounter weight discrimination for being just 30 pounds overweight, she says.
I thought of doing an April Fool’s post, but I was feeling uninspired. Fortunately, a lot of other bloggers aren’t as boring as me. Utopian Hell has been kind enough to catalog a bunch. My favorite was Rox’s astounding parody of Michelle Maklin, pulled off with the assistance of a cast of thousands (well, a bit over a dozen, anyhow).
And it’s not an April Fool’s joke, but this photo over at Lab Kat’s totally cracked me up. Man, those Aussie’s are strict.
Hey, if you know of any April Fool’s links (or, you know, whatever) that cracked you up, post ’em in the comments. I could use more laughs.
There are many intelligent critiques to be made of Women’s Studies, and perhaps of Ethnic Studies as well. Unfortunately, there are many shallow and thoughtless critiques as well, and maybe these get made more often. Which brings me to this post on Finnegan’s Wake.
Finnegan, who is (I think) a philosophy major, has a good point; if bullying of queer kids in school has become much less common, then that’s a very significant and positive development. Unfortunately, he concluded his post with an attack on a certain group of majors:
Last, the comment that’s going to get me into trouble. LGBTQ studies, gender studies, ______ ethnic group studies, African Amerian studies, Judaic studies, etc: I just don’t understand concentrating one’s academic life on questions of group identification. There is more to an individual than his/her skin color or sexuality, and there’s a lot more to the world than one’s own existence and insecurities. I don’t doubt that there are interesting classes to take on all these subjects, and interesting papers to be written, but as majors they suggest a fantastic intellectual paucity. If you want to spend four years doing nothing but self-reflection, well, there are analysts for that. Meanwhile, the universe contains a great many phenomena and syntheses that you don’t know about, and you will never have a chance after your undergraduate years (graduate studies being obsessively single-minded even within a given field) to do something about that ignorance.
I responded in Finnegan’s comments, but I thought I might as well cross-post my (slightly edited) response here, as well. Sometimes I wish I were Amanda; this sort of thing is better responded to with withering sarcasm, but I’m not good at that. (Of course, Amanda does brilliant analysis as well.) (Gee, why does Amanda say I suck up to her flatter her shamelessly? I can’t imagine. She must be delusional. Poor deluded chick.)
In his comments, Finnegan wrote:
One phenomenon that seems apparent to me is that students in programs like Women’s and Gender Studies or AfAm Studies, etc., have a tendency to hermetically seal themselves off from other disciplines and from challenges to their orthodoxies.
I was a WS major (well, sort of a design-your-own major, based on economics and WS). Far from being “hermetically sealed,” WS had a huge number of courses cross-listed with different disciplines – much more so than any of the more standard majors.
There is more to an individual than his/her skin color or sexuality, and there’s a lot more to the world than one’s own existence and insecurities.
Your sneering description of what you imagine WS is like is so unrelated to the reality I experienced that it’s not even insulting; it’s just bewildering. It’s as if someone said “I could never be a philosophy major, they don’t learn anything; they just sit around contemplating how many angels could dance in their navel.” The statement speaks to the speaker’s bias and ignorance, but doesn’t actually say anything about the subject matter.
If you want to spend four years doing nothing but self-reflection, well, there are analysts for that.
Witty (well, not especially) put-downs are not a replacement for actual analysis or knowledge.
Meanwhile, the universe contains a great many phenomena and syntheses that you don’t know about…
All majors share this “flaw”; there is no major that will cover more than a tiny portion of the universe’s phenomena. I’ve known physicists and economists who have gone through college without ever reading a novel after freshman year, for example. I was initially interested in being a computer science major, but recoiled after realizing the required courses list would leave little chance to take other sorts of classes. Business majors typically have next-to-no interaction with the rest of the campus.
In fact, ethnic and women’s studies tend to be less cloistered than most other majors; at many universities, these courses are taught by professors from a variety of disciplines, hence all the cross-listing.
“…you will never have a chance after your undergraduate years (graduate studies being obsessively single-minded even within a given field) to do something about that ignorance.”
Colleges provide a structured environment for study; but it’s far from true, as this statement seems to suggest, that intellectual life ends when college ends.
You seem to think college should be a sort of intellectual broadness marathon, in which people choose majors based on trying to learn as many different phenomina as possible.
I think you’re mistaken. People should study what they’re passionately driven to study. There is intellectual richness to be found in almost any field, if you have a open mind; the silly “my major is better than yours” attitude of your post doesn’t reflect that reality.
Of course, to study just one field exclusively – whether women’s studies or philosophy or, I don’t know, French – would be kind of sad. But I think few if any students actually do this; most take classes outside their majors. Most of the WS majors I knew took minors (or a second major) in other disciplines; the same thing may even be true of philosophy majors, for all I know.
Just go and listen, you won’t regret it.
Via Body & Soul.
Terri Schiavo, the severely brain damaged Florida woman who became the subject of an intense legal and political battle that drew responses from the White House to Congress to the Vatican, died today, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed on the order of a state court judge.
Let’s hope Terri’s family (both sides of it), and the many people who have been passionately drawn into her story, find some peace.
First of all, let me point out that Kevin at Lean Left has exactly the right take on this. The medical issues are secondary, not central, to this case.
The legal issue in the Schiavo case has always been what Terri Schiavo wants, and the court’s rulings on withdrawal of her feeding tube have always been reflective of Terri Schiavo’s wishes, not her husband’s and not based on some sort of evaluation of whether her “life is worth living” or not. The Court has heard evidence from many people and has concluded that Terri’s wishes were known convincingly and that they were to the effect that she would not want to live in the condition she currently is in. […] The court’s various orders to terminate treatment have always been predicated on this wish of Terri Schiavo’s, not on the personal request of Michael Schiavo or on his, the court’s, or any other person’s evaluation of her “quality of life” or belief that her “life is not worth living.” The only person who, legally and morally, can make that determination is Terri Schiavo, and it is her previously-expressed determination in that respect that the court has acted on.
(Kevin, by the way, has been doing absolutely top-notch blogging on the legal and ethical issues of the Terri Schiavo controversy. If you don’t read Lean Left, you really should.)
* * *
Nonetheless, I have a few links and comments to make regarding the debates over Terri’s diagnosis.
The National Review published an article which strongly implied that no responsible doctor could diagnose a Persistent Vegetative State (PVS) without an MRI and a PET scan.
Is that true? It seems to me that one way of answering that would be to look at what peer-reviewed medical journals say about diagnosing PVS.
For example, the British Medical Journal (1999) published an article entitled “The permanent vegetative state: practical guidance on diagnosis and management” which discusses diagnosis in great detail, yet never claims that MRIs, PETs, or any advanced imaging are necessary.
And the Royal College of Physicians published an article in Clinical Medicine (2003), “The vegetative state: guidance on diagnosis and management” pdf link). According to this article, either a CT or a MRI “often helps to clarify the cause of these clinical syndromes,” but did not say they were necessary for making a diagnosis. (Of course, Terri Schiavo has had both CTs and an MRI). As for more advanced scans, such as PETs, they specifically said “their use is not required for diagnosis of the VS.”
Note that both these articles come from Britain, where virtually no one had heard of Terri Schiavo before last month; it is therefore unlikely that these writers are in any biased by the current controversy. And although all of them are experts on diagnosing PVS – much more so than anyone the National Review quotes (none of whom, as far as I know, have published peer-reviewed articles on PVS diagnosis) – what they write clearly contradicts the NR‘s claims.
More importantly, the constant claim that further testing is required to be able to diagnose Terri Schiavo is simply unsupported by the objective medical literature.
(I’ve written more about the NR article here. I have to thank “Alas” reader “Bob,” who pointed out the Clinical Medicine article.)
* * *
RangelMD, a doctor-blog, has a discussion of Terri’s condition. Referring to the image from Terri’s CT scan which has appeared on the web, Dr. Rangel writes:
To the medically trained person this scan appears grossly abnormal and sickening. The blue areas are remaining brain tissue but most of the scan shows black areas which are essentially fluid (cerebrospinal fluid). The normal body reaction to irreversibly damaged tissue is to replace it with fluid and this is clearly what has happened after Mrs. Schiavo suffered severe anoxic damage to her cerebral cortex . Most of what remains of her brain is essentially a fluid filled sac surrounded by a thin shell of brain tissue rather then the solid structure we normally associate with a brain. […]
While a CAT scan cannot detect brain function, further evaluation such as the use of a PET scan (Positron emission tomography) is not indicated. Advocates of further testing appear unaware of the paradox of calling for the evaluation of something (Mrs. Schiavo’s cerebral cortex) that is clearly not present on the CAT scan. A PET scan will not suddenly reveal a functional cerebral cortex in Mrs. Schiavo’s cranium as if it had been hiding behind her cerebellum all this time. Calling for a PET scan makes as much sense as calling for an X-ray of a leg that had been amputated. An MRI scan (magnetic resonance imaging) is not indicated either since the CAT scan is more than adequately sensitive enough to detect the presence or absence of a cerebral cortex.
Note that like the peer-reviewed articles, Dr. Rangel’s analysis undermines the premise of the National Review article, and of all those who have been saying that further testing is needed. The truth is, there is more than enough evidence; those who have not been convinced yet, will never be convinced by further testing. Terri Schiavo’s wishes have been ignored for well over a decade; to ignore them for even longer so that unneeded tests can be performed is not justified.
The Zoomquilt. If at all possible, I recommend using the flash version, not the html version. It may take a while to load if you have a slow connection.
A recent article in the New York Times bagged on current Broadway vocalists for being too “American Idol” and not distinctive and individualistic enough.
HE three women come from different times, different lands and different wardrobe departments. But since they are all denizens of that quaint provincial theme park called Broadway, the green-skinned witch (hometown: Oz), the pink-cheeked tomboy (hometown: 19th-century Concord, Mass.) and the ethnic rainbow of a waif (hometown: Paris, but now adrift in 21st-century Brooklyn) turn out to share the same voice.
Close your eyes and listen as their larynxes stretch and vibrate with the pain of being an underdog and the joy of being really loud. Bet you can’t tell them apart. For that matter, bet you can’t distinguish the heroines of the current Broadway musicals “Wicked,” “Little Women” and “Brooklyn” from the average female finalist on “American Idol.”
Ann Alhouse, who love AI and hates Broadway, thinks there’s nothing new here:
But crowd-pleasing has been part of shows and concerts for a long time. Why do they give Oscars for hammy emoting — crying and dying — and not for subtlety? Why do people at rock concerts cheer for show-offy guitar solos? Brantley’s article is titled “How Broadway Lost Its Voice to ‘American Idol'” — and I just don’t believe in the cause and effect. The human taste for big, loud, and spectacular goes back a long way.
I agree and disagree. The style of vocals favored on Broadway has definitely changed; in the forties and fifties, a generic Broadway song owed less of its stylings to pop – the vocal show-off numbers were smoother, slower, less full of needless soars and dips, all of it filed off to form a smooth, almost featureless vocal surface. It’s very impressive, and to my ear almost oppressively boring; I prefer the modern Broadway vocalist, crescendoing ever onward.
The Times critic, Ben Brantley, complains that nowadays there’s less individual flair. I’m not sure that’s true. Yes, Just what the generic style consists of has changed; but the fact that there is a generic style has not. It’s simply not possible for everyone to be Kristin Chenoweth; by definition, the majority of performers don’t have as much individual flair as the stand-outs. (Hey, I didn’t know Chenoweth did a recording of Candide – along with Patti Lupone. Damn. I’ve got to get that DVD.) Brantley is nostalgic for the days of Ethel Merman; well, she was fantastic, but you could hardly call her a typical example of what vocalists used to be like.
Matt at A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago, who like me loves Broadway but unlike me knows something about it, defends “Defying Gravity” from Wicked, one of the songs Brantley criticizes:
The third song he singles out to bash is the Act One finale of Wicked, “Defying Gravity.” First, it must be noted that in a lot of ways, “Defying Gravity” is a traditional Act I Finale. While the song is primarily sung by one of the show’s two leading ladies, a substantial part of it is a duet, and it closes with punctuation from the entire ensemble. Second, unlike “Astonishing,” “Defying Gravity” fits into the plot, both musically and character-wise. The lyrics relate to and advance the plot, and the music makes sense–the character singing the song has reached a breaking point in her life–a departure–and the music reinforces that–soaring into a belt at the end of the first Elphaba verse–as does the staging. Wicked does have songs that might rightly be proclaimed as nothing more than “Look At Me!” songs (most notably “Popular”), but this isn’t one of them.
Kip is listening to the same song, but he doesn’t succumb uncritically to the soaring vocals:
“Defying Gravity“? is a king-hell slice of Disney cheese, a competently played first-act closer that bulldozes its way through what ought to be the most delicately charged moment between Elphaba and Glinda, leaping past questionable rhymes and awkward scansion straight to those triumphantly lung-punching diva belts your bones will thrum to all through intermission, and the less said about the climax, the better. And it doesn’t matter; it doesn’t matter. I can see the auctorial intent blundering up to me like a sloppy puppy dog, like a kid behind the wheel for the very first time, and it doesn’t matter one bit: my buttons still get pushed. Just about all of them. Hard. “And if you care to find me,”? Idina Menzel whoops over the accelerating horns and synths and drums, “look to the western skies!”? and it’s all I can do not to hit replay over and over and over again like some endorphin-besotted rat.
I know just how Kip feels. During that “and if you care to fine me, look to the western skies!” bit I have to close my eyes and I almost shiver. The thing is, this sort of thing is only good if it works on you; if it doesn’t hit you somewhere in the solar plexus, it’s plain embarrassing.
Kip shows just how little there is to “Defying Gravity” (which I love) by mentioning it the same post as another song with a close-your-eyes-and-thrill-to-it moment, Stephen Sondheim’s god-like “Now/Soon/Later,” from A Little Night Music, just as shiver-inducing but about a hundred times more intelligent, character-based and real. I’m playing Wicked on heavy (heavy!) rotation right now, but there was a time when I played Kiss of the Spider Woman just as often, and now I play it less than once a year. Sondheim isn’t as easy, but it’ll last a lot longer.
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