Another landmark study has revealed great insights: depressed people eat more chocolate. Check out the peer-reviewed detail, especially the part that notes "Higher . . . depression scores were associated with greater chocolate consumption. Whether there is a causal connection, and if so in what direction, is a matter for future prospective study."
Ogden Nash was pretty dismissive of worrying about causal connections in his poem "Which the Chicken, Which the Egg:"
He drinks because she scolds, he think;
She thinks she scolds because he drinks;
And neither will admit what's true,
That he's a sot and she's a shrew.
(More fun and less insightful is his "The Perfect Husband:" "He tells you when you've got on/ too much lipstick/ And helps you with your girdle/ when your hips stick.")
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
We have met the enemy, and he is PowerPoint
Today's New York Times carries a cover story that would, to the casual reader, seem to indicate that our ongoing military travails in the Middle East have a lot to do with Powerpoint glut. Lots of big-wigs are quoted talking about how complex issues can't be reduced to bullet points, and one particular bullet is quoted -- "accelerate the introduction of new weapons" -- which is criticized for not saying who should do so.
PowerPoint is a convenient punching bag, easy to get laughs. 15-year-old in the house uses it for lots of 9th grade presentations, and it takes some serious reviews to make the presentations more than just a foil for large images. She tends toward unreadable type over very colorful photographs with really vivid, swoopy transitions and animation effects, and loses, in the process, what she is trying to communicate. She is, after all, 15 and not a graphic designer. She is also getting much better with coaching and feedback.
The PowerPoint Rangers that the Times goes to great length to paint in unflattering light are not, however, 15, nor are the military brass who command them. Making PowerPoint the fall guy for sloppy thinking is like blaming the typewriter for bad orders. PowerPoint is a tool, and like all tools, only does as well as the operator running it. It provides structure for communication, but not the content. And it's also not the only communication/structure tool available. Email is a bad tool for editing text; PowerPoint is a bad tool for conveying very detailed and naunced arguments. That said, if you can't provide a precis of your argument, then you haven't really mastered what your argument is -- and PowerPoint provides the structure to help you do that, but it won't do the thinking for you.
You don't blame Excel for spreadsheets that tote up how much Goldman Sachs made in the mortgage mess; don't blame PowerPoint for lazy thinking and an overreliance on swoopy transitions and animation effects that distract the viewer from the underlying facts (or lack thereof).
PowerPoint is a convenient punching bag, easy to get laughs. 15-year-old in the house uses it for lots of 9th grade presentations, and it takes some serious reviews to make the presentations more than just a foil for large images. She tends toward unreadable type over very colorful photographs with really vivid, swoopy transitions and animation effects, and loses, in the process, what she is trying to communicate. She is, after all, 15 and not a graphic designer. She is also getting much better with coaching and feedback.
The PowerPoint Rangers that the Times goes to great length to paint in unflattering light are not, however, 15, nor are the military brass who command them. Making PowerPoint the fall guy for sloppy thinking is like blaming the typewriter for bad orders. PowerPoint is a tool, and like all tools, only does as well as the operator running it. It provides structure for communication, but not the content. And it's also not the only communication/structure tool available. Email is a bad tool for editing text; PowerPoint is a bad tool for conveying very detailed and naunced arguments. That said, if you can't provide a precis of your argument, then you haven't really mastered what your argument is -- and PowerPoint provides the structure to help you do that, but it won't do the thinking for you.
You don't blame Excel for spreadsheets that tote up how much Goldman Sachs made in the mortgage mess; don't blame PowerPoint for lazy thinking and an overreliance on swoopy transitions and animation effects that distract the viewer from the underlying facts (or lack thereof).
Monday, April 26, 2010
Four Unhealthy Behaviors Linked to Premature Death
Well, another landmark medical study offers us a breakthrough: being unhealthy can make you die. I don't know how much this study cost. I wonder if it was as expensive as the one that told us that college students are prone to binge drinking? Or that migraines in women are linked to their menstrual cycles?
Seriously, who approved the grants that supported some pathetic graduate students diligently tabulating the data on how many packages of Doritos were consumed, how many episodes of Cops! were watched? Did they do cross-tabs on the relative merits of sitcoms versus Lucky Strikes or Marlboro Lights? (Are they still allowed to call them "lights?" I think I read that they can't do that anymore, because then people might think that cigarettes are good for them.)
Puts in mind of a line from a Pink guilty fav: "just keep your drink and give me the money."
Seriously, who approved the grants that supported some pathetic graduate students diligently tabulating the data on how many packages of Doritos were consumed, how many episodes of Cops! were watched? Did they do cross-tabs on the relative merits of sitcoms versus Lucky Strikes or Marlboro Lights? (Are they still allowed to call them "lights?" I think I read that they can't do that anymore, because then people might think that cigarettes are good for them.)
Puts in mind of a line from a Pink guilty fav: "just keep your drink and give me the money."
Monday, April 19, 2010
clogs redux
When I went to visit Bryn Mawr College in the fall of 1979, I remember vividly what I wore. To visit the school that gave us Katharine Hepburn (and, I hoped, to impress the interviewer with my appropriateness), I pulled out all the stops: red Dean's shetland sweater with my monogram, white Skyr cotton turtleneck printed with tiny red hearts, navy wool skirt, and -- my favorite part -- my navy suede clogs. I loved the clogs because they made me taller and made me feel powerful. Maybe they felt like weapons on my feet, a sort of preppier play on Bond style. And I also loved them enough to have bought them with my own money from the tony shoe store in downtown Princeton, New Jersey. I think I paid almost $50 for them. Yikes.
Today I saw Chanel's spring 2010 clogs on eBay for $1500. Affixed to the gray suede is a camelia flower, so I guess they have something over my 1979 favorites -- what I don't know is if an aspiring 7-sister would wear them for an entrance interview these days. But I saw a different listing somewhere that Tretorns are coming back, too. Whale pants are just around the corner.
Today I saw Chanel's spring 2010 clogs on eBay for $1500. Affixed to the gray suede is a camelia flower, so I guess they have something over my 1979 favorites -- what I don't know is if an aspiring 7-sister would wear them for an entrance interview these days. But I saw a different listing somewhere that Tretorns are coming back, too. Whale pants are just around the corner.
Friday, April 16, 2010
becoming our parents
It was bad enough the day I realized I had become "that old lady." I was maybe 32, and we were off skiing in the Poconos, and some ditzy teenager was skiing completely over her head on a mogul field, falling, slipping, sliding, laughing . . . . being a danger to herself and to others and having an obliviously fine time doing it. She took a particularly nasty fall, and I skied over to her, reached out my pole to help her up, and asked her if she was okay. She replied, "yes," which I took as license to tell her to take her skis off and walk the rest of the way down and not come back to this run until she could ski it. That moment -- I became the "old lady," the "anti-fun police." Just like the lady who had griped me out on MaryJane in Colorado more than a decade earlier.
Now, I'm not just the old lady, I am my mother and my father in equal measure. I talk about the weather, and about aches and pains. I note loudly that I am apparently the only one who can close a closet door. I mail gifts late. I gripe about politicians. I sometimes develop a Tourettes-style language cycle when driving (it's the other drivers who cause this, natch). And the thing is -- I hardly notice it. I think that's the genius of aging, it happens slowly and in such a way that you don't panic as you morph into your parents.
Now, I'm not just the old lady, I am my mother and my father in equal measure. I talk about the weather, and about aches and pains. I note loudly that I am apparently the only one who can close a closet door. I mail gifts late. I gripe about politicians. I sometimes develop a Tourettes-style language cycle when driving (it's the other drivers who cause this, natch). And the thing is -- I hardly notice it. I think that's the genius of aging, it happens slowly and in such a way that you don't panic as you morph into your parents.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
...this just spotted
On the wonder that is MSN's Wonderwall, under the "just breaking" ersatz news section. Join me in playing "one of these things is not like the other:"
- Nas says his focus in now on his music and kids
- Juke Joint Festival spotlights Miss. blues history
- Mark Twain's final years
- Demi Lovato Posts Pic in Hospital Gown, IV in arm
- 'South Park' creators plan B'way musical for 2011
The bigger dance and reconciliation with feminist leanings
That's a long title for a short blog post. The Bigger Dance is the annual, more than a little bit sleazy, post-NCAA competition sponsored by local sports radio station KJR. Instead of pitting teams of collegiate basketball players against each other where the competition is decided by the games themselves, they pit female celebrities, celebutantes, swimsuit models, athletes, and actresses against each other where the competition is decided by people phoning in.
Let's talk about the people that phone in to talk shows. First, they don't tend to exhibit overwhelming balance in their lives. They like to either complain bitterly ("Mariners have never invested in pitching, I don't care what they say"), show off their amazing knowlege ("actually, if you look at the statistics, you'll see that the Gophers' 4th quarter shooting percentage from the field tends to go up when they are in a a come-from-behind situation, even as their free throws percentage drops"), or spout just plain nonsense. I've never understood how talk show radio hosts survive the inanity and idiocy of the callers. The only thing worse than radio show callers are the people who "talk back" to online articles and blog postings, where they have more perceived anonymity and less occasion to be heard by a boss or loved one as they rant. My own experience on that front still pains me. ("General Manager of Head Lice," whatever.)
So the Bigger Dance -- is it objectifying women? You bet. Are the callers, as they vote, representative of some of the baser qualities that exist in humans? Yes. Is anything I say or do going to make it go away? I mean, I could set up a protest, or get one of my techier friends to launch a DNS on their site to frustrate users trying to post their brackets, or activate the Wellesley red phone to get some sort of action going -- but Sports Illustrated isn't going to stop doing the swimsuit edition because it gets pulled from (most) every high school library upon impact, nor is being an irritant going to stop guys from discussing who is hot and who is not.
Instead, I look on the Bigger Dance as an opportunity to learn more about men. I've tried to "channel" man-think and submitted my own bracket. A lot of channeling man-think is trying to focus more on boobs, blondeness, and relative sluttiness than on what I would normally consider in looking at women, like age-appropriateness of ensembles and the cankle index. (That men don't see or don't care about Jessica Alba's cankles is one of my biggest frustrations in life--she has a pretty strong history in the Bigger Dance.) Plus -- actually winning the Bigger Dance gets you real prizes. It's like my own little sociological experiment with the opportunity to go to Australia and watch surfing for free.
Let's talk about the people that phone in to talk shows. First, they don't tend to exhibit overwhelming balance in their lives. They like to either complain bitterly ("Mariners have never invested in pitching, I don't care what they say"), show off their amazing knowlege ("actually, if you look at the statistics, you'll see that the Gophers' 4th quarter shooting percentage from the field tends to go up when they are in a a come-from-behind situation, even as their free throws percentage drops"), or spout just plain nonsense. I've never understood how talk show radio hosts survive the inanity and idiocy of the callers. The only thing worse than radio show callers are the people who "talk back" to online articles and blog postings, where they have more perceived anonymity and less occasion to be heard by a boss or loved one as they rant. My own experience on that front still pains me. ("General Manager of Head Lice," whatever.)
So the Bigger Dance -- is it objectifying women? You bet. Are the callers, as they vote, representative of some of the baser qualities that exist in humans? Yes. Is anything I say or do going to make it go away? I mean, I could set up a protest, or get one of my techier friends to launch a DNS on their site to frustrate users trying to post their brackets, or activate the Wellesley red phone to get some sort of action going -- but Sports Illustrated isn't going to stop doing the swimsuit edition because it gets pulled from (most) every high school library upon impact, nor is being an irritant going to stop guys from discussing who is hot and who is not.
Instead, I look on the Bigger Dance as an opportunity to learn more about men. I've tried to "channel" man-think and submitted my own bracket. A lot of channeling man-think is trying to focus more on boobs, blondeness, and relative sluttiness than on what I would normally consider in looking at women, like age-appropriateness of ensembles and the cankle index. (That men don't see or don't care about Jessica Alba's cankles is one of my biggest frustrations in life--she has a pretty strong history in the Bigger Dance.) Plus -- actually winning the Bigger Dance gets you real prizes. It's like my own little sociological experiment with the opportunity to go to Australia and watch surfing for free.
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