Monday, October 31, 2005

I don't normally go in for Maureen Dowd (I couldn't if I wanted to, since the Times started requiring fees to read its op-ed pieces online), but her piece in Sunday's Times was really interesting.

I think most women can agree that there has been a sort of feminist crisis brewing: the twenty-somethings are by and large distancing themselves from (capital-F) Feminist imagery and ideology, and the fifty-something trailblazers are aghast. Many claim - and I think rightly so - that feminism is dead. (Whether it lives on in ways that are less superficial is another matter altogether, though.)

In her article, Dowd, at times, mistakes her own feelings of inadequacy for the failure of feminism, blaming not only men ("He predicted that I would never find a mate because if there's one thing men fear, it's a woman who uses her critical faculties.") but women too ("Many women now do not think of domestic life as a 'comfortable concentration camp,' as Betty Friedan wrote in The Feminine Mystique, where they are losing their identities and turning into 'anonymous biological robots in a docile mass.' Now they want to be Mrs. Anonymous Biological Robot in a Docile Mass"). Still, she makes some accurate observations about young women trying to recapture a false, imprisoning ideal of femininity and domesticity.

Here's an excerpt:

It was naïve and misguided for the early feminists to tendentiously demonize Barbie and Cosmo girl, to disdain such female proclivities as shopping, applying makeup and hunting for sexy shoes and cute boyfriends and to prognosticate a world where men and women dressed alike and worked alike in navy suits and were equal in every way.

But it is equally naïve and misguided for young women now to fritter away all their time shopping for boudoirish clothes and text-messaging about guys while they disdainfully ignore gender politics and the seismic shifts on the Supreme Court that will affect women's rights for a generation.

What I didn't like at the start of the feminist movement was that young women were dressing alike, looking alike and thinking alike. They were supposed to be liberated, but it just seemed like stifling conformity.

What I don't like now is that the young women rejecting the feminist movement are dressing alike, looking alike and thinking alike. The plumage is more colorful, the shapes are more curvy, the look is more plastic, the message is diametrically opposite - before it was don't be a sex object; now it's be a sex object - but the conformity is just as stifling.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

I keep forgetting to post about this. A physicist friend (and Ben's "competition," sort of...) told me about Cosmic Variance, a really interesting, readable physics blog. Although certainly written by and for professional physicists, it tries to focus on ways contemporary physics fits into the bigger picture. If you can read the New York Times science section, you can read this.

For me, the most successful posts are the amusing "reality check" posts (On Parents and Physicists / a cute encounter during a commute / and this funny one), as well as the ones that soul-search about the politics and meaning of scientific research (here and here. Granted, there is a lot of space given up to talk about pure, unadulterated partisan politics, but that's what the scroll bar is for.

It's been grey and cloudy here for about a week; it's been perfect for moody black-and-white photos. I took these in an alley downtown where I parked for a meeting (a half-block away from Oslo!), and in the industrial complex where I work. I parked right in front of the aging Jewish Synagogue; I would love to see that place lit up at night.

Strangely, the clouds have broken just before sunset each day, so the scenery during the commutes home has been particularly enjoyable. Hopefully, I'll be able to snap a few highway sunset photos before the time and the weather change.
















Wednesday, October 19, 2005

TROGDOR the BURNINATOR!!!!

Okay, sweet p. is right. I've been away and offline quite a bit. Now that I'm the only person who spends 8+ hours a day in the office, my responsibilities have increased somewhat, and there seems to be less and less down time at home. To make up for that a bit, here are some photos of our weekend in Detroit.

Although I'm here in the city every day, I don't often get a chance to explore and act like a resident. A handful of other shots are on my flickr site. One of the things both Ben and I agreed on was that so many of downtown's public amenities (Hart Plaza, the RenCen, Campus Martius) would be incredible places if they were located in a vibrant, pedestrian-oriented city -- a New York or a London. We were practically the only people out on the street on Saturday night and Sunday morning. Not surprisingly, Detroit is such an auto-centric community (bus services barely exist, no commuter trains run) that most parks and plazas are forgotten beside the multi-lane roads.





Monday, October 03, 2005



Stephen Wolfram, author of the software Mathematica, has just started a new service, WolframTones, which employs fractals to "randomly" create semi-structured midi ringtones. The image above is how WT represents the constituent sounds of the tone I "made." Generally, the results sound like Steve Reich or John Cage knockoffs. But for $2, that's good enough for my cell phone. Be sure to play with the 'piano,' 'signalling,' and 'experimental' music genres.