A picture is worth a thousand words, but I don't have near enough infographics on this blog! So here's my very special Election Day Post that aspires to be the pop-cultural, right brained amateur version of Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog. Well not quite exactly, but...
“How do I love (bankrupt) thee? Let me count the ways.”
This election year it’s hard not to take note of all the various ways in which the next generation is screwed. Younger cohorts will struggle with student loans, possibly endure continued high unemployment rates, foot most of the bill from the national deficit and suffer the effects of a national economy that has paid out more than it has taken in over a long time. The Z’ers, or Homelanders, see their grown up sisters and brothers test their wingspan only to return back to the safety of parental den when things go wrong. They are advised that an expensive college degree is the only means to a comfortable future, yet that there are no guarantees for anything anymore. One would think in a time when individuals feel the effects of a troubled economy family bonds grow stronger. And they do. Many parents gladly open up their homes to boomeranging grown children and quarterback them each time they test their employment muscles in the slow job market. But what the long-term financial security? If the younger generations are going to be held back for decades by the locked doors they meet now won’t family assets once again gain importance as a source of income? If neither a college degree nor a mortgage seems like a good investment you should at least be able to look forward to your fair share of the family estate. Right?
It is widely believed that the solution to many of the world's ills goes through the empowerment of women and especially female children. By allowing girls the resources and freedom to grow up healthy and educated we can reduce the world population, increase entrepreneurialism and...
My last post brought up the endless discussion if people's intelligence is mainly the product of nurture or nature. Now psychological scientist Christopher Chabris of Union College and David Laibson, a Harvard economist, have revealed that intelligence cannot be traced to a specific gene. Previous studies...
If you're a parent like me you regularly crash into sleep in one of your children's' beds after putting them to bed around dusk. Then you wake up a few hours later and drag your sleep drunk self into your own bed where the night trolls start spinning your head with worries that have built up earlier in the day. There are the bills you didn't pay, the email you sent your boss that just didn't come out the way it should, the pile of unfolded laundry that keeps growing.
And then there's THAT thought, the very reason why you collapsed under the feathery weight of a little chapter book about unicorns or whatever. The only part you remember from your reading session is that your child was struggling so hard keeping her eyes open and comprehending the little words that just seemed to float all over the page. So despite having forced yourself to fiercely focus on a fantasy-equestrian pastel colored world just so that you could quiz your daughter about the contents of the book, you both got more caught up into a mundane mess of pronunciation challenges and counting page numbers than deciphering any meaning at all. And just when you opened your mouth to give your daughter a tired lecture about how important improving her reading skills will be for the upcoming state mandated test, you remembered that your little girl has already spent 7 hours of the day in school cramming facts and another hour or so doing homework in between the hustle and bustle of activities after school. So you remind yourself that tomorrow is another day to visit libraries and bookstores, and another chance to pick kid-friendly books off the shelves that might - just might - captivate her interest and eventually enable her future academic success.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a speech by legendary, mother-of-all feminists Gloria Steinem at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center here in Austin. As a mother of three daughters I am anxious to learn if feminism is an ongoing movement that will continue to grow roots into the younger generations or if it is subjected to cyclical patterns where in which the expected roles of women ebb and flow with cultural and political currents. Strauss and Howe's in The Fourth Turning suggest that some cyclicality is at work and note fluctuations between eras dominated by traditional gender roles and other eras when women take on more androgynous fashions and social roles. Cyclical theories will typically emphasize these undulations in social trends, but there is clearly a progressive "upward" movement at least in modern age. During her speech Steinem counteracted the myth of declining feminism, but she also touched on the backlash and the "feminazi"-accusations from extreme anti-feminists like Rush Limbaugh.
I enjoyed the speech, but I must say I was hoping to hear more about her thoughts about the future.
