From Andrew Martin’s “New Dietary Advice From Government: Just Eat Less” as published in the January 31st, 2011 issue of the NYT:

The latest nutrition guidelines released Monday by the federal government reiterate much of the advice from previous years: eat less salt and saturated fats, eat more fruits and vegetables and whole grains.

But there is a startling difference. This time, the government suggests that Americans also just eat less.

More specifically, the guidelines urge Americans to drink water instead of sugary drinks like soda, and it suggests that they avoid fatty foods like pizza, desserts and cheese (albeit deep in the report).

What?! Clearly Obama is a communist; what else would explain the federal government’s encouragement of decreased consumption?  Everyone knows that decreased consumption results in a shriveled private sector which, net-net, results in a relatively larger government (in terms of share).  Harrumph!

Other possible communists include:

• “Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University and a critic of government nutrition guidance” (PhD UC Berkeley molec bio; MPH public health nutrition, also UCB)
• “Margo Wootan, the director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest” (BS nutrition Cornell; doctorate in nutrition from Harvard’s School of Public Health)

The article underscores that the federal government is also racist:

… all African-Americans, children, and adults with hypertension, diabetes and chronic kidney disease should cut their salt consumption to 1,500 milligrams a day; the recommendation for everyone else is 2,300 milligrams, which equates to a teaspoon.

///

Just kidding. Duh. Eat more vegetables!

Daniel Bell wins, WTF re: horses, and random post-snow voice mails

Daniel Bell Wins

Daniel Bell’s last hurrah was in his death. Why? He passed away on Tuesday, January 25th, 2011. However, Michael T. Kaufman, who wrote his obit for the NYT, died last year:

Michael T. Kaufman, a reporter at The New York Times, died in 2010. William McDonald contributed reporting.

I sort of love it. Imagine:

“Hey Kaufman! I hear you’ve already written my obituary? Well, we’ll see about that!”

I salute Mr. Bell for writing books that taught me about the Pony Express, mail-order catalogs, and the rise of consumer credit.

WTF re: horses

Lauren Slater writes in “The Centaur”, an excerpt from “The Sixty Thousand Dollar Dog: Adventures in Animal Land” as printed in the Winter 2011 issue of Creative Nonfiction:

After all, it seems everyone knows — whether or not they’ve ever cracked the cover of a relevant book — that a girl’s “obsession” with ponies is excellent practice for what will later become full-fledged sexual activity, preferably in the nuptial bed.

Huh? This sentence follows one that includes the phrase, “women’s real-life love of horses”.

Huh part two?

I ask my little sister about this.  “Did you ever have a thing for ponies when you were a kid?”

She nods somberly.  “Yes.  I used to draw horses all of the time.”

“What?!” I begin to feel a bit like F. Scott Fitzgerald.

“Mmm-hmm. And one year for Christmas, mom said, ‘Oh look! There’s a pony outside!’ And I was so excited. But when I opened the front door, it was a crystal pony in the snow.” She looks crestfallen all over again. I can’t help but think, ‘Seriously, kid? You really thought there was going to be a real live pony outside?’

Ah well; maybe that’s the difference between Smith and Yale.

But seriously: do all chicks dig ponies?! Am I missing something? Slater’s piece basically assumes this as a foundational truth.  Huh? Does my lack of horse fascination mean that I lack “penis envy or misplaced heterosexual eroticism”?

Random post-snow voice mails

Finally, I received this voice mail today at the office from an 866 number. Enjoy.

The top nine reasons to not become a middle school teacher?  You can’t mention any of the following plants and animals:

1. Gerbil
2. Burning bush
3. Dik-dik
4. Pussywillow
5. Great tit
6. Maleberry
7. Woodcock
8. Booby
9. Ass

From SAGE Magazine (I don’t know when … I tore the page out and it’s not dated, but it’s on page 32 (”LISTED - Conveniently Uncouth”) of whichever issue I got this from)

The tenth reason is that you can make more as a manager at McDonald’s:

From a post on the eLearners.com blog, “The Poor Salaries of Our Teachers: Jobs that Pay Better than Teaching“, by my very own sister Victoria!

There go my young middle-aged girl dreams of Vassar math teaching.

—

Maybe if we paid our teachers better, this page would read, “we made too many” …

Writes David Brooks in his January 17, 2011 NYT opinion “Amy Chua Is a Wimp“:

Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group — these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale.

Sounds like a guy who never took a class at Yale.  If you don’t think that, while huddled around those Harkness tables during discussion session, you’re not only dropping knowledge about your POV on why Ed Said is a suck, but also “managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms”, and “navigating the distinction between self and group”…

… maybe you should go home tonight and work on 2,000 math problems.

Thanks to Vlad and Jess for putting his opinion piece on my radar!

My friend Leah posted Laura M. Holson’s “You’re Young and Jewish: Discuss” (which appeared in the January 14, 2011 issue of The NYT) to Facebook a few hours ago.  From the article:

… a group called Reboot … since 2002 has conducted an annual conference for young, affluent Jews to discuss their ethnic and religious identity, in between spa treatments and walks among the ponderosa pines of the Wasatch Mountains.

I commented on her page something along the lines of the following, which I include here because I allocate a few of my brain cells towards feeling deeply conflicted about these matters, and welcome some alleviation from the suffering in the form of enlightened comments from all y’all.

I’m always jealous of stuff like annual conferences for minority groups to come together and discuss their identities. It reminds me that for me, there’s no place to call home. This is probably more perception than reality, but when was the last time you heard of a conference for educated half-Thai Americans?  Sure, I went to a hapa conference at UC Berkeley back in 2000, but do the half-Korean offspring of people who met in grad school have that much in common with the half-Thai progeny of people who met during a war?

Or maybe the notion that banding along any arbitrary dimension selection — sex, class, religion, ethnicity, et cetera — is a truly post-modern, post-place concept.  Do we need our hyphenated identities (so to speak, I know that I am reducing complex issues here so appreciate any suggestions re: how to think more intelligently about these matters) more now than before — where “now” is an era where our self-identity is disaggregated from our physical location (which is ever in flux; would foursquare have gotten a lot of traction in 1850?), where we are so alienated from our fellow man that we can pretend our fate is not interconnected with anyone who seems like they might be different from us — where different is defined along the same dimensions that we select for our self identity … ?

1. We move around a lot
2. We can no longer identify ourselves as Anittah from North Liberty
3. Because that has no currency
4. So we choose a dimension that does have currency
5. Which these days means sex, religion, ethnic origin, et cetera
6. And so we decide that we are Anittah a Buddhist Marketer
7. And that everyone who is not a Buddhist Marketer is an other
8. And so we attend conferences for all the Buddhist Marketers out there
9. Which means that we sit on our couch and blog all on our lonesome

The hairier issue, to me, the one with teeth, is: What does it say about our society that there is a need for a group like Reboot to begin with?

According to an article in The Sacramento Bee by Laurel Rosenhall, UC Davis just opened a food pantry to help students who can’t afford to eat.

The food pantry is operating under the guidance of the Department of WTF.

—

What kind of a world … ?

Calling all females with desks!

My padfolio needs a refill, so I just thumbed through an office supply catalog in search of some hot quad rule action.  I can’t find the index in this catalog, though, so while thumbing through the front section (”Exciting & Innovative Products”), imagine the reaction my sociocultural eyebrow had when I happened upon (drum roll) …

The Post-It Pop-Up Notes Purse Dispenser!

OMG!

Or, howzabout The Red Shoe Tape Dispenser!

Granted, the tape dispenser might also be beloved by gay men, especially if one adds some sprinkly-dinkly sparkle action on top (there’s no place like home-o!) (Relax).

I have yet to see either product in three dimensions, but the purse has five stars and the shoe has two stars on Amazon.com.  And apparently there are real live humans who do not find these products worthy of an eye-roll; from the customer reviews:

My wife saw this in a store and she fell in love, so I got it for her office.

This cute little purse can easily start a conversation around any office desk. While it is handy for holding post-it sticky notes, it is also a novelty that will perk up any desk. It should come in other shapes such as a baseball or a pencil. It makes a cute gift for any female with a desk

Oh, yes, a perky desk!  Just what my vaginally-endowed self has been looking for! Hooray!

This purse post it note dispenser has got tobe [sic] the cutest! I love it. I bought the red high heel shoe tape dispenser to go with it.

Oh, man.  Well, hey, whatever floats your boat, right?

Here’s what floats mine:

You can flush disorganized paper piles right down the drain!

But hey, what do I know.  I play sports, which de facto nullifies my girl card. ;)

—

Let’s say you were a novelty products brand that was looking for some buzz.  It might not be idiotic to launch a controversial product out there with the idea of getting people to mock you.  This mockery would sometimes drive folks to your home page, where they would then be cross-sold with all of your other items that are actually dripping with awesome.

Signed,

Satan’s Little Helper

I thought it was sort of great that “The James Franco Project“, an article by Sam Anderson in the July 25, 2010 issue of New York magazine, was accompanied by an illustration by Gluekit, a design duo that includes Kathleen Burns TD’99.

I also thought it was sort of great to learn that James Franco is a Yalie!

Of course, it turns out that one James Franco is a higher education whore: from the article, we learn that “he’s enrolled in four graduate programs at once.” !

• His parents met “as Stanford students”
• “he dropped out of UCLA”

At age 28, ten years after dropping out, Franco decided to go back to college. He enrolled in a couple of UCLA extension courses (literature, creative writing) and found them so magically satisfying — so safe and pure compared with the world of acting — that he threw himself back into his education with crazy abandon.

• “He graduated in two years with a degree in English and a GPA over 3.5.”

As soon as Franco finished at UCLA, he moved to New York and enrolled in four of them [graduate schools]: NYU for filmmaking, Columbia for fiction writing, Brooklyn College for fiction writing, and — just for good measure — a low-residency poetry program at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. This fall, at 32, before he’s even done with all of these, he’ll be starting at Yale, for a Ph.D. in English, and also at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Well, well, well.  Will Franco pull a Surowiecki and quit the Ph.D. pre-ABD? Or will we actually find his name someday in the alumni directory?

Time will tell.  As for the James Franco, Yalie, spotted already in the alumni directory?

D’oh!

Given:

“If you really like filling out forms, and like to read the fine print on the back of a form for any field that you’re not exactly sure how to fill out, then you probably have the disposition to deal with much of the mechanics of lawyering,” said a law professor who practiced for a decade before transitioning into academia.

From Jennifer Baker’s May 25, 2010 GradSchools.com article (”The Five Worst (and 5 Best) Reasons to Apply to Law School“) via yesterday’s “No Wonder You’re Not Employed?“

And:

In September, Mr. Loughner filled out paperwork to have his record expunged on a 2007 drug paraphernalia charge. Although he did not need to bother — he had completed a diversion program so the charge was never actually on his record — the incident stuck in the mind of Judge José Luis Castillo of Pima County Consolidated Justice Court.

It was unusual, for one thing, the judge said, that anyone knew how to go about filling out such forms.

From Serge F. Kovaleski, Marc Lacey and Timothy Williams’ January 11, 2011 NYT article “Loughner Grew More Paranoid in Last Year, Friend Says“

Just planting seeds.

Hmm, does this sound like the kind of guy you’d want as your lawyer?

“I’m not really good at keeping records.”

Michael Wallerstein, Thomas Jefferson School of Law grad, in David Segal’s January 8, 2011 NYT “Is Law School a Losing Game?”

Too bad disorganized Wallerstein didn’t read Jennifer Baker’s May 25, 2010 GradSchools.com article (”The Five Worst (and 5 Best) Reasons to Apply to Law School“) in which a then-2L Angel Falcon reports from the front lines:

There are large waves of law school graduates going out into the field who do not have jobs and have over $100,000 in debt. The salad days of Biglaw just scooping kids with JDs up and giving them $120,000 fresh out of school are gone and, in my opinion, will not come back. If you think ‘I’ll go to law school and get a good job and make money’ then you may be better served going to get an MBA.

And if you’re not really good at keeping records?  Red flag, buddy. From the same article:

“If you really like filling out forms, and like to read the fine print on the back of a form for any field that you’re not exactly sure how to fill out, then you probably have the disposition to deal with much of the mechanics of lawyering,” said a law professor who practiced for a decade before transitioning into academia. “Of course, it’s very important that you like solving problems, especially problems like helping people to navigate lots of intricate, complex forms.”

Of course, I personally love forms. Particularly when they’re lead gen forms and currently involved in an A/B test.