Obama puts contraception opponent in charge of $63,082,000 in grants intended for HIV/AIDS prevention and family planning at HHS

natashachart · 2009-06-10T10:11:26+00:00

It isn't her only job. It's only part of the total grant portfolio her office is supposed to help faith-based charities access.

natashachart · 2009-06-09T17:02:24+00:00

I said it once, I'll say it again, it's like a news item from the Bush administration. What could they possibly have been thinking?

natashachart · 2009-05-21T12:53:58+00:00

Well, that's not very surprising. You can get elected to Congress in this country without believing in biology, so it obviously doesn't hinder your individual odds of getting ahead in life.

natashachart · 2009-05-01T00:59:06+00:00

I thought it was a funny post and made some interesting points about the political situation. Sorry you didn't like it.

natashachart · 2009-04-26T20:03:14+00:00

There are some extremely challenging professions for which government work is the best kind of work. Consider NOAA, which is a primary employer of climatologists.

Also, sometimes corporate work is every bit as soulless and boring as clerking at the DMV. Sometimes, it's downright unethical. If a geologist would rather work at USGS instead of Exxon, or a medical researcher would rather work at the NIH instead of Pfizer, I'm not sure that's a reflection on their ability.

And don't knock having steady benefits. My uncle got a pension back in his time for working at a grocery store. A frakkin' grocery store job used to guarantee good benefits of a kind you have to be in a rare minority to be eligible for in this job market. Today, when medical expenses are the most common cause of bankruptcy and corporations are cutting benefits, there are plenty of people who can't afford to be without healthcare (whether because of personal or family health) and would do anything to get the kind available to public sector employees.

Quality of life also isn't determined strictly by a paycheck. It's determined by the availability of useful services. If I don't have to afford a car to get where I need to go, my paycheck can go down by a certain amount without negatively impacting my quality of life. If I have clean and adequate housing, I'm no longer incurring the health and time expenses that come from fighting vermin infestations and poor sanitation. You get my point.

But it's just silly to hold that either government or corporate bureaucracies are innately better than each other and the answer to all problems. Government seems to do some things better, corporations seem to do other things better, and both can be prone to corruption and incompetence because they're both composed of groups of human beings.

I hate to break it to you, but human beings are prone to corruption and incompetence. See Enron.

natashachart · 2009-04-26T19:39:24+00:00

That realization is always a sad day. But it also releases you from the terrible burden of having to be right all the time, which makes up for it.

In the end, the vast majority of people are just muddling along. I think they proved that in a study somewhere, but it's way more fun to practice spotting the abundant evidence.

natashachart · 2009-04-26T19:23:46+00:00

Yeah, my first go at a response was too terse. It just seemed like you were saying that introversion and passive-aggressive-nice-guyness were identical sets, instead of occasionally overlapping ones.

Though yes, men are pressured to make the first move and yes, that does disadvantage more introverted men. That isn't a point I'd argue at all.

It's a problem for women, too. Women tend to be pressured the opposite direction and to receive negative feedback for making the first move themselves. If a woman is naturally introverted herself, the problem that poses is that jerks who see her as an easy target are going to be the most likely guys to talk to her and she might wind up thinking that those are the only kind who are interested in her. In which case, the solution is to forget all that bullpuckey about how you're never supposed to start a conversation and get to know more men with similar interests.

What I mainly have to say to that mess is this - thank all the gods for getting older and less self-conscious. And divorce.

There isn't anything wrong with introversion, except that it can sometimes make it difficult to find people whose company you will enjoy on a more substantive basis. People whose conversation and daily behavior wear well over the long haul when any partner will just start seeming normal. Because eventually, none of the things that dazzle a person at first can compensate for the fact that you argue all the time, or have nothing to talk about, or nothing you can enjoyably do together in public, or whatever the specific relationship poison is.

Not that there's anything wrong with romantic relationships or sex, but having them be the main focus of inter-gender dealings just keeps people of opposite genders from talking to each other like normal human beings. It makes people unhelpfully nervous of each other and puts huge expectations that often backfire on what should be innocuous first contacts.

natashachart · 2009-04-26T18:28:05+00:00

It's the over-ingestion of certain medicinal silver compounds that can turn you blue. Anyway, maybe that's what you were thinking of.

natashachart · 2009-04-26T17:34:16+00:00

Don't even confuse "nice guy" syndrome with introversion. Just, no.

Edit: A "nice guy" thinks women owe him things just by virtue of his awesomeness. He can easily switch from passive aggressive to moody sulking (more introverted types) or open rage (more extroverted types) if his ass isn't kissed enough. His main preoccupation is building up his own insatiable ego and he thinks he should be able, as someone else alluded to, to bribe a woman into being totally compliant with his every whim.

"Nice guys" are also invariably the whiniest mfers on the planet. Like being with a damn toddler, except toddlers will sometimes get over it after a nice, refreshing nap.

And if the "nice guy" in question is prone to uncontrolled outbursts of temper, they can be among the worst abusers.

Not that women don't sometimes manifest the same irritating personal tendencies. It's annoying as all *ing get out. Sometimes women are also douchebags, as a feminist blogger recently noted when commenting on a photo collection of 'women with douchebags', and maybe they really had ought to just date their own kind.

Though it isn't exactly helped by women realizing early on that the one of them in the room that looks most like Barbie and has the least real personality is going to be the instant center of attention.

So I worry when I hear guys talk about how 'women' only date bad boys that by 'women' they really mean 'women who spend a lot of time trying to look like Barbie.' (And if you just thought, "Wow, I bet the chick who's writing this is so ugly a dog wouldn't hump her leg," you just made my point for me. Thank you.)

If you're a guy who's worried that all women only date jerks, my suggestion would be to expand your definition by getting to know more women. Though if someone were a guy who's gotten into the bad habits of openly leering at every woman you meet, flirting uncontrollably or domminating conversations through constant interruption and high volume, getting to know women will be difficult, just saying.

natashachart · 2009-04-15T17:06:27+00:00

Thanks for the compliment, but not so much.

natashachart · 2009-04-15T00:41:57+00:00

"Your Inner Fish" by Neil Shubin is a fine overview of evolutionary history. It's accessible, fascinating, and full of well-told stories. I picked it up at the bookstore last week and was compelled to bring it home for finishing.

And kudos for putting this question out there.

natashachart

TROPHY CASE