Geeky valentines.
My favorite is the Avogadro one.
(And the comments are hilarious too.)

Also, I still think that this is romantic, but I am a dork at heart.

(Thanks to C.G. for the link.)

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American Princess writes about why feminists don't stand up for women in the Middle East. Well said.

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My husband found this this morning, and we're just fascinated by it: The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough

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I missed a day of Lileks, and it was a good one. Recommended reading: Thursday's Bleat, in which Lileks channels Hate America Firsters.

Nations are bad enough, but weÂ’re something else: the only nation that has ever fought a war, acted in self-interest, had a good opinion of itself, permitted slavery, elected leaders who lacked a certain Olympian quality, had a popular culture that included simple catchy melodies and bright pictures, harbored racist attitudes, had a strong religious element, and contained a sizable amount of stupid people.

And scroll through the slogans. And be sad.
But enjoy #218. And laugh at #486.

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This Chicago Boyz article is really good but also really painful for me to read because I know I am "educated beyond [my] intelligence." But at least I know and can admit it, right?

Yeah, reading that post made me want to puke.

(Gee thanks, David...)

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Mrs. du Toit has a lengthy but good post covering a variety of ideas. One segment I particularly liked:

Take something like a Happy Meal at McDonaldÂ’s. While it might seem affordable to us today, even in todayÂ’s dollars, the idea that someone would spend $3.00 a meal for the kids, when the ingredients cost 50 cents, would have been considered a luxury item. What we have done as a society is put a value on our time, and a willingness to pay someone else to add the value of preparing it. The ingredients cost 50 cents, and if you add your free labor to prepare the same meal, thatÂ’s how much it will cost you (plus about 5 cents to cover the energy costs).

If, however, you do not want to spend the time to prepare the meal yourself, then you have to pay someone else to do it, and that is why we say “a couple can no longer live on one income.” They sure as hell can, IF they are willing to assign to the job description of a wife the same level of labor that was assigned 100 years ago.
...
My point is that what we define as “getting by” now includes luxury and non essential items. A welfare recipient once said, “I can’t afford a Happy Meal for my kid on the money I get.” Nor should she! She is not working, so she has plenty of time to prepare the meal and save the labor costs.

That last sentence killed me.

Posted by: Sarah at 11:22 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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1 I guess the only consideration that is left out of the second paragraph is the desire many women have to work, which, although it puts a premium on time, is pretty fulfilling.

Posted by: Nicole at January 30, 2008 04:45 PM (jyFmj)

2 I'm actually a little offended by the "if they are willing to assign the job description of a wife the same level of labor that was assigned 100 years ago." The most obvious reason, of course, is that I'm not willing to go back to being a second class citizen because I'm female. If a member of a household wants to take on household responsibilities in order to save money, I'm all for it. But it doesn't have to be a wife's assigned duty. I take pride in taking care of my family and finding ways to cut expenses--like cooking at home rather than eating out. That's my choice, not my job description. Secondly, the level of labor which a modern day wife/mother/household adult is no less than it was 100 years ago. The responsibilities have changed, and generally take less intensive physical labor, but we are just as busy as we were then, if not more. Technology creates as many new responsibilities as it alleviates, in my experience. Not only that, but our children have more activities, schools have more demands. Sometimes I would love to go back 100 years when there weren't phones ringing all day with people needing things, and without all the appliances that break or have to be cleaned or demand attention in one way or another. I completely disagree that today's household executives have less to do than their equals 100 years ago. Also, with the Happy Meal example, say the ingredients and energy costs equal $.55 and it takes you an hour to prepare it. My time is worth more than $2.50 per hour. I understand that the savings are cumulative, but time is certainly a factor when considering cost/benefit ratios. I don't buy my kids Happy Meals because they are gross, full of fat and salt and are otherwise nutritionally deficient. I do, however, agree that the last sentence is disgusting and represents an incredible problem in our society.

Posted by: Sis B at January 30, 2008 06:31 PM (qPf1j)

3 I'm not sure I read that the same way that you do, Sis B. What I was thinking about were the families where both parents work, so then they pay for daycare, a cleaning lady, a second car payment, meals in restaurants, etc, and use up all their disposable income and say that you "can't get by on one." It's just an opportunity cost; if you WANT to get by on one, you often can...but we've definitely redifined "getting by." At any rate, I mostly posted the excerpt for that last line, which I had never heard phrased that way and which made me guffaw.

Posted by: Sarah at January 31, 2008 02:54 AM (TWet1)

4 i was on board with the whole thing until the wife sentence, then i got all riled up. and guffaw is an awesome word, and totally applies to the reaction of that lady's comment.

Posted by: Sis B at January 31, 2008 03:26 AM (qPf1j)

5 Yeah, the wife comment bugs me too. But most families have a pretty equal division of labor. I don't think it was intended to offend/piss off anyone. That being said, I have been cooking since I was 9 years old. I had a single mom, it was one of my chores so to speak. I cannot tell you the number of people I know who simply don't know how to do it. It's a life skill, like balancing your check book and knowing how to fill out your taxes. And I am APPALLED at the sheer volume of people who simply don't know how to cook simple things. But I do agree that what we consider getting by today is much different than it was 20 years ago. People need to get a grip.

Posted by: Mare at January 31, 2008 04:18 AM (EI19G)

6 I emailed Sis B and commented that, if you know the du Toits, you would never say that Connie is subservient

Posted by: Sarah at January 31, 2008 04:49 AM (TWet1)

7 Dang it! I wrote a sparkling comment that was eaten alive. At any rate, as to the 'wife' comment, I took it to be gender neutral or as in the definition of what a wife did 100 years ago regardless of who would do the duties now. Plus, I often lament how I need "a wife" even though I am one! My husband does way more than many of my friends' husbands do, but even now, with my crazy school schedule, when push comes to shove & something out of the norm has to be done, it usually is seen as obvious that I as mother/wife will do it rather than father/husband. I guffawed too & immediately thought of the Eddie Murphy stand up (Raw?) in which he talked about his mother telling him she could make him a hamburger 'better than McDonald's.' a RIOT.

Posted by: Guard Wife at January 31, 2008 06:14 AM (20Lnu)

8 Sarah, I loved this part of the post. You and I have spoken before at the cost of being a SAHM. It can be done. If people want it bad enough. I have women tell me all of the time, that they want to do it, but cannot afford to. I would beg to differ. You can do it, you will just live differently than most of your peers. We do not have a McMansion, we cannot go out to eat, I cannot buy books (thank GOd for the library), I do not go to Starbucks, or have a cleaning lady, etc, I get my hair done when we can afford it, I rarely get my nails etc done those are luxuries to us. $3.oo is a lot for a Happy Meal in our home. We rarely go out to a movie. If we do, it is usually the dollar movies on 50cent Monday. I ration my gas, and do errands accordingly. You learn to live differently. I have been a SAHM for 6 years, and although I am looking at getting back into the workforce soon, I do not regret spending that 6 years with my children. My Husband reminds me frequently that I can always go out and make $$, but I will never get that time back with my children. And as I am packing I keep looking through the baby books, and wondering where that time went, it goes so fast. I am glad I have been blessed to SAH.

Posted by: awtm at January 31, 2008 08:36 AM (x5J2q)

9 I guess, from my perspective, I was assuming that many working moms still many of those chores themselves...so in addition to working, they still clean their own homes, cook many meals, and take care of other household chores. The childcare expense is definitely a big one (from what I've heard) and it's true that gas and transportation costs are getting bigger and bigger all of the time. When I hear people (especially dual income families) say that can't live on what they make, I assume they aren't doing a good job of managing the money they have. Maybe that's presumptious.

Posted by: Nicole at January 31, 2008 09:09 AM (jyFmj)

10 I worked until kid #4 was born, and quite frankly we had more money after I stopped working than we did while I WAS working. The reason for that was exactly what Sarah listed above - we didn't eat out very often anymore, I didn't have to pay childcare anymore (except for the oldest, my kids came close together), the gas, the car payments -- and more -- it all added up. Not to mention the fact that I was mentally stressed beyond belief trying to balance the two, work and home, even though my husband has always been wonderful about helping out. Once I stopped working, I was no longer too tired to cook. I was no longer using my credit card to put gas in my car. And so on. So, in our case with a somewhat large family, it saved us money for me to stay home.

Posted by: airforcewife at January 31, 2008 02:09 PM (mIbWn)

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This is really rich. Mahatma Gandhi's grandson says that Jews just need to get over the Holocaust:

It is a very good example of a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends. The holocaust was the result of the warped mind of an individual who was able to influence his followers into doing something dreadful. But, it seems to me the Jews today not only want the Germans to feel guilty but the whole world must regret what happened to the Jews. The world did feel sorry for the episode but when an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on the regret turns into anger.

You know who else is one individual that the whole world regrets what happened to? And who gets "overplayed"? Gandhi.

What an a-hole.

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Definitely go read this article today, Great (American) Expectations. Excerpt:

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is chided for not moving legislation quickly enough through Parliament. But the very essence of a real parliament, as opposed to a rubber stamp, is gridlock. Have Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, with nothing worse to overcome than their Republican opposition, done better in their first year in the majority than Mr. Maliki, who must run a government besieged by al Qaeda and Iranian-backed militias?

From The Wall Street Journal's offices in New York City, one can look down at Ground Zero, still mostly a huge pit after more than six years during which its reconstruction, now in its umpteenth design iteration, was supposed to have been the signal proof that Americans would rebuild--better, taller, prouder.

Also across the way is the hulk of the old Deutsche Bank building, critically damaged on 9/11 and slated for destruction. In an attempt to ensure that not even trace levels of asbestos and other unpalatable elements would escape the wreck, a meticulous plan was devised to dismantle the building floor by floor, at a price exceeding that of its construction. In August a fire broke out, and two firefighters died after getting lost in the maze of internal scaffolding erected to keep the asbestos in. Those brave men lost their lives for the sake of an EPA standard, and there's been no work to speak of on the building since. It's a case of the perfect becoming the enemy--the mortal enemy--of the good.

And the rest is just as good.

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A neat blog post. Teaser quote: "I love It's a Wonderful Life because it's the greatest financial services movie ever made."

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I'm a few days late in noticing this very touching post, ironically entitled Why I Hate Christmas.
Stupid pregnancy hormones, good for nothing anymore except making me weepy.

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AWTM, this link's for you. It has a teh in it! I'm still giggling.
You Might Be a Fredhead If...

I had a friend in high school (Hi, T!) who used to make a hilarious distinction between "money" and "real money": Money was what his mom gave him; real money was the stuff he had to go out and earn.

I would pay Real Money to see Fred Thompson beat up teh bin Laden.

And how bad do I want one of these shirts?

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Mark Steyn:

At the recent climate jamboree in Bali, the Rev. Al Gore told the assembled faithful: "My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here." Really? The American Thinker's Web site ran the numbers. In the seven years between the signing of Kyoto in 1997 and 2004, here's what happened:

•Emissions worldwide increased 18.0 percent;

•Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1 percent;

•Emissions from nonsigners increased 10.0 percent; and

•Emissions from the United States increased 6.6 percent.

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Peggy Noonan:

I wonder if our old friend Ronald Reagan could rise in this party, this environment. Not a regular churchgoer, said he experienced God riding his horse at the ranch, divorced, relaxed about the faiths of his friends and aides, or about its absence. He was a believing Christian, but he spent his adulthood in relativist Hollywood, and had a father who belonged to what some saw, and even see, as the Catholic cult. I'm just not sure he'd be pure enough to make it in this party. I'm not sure he'd be considered good enough.

Ain't that sad.

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This tongue-lashing (via AWTM) is long and angry and personal. It's also entirely worth reading.

Mass Murder and the Metrosexual reaction to the Westroads Mall massacre

The part that got to me was this:

I'll tell you what you will want because I have heard it over and over from people that have been lucky enough to live through violence. You will want a gun. You will cry for a gun. You will pray for a gun. You would offer up your soul for a gun to save your wife/husband and kids.

You'll be running like a scared little sheep trying to herd your family out of danger all the while praying "Oh how I wished I had a gun, oh please let us be spared, oh I feel so helpless, how I wish I could do something to save my wife/husband and kids, please someone with a gun stop this madness."

But then it wouldn't do you any good would it? Because of your irrational fear of an inanimate object you wouldn't have practiced the skills to function with it and you'd probably end up dead anyway. That is what his is really all about isn't it. You lack the gumption to do what is necessary to protect yourself and your family so you harbor an unhealthy jealousy for those that do.

I could use another trip to the range.

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Well, if we're not going to see the Freedom Watch ads on the networks, then we need to go over to Powerline and watch them. They're touching.

And at least this way I'll see them; we fast-forward through commercials anyway in this household.

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My husband is about to start his last semester of his MBA program. Yay for him! He has busted his tail to work full time and make it through an entire MBA, and I'm so proud of him for his perseverance.

When he started the program, we were still living in Germany. He had to look far and wide for an online degree program from a respectable school that didn't require him to fly across the Atlantic once a semester. It took a lot of research before he found the right program, and I think he could've saved a lot of time if we had known about the website Military MBA. So when Military MBA contacted me about hosting an ad on my blog, I thought that was a program I could get behind.

If you're in my husband's boat, trying to find an MBA program that will fit with the hectic military lifestyle, give Military MBA a look.

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Thomas Sowell:

Among corporate CEOs, those who cash in stock options that they have accumulated over the years get a big spike in income the year that they cash them in. This lets critics quote inflated incomes of the top-paid CEOs for that year. Some of these incomes are almost as large as those of big-time entertainers -- who are never accused of "greed," by the way.

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-- I always find stuff like this, Shiver Me Timbers: 'Tree Man' Revealed, so sad. This man's life has been ruined, he's been mocked and has resorted to working in a freak show, all over something Americans doctors could fix with doses of Vitamin A. My heart always breaks when someone in another country suffers a horrible, debilitating illness that can be cured with simple medicine.

-- I have a really low tolerance for Mormon bashing. And this article, Enough Cliches About Faith: Mitt's Mormonism Matters, got under my skin today.

Those contradictory statements won't cut it. And they don't sidestep the plain fact that Mormonism, like the other faiths I mentioned, is not a Christian religion.
...
Mormons, it turns out, believe human souls have existed for all eternity, temporarily inhabit physical bodies and can eventually evolve into gods. They also believe the Garden of Eden was in Missouri and that tribes from Israel traveled to what is now America, built ancient cities and fought epic battles.

Needless to say, there's no physical evidence of the cities or the thousands killed in the ancient wars of the Mormon holy books, and DNA evidence rules out American Indians as descendants of ancient Israel.

DNA evidence also rules out Noah's Ark, and there's no archaeological evidence of the Exodus. So let's throw out the Old Testament while we're belittling religions. There go Judaism and Christianity. Oh well. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

-- And my #1 pet peeve of all: our military installations in Germany. Mark Steyn opines on the Defense Welfare Queens:

But hundreds of thousands of U.S. personnel should not be living permanently in Europe, for reasons I go into in America Alone. The problem is nicely encapsulated in a remark by Karl Peter Bruch, the then Interior Minister for Rhineland-Palatinate. When Rummy first mooted reducing the American presence and the Germans started lobbying Washington to change their minds, Herr Bruch said:

We realised that our installations are in grave danger. And then came the question, what can we do to make us more attractive?

"Our" installations? Who's this "our," kemosabe? These bases are built, maintained and staffed by the United States - and paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Yet Herr Bruch regards them as a permanent feature of the German landscape, like the Black Forest.

Amen, brother. I once asked a German co-worker what happens to the buildings and land when we close down an American installation, do we sell the buildings to the Germans or just leave? She indignantly replied that, of course the Germans don't buy anything; we Americans "stole" the land in the first place. And what was perhaps the only time in Sarah's life that she managed a zinger, I fired back with, "Um, you really don't want to get in a measuring contest of who stole more land in the 30s and 40s, do you?"

The Continentals are so insulated from reality they don't even value the U.S. presence in strategic terms. German politicians speak of U.S. military bases mainly as an economic issue — all those German supermarkets and German restaurants that depend on American custom.

And that sums it up. All you ever hear about is how all the poor restaurant owners will go out of business when American soldiers stop eating out every night of the damn week. Cry me a river. Bring all those soldiers back to the US to patronize American restaurant owners.

US out of Germany now! No more blood for schnitzel.

(All links via Conservative Grapevine)

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I keep sitting at the computer, waiting for inspiration to strike. It doesn't. But I can give you links.

Steyn's GOP looks like the party of diverse ideas
Reynolds' Loving Monsters

And here's a good RWN post called 2/3 of Americans Polled are Idiots. I swear, I don't want to compare life to that movie Idiocracy, but sometimes I just can't help it. Sometimes a silly movie about how morons outbreed smart people and turn the world to crap doesn't seem so far off.

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Quote of the day, by John Hawkins:

We will never go back to the America that the Founding Fathers envisioned. We're talking about people who were profoundly distrustful of the federal government and believed in keeping it extremely weak and starved of funds. They wouldn't support Social Security, Medicare, or even the income tax. The Founders made the nerdiest Big L Libertarian you'll ever run into today seem like Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in comparison.

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