subject: this recession kinda sucks right

to: hotpants's dad (an economic expert)
from: hotpants
date:Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 9:43 AM
subject: this recession kinda sucks right

...the coffee shop i'm working at is filled with only men between late 20s and early 40s. 6 mo ago it would have been mostly moms and their little ones at this hour. there is at least one employed cop. (1 out of 9) they could be "working from home" or this could be an anomaly, but given that at the clinic last night there were at least 3 men who came in who used to have insurance, but don't anymore b/c of being laid off, i'd guess that recession has something to do with this.

-hotpants

(hotpants inserted comment: i thought at 1st i wouldn't blog about this b/c it assumes a bit about the sexes and other things, but my dad talked to me into it...)

to: hotpants
from: hotpants's dad
date: Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 10:09 AM
subject: this recession kinda sucks right

... it would be very good for you to blog something that suggests males are people worthy of the sympathy of all. (hp inserted comment: hey i did just talk about the detroit workers, many of which are male.) Indeed, all you have to do is report what you reported to me. I try very hard to use concrete observation in my classrooms. And, you don't have to give a complete sociological analysis on the biases of your observations either.

I just did a mental calculation about plausible rates of recovery and the fastest rates of recovery would get us close to full employment in 2 1/2 years if recovery started now. Which it hasn't.


(hotpants' comment post-emails: crap that sucks! stay in school if you can!)

mmmmmmmm sodium chloride.....

In a recent article in the NYT (and you wonder where we get all of our nifty ideas) I was alerted to the fact that the mayor of NYC (you may know him as Michael Bloomberg) announced that NYC is going to try to pressure the food industry and restaurant chains to cut their use of salt in half over the next decade. While this may seem all in good fun and with health promotion in mind, what the article so astutely points out is that for decades now it has been hypothesized that salt is bad for your health, and yet there has been no definitive answer on this matter.

It even appears that while a reduction in salt intake may be good for some people, like those with high blood pressure, there has been no research indicating that in the general population a reduction in salt actually does anything good, and may in some cases actually be harmful(like in the cited study where heart patients that were randomized to a low sodium diet were more likely to be rehospitalized and die). As Michael Alderman, an expert in hypertension at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, put it, “We have no way of knowing the health effects of eating less salt, yet we’re supposed to forge ahead with this new policy that affects the whole population.”

So really dear, fantastic blog readers, when will all of this sensational idiocy end? Do we really need to outlaw transfats and make policies about the amount of salt in our food? Or should we consider, just for a second, promoting eating in moderation?

NYT Article

did GM really miss the boat that badly?

detroit is an easy target these days, but having finally seen "who killed the electric car?," i'd like to throw a few at that big bull's eye.

i enjoyed this movie. i mean who doesn't love hearing president bartlett (aka martin sheen, the narrator) talking sense again. i only had 2 complaints, 1. i thought the effort to be a little bit balanced was a little too lopsided. (in a direction that i agreed w/, but still...) i think it would have been better if they let their biases be known even more clearly. 2. i would have liked to hear more about the other electric cars' stories, not just the GM. buuut... they had a neat little package of a story for the GM EV and a cute redheaded spokesperson to tell some of it. so i can see why they chose it. readers, what did you think of the film?

ok, enough with the movie reviewing, hotpants! here's the nitty gritty that i got from the film, for those that don't know. the lovely golden state demanded that 10% of vehicles be zero emissions for car companies to be able to sell in their state (a board called CARB did this). yay! for them. electric cars were produced and a lot of people liked them (at least the GM EV). There were wait lists. However, they were not mass-produced for a variety of reasons, and some conspiracy theories (that i might believe...). then cali revoked the policy (at least in part) and the cars were destroyed. every one of the GM EV's was leased, so they recalled them and crushed them. arg!!!! now there are wait lists for hybrid toyatas instead.

i heard two things on the radio relevant to detroit today. one was that jay leno is giving a free concert to several thousand people who had been laid off there recently. the other was a commentator predicting that the prolonged recession will bring "smaller cars and fuller lives." well here's hoping that for laughs, smaller cars and fuller lives for the people in detroit that no longer have jobs thanks, in part, to their bosses' short-sightedness.

the film's website (it's really good and very informative)

GM's response to the movie

Is this really where the wild things are?

It recently came to my attention that one of my all time top ten favorite childhood books, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, is being made into a full length feature film. Not only is it being made into a feature film, but it is also going to be a live action feature film. While I totally love and adore both the director, Spike Jonze, and the screenplay adaptor, Dave Eggers, I have to say that I am a bit sad to see a book that is vividly visualized in my head and via the beautiful illustrations in the book itself being made into a full length live action film. First, because if I go and see the film, which most likely I will, I will now have the images that I have so carefully crafted in my head, replaced with images that are no longer mine but have been purposefully decided by someone else. Additionally, I will now potentially see the actors faces as the characters instead of how I imagined them.

Second, Where the Wild Things Are is a very succinct book with a very specific time frame allotted for the story. To make this short illustrated story into a feature film there will need to be some elaboration as to the background of the characters and the story itself. Is this really what we want? Do we really need to know any more about the characters then what Maurice Sendak decided was needed in the original story? Granted there is potential that this will be done with lots of care and skill, but there is a reason that Maurice Sendak chose to make the story as it is and why it is so successful. Should that really be messed with?

Finally, I have to say that generally I am just kinda sad about all of these great kids books being made into films as of late. I really feel that this takes away some of the creativity and joy from reading these books both as a child and and adult, and really if we are offering children the fancy new sparkly version where they don't actually have to pick up a book and can still get the story, then can we really complain that kids aren't reading as much these days?

IMDB for Where the Wild Things Are

iowa i love ya, iowa iowa i love ya

seven years ago i spent several hot summer weeks in iowa, measuring corn. i'm not kidding. my brother helped me out too and got a killer sunburn (and chunk of cash). i didn't have great thoughts about iowa then. i preferred to be seattle, despite iowa's beautiful rolling hills. at the time, i was naive enough to think of iowa as clearly too convervative for me to spend time in...

but, what what! this week they proved me wrong. yay!

nyt article about iowa's triumph

Organic Gardening at The White House

I am sure at this point many of you have seen the lovely pictures of the always beautiful Michelle Obama in the new organic garden at The White House. You may at this point be asking yourself, what the heck could hotstuff take issue with an organic garden that little kids get to tend to and some of the food will go to a homeless shelter. And I would say that is a fair question, but then I want you to ask yourself, what exactly are they trying to do with this organic garden? Are they trying to influence the way that people think about food and growing food? Are they jumping onto the idea that the world would be a better place if all of us had our own gardens and made our own food supply while not hurting the environment?

There has been a recent push it seems towards organic gardening as an ideal way to help out our environment, our waistbands, and potentially our wallets, but do any of you know how time consuming it is to take care of an organic garden? let alone deal with pests and fertilizing an organic garden? Is this actually a feasible reality for the majority of people in our country who are working overtime just to keep their electricity on? Is gardening, dare I say it, an option only for the elitist few with the money, time, and land to do it? And with that in mind, should our president really be presenting this as an ideal? Please, I am grappling with this question, and would love to hear what you, our wonderful readers, think about it!

NYT Article on the Garden

wtf! why did it take so long for this doc to get a nobel prize?

dr. victoria lazoff has been a tireless proponent of women's health and yet the sexist nobel prize committee has totally ignored her influential work. if she wasn't white, i'd say they were racist too.

article about the good doc and her award winning work