My Magnetic Personality

Discombobulated kitteh from I Can Has Cheezburger?
If I seem charmingly magnetic today, it’s because I got all the atoms spun around in my brain.
I didn’t come out of the MRI in as many pieces as this kitty. I did find it a tad discombobulating, compared to my experience with the breast MRI. Maybe that was [...]

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Dick Armey: North Dakota’s Worst Export

North Dakota grows a lot of durum wheat. You’ve surely eaten it in your noodles. North Dakota is first in the nation in exporting sunflower products. It also ships out sugar beets and other wholesome foodstuffs.
Years ago, however, we sent a rather toxic export south to Okalahoma. Having made a career as an economist, he [...]

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The World Sparkles and Spins to a Halt

Last time I posted a picture of this vine, it bore a clematis blossom.
Today we woke up to an ice storm that kept the kids home from school for the third day running. They’ll be home tomorrow, too; we’ve blown through all of our snow days, and then some.
The university closed due to weather for [...]

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Time Travel to the Island of Lost Toys

From the annals of classic 1970s ads, here’s a reminder of what’s gone lost in the world of play since my childhood.
I’m not arguing for a pink-and-blue-tinged nostalgia. I remember how clearly trucks were considered a boy toy. My little brother adored his Tonka trucks while I stuck to my stuffed animals. I was no [...]

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Sweet Schadenfreude: Adieu, Bill Kristol

Yesterday, in response to Amanda Marcotte’s post arguing that that New York Times should give Steven Pinker a column on language to distract him from bloviating on ev psych, I said:
Now that you’re found the perfect job for Pinker, can we launch a re-employment program for Bill Kristol, too?
And lo! Today comes word that [...]

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"Reborn" Female?

I foolishly clicked on the “don’t click …” link at this post by Auguste at Pandagon … and slid into a world of “reborn babies.” In case you want to live a little crazy, too, here’s where not to click.
If you’re more prudent than I, maybe it’s enough to know that reborn babies are ultrarealistic [...]

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What the Hooman Vets Told Me

Reluctant patient kitteh from I Can Has Cheezburger?
So Thursday night I got sprung from the hospital, once the ER doctor called my regular doctor and got him to promise to see me the next day. Feeling much like this LOLcat, I dragged myself to the hooman vet. He examined me pretty thoroughly. All my reflexes [...]

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A Slightly Scary Hospital Drama with a Happy Ending, So Far

Even though I adore the TV show House, it’s not only the medical facts that it often fudges. It’s mostly wrong about how people behave in hospitals, too, and what a good thing that is.
Just about every time I’ve set foot in a hospital, I’ve been amazed at the kindness I’ve witnessed. Nurses who bring [...]

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My Pro-Life Reflections on the 36th Anniversary of Roe

Today is Blog for Choice Day, marking the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The official topic is what action we’d most like to see the Obama Administration take on reproductive justice. My official response is brief because I think the first steps are pretty straightforward:

Repeal the Mexico City policy aka the Global Gag Rule.
Reverse [...]

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A Bear, A Tiger, and an Awesome Inauguration

I watched the inaugural festivities in the university’s grand (i.e., scandalously expensive) new student center, surrounded by dozens of friends and colleagues and happy strangers. (Oh, and my husband, too.) We shared high-fives when Biden supplanted Darth Cheney. We cheered when the clock struck noon and made Barack Hussein Obama our 44th president. And I [...]

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Queering Masculinity, ’70s Style

A few days ago, while I was having coffee with a colleague and friend of mine, we somehow got onto the subject of “Match Game.” I spent hundreds of hours watching that show during those long, lazy summers when I was in late grade school and junior high, circa 1975. The fact that everyone’s parents [...]

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The End of Our Long National Hairball

Hairball kitteh from I Can Has Cheezburger?Poor Grey Kitty suffered horribly from hairballs. (No, that’s not her in the pic above; she was much prettier, even while yakking.) She’d groom herself neurotically and then try to hack up a ball of hair the size of a small kitten. No sooner had she eliminated one hairball [...]

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Cornel West, Love, Justice … and Me

Well, okay. I didn’t actually even shake his hand, much less get to talk with him one-on-one. But I got to hear Cornel West speak at my university today, and I was both moved and impressed.
Impressed: because he’s got such an stirring delivery. If I tried to riff on the whole scale of emotion and [...]

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Ignorance Is Not Bliss: The Sad State of Sexual Medicine

Not long ago, I discussed the discomfort physicians too often feel while discussing sexual issues with their patients. This discomfort is rooted in broader anti-sex attitudes in America – and no, the ubiquity of sex in the media does not mean that America celebrates sex, only that we commodify it. The result is that patients [...]

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God O Thunder Falls to Earth

Lego version of Thor, the Norse God of Thunder; image by Flickr user Dunechaser, used under a Creative Commons license.
Yesterday, Columbus police arrested a guy who’d been an active member of an Internet discussion board for johns, where he reviewed prostitutes and issued advice on not getting busted. The Columbus Dispatch reports he posted under [...]

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The Depression Hits Home

Recession kitteh from I Can Has Cheezburger?
No, I didn’t lose my job. But my sister’s husband did. He just got laid off after a decade-plus as a sales rep for a major tool maker.
My sis and her husband will be okay financially. They’re in no danger of losing their home. My sister is still employed. [...]

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A Catty Comment on the Weather

So this is how people react to winter where I grew up (and yes, I’m from North Dakota, but the mindset is identical – so laconic that you’d think tempers had frozen solid):
[S]ome Minnesotans took it as just another winter day, even in the state’s extreme northwest corner where thermometers bottomed out at 38 degrees [...]

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From the Department of Too-Perfect Names …

… comes this:
Warner Chilcott Limited today [1-7-2009] announced that it has signed an agreement with Dong-A PharmTech Co. Ltd., based in Korea, to develop and market their orally-administered udenafil product, a phosphodiesterase type 5 (PDE5) inhibitor for the treatment of erectile dysfunction (ED) in the United States. Dong-A has successfully completed Phase 2 studies of [...]

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Saturday Silliness: Manamana

For about the past month, my kids have been utterly obsessed with the Muppet Show. They are turning into miniature YouTube addicts. (In contrast to the rest of us, who are full-blown addicts by now.) This is the clip that started it all – their gateway drug, you might say. I have to admit it [...]

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The Cushy Life of the Historian?

Photo of the Staatsbibliothek (State Library) in Berlin by Flickr user NathanBushDesigns, part of his very cool Staatsbibliothek set, used under a Creative Commons license. I spent many hours there, happily engrossed in the writings of dead German feminists and gynecologists.
Who knew I was so lucky? I have the seventh-best job in America! Okay, women’s [...]

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