Friday, February 08, 2013

Weekend Reading: The Emotional Roller Coaster Edition

I've got a bunch of great links for you this week, but I have to admit, they are all over the emotional map.

I'll start with a thought-provoking and angering post from Women Under Siege about the differences in how Western press covers rape in India, versus, for instance, Ohio. I'm embarrassed to admit that I hadn't noticed this difference before I read the piece. It poses some very good questions.

This next post is about something I have not only noticed, but experienced: the double standards for women in leadership. The advice in the post isn't really very helpful (in my opinion), but I will share the article anyway, for the quotes from and about powerful women, particularly this one:

"For instance, in a recent interview with members of Hillary Clinton's press corps, a veteran reporter said: "The story is never what she says, as much as we want it to be. The story is always how she looked when she said it." Clinton says she doesn't fight it anymore; she focuses on getting the job done. "

I have to say, it would be awesome to have the chance to get honest, off the record advice from Hillary Clinton about how to deal with the patriarchy.

I know that I mostly keep the discussion about guns to my other location, but this article by Walter Kim, a gun owner, is just wonderful.  I think people on all sides of the current debate would benefit from reading it.

Speaking of wonderful articles that help you understand how someone else thinks, this post by Michael Simpson on living, and almost dying, with bipolar disorder, is one of the best descriptions of mental illness and its impact that I've ever read.

Brothers Michael and Jonathan Eisen both have really good posts about their father's suicide and how Aaron Swartz's recent suicide stirred up old memories.

Mommyshorts has a post (with a giveaway that is still open) about a sweet little girl with a terrible rare disease, and the fundraiser to fund a clinical trial. There's been a lot of discussion in the science part of my online world lately about the idea of crowdfunding science. This would be a good place to try that, I think. 

And now for the happier portion of this list:

Kate at One Tired Ema has a great post about parenting, and the lack of good indicators of success. I love Kate's writing about parenting, and this post shows why.

The WTF, Evolution tumblr showed up in my Twitter feed, I forget how, and I have wasted heaps of time on it already. So I thought I'd share.

Finally, this video about a 7th grader's science project is just all around awesome, particularly if you have a little girl who loves Hello Kitty:



(I found it on Boing Boing.)

2 comments:

  1. Not to rain on her parade, but it doesn't look like she used FAA-approved rope/string between her balloon and her payload.

    I've launched weather balloons into near-space (30-35 km) and
    the FAA is very testy (pun intended) about the max test strength of
    the string we use. If a plane runs through the string, the string
    must break easily and not pose a hazard to others.

    http://badmomgoodmom.blogspot.com/2011/08/launching-weather-balloon.html
    http://badmomgoodmom.blogspot.com/2005/11/hydrogen.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Interesting! If we ever need to do a similar science project, I'm calling you.

      Delete

Sorry for the CAPTCHA, folks. The spammers were stealing too much of my time.