A house divided...

Dinner together: seafood stirfry.  We play two hands of Uno with the kids, then get them settled in their beds.

Now, he's curled up in our bed, watching "American Idol".

I'm at the other end of the house in the den, watching "Juilliard" on PBS.

I guess you could say it's a mixed marriage.

9:36:57 PM    comment []

RantsCounterRants:  Martha, Martha, Martha…

Since Martha Stewart did an interview recently, there’s been more buzz about her.  Most of it not too flattering – note my esteemed colleague The Raven posting on her, not once but twice this week.

Why?  Martha doesn’t get it.

Frankly, I don’t either, on the face of it.  Scratch a little deeper and yeah, I get it.

I’m not cut from very different cloth; I’ve run into some of the same stuff that’s stymied Martha.  I can relate.  Just wish I’d also as much business sense as Martha, managing to turn her skills as a household maven and caterer into a multi-million dollar omnimedia company. 

Here’s why people love to bash her, in my opinion:

Americans don’t like women to be direct.  We’re not supposed to come out straightaway and have an opinion; we’re supposed to vacillate and hem and haw about everything.  It’s just not a feminine attribute to cut to the chase.  Being able to get to the point and say “That’s a good thing” and by corollary, “That’s NOT” gets straightforward women in trouble all the time.  You have no idea how many times I’ve heard that I’m “opinionated”, as if that’s a curse.  I am entitled to my opinion; don’t ask me if you don’t want to know, and don’t give yours if you aren’t willing to hear mine.  Martha’s got the same curse.

Women should be concentrating on men and kids.  Instead of seeing Martha as a very strong person who overcame a divorce, raised a child, started not one but a couple of businesses with more than a modicum of success, Americans are more likely to bash her for getting ahead and not concentrating on “traditional American values” (whatever the hell those are).  “She’s full of herself”, they say.  I hope the hell so.  Me too.

Men only in the “Bon Vivant” club – no women allowed.  Damn it if Martha doesn’t want to live large and well and right.  It’s just unseemly to American sensibilities.  Agh…I like fine crystal (Riedel and Spiegelau), I like it spot-free (hand wash, tepid water), and I like a very good red wine (Stag’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon, please) in the red wine goblets (NOT the white wine goblets!).  And don’t forget the linen napkins (ironed, I insist – I’ll iron them myself).  Does that make me anathema?  Especially if I’m willing to work hard to get those things for myself?  Of course I want the best out of life – just as you do.  So does Martha, thin silver chopsticks and all.

She’s just a damned Polish girl from New Jersey.  Ah, even in the United States we have a class system.  It’s okay if we get lucky, like winning the lotto when you’re down on your luck.  Otherwise you’re supposed to live out the life into which you were cast.  Martha’s just supposed to be some housewife in suburbia, married to someone at or slightly above her class.  Yeah, me too (to which I say, “Bite me”).

What a know-it-all.  Ah, yeah, those smart women are trouble.  Intelligent women are today’s “uppity n*ggers” – I wish I had a dime for every time somebody made fun of me because I have an extensive vocabulary, and another for each time somebody thought I had an “attitude” because I was smart.  Same for Martha; she’s not supposed to be smart enough to make heads or tails of a financial statement AND make a mean pot roast.    

What makes HER an expert?  If you don’t think she knows what she’s talking about, change the channel, find somebody else to coach you and shut the hell up.  There aren’t many people who’ve tackled the gamut of running a house and living well at the same time.  If she’s up to it and her content is sound, more power to her.  Look at Bob Vila – he’s been doing the same schtick for 20 years or so, and he’s not exactly the finest craftsman around (pardon the pun).  Find a house, fix a house, build a house; he does it on television, in books, on the internet, and he’s the spokesman for Sears’ tools.  Kind of a one-note guy making beaucoup d’argent, but nobody’s bitching about Bob.

Damn woman!  There is the heart of the matter.  She’s a woman.  She’s not allowed to prosper or reach a point of over-exposure without becoming a clown (like Anna Nicole).  On the other hand, she’s never supposed to be human; she’s a celebrity.  Happens in the corporate world; I’ve seen it.  As soon as a woman makes it to a new level in an organization, she’s scrutinized carefully, every little flaw magnified.  Had a man gained the same roll, it’d be business as usual, ho hum.  This kind of crap takes its toll on women – not only does the system grate on them on the way up, it makes it damned difficult to get to and stay at the top.

I’m not defending Martha if she’s done something wrong in regards to insider trading.  But if she has, don’t you think after a year of this crap they’d have produced some hard evidence?  (It’s kinda’ like Bush’s dearth of hard evidence on Iraq…)   I’ve posted on this before, my opinion hasn’t changed. 

As for Martha’s business: I’ve bought her Living magazine since 1991 – it’s one of my favorite reads, has been for more than a decade.  I still catch her shows on CBS, on HGTV and FoodTV.  I browse and shop her website.  She does it well, better than most others in similar market space.  Only problems I’ve ever had with anything produced by Martha were some of her recipes; they can be a bit variable, but I now allow for experimentation.  (The Strawberry Jam 101 was not as good as my regular jam.  But her Blueberry Buckle is to die for.)

So why is it everything she is and has done for her self and others is subject to vituperative ranting?  For the same reasons that people ranted on Hillary Clinton when Bill was President, or people questioned Carly Fiorina’s ability to run HP.  For the same reasons that any other smart, demanding woman gets bashed.

- - -

UPDATE – 01-FEB-03 –

 

There’s been more discussion on Martha Stewart and “Martha Bashing” here in the Salon blogosphere since the above was first posted.

 

I’ve posted above, after reading Global Suburb’s response this week.

 

Maxine Daley also has some invigorating words at her blog on this topic.

 

Feel free to add your two cents in Comments – it’s not going to cost you anything.

 

What the heck, live large and try out a Salon blog of your own; first month’s free.  Bash Martha all you want for a month in your own blog, what a deal!

 

  7:24:58 PM    comment []

Iraq UN Ambassador: Is one President contradicting another?

Live now on CNBC: Mohammad al Dhouri, Iraq's UN Ambassador says former President Bush said all Iraqi WMD were destroyed and asks whether current President Bush contradicts this statement...

Hmmm, interesting (if feeble) attempt at spin...

12:41:42 PM    comment []

RantsCounterRants: A response to Jan on genetic modification of food…

Jan Haugland shares some highly intelligent rebuttal in comments below.  I’m compelled to reply, but doing so won’t fit in comments.

Re: …mutation, are random with respect to fitness…  Mutations are random only within a limited amount of variation.  In respect to cultivated foods, we select variations that occur either naturally or with encouragement for success; we modify the selection coefficient through choice.  It’s not random.  We’re not waiting for nature with crops; we haven’t since we first chose a food for taste or color.  This method of genetic modification has and continues to produce satisfactory foods in abundant quantities. 

Re: mutations...highly destructive for other species... The degree and number of modifications being made, the transgenic migrations between animal-plant substantially changes the limitations of the mutations range (and scientists cannot yet conclusively document the range of limitations within a gene pool since they cannot fully document genetic history).  Due to this increased volatility, it’s possible to destructively impact not a single gene in a gene pool, but an entire species AND an ecosystem.  As you pointed out, viruses can transfer genetic material; add this to the already highly extended and volatile range of variations and mutations and we can no longer safely predict the impact on gene pool, species, ecosystem. 

I highly doubt (having worked for a biotech company) that testing for plant product viability also checks regularly for mutations by random exposure to viruses (which also mutate frequently); the cost to test for this is more the cost to pay out losses.  (This is a business decision, made by corporations – not a societal decision, because society has yielded this decision.)  If a product is being developed for a highly specific deliverable like “improved yields”, that’s often the limit of testing, in addition to short-term toxicity to humans and animals. 

Re: what you write about plants and animals is false.  Are you a plant or an animal? Most of us would say you’re clearly an animal - there's a high degree of differentiation between them, maintained for hundreds of millions of years, iterations beyond count.  The amount of DNA/RNA transferred to date between animals and plants has not been substantive for a reason (nor are there an abundance of organic objects that are both plant/animal).  What is that reason?  Science does not have a firm answer and until it can explain it, science should not tinker with combining them irresponsibly by working only toward highly narrow outcomes.  (It's like playing with increasing atomic energy output without fully understanding atoms and trying learn about them on the job…)

Re: …why we should trust a random process to be better at tinkering… The kinds of modifications I’m discussing are not on the same scale as our past and on-going use of selection.  Selection is not random; if we want a redder apple, we select those that are most red and cross them.  The attributes themselves from which we choose are hardly random.  We don’t look for a blue apple because it’s not within the normal range of genetic variations, within the apple’s limitations.  It’s also not within our range to select as humans; we don’t typically pick blue foods to eat (blue pudding and soda was only a fad, and not a highly successful one!), perhaps for reasons of conditioning and perhaps because it’s not within our own range of limitations to select them.  (Note that companies went ahead and dyed food blue with short-term results.  As a society, we’re still not asking fundamental questions about why humans don’t eat blue, and if it’s appropriate as a culture, as a genome that we embrace blue foods.  We just rolled over and played dead to corporate marketing.)

I have not said that I do not believe in studying genetics and their modification (although I don’t believe in “tinkering”).  I firmly believe that what is required is additional knowledge.  I do not believe the science is truly ready for full commercialization, based on the examples of Starlink and rape seed alone.  Instead of study in the private sector, more effort should be placed in the public sector through universities.  For the example of wild rice, the potential loss of a particular public-domain genome for the benefit of private parties is not acceptable.  Further, in the case of cereal grains, note that a clear majority of humanity subsists on only 5 different types (wheat, corn, rice, barley, sorghum); the loss of any one of these through irresponsible genetic handling (not just the modification, but its application through commercialization) could have serious implications.  The loss of any two could mean mass starvation of a scale unimagined.

Some try to legitimize food modifications for the purposes of solving hunger and dietary deficiencies.  It’s a poor argument -- there is plenty of food and already appropriate foods in existence.  Genetic engineering solely for the purposes of higher yields or added nutritional benefits maybe completely misguided and inefficient. The real problems of world hunger are education and distribution, both of which will not be solved if funding is spent on the wrong solutions.  India’s dietary deficiency of Vitamin A could be solved easily with investment in education and improved distribution of indigenous seeds.  Instead, private companies seek to solve this by engineering a rice plant which produces more Vitamin A.  The rice cannot be grown broadly since it requires paddies (lots of water and appropriate seasonal conditions); it must be shipped to where it is needed; it may be far more expensive than other available rice products both to growers as seed and to consumers as grain, and it may face strong resistance or never be adopted.  Most rural Indians can improve Vitamin A content in their diets by growing and eating indigenous plants, but they do not know about the plants and are often persuaded to eat cereals or other western products instead.  This is not a problem that will be solved best by genetic modification.  The risks simply outweigh the rewards.

As a society, we need to retrieve some of the responsibilities we’ve abdicated to business.  Look at Starlink as an example of business’ risk evaluation at work: Starlink may now have cost Aventis more than it was worth to create, but the original business analysis clearly did not prove that contamination was a compelling reason to terminate this product before commercialization.  Was this product ever worth it prior to commercialization to our society?

We and biotech companies must look at the ethics of genetic modification systemically, holistically.   This means the entirety of risks and benefits must be identified and evaluated prior to any commercialization.  We cannot afford not to.

10:03:46 AM    comment []

You Googled Me?:  Helen Thomas is one hot babe…

Well, at least as far as Googlers are concerned.  I had a mess of referrals yesterday looking for:

“Helen Thomas”, “worst president ever”, “George Bush”

together or in any combination. 

One of my recent blog posts cited Helen’s comments on Dubya from a recent speech, provided in an article at The Daily Breeze, written by John Bogert.  This must have attracted the Googlers.

You certainly must have hit a funny bone or a nerve, Helen!

9:45:35 AM    comment []