Fiat Lux
Steve M from “No More Mister Nice Blog” is shuttering his blog.
I’m bummed; his was one of the ones I really liked.
Althought I have strong feeling on the subject of Israel, I rarely blog about it. This is in part because I think it’s easy for me to have an opinion while sitting safely here in America, but the people who are actually living through it probably don’t appreciate the armchair quarterbacking. Also, because my position is hard to explain and tends to satisfy nobody. Some don’t like it that I have little good to say about the Palestinian leadership and the practices of Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, et al. Others believe whatever Israel does is right without qualification.
So all in all, I tend to let the subject be. There’s plenty of other things to blog about. However, today I ran across an entry in the Bull Moose Blog that I liked. It’s short and worth a read.
One of the many things I’m working on these days is summer internship applications. With that in mind, here’s something depressing about job opportunities for women:
Did Stan Shih Really Say that a Woman’s Place was in the Home?
Stan Shih is the CEO of Acer.
I don’t have any new cute cat pictures, so today I’ll share the random contents of my iTunes Party Shuffle:
Sunday ….. “Sunday in the Park with George”
Talking Back To The Night ….. Steve Winwood
Bomday Dreams ….. “Bombay Dreams” (London Cast)
Fallen (Radio Edit) ….. Sarah McLachlan
Big-Eyed Fish ….. Dave Matthews Band
Meet Virginia ….. Train
Live To Tell ….. Madonna
All This Time ….. Sting
Something Happened On The Way To Heaven ….. Phil Collins
Somewhere Down The Crazy River ….. Robbie Robertson
I really need to start listening to more newer artists but I don’t have the time or more important the money to start buying a lot of stuff in the hopes I’ll like some of it.
UPDATE: If you like cat blogging, Atrios has a particlarly nice shot of his gray cat this week.
One of the campus facilities dep’t trucks was decorated with this bumper sticker:
Why is MY oil under THEIR sand?
*sigh*. Some people are real idiots.
I’m tempted to make a minor stink about the sticker to the college administration but since I didn’t get the license plate of the truck I’ll let it slide. if I see the truck again, though, I’ll make a note of it.
There’s another flurry in the recurring cycle of “where are all the female political bloggers” going on this week, fed by a couple of posts at Kevin Drum’s site.
I don’t think there’s some sort of deliberate conspiracy on the part of Kevin Drum and his pals to keep female bloggers out of their blogrolls. But I do think there’s a particular blindness that left-leaning men enagage in. I believe they generally do care about womens’ issues and want to see women playing a more active and vocal role in the general discourse. But simultaneously, they don’t realize that their inaction is not helping that day come to pass.
Despite decades having passed since “the feminist revovlution”, this is still much more of a man’s world than it is an egalitarian one. Men in positions of authority, like the top bloggers, need to realize that they have to actually do something to help change the status quo.
I just posted a suggestion on Ezra Klein’s site to this end, and I’m going to repost it here:
How about creating a new mini-blogroll on your front page. Update it regularly. In it, you link to bloggers who ought to have better recognition but for whatever reason, don’t get it. And make a point of being diverse in your linking. To make the workload manageable, I’d suggest updates every 4 to 6 weeks and no more than 5 to 7 blogs listed in the blogroll.
Even better, try to get one or two of the other big-name Lefty bloggers to do the same thing.
I’m not the only person to make this suggestion. Several people said more or less the same thing in the comments to Kevin Drum’s post. Ultimately, actions speak louder than words. Maybe the guys will take some steps to show they do walk the walk when it comes to advancing women. Or maybe deep down they really are a bunch of sexist pigs. Let’s see what happens.