Update
I had some nice long entry composed in my mind that disappeared the instant I sat down. Really:) Maybe if I just babble for a bit something meaningful will come out.
Everyone is in bed but me. Ah, the relaxation. How nice. I wish I had something that I wanted to do, other than update my LJ, that is:)
I just read Freakonomics by Stephen Levitt and Steven Dubner (or maybe it's the other way 'round. I'm too lazy to go look.) It was an interesting read. Very fast. Not much to it really. I'll just be lazy and point you to someone else's review of Freakonomics instead. Spadafora has a nice summary of the main points listed like this:
The main ideas of Freakonomics are, in the authors’ words:
* Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life.
* The conventional wisdom is often wrong.
* Dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle, causes.
* “Experts”-from criminologists to real-estate agents-use their informational advantage to serve their own agenda.
* Knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so.
I thought it was an interesting way to look at information. The analysis that really caught me by surprise is the idea that legalized abortion does more crime control than any other measure, although if you think about and look at other countries (like Romania where abortion was outlawed for 20 years), you can see there is definitely a correlation. I find it troubling then that there are rumbles of overturning Roe V Wade. There were a couple chapters at the end of the book about names which seemed sort of silly and frivolous and not as interesting as the rest of the book, but it was made interesting just because of the analysis, if that makes any sense. There are some very interesting human stories in the book that are presented in a sort of matter-of-fact way because the authors are doing rigorous analysis, not necessarily collecting compelling human stories. Go look up Stetson Kennedy, for one, if you've never heard of him.
In children's lit, I picked up Actual Size by someone whose name I forget and we read it today. It was terrific. Or I thought it was terrific. I think I might have biased DD1 to also think it was fabulous:) It's cool. It has things like the actual size of the eye of a giant squid and at the other end of the spectrum some small things like a shrew. It shows the hand of a gorilla (which my daughter put her hand up to and told me that the gorilla's hand was bigger:)) and then on the next page facing it is a lemur and you can see it's teeny hand. So cute.
In gossipy news, my little sister somehow arranged for her boyfriend to come down to see her. Now, this sounds all normal. Well, it's not. She just started dating him last week. She asked my parents if he could come; they said "fine". She got on the phone and the internet and told him which tickets to buy. Then she called work (Victoria's Secret, of all places) and told them she couldn't work because he was going to be in town. Her boss said, No way, we need you. We'll hire the boy for a week too. Hee. So, she got her boyfriend down for a week and he's even going to earn some money to help pay for the cost of his trip. So cute. Also pretty absurd if you ask me. Young love. There's nothing like it.
On the parenting front, I find myself frustrated constantly by a child who wants to always butt in and do whatever anyone is doing. This means she is constantly taking stuff away from her younger sister, booting me off the computer, or demanding to "be in front". The only time this works to my advantage is if I want her to go pee and then I announce that I have to pee she will run in front of me to get to the potty first. ARgh. Any ideas?
And in a last rush of productivity, I got my holiday cards out today. I am so proud of myself. I thought ahead and got New Year's cards this year and I'm sending them out on time instead of late for the first time in years! Hurray:)
Everyone is in bed but me. Ah, the relaxation. How nice. I wish I had something that I wanted to do, other than update my LJ, that is:)
I just read Freakonomics by Stephen Levitt and Steven Dubner (or maybe it's the other way 'round. I'm too lazy to go look.) It was an interesting read. Very fast. Not much to it really. I'll just be lazy and point you to someone else's review of Freakonomics instead. Spadafora has a nice summary of the main points listed like this:
The main ideas of Freakonomics are, in the authors’ words:
* Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life.
* The conventional wisdom is often wrong.
* Dramatic effects often have distant, even subtle, causes.
* “Experts”-from criminologists to real-estate agents-use their informational advantage to serve their own agenda.
* Knowing what to measure and how to measure it makes a complicated world much less so.
I thought it was an interesting way to look at information. The analysis that really caught me by surprise is the idea that legalized abortion does more crime control than any other measure, although if you think about and look at other countries (like Romania where abortion was outlawed for 20 years), you can see there is definitely a correlation. I find it troubling then that there are rumbles of overturning Roe V Wade. There were a couple chapters at the end of the book about names which seemed sort of silly and frivolous and not as interesting as the rest of the book, but it was made interesting just because of the analysis, if that makes any sense. There are some very interesting human stories in the book that are presented in a sort of matter-of-fact way because the authors are doing rigorous analysis, not necessarily collecting compelling human stories. Go look up Stetson Kennedy, for one, if you've never heard of him.
In children's lit, I picked up Actual Size by someone whose name I forget and we read it today. It was terrific. Or I thought it was terrific. I think I might have biased DD1 to also think it was fabulous:) It's cool. It has things like the actual size of the eye of a giant squid and at the other end of the spectrum some small things like a shrew. It shows the hand of a gorilla (which my daughter put her hand up to and told me that the gorilla's hand was bigger:)) and then on the next page facing it is a lemur and you can see it's teeny hand. So cute.
In gossipy news, my little sister somehow arranged for her boyfriend to come down to see her. Now, this sounds all normal. Well, it's not. She just started dating him last week. She asked my parents if he could come; they said "fine". She got on the phone and the internet and told him which tickets to buy. Then she called work (Victoria's Secret, of all places) and told them she couldn't work because he was going to be in town. Her boss said, No way, we need you. We'll hire the boy for a week too. Hee. So, she got her boyfriend down for a week and he's even going to earn some money to help pay for the cost of his trip. So cute. Also pretty absurd if you ask me. Young love. There's nothing like it.
On the parenting front, I find myself frustrated constantly by a child who wants to always butt in and do whatever anyone is doing. This means she is constantly taking stuff away from her younger sister, booting me off the computer, or demanding to "be in front". The only time this works to my advantage is if I want her to go pee and then I announce that I have to pee she will run in front of me to get to the potty first. ARgh. Any ideas?
And in a last rush of productivity, I got my holiday cards out today. I am so proud of myself. I thought ahead and got New Year's cards this year and I'm sending them out on time instead of late for the first time in years! Hurray:)