Women, Men, and Maureen Dowd

The subject of Ms. Dowd's columns almost a year ago about career-driven women came up again tonight. (We also discussed how her columns are generally pointless and a waste of space and wondered how she ever managed to swing her job.) Luckily, some digging with Google turns up still-working links to the articles, even though the Times search engine tries to get you to pay for them. (At some point, a site was also charging for access to an article of mine available for free on the Herald site. Weird.)

In any case, the first article was "The Baby Bust" and the second was "Y? DNA! Q.E.D.". There are plenty of careful dissections of these articles findable on Google, so I won't bother writing my own. I offer them only because they seem to be great conversation pieces.

Proximity without intimacy

I'm finishing Bare: On Women, Dancing, Sex, and Power by Elisabeth Eaves, which I actually started on the plane to San Diego this winter, where I was going to give the book as a present to Andrea. I saw it at the bookstore and it looked interesting. Is it cheesy to read someone's present? A little. But it was incredibly engrossing, and when I didn't get a chance to finish it, I tracked it down at the library.

At one point, it says

"Do you know what Dante's definition of hell is?" I asked Clarence from Cleveland. Being so near the airport, Extasy got a lot of business travelers. He wore shiny loafers and a pressed shirt.

"Proximity without intimacy," I said. Clarence nodded politely but vaguely. He was game to talk to me. Both of us chipper and friendly, we had gone over names, cities of origin, his job, the weather, that day's football game. He looked unsure of whether he should pick up my new conversation strain or change the subject entirely.

I knew almost nothing about Dante. I had read a reference to him in a novel that day, and it was floating around in my head. I wanted to kick myself as soon as I had said it. It was absurd. I was absurd, Clarence was absurd. This place was absurd, and the Divine Comedy was an absurd thing to bring up. I didn't want to appear well read because it made me feel like a talking monkey. I had been show-offy and self-indulgent, which suggested that I cared what Clarence thought, and I didn't want to start caring, or appearing to care, what any of them though. I wanted to give people only my facade.


So, I thought to myself, did Dante really say that? Literally? After a little web hunting (and then some), it looks like a lot of people have picked up this meme from the book Eaves is likely referring to: Melissa Bank's 1999 The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing, which made it into Oprah's book club and spawned various erroneous Dante citations. Some people only describe it as being from an unnamed book (ashamed of the title?) or add a disclaimer explaining they haven't read Dante themselves. Interestingly, the only use of the phrase clearly predating the book is a guide to BDSM.

All of that said, it's a pretty intriguing idea. But is the absence of both proximity and intimacy worse? I'd say probably yes. The terms are terribly vague, but if I think empty subway train versus subway train full of strangers, or empty library versus library full of strangers, the one with the people always wins. Or, metaphorically, if I think about knowing a subject superficially versus not knowing about it at all, the choice seems obvious. I suspect many people have latched on to this in the context of romance, but it probably isn't so true if one gives it more thought.

White Noise

I finished White Noise today, including some reading out in the park pretending it wasn't quite as cold as it is. Despite predispositions to the contrary (fun fact, we put this article online the summer I was at the Atlantic), I really did enjoy it. It's a pretty addictive style, although it helps that I enjoy implausibly-eloquent dialogue, which is probably why I also like Dawson's. Admittedly, some of the ideas are simple and there are occasional bits of blatant style-over-substance, but there are some fun little pithy passages. Several toward the end revolve around death and war, timely-ily enough. For example:

"Nostalgia is a product of dissatisfaction and rage. It's a settling of grievances between the present and the past. The more powerful the nostalgia, the closer you come to violence. War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country."

I(')M Away

So, the war may be dominating all the blog-watching sites, but the big news today is clearly the Times's recognition of our obsession with away messages. This made me think, maybe we need a purity test for IM.

Have you ever...

• ...procrastinated by...
  
  
  
  • ...reading away messages?
    
  • ...reading away messages about procrastinating?
    
  • ...writing away messages?
    
  • ...writing away messages about procrastinating?
    
  
  
• ...written more than 5 away messages in one day?
  
• ...written an away message about showering?
  
• ...written an away message to...
  
  
  
  • solicit pity?
    
  • confirm your popularity?
    
  • beg for help?
    
  • brag about your exciting life?
    
  • pretend to have an exciting life?
    
  • manipulate a MOS? (if you don't know what an MOS is, you need to stay in more)
    
  
  
• ...written an away message that...
  
  
  
  • ...quoted a real-life conversation?
    
  • ...quoted an IM conversation?
    
  • ...quoted an away message?
    
  • ...responded to an away message?
    
  • ...continued an earlier away message?
    
  • ...quoted a song?
    
  • ...quoted a web page?
    
  • ...quoted an email?
    
  • ...quoted poetry?
    
  • ...quoted your homework?
    
  • ...quoted your professor?
    
  • ...quoted an overhead conversation?
    
  
  
• ...left an away message up when you were actually there?
  
• ...responded to an away message?
  
• ...been sad that nobody responded to your away message?
  

I think I've done pretty much all of these. Good god.

Bits N Pieces

The Media Lab had an open house today, and since IBM is a sponsor, I got to drop by and see some cool stuff. It was my third time there - the first time I met Brian, and the second I saw a talk by John Maeda. This time, I managed to talk to Cameron at long last, which inspired me to start being better about actually writing in my blog. Of course, I don't have that much to say at the moment. I went out in search of green beer last night and failed. Maybe next time. I also have this fun passage I ran across:

Box joined Microsoft early last year to help develop its .Net Web services architecture and has a reputation as a lively speaker. At the 2001 TechEd show in Barcelona he led a discussion on SOAP while sitting in a bathtub.

On Monday, to show that solidarity exists at least among developers, he coaxed an IBM software engineer on stage and made him pose for a picture while he kissed him on the cheek.

Fun with acronyms

So, I ran across this acronym MEGO, and I was like, what is that? But, handily, Merriam-Webster (as linked to from Google) included results from computer and acronym dictionaries, and within seconds I had discovered:

/me"goh/ or /mee'goh/ ["My Eyes Glaze Over", often "Mine Eyes
Glazeth (sic) Over", attributed to the futurologist Herman
Kahn] Also "MEGO factor". 1. A handwave intended to
confuse the listener and hopefully induce agreement because
the listener does not want to admit to not understanding what
is going on. MEGO is usually directed at senior management by
engineers and contains a high proportion of TLAs.
2. excl. An appropriate response to MEGO tactics. 3. Among
non-hackers, often refers not to behaviour that causes the
eyes to glaze, but to the eye-glazing reaction itself, which
may be triggered by the mere threat of technical detail as
effectively as by an actual excess of it.

Neat!

Boston

I've been spending too much time waching reality TV and not enough time enjoying Boston. But I did walk home today, and enjoyed the view of Boston with the Charles frozen over and covered in snow. It's a little trippy. You'd want to run out there, except you'd fall through the ice and freeze. It's also a bit sad and desolate. I almost want to break down and get a camera to capture it.

Speaking of Boston, I ran across a site for Boston blogs (though there are others), including one about the people who keep trying to run me over on Boylston. I'm glad I don't have to drive around here.