caliarch.net

Every now and then we run into an idea or perspective that is so apt for where we are, so in tune with what we care about, so relevant to the things that preoccupy us that they take up permanent residence in the front of our minds for a while, becoming a new lens through which we view and interpret vast swaths of our lives and experiences.

This happened to me in July with the whole Myers-Briggs personality thing.  Why?  Not totally sure.  But ever since then, I can’t help but think of everything–everything–about myself, my relationships, and my interaction with the rest of the world in those terms.

Well.  I kind of partly know why. (more…)

Today I did two things that, knowing me, are totally unbelievable.  As in, tell them to anyone who knows me any kind of well, and you’d probably get an incredulous “Really?”

1)  I intentionally read a Vogue! magazine story about/interview with Jennifer Aniston.

2)  I went, “Wow, Jennifer Aniston is sort of eerily like me.”  Not in terms of profession, income, fashion, celebrity, etc., etc., etc., but just in terms of some of her quotes about her life.  It was kind of cool.   For example… (more…)

From a Slate article about redecorating the White House every four years…

For both public and private spaces, the president’s family can sort through first-rate spoils instead of relying on shopping trips. There’s a White House storage house with old furniture (like four-poster beds) and an art collection with about 500 sculptures, drawings, and paintings (including works by Norman Rockwell and Georgia O’Keefe) obtained as gifts or by previous first families and the White House curator. Traditionally, presidents select portraits of their favorite predecessors to line the walls. For the Oval Office, George W. Bush chose a painting called A Charge To Keep. He often tells visitors that it depicits Methodist circuit riders–missionaries who spread the Good Word across the Alleghenies in the 19th century. It actually depicts a horse thief fleeing a mob.

Sigh.  You really can’t make this stuff up.

:)

This is the coolest thing I’ve heard in a while.

As part of the last-minute flurry of rule-passing, the Bush administration wants to pass legislation that would protect from discrimination health care providers who oppose procedures like abortion, sterilization, and IUD insertion that they find morally objectionable.  Similar laws protect doctors who refuse to write and pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control or emergency contraception prescriptions because they disagree with them on religious grounds.
Sorry…I just feel like you probably *should* discriminate against people who refuse to do the job you’ve hired them to do.  If you find part of a certain job “morally objectionable,” you probably shouldn’t take that job.  I can “morally object” to factoring if I want to; I have that right.  If, however, I feel so strongly about this that I refuse to teach it, even though that’s part of the job I signed up for voluntarily, I shouldn’t get to have that job anymore.  Letting me keep my job and protecting me for  my refusal to do part of it is not in the best interest of my students’ education.  They have a right to learn about factoring, and it’s not MY right to make that choice for them.

Additionally…

“Pharmacies said the rule would allow their employees to refuse to fill prescriptions for contraceptives and could ‘lead to Medicaid patients being turned away.” State officials said the rule could void state laws that require insurance plans to cover contraceptives and require hospitals to offer emergency contraception to rape victims.

The Ohio Health Department said the rule ‘could force family planning providers to hire employees who may refuse to do their jobs’ — a concern echoed by Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.”

http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/this-american-moment-the-surprises/?th&emc=th

I love it when people begin a statement with, “I’m not a racist, but…”

Like, “I’m not a racist, but I just don’t think the United States is ready for a Black president.”

Apparently the United States disagrees.