Modern times seem to be riddled with growing gaps - the income gap, the achievement gap, the tolerance-of-celebrity-gossip gap. Now here's another one to worry about, according to today's New York Times: the growing happiness gap between men and women.
You just knew this had to be a NYT story.
Two new research papers arrive at this conclusion. One tracked traditional happiness data by asking people how satisfied they are with their lives. It found that women, who in the early 1970s reported being slightly happier than men, are now slightly less happy.
The other analyzed time-use studies over the past four decades to determine how much time men and women spent doing things they found unpleasant. Since the 1960s, men have gradually cut back on tasks they dislike. They now work less and relax more.
Meanwhile, women have replaced housework with paid work (or not replaced as much as added onto), and as a result are spending more time doing things they don't enjoy.
The obvious explanation would seem to be the old "second shift" theory, that women just added their jobs onto their already long and laundry-filled to-do lists. But, according to the Times, this overlooks the fact that women aren't actually working more today than they were 30 or 40 years ago - they're just spending more time on paid work and less on cooking and cleaning.
(In the index, both men and women seemed to dread their jobs. They ranked time at the office above only trips to the doctor and washing dishes in terms of enjoyment. Both would much rather cook or do laundry.)
But the gender happiness gap appears long before working life. As "life has generally gotten better over the last generation" -- the Times boldly asserts, using "less crime, longer-living grandparents and much cooler gadgets" as evidence - male high school seniors have gotten happier. About 25 percent say they are satisfied with their lives, up 16 percent from 1976. Meanwhile, only 22 percent of their female peers say they're happy, about the same in the 70s.
Shorter version: teen life sucks.
I would posit this may have something to do with how dismally bad men's fashion was in 1976. But the experts who talked to the Times chalk it up to the "hottie theory" - the pressure for high school girls to be hot above all else. Back in the 70s, that's all you had to be. Now you have to be a Harvard-bound, track star, volunteering-at-the-homeless-shelter-on-weekends hottie. That's enough to bum anyone out.
#2
I know why male high school seniors are happier than when I was one - they get more sex. Seriously, does it take anything else to make an 18-year old guy happy?
#3
the growing happiness gap between men and women.
Trust me, if Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.
Posted by: Steve ||
09/27/2007 16:38 Comments ||
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#4
In the old days girls were taught to be pleasant and not whine. Now women's magazines and television shows teach women to notice where their lives fall short of an imagined ideal, and that venting is healthy. So a noisy number of women are willing to feel unhappy, and are willing to say so.
1. Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat.
2. Movie nudity is virtually always female.
3. You know stuff about tanks.
4. A five day vacation requires only one suitcase.
5. Monday Night Football.
6. You don't have to monitor your friends' sex lives.
7. Your bathroom lines are 80% shorter.
8. You can open all your own jars.
9. Old friends don't give you crap if you've lost or gained weight.
10. Dry cleaners and haircutters don't rob you blind.
11. When clicking through the channels, you don't have to stall on every shot of someone crying.
12. Your ass is never a factor in a job interview.
13. All your orgasms are real.
14. A beer gut does not make you invisible to the opposite sex.
15. Guys in hockey masks don't attack you.
16. You don't have to lug a bag of useful stuff around everywhere you go.
17. You understand why Stripes is funny.
18. You can go to the bathroom without a support group.
19. Your last name stays put.
20. You can leave a hotel bed unmade.
21. When your work is criticized, you don't have to panic that everyone secretly hates you.
22. You can kill your own food.
23. The garage is all yours.
24. You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.
25. You see the humor in Terms of Endearment.
26. Nobody secretly wonders if you swallow.
27. You never have to clean the toilet.
28. You can be showered and ready in 10 minutes.
29. Sex means never worrying about your reputation.
30. Wedding plans take care of themselves.
31. If someone forgets to invite you to something, he or she can still be your friend.
32. Your underwear is $10 for a three pack.
33. The National College Cheerleading Championship
34. None of your co-workers have the power to make you cry.
35. You don't have to shave below your neck.
36. You don't have to curl up next to a hairy ass every night.
37. If your 34 and single nobody notices.
38. You can write your name in the snow.
39. You can get into a nontrivial pissing contest.
40. Everything on your face stays its original color.
41. Chocolate is just another snack.
42. You can be president.
43. You can quietly enjoy a car ride from the passenger seat.
44. Flowers fix everything.
45. You never have to worry about other people's feelings.
46. You get to think about sex 90% of your waking hours.
47. You can wear a white shirt to a water park.
48. Three pair of shoes are more than enough.
49. You can eat a banana in a hardware store.
50. You can say anything and not worry about what people think.
51. Foreplay is optional.
52. Michael Bolton doesn't live in your universe. (unless it's the one from Office Space)
53. Nobody stops telling a good dirty joke when you walk into the room.
54. You can whip your shirt off on a hot day.
55. You don't have to clean your apartment if the meter reader is coming by.
56. You never feel compelled to stop a pal from getting laid.
57. Car mechanics tell you the truth.
58. You don't give a rat's ass if someone notices your new haircut.
59. You can watch a game in silence with your buddy for hours without ever thinking "He must be mad at me."
60. The world is your urinal.
61. You never misconstrue innocuous statements to mean your lover is about to leave you.
62. You get to jump up and slap stuff.
63. Hot wax never comes near you pubic area.
64. One mood, all the time.
65. You can admire Clint Eastwood without starving yourself to look like him.
66. You never have to drive to another gas station because this one's just too icky.
67. You know at least 20 ways to open a beer bottle.
68. You can sit with your knees apart no matter what you are wearing.
69. Same work....more pay.
70. Gray hair and wrinkles add character.
71. You don't have to leave the room to make an emergency crotch adjustment.
72. Wedding Dress $2000; Tux rental $100.
73. You don't care if someone is talking about you behind your back.
74. With 400 million sperm per shot, you could double the earth's population in 15 tries, at least in theory.
75. You don't mooch off others' desserts.
76. If you retain water, it's in a canteen.
77. The remote is yours and yours alone.
78. People never glance at your chest when you're talking to them.
79. ESPN Sports Center.
80. You can drop by to see a friend without bringing a little gift.
81. Bachelor parties whomp ass over bridal showers.
82. You have a normal and healthy relationship with your mother.
83. You can buy condoms without the shopkeeper imagining you naked.
84. You needn't pretend you're "freshening up" to go to the bathroom.
85. If you don't call your buddy when you say you will, he won't tell your friends you've changed.
86. Someday you'll be a dirty old man.
87. You can rationalize any behavior with the handy phrase "F*#k it!"
88. If another guy shows up at the party in the same outfit, you might become lifelong buddies.
89. Princess Di's death was almost just another obituary.
90. The occasional well-rendered belch is practically expected.
91. You never have to miss a sexual opportunity because you're not in the mood.
92. You think the idea of stealing street signs is funny, not immature.
93. If something mechanical doesn't work, you can bash it with a hammer and throw it across the room.
94. New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet.
95. Pr0n movies are designed with your mind in mind.
96. You don't have to remember everyone's birthdays and anniversaries.
97. Not liking a person does not preclude having great sex with them.
98. Your pals can be trusted never to trap you with: "So... notice anything different?"
99. Baywatch
100. There is always a game on somewhere.
#6
The new york slime has an article in which they purport to seriously discuss something called "hottie theory". We must be closer to the end of print media than I had thought.
Initial suspicions of an airplane crash quickly spiraled into widespread reports that a meteorite had plummeted to Earth and left a smoking, boiling crater whose supposedly noxious fumes were reported to have sickened curious locals who went to peer at the hole.
Geologists doubted that the crater was actually caused by a meteorite, and firm explanations were offered that a meteorite would not even emit fumes and that the "sickness" was likely a case of mass hysteria. Run away, run away!
Nevertheless, onlookers far and wide were fascinated by the idea that this event could be a real-life "Andromeda Strain," after the 1969 novel by Michael Crichton in which a mysterious rock from outer space carries a lethal microbe that kills nearly everyone infected by it.
Media reports of the number of locals afflicted by a "mysterious disease" with symptoms such as nausea, headaches and sore throats after visiting the crater figured in every news article about the Aug. 15 event, with some reporting that as many as 600 people had fallen ill.
But doctors who visited the site told the Associated Press they found no evidence that the crater had actually sickened such a large number of people. No, really?
If noxious fumes did emanate from the crater, they were most likely the result of a hydrothermal explosion that could have actually formed the crater, or were released from the ground if and when the meteorite struck, according to many geologists. Hmmm - noxious fumes emitted from a crack...
Arsenic is found in the subsoil in that area of Peru and often contaminates the drinking water there, according to Peruvian geologists quoted on Sept. 21 by National Geographic News.
Arsenic fumes released from the crater could have sickened locals who went to look, said one geologist who examined the site.
Some health officials suggest instead that the symptoms described by the locals, the large number of people reporting those symptoms and the apparently rapid spread have all the hallmarks of a case of mass hysteria. When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
#1
Damn...does anybody in Peru have and dang shovel to get down to the 'bottom of the situation'? Instead of hopeless despair, crying and moping,, the Peruvian military should have all 100(sic) of their troops in white suits and masks flinging mud over their shoulders to bring up the culprit; rock, satellite or spaceship☺!
#4
Nice, Kelly..."Invasion Of The Body Snatchers",LOL! Makes you wonder why visitors from outer space only land in the underdeveloped ignorant backwater countries of the world, instead of the oceans, the polar caps or best...the front lawn of CNN!
One thing that really amazes me is that these folk, having mastered the arcain art of intersteller travel, can devise no better way to communicate with us on arrival other than hacking up a wheat field.
Posted by: kelly ||
09/27/2007 12:56 Comments ||
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#8
Since the first thing People do is take their Spaceship and try to kill the occupants, why in the hell would any intelligence ever come here twice?
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/27/2007 13:53 Comments ||
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#9
I'm thinking that there will be zombies. But I've bet on zombies before and been disappointed.
Posted by: Formerly Dan ||
09/27/2007 14:37 Comments ||
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#13
What matters to good Madonna fans is notsomuch the crater or the meteorite or the subterranean vents, etc. but whom was present amongst the crowds watching the incident, physically or psychically. SONG LYRIC "WATCHING ME IS WATCHING YOU, HUH-HUH"...! CLEARLY PYWAR-INTEL IS NOT WATCHING GWEN STEFANI'S BOOB RACK AGAIN - SHE'S GONNA BE PISSED.
Sydney: More than 1,000 women wriggled into bikini swimming costumes on Wednesday on Sydneys world-famous Bondi Beach to set a world record for the highest number of women attending a swimsuit photo shoot. A total of 1,010 women paraded on Australias most famous strip of sand for a mention in the prestigious Guinness Book of World Records.
Guinness adjudicator Chris Sheedy said the shoot was the most spectacular world record he had witnessed. As an Australian myself its logical that any record involving sun, sand and surf should be held in this country, Sheedy said. I imagine it will be quite an effort to better the mark set by Cosmopolitan at Bondis world-famous beach, but we throw the challenge out to other countries around the world to outdo this precedent-setter, he said.
The photo shoot will appear in the January issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. The record-breaking shoot highlighted the zest for life that Australian women have: we love a challenge, were not afraid to show our bodies, we love the beach and we dont take ourselves too seriously, Cosmopolitan editor and shoot organiser Sarah Wilson told The Daily Telegraph newspaper.
#2
When I first lived in Oz, I used to run barefoot along Bondi Beach every Sunday. The sand just above the waterline had the ideal consistency for running. Scenery wasn't bad either.
Islamic authorities in Germany said they had ended talks with a maverick German author who wanted to read aloud Salman Rushdie's controversial novel, The Satanic Verses, inside a mosque. Guenter Wallraff, 64, announced in July that he was seeking an invitation from Ditib, an Ankara-funded foundation which maintains Turkish-speaking mosques in many German cities, to conduct the reading in Cologne.
Ditib officials in Cologne said they had discussed the proposal with Wallraff until two weeks ago, but negotiations failed because Wallraff was unwilling to compromise. "He lacks understanding for the feelings and needs of members of our Muslim community," said a spokesman, without detailing what Ditib had proposed to Wallraff.
Dignity, ever so easily dented.
The confident Muslim community in the city has been fighting this year for a permit to build a grand mosque.
So Confident, they can't even Tolerate a book-reading.
Wallraff, a leftist gadfly who won fame with undercover journalism exploits, said Tuesday he would travel to Ankara in late October or early November and appeal to Ditib officials there to overrule the rejection. "I don't give up that easily," he said, adding that he had received anonymous death threats from extremist Muslims and on an Islamist website after announcing his proposal. "Almost all those I have spoken to in Turkish community support me," said Wallraff. "I even offered to do the reading outside in the car park." He added, "I have read the book aloud at home to Muslims and they actually laughed at parts that didn't mean anything to me. You can see that this book's place is in a Muslim context."
Maybe this guy and the lefty Swedish artist can lead the world out of the swamp.
Rushdie, who stayed in Wallraff's apartment during visits to Cologne in the 1990s, was put under police protection after the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran called in 1989 for him to be killed.
#3
Islamic authorities in Germany said they had ended talks with a maverick German author who wanted to read aloud Salman Rushdie's controversial novel, The Satanic Verses, inside a mosque.
Now thats what you call a German having some balls! I wonder a Fatwa will follow for even suggesting it?
#2
The significance of Belgium splitting is not in the fact there will be 2 states where there was previously one. Nobody really cares about that. It's because it's another nail in the coffin of the territorial integrity principle promoted by the kleptocracy and thugocracy loving UN.
If Flanders can go its own way, why not Darfur, Baluchistan (both parts), Kurdistan (all four parts), Irian Jaya, etc, etc.
#4
Nature abhors a vacuum. I can't wait for Hezbollah's first "humanitarian aid" package to be delivered to Antwerp, or Hugo's announcement of a shipment of tractors.
Also, it won't be long for the finger of blame to point squarely at the Juden diamond district...
#5
Now, now, Seafarious: Europeans do not blame all their problems on the Jews. I mean, nobody said that global warming is the fault of Israel. Oh, wait.
It seems likey that the dissolution of nation states into small elements would strengthen the EU and UN. Those states can't raise armies of any capability, sustain a complex economy within their borders etc. - and give up those roles to a larger entity.
At least, I've heard Scottish nationalists argue for devolution out of the UK on the basis that the EU/UN can do whatever needs doing beyond their borders.
#7
And the EU would get its own City State of Brussels, populated by a discontented minority willing to be used as a tool in imposing state interventionist policies on the unwilling majority in exchange for a life on the dole. Sound familiar?
From yesterday. The links pointing to the roll call is interesting.
The Lieberman/Kyl Amendment has passed by an unbelievable 76-22 vote. Roll Call here
Bidens Iraq Partitioning Amendment passed by a vote of 75-23. Ill put up Roll Calls as they become available.
And the House of Representatives, evidently eager to show that they are as spineless and easily cowered as the Senate, voted to condemn MoveOn for the Gen. Betrayus ad, 341-79. Roll Call here.
#1
Text of the Lieberman/Kyl Amendment here. This is the good part:
SEC. 1535. SENSE OF SENATE ON IRAN.
. . .
(b) Sense of Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate--
(1) that the manner in which the United States transitions and structures its military presence in Iraq will have critical long-term consequences for the future of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, in particular with regard to the capability of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to pose a threat to the security of the region, the prospects for democracy for the people of the region, and the health of the global economy;
(2) that it is a vital national interest of the United States to prevent the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran from turning Shi'a militia extremists in Iraq into a Hezbollah-like force that could serve its interests inside Iraq, including by overwhelming, subverting, or co-opting institutions of the legitimate Government of Iraq;
(3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies;
(4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies;
(5) that the United States should designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and place the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists, as established under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and initiated under Executive Order 13224; and
(6) that the Department of the Treasury should act with all possible expediency to complete the listing of those entities targeted under United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1737 and 1747 adopted unanimously on December 23, 2006 and March 24, 2007, respectively.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/27/2007 13:34 Comments ||
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#2
Coming from one the Bluest of Blue states, I noted
that my two Senators voted against this.
Kerry/Kennedy. God bless Senator Lieberman for coming up with this legislation and proving that some Dem's have some common sense.
Hillary's vote was a surprise, but she's been getting sandbagged by her own party members. It will be interesting to see how she spins this.
The pissing and moaning of the Kos Kidz at their website was amusing to say the least.
Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centres (JPMC) College of Medical Technology Principal Prof Mubashir Shaikh, 53, was killed in what is being described as a target killing outside his Mehmoodabad clinic after iftari on Wednesday.
The college is currently closed like other JPMC institutions after two students from its college of physiotherapy were killed in student violence with a rival political group. Police sources said that they could not rule out these matters in the investigations yet.
One son, three daughters and his wife survive the DHA Phase VIII resident. He had 20 years of government service to his credit and hailed from the Punjab. JPMC has planned a condolence meeting for 10.30am on Thursday morning. There were also reports that paramedics have called a rally, but it was not immediately confirmed whether this was linked to the professors death.
According to eyewitnesses Khawaja Irfan and Javed Iqbal, two men on a motorcycle drove up to Prof Shaikhs car. One of them was wearing a helmet and the other had covered his face with a cloth. They signalled to the doctor by tapping on his window and asked him to scroll down his window before killing him. He was shot in the head according to Dr Seemin Jamali, chief of the casualty department.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/27/2007 00:00 ||
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Link ||
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1. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (pronounced bat-SHIAT cray-zee) was born Oct. 28, 1956, three years after the CIA-sponsored coup that installed the pro-Western leader Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as Iran's leader. A Shiite Muslim, he and his wife, a professor, have two sons and a daughter.
2. When he was an infant, Ahmadinejad's family moved from the village of Aradan to Tehran. It was at this point that the family changed its name from Saborjhian, which translates to "thread painter" (the lowliest job in Iran's traditional carpet-weaving industry), to the more religious Ahmadinejad ("race of Muhammad" or "virtuous race").
3. Ahmadinejad is the fourth son of seven children. His father, Ahmad, ran a grocery store and then a barber shop in Aradan; upon their move to Tehran, his father became a blacksmith.
4. In 1975, he finished 130th among students across Iran who took university entrance exams that year and was admitted as a civil engineering student at Tehran's University of Science and Technology. He would later complete graduate work, earning master's and doctoral degrees in traffic and transportation engineering.
5. As a student, Ahmadinejad was politically active. Although religious activism was repressed under the shah, Ahmadinejad and his fellow protesters produced leaflets denouncing the shah using a printing press hidden in his family's home. Later, Ahmadinejad joined the ultraconservative faction of the Office for Strengthening Unity, the radical student group that grew out of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and staged the capture of the U.S. Embassy.
6. After serving in the war with Iraq, he joined Iran's elite Special Brigade of Revolutionary Guards, the militia force loyal to the spiritual leader at the time, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He served in covert operations with the guards, probably in Kirkuk, and may also have been involved in the elimination of the Ayatollah's enemies; intelligence sources believed that he traveled to Austria in 1989 to assist in the assassination of Abdorrahman Qassemlou, a Kurdish dissident.
7. He was cofounder of the Islamic Society of Students and was an instructor with the Basij, the youth volunteer organization that enforces the Islamic Republic's strict religious codes. The Basij crisscrossed the city via motorcycles, searching for women out in public in violation of strict Muslim dress codes or in the company of males who were not close relatives.
8. After the war, he returned to academia as a lecturer and professor of engineering at his alma mater. Ahmadinejad's public service included serving as vice governor and governor of Maku and Khoy and acting as an adviser to the minister of culture and Islamic guidance. He was governor of the province of Ardabil from 1993 to 1997 and was the appointed mayor of Tehran in 2003.
9. As Tehran's mayor, he gained a reputation for personal piety and attentiveness to the city's lower and working classes. His two-year tenure was marked by religious conservatism and populism. He ordered the shutdown of fast-food restaurants, a crackdown on Internet caf�s, and the cancellation of some secular entertainment events. He also turned cultural centers into religious halls. At one point, he donned a street sweeper's uniform to earn the respect of city workers and, shunning a city-provided limousine service, drove his own 1977 Peugeot.
10. Declaring that "we did not have a revolution in order to have democracy," Ahmadinejad won Iran's presidential election, edging out his rival, Islamic cleric and veteran politician Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in the runoff election in June 2005.
#1
With science and Islam being incompatible and this guy having a doctorate in engineering I begin to suspect he know he's spouting bull$h!t about the Twelvth Imam and is just another sociopath who is in it for the power fix. He's gotta be good to fool the Mad Mullahs who put him where he is but I bet that deep down inside he resents the hell out of them.
#2
One item is conspicuously missing; the part where he was a bed wetter and thumb sucker during childhood (childhood lasted until he was well into his teen years).
#3
11. Wears women's underwear.
12. Often mistaken for homeless person.
13. Believes, "if your not on the receiving end, it's not gay."
14. Is unable to tie a tie. Says "it's really hard".
15. Favorite snack: Snot.
16. Favorite actor: "that Spicoli guy."
17. Guilty Pleasure: Goat pr0n.
18. Favorite TV show: "Naboul, the Jew Killing Bee".
19. Favorite Great Satanist: "that Spicoli guy".
20. Least Favorite Things: Loud bangs, Inshallah aircraft maintenance
#7
So he is a doctor of traffic engineering: he isn't old enough to blame for the I-10 connection to the Mississippi River bridge in Baton Rouge, so it must have been his thesis advisor who designed that.
#8
Traffic Management Doctorate Degree?
Maybe Columbia should "sister university" with his alma mater and see if the 13th iman can help thin out traffic after the Yankees games.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centres (JPMC) College of Medical Technology Principal Prof Mubashir Shaikh, 53, was killed in what is being described as a target killing outside his Mehmoodabad clinic after iftari on Wednesday. 
