On The Turning Away

Crossposted.

“Children who grow up in a different environment may have very different early experiences, and may process information differently than children from a different environment.”
- BBC

A British academic concludes from her study that men with sexist views ‘earn more’ than their modern-thinking brothers. It could be because “more traditionally-minded men are interested in power, both in terms of access to resources - money in this case - and also in terms of a woman who is submissive.”

A shot across the brow for self-proclaimed progressive men?

Crossposted.

Last week Bob Garfield hung up his boots after an 11-long months of crusading against Comcast. In the interim, many thousands “angry, mistreated” customers have visited the site to voice their grievances. Now their efforts appear to bear fruit: Griping Online? Comcast Hears and Talks Back.

Besides cable providers, credit card companies also deserve a place in the pantheon of abusive customer service. And we’ve had our fair share of woes with Chase credit card, part of JP Morgan Chase.

If you google “complaints about Chase credit card”, you’ll get hundreds of thousands of results, with the most recent ones dated yesterday. Which makes you wonder: Is Chase listening at all to those complaints or is it business as usual? If our experience today is any guide, the answer might be the latter.
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The last post (July 11, 2008) was hacked again while we’d gone fishin’. But sys admin is investigating it. Here is a repost. Or this.

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Summer is in full swing here - Fannie and Freddie plummeted as investors fear “socialism at our doorstep”, Fake Steve Jobs decided to hang up his boots, and stuffwhitepeoplelike hit the bookstores.

In the meantime, some intrepid souls “summered” in our backyard, a/k/a blog, and removed a June 10 post on “Deranged Hillary Hatred”. Summer must be going swimmingly for those into somersaults, we wonder?

We recently asked a random number of people in our circle where they meet their friends. Perhaps not surprisingly, college (and to a lesser extent, high school) tops the list, followed by alumni events and networking occasions. So is it the happenstance where we meet that leads to friendship or is it because we consciously seek out those whose values we share?

Scientists at University of Leipzig endeavored to test the notion whether “People More Likely To Become Friends Based on Proximity Or Shared Values”.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, their findings suggest that friendships are based on more superficial factors like chance encounters, rather than intentional choice and common values and interests. But our straw poll does not seem to conform to their conclusion.
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“When not prompted by vanity, we say little.”
- Rochefoucauld (1613 - 1680)

Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

April is the cruelest month,
breeding lilacs out of the dead land,
mixing memory and desire,
stirring dull roots with spring rain.
- T.S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)

A quiet revolution, of the aqua sort, is underway in Manhattan’s high-end or green-conscious dining establishments. Soon, you’ll be paying $5 per glass for “homemade, specially treated sparkling water from the tap”. And bottled water, part of the “bottled water and tofu” Gore era emblem for Bobos, is fast becoming an environmental pariah. Who knew?

Bloomberg’s city hall is purportedly to have spent $700,000 on a PR campaign urging New Yorkers to drink from the tap, although New York City is among the 34 cities that haven’t tested their drinking water for drugs, or “trace pharmaceuticals”, as shown present in water providers in the 24 cities AP investigated last month.
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