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belkin re-visited

Opting out.

A first census snapshot of married women who stay home to raise their children shows that the popular obsession with high-achieving professional mothers sidelining careers for family life is largely beside the point.

Instead, census statistics released Thursday show that stay-at-home mothers tend to be younger and less educated, with lower family incomes. They are more likely than other mothers to be Hispanic or foreign-born.

The notion of an opt-out revolution took shape in 2003, when New York Times writer Lisa Belkin coined the term to describe the choices made by a group of high-achieving Princeton women who left the fast track after they had children.

I remember Belkin's article in the NYT. I was not a fan.

8:45 a.m. - Oct. 01, 2009

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on the media

Great article about fear-mongering and exaggeration in the media. It's short, but here are my favorite passages:

Take King County government. The new budget came out this week. It was branded "devastating" and "radical" because like all budgets these days, it is less than hoped for.

A typical quote from a county councilman: "What we're witnessing is the systematic dismantling of county government."

Really? The county's general budget will be 4 percent less than the last one. I looked up some past budgets and the new one is the same amount of money, $620 million, that the county spent in 2007. It's still 14 percent more than the county spent in 2005.

About 150 of 14,000 county employees are being laid off � a jobs cut of 1 percent.

To quote the Seinfeld show again: Oh, the humanity!

I work at a company that has lost about a third of its staff. Near our office, I often walk by a four-story architecture office in which the entire first floor now sits empty. Project files dated 2005 or 2006 are scattered in abandoned cubicles. It's like a boom-time museum.

6:39 p.m. - Sept. 30, 2009

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new manager

On Canadian health care.

The new manager of our group arrived today. The group has been leaderless for a while. He seems like a nice guy. We'll see how things go. He will be sitting practically across from me which is a little weird. I guess I'll be able to eavesdrop on conversations if I want to.

8:40 a.m. - Sept. 30, 2009