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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