According to a New York Times article by Laurie Tarkan featuring research done at Smith College, Princeton and Berkely, fathers should start demanding a little more respect from their wives because even though they want to be involved in their children’s lives, they are discouraged by the attitude of their wives and society in general…
As much as mothers want their partners to be involved with their children, experts say they often unintentionally discourage men from doing so. Because mothering is their realm, some women micromanage fathers and expect them to do things their way…Yet a mother’s support of the father turns out to be a critical factor in his involvement with their children, experts say — even when a couple is divorced.
OK, I admit that I do try to micromanage and want my husband to do things my way as far as child rearing is concerned, but for a father to blame a lack of motivation to get involved in his child’s life to this is really silly…I know disapproval is terrifying and disappointing, but instead of making silly excuses, why don’t men try talking to their wives? Solutions can only be found if they are looked for…
Tarkan states that “Uninvolved fathers have long been accused of lacking motivation. But research shows that many societal obstacles conspire against them.” The obstacles she is referring to are the pink walls and flowers in doctor’s offices and day care centres which leave fathers secluded and discouraged…WOW! I would feel secluded and discouraged if I had a son who wore only brown and blue clothes and played with cars and Ben 10 toys…I have a question for the researchers of the study, Philip A. Cowan and Carolyn Pape Cowan: Was this study conducted so that men could freely blame their wives and interior decoration for making them uninvolved fathers?
Tarkan does redeem herself by explaining that studies show that children are better off when both parents are equally involved…I couldn’t agree more…Fatherhood is just as valid as motherhood and couples (especially mothers) who get divorced should remember this…Children can only grow up to be good parents if they are shown how…
Yes, men do face some subtle and not-so-subtle discrimination when doing traditional “mommy stuff”, but I feel that fathers who really want to be involved in their children’s lives will find ways to overcome these obstacles…A father who really cares about his children will not notice the colour of the wallpaper unless he’s insecure about his own masculinity, and if sitting in a room with pink walls is enough to qualify as gender discrimination, then I am discriminated against whenever I walk into a room that is not decorated to my personal liking and should therefore be able to sue the owners for millions of dollars…Anyway, up until the 1920s, pink was considered a manly colour because it was close to red (flashy and aggressive), and blue was considered a womanly colour because it was more soothing and tranquil, so who knows what the doctor’s waiting rooms of the future will look like! And people, if a man wants to be a hands on father, please don’t snigger…Don’t reinforce out dated societal prejudices…Just as women want society to view them differently, men do too…
My unsolicited advice to fathers: If you make a mistake or don’t know how to do something, please admit the fact, take criticism from your wife with a smiling face and ask her for help…I can guarantee that your wife won’t lose respect for you if you show your vulnerability…
As some of you may know, I’ve recently started Twittering…
: What are you doing?
Me: I’m not doing anything
: What are you doing?
Me: I’m trying to Twitter, you twit.
: What are you doing?!
Me: Why are you yelling at me?!
: Just messing with you. What are you doing?
: I know you are still there. What are you doing?
Me: Trying to come up with an update, you dimwit
: What are you doing?
Me: Stop! I’m trying to read!
: Can you keep up? BTW, You have good bladder control. What are you doing?
Me: uh. Are you my doctor now?
: No. You haven’t left your computer for 5 hours. What are you doing?
: Hey, where did you go? What are you doing?
: What are you doing?
: What are you doing?
Suddenly, there’s a sound of something breaking and the computer screen goes off…
Did You Know? 4.0 is the official update of the popular Shift Happens video…This new version is about the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist…
Creator: Karl Fisch
Another interesting video:
Social Media Revolution
[Link]
Insert descriptions that may detract from the ongoing story:
Gripping her brand new brown coloured Luis Vuitton bag tightly, Nandita rushed out of her three bedroom Alaknanda flat, banging the newly polished mahogany front door loudly…
Write as you speak:
‘”She wasn’t there at home, it’ll be later when I’m going to call”
Punctuation is for idiots:
Each night you stay at our world famous spa at the fully published rate you will be entitled to a special discount at our fine dining Indian restaurant The Santoor.
Describe every character in minute detail:
Ram shifted his weight, the weight he had steadily gained over the last five years on a steady diet of dark chocolates and whiskey and which showed no sign of diminishing, while he soaked his tired and aching feet in a tub of lukewarm water. His feet had always been a source of irritation to him, imbued as they were with a mysterious capacity to ache at odd and unrelated times. The aches and pains were not new and were not related to his weight gain. This had been the case since the age of about 15 when his father had bought him his first pair of black formal shoes from Gata. Within a week, he had callouses and the aches had begun.
Suddenly the front door opened and his wife Monica, who was the Vice President of Client Servicing at XYZ Advertising in charge of the prestigious Calorie Cola account, walked in wearing her black patent leather stilettos.
Use buzzwords like ‘teamwork’, ‘validate’, paradigm’ and ‘focus’ wherever possible:
“analysis and validation of support strategies for customer satisfaction parameters”
Buzzwords are especially good when writing mission statements…
Always use adverbs even when they are not necessary:
Joseph Little’s new book is truly unique.
Authors you should read:
Danielle Steel:
“She wore a dress the same color as her eyes her father brought her from San Francisco” – Star
Stephen King:
“Even before the deal with Straker had been consummated (that’s some word all right, he thought, and his eyes crawled over the front of his secretary’s blouse), Lawrence Crockett was, without doubt, the richest man in ‘Salem’s Lot and one of the richest in Cumberland County, although there was nothing about his office or his person to indicate it.” – Salem’s Lot
Dean Koontz:
“Eighteen years ago, on the night of her eighth birthday, in a seaside cottage on Key West, Chyna had squirmed under her bed to hide from Jim Woltz, her mother’s friend. A storm had been raging from the Gulf of Mexico, and the sky-blistering lightning had made her fearful of scaping to the sanctuary of the beach where she’d retreated on other nights. After committing herself to the cramped space under that iron bed, which had been lower slung that this one, she had discovered that she was sharing it with a palmetto beetle. Palmettos were not as exotic or as pretty as their name. In fact, they were nothing more than enormous tropical cockroaches.” – Intensity
Barbara Taylor Bradford:
“An ineffable tranquility hovered over the villa, was broken only occasionally by the intermittent sounds of the staff going about their duties: the whirr of the vacuum, the faint birdlike chirpings of the maids as they dusted adjacent rooms, the echo of the butler´s brisk tones issuing orders, the click of a door closing, the patter of distant busy feet. Gradually these individual noises were beginning to merge, flowed together to create a vague and muffled hum that hardly intruded at all on her gentle peregrinations through the labyrinth of her mind.” – Voice of the Heart
[For more examples of fantastic writing, go to The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction contest website]
I am the author of these examples…I didn’t have to try hard writing them as bad writing comes naturally to me, but I am a good reader and these are some of the things I don’t like reading…
We Indians take pride in our mathematical ability and are not shy broadcasting it…The question is, are we really as good as we think we are? The results of the International Mathematical Olympiad or IMO ( an annual competition for high school students) show otherwise…
India’s rank in the last 10 Olympiads:
2009: 28 2004:14
2008: 31 2003: 15
2007: 25 2002: 9
2006: 35 2001: 7
2005: 36 2000: 14
[Link]
China’s rank in the last 10 Olympiads:
2009: 1 2004: 1
2008: 1 2003: 2
2007: 2 2002: 1
2006: 1 2001: 1
2005: 1 2000: 1
[Link]
If you look at the entire list, you will notice that we have been routinely coming behind smaller countries like Iran, Mongolia, Serbia and Turkey…China, Russia, USA, North Korea and South Korea usually rank in the top 5…
Whilst the Mathematical Olympiad may not be a true indicator of talent or overall intelligence, it does show the rot in our education system, which is based on rote learning rather than analytical thinking…Indian children are not stupid, they are just pragmatic…Their focus (and the focus of many teachers) is to maximize marks rather than learn…This attitude needs to change if we are to succeed as a nation…If children don’t learn how mathematics relates to the rest of the world and how to approach problems from different angles using mathematics as a tool rather than just concentrating on getting the math right, then we are doomed…Educationists should remember that new technologies can only go where mathematicss has been been before…For example, engineering of today is based on mathematics developed more than 30 years ago whilst the mathematics being developed today will power engineering 30 years in the future…
Why are the Chinese doing better than the Indians at the IMO?
In Chinese society mathematical skills are considered a barometer of a persons’ overall intelligence…Mathematics is also the foundation for the modern sciences, whose progress has been given priority over liberal arts (I don’t agree with this) by China’s government and educational authorities…Like in India, there is a lot of competition in China to get into good educational institutions and good educational institutions give great importance to mathematical skills…As a result, a majority of primary school and middle school students in big cities take after school Mathematics Olympiad (MO) courses (MO questions require analytical thinking) to improve their chances of getting into the university and course of their choice…
Does MO education work? It seems it does…Not only has it helped Chinese students win more gold medals in the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) than students from any other participating country, but it has also helped a great many to gain admission at top universities in China…It seems that mathematical skills, reasoning and creative thinking can be cultivated through intensive training and hard work… If you look at the results tables on the IMO website, you will notice that every year this competition is dominated by students from Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Taiwan – societies that place high value on science and technology and see mathematics as the foundation of science, and use similar training methods to teach mathematics as China does…
As I mentioned earlier, the Math Olympiad is not an indicator of intelligence but given that both cultures embrace intellectual challenge, Chinese educationists and policy makers must be doing something right which has resulted in their students’ excellent showing at the IMO year after year…The Chinese first participated in the IMO in 1985 when they ranked 32nd., but since then they’ve moved up and up…India, on the other hand, first participated in 1989 when they ranked 25th. and have remained more or less mediocre since then (except for 4 years when they ranked in the top 10)…It’s not as if the Chinese have suddenly become more intelligent, it’s just that their method of education has become better…They seem to be more proactive unlike India where the course structure and material never changes…If our ‘top’ children chronically underachieve, then our dream of being a superpower will have to wait…
We are not as clever as we think we are because we don’t see the present or the future, just the past…We are not as clever as we think we are because we don’t see the rot in our system…
Edited to add:
Abhishek made a comment that the reason Indians don’t fare well in competitions like the Math Olympiads is because we concentrate more on getting into the IITs…This is probably true but doesn’t this show that our education system focuses only on mastering theoretical knowledge that helps in getting jobs and not on conceptual and innovative thinking? Getting into IIT is so ingrained in our culture that everything else is overlooked…IITs exist because of JEE and not because of research…The facilities are just not available because of a lack of funds and government interest…IIT ranks high in the world when it comes to BTech but this ranking falls drastically when it comes to post graduate education…Indians do well in foreign universities because they can take advantage of first class facilities funded by foreign donors…
Have you ever wondered why the Chinese are so good at Maths? I know I have… Malcom Gladwell, the author of the extremely interesting book Outliers (he is also the author of The Tipping Point and Blink), solves the mystery for us…According to him, the Chinese (and other South East Asians) are not more intelligent than Westerners; all they have is a more developed number sense because of the way their language is structured…
“Take a look at the following list of numbers: 4,8,5,3,9,7,6. Read them out loud to yourself. Now look away, and spend twenty seconds memorizing that sequence before saying them out loud again.
If you speak English, you have about a 50 percent chance of remembering that sequence perfectly If you’re Chinese, though, you’re almost certain to get it right every time. Why is that? Because as human beings we store digits in a memory loop that runs for about two seconds. We most easily memorize whatever we can say or read within that two second span. And Chinese speakers get that list of numbers—4,8,5,3,9,7,6—right every time because—unlike English speakers—their language allows them to fit all those seven numbers into two seconds.” [Link]
Chinese words for numbers are extremely short…For example, 4 is ’si’ and 7 is ‘qi’ (takes 1/4 of a second to pronounce each number) while in English they are ‘four’ and ’seven’ respectively (takes 1/3 of a second to pronounce a number)…As a result of shorter names for numbers and the memory loop, the Chinese especially the Cantonese are better able to memorize digits than English speaking people…
“It turns out that there is also a big difference in how number-naming systems in Western and Asian languages are constructed. In English, we say fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen and nineteen, so one would think that we would also say one-teen, two-teen, and three-teen. But we don’t. We make up a different form: eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fifteen. Similarly, we have forty, and sixty, which sound like what they are. But we also say fifty and thirty and twenty, which sort of sound what they are but not really. And, for that matter, for numbers above twenty, we put the “decade” first and the unit number second: twenty-one, twenty-two. For the teens, though, we do it the other way around. We put the decade second and the unit number first: fourteen, seventeen, eighteen. The number system in English is highly irregular. Not so in China, Japan and Korea. They have a logical counting system. Eleven is ten one. Twelve is ten two. Twenty-four is two ten four, and so on.
That difference means that Asian children learn to count much faster.
The regularity of their number systems also means that Asian children can perform basic functions—like addition—far more easily. Ask an English seven-year-old to add thirty-seven plus twenty two, in her head, and she has to convert the words to numbers (37 + 22). Only then can she do the math: 2 plus 7 is nine and 30 and 20 is 50, which makes 59. Ask an Asian child to add three-tens-seven and two tens-two, and then the necessary equation is right there, embedded in the sentence. No number translation is necessary: It’s five-tens nine. For fractions, we say three fifths. The Chinese is literally, ‘out of five parts, take three.’ That’s telling you conceptually what a fraction is. It’s differentiating the denominator and the numerator.
The much-storied disenchantment with mathematics among western children starts in the third and fourth grade…a part of that disenchantment is due to the fact that math doesn’t seem to make sense; its linguistic structure is clumsy; its basic rules seem arbitrary and complicated.
Asian children, by contrast, don’t face nearly that same sense of bafflement. They can hold more numbers in their head, and do calculations faster, and the way fractions are expressed in their language corresponds exactly to the way a fraction actually is—and maybe that makes them a little more likely to enjoy math, and maybe because they enjoy math a little more they try a little harder and take more math classes and are more willing to do their homework, and on and on, in a kind of virtuous circle.” [Link]
Edited to add:
I didn’t realize that campaign speeches were all one needed to win the Nobel Prize for Peace…Long live the Nobel Committee! I hope you are sleeping peacefully now…
When stones and bottles don’t work,
cow udders do! [Link]
Isiah Harris receives an H1N1 influenza vaccine at Rush University Medical Center October 6, 2009 in Chicago, Illinois. Rush is one of many hospitals and clinics that have started to distribute the vaccinations against the H1N1 swine flu virus in the United States this week. [Link]
Hell, I’d rather suffer from H1N1 than get vaccinated against it! Couldn’t they find a better delivery method?
The new CDC anti-smoking ad
Tobacco advertising today aims more at stigmatizing smokers than informing them of health effects of smoking…Fine, stigmatize smokers but why is it necessary to pick on one minority group – gays? Will this new tactic work?
“God would have made His will known without books, considering how very few could read them when Jesus of Nazareth lived, had it been His pleasure to ratify any peculiar mode of worship. As to your immortality, if people are to live, why die? And our carcases, which are to rise again, are they worth raising? I hope, if mine is, that I shall have a better pair of legs that I have moved on these two-and-twenty years, or I shall be sadly behind in the squeeze into Paradise.”
- Lord Byron in a letter dated Sept. 13, 1811 to his friend Rev. Francis Hodgson [link]
Well said, Lord Byron! If God is loving and full of mercy and grace, why are non-believers and sinners sent to hell – why is there a hell at all? If we are images of Him, why aren’t we all saints? Why are scriptures so important – did God write them himself?
I hope, if mine is [carcass is raised], that I shall have a better head of hair (a la Dimple Kapadia) and a better figure (a la Megan Fox), or a sinner like me shall be sadly behind in the squeeze to get the Lord’s attention in Paradise if I reach it at all…
More of Lord Byron’s Wit and Wisdom:
Adultery : What men call gallantry, and gods adultery, Is much more common where the climate’s sultry. (Don Juan, canto 1, stanza 63)
Anarchy : There is, in fact, no law or government at all [in Italy]; and it is wonderful how well things go on without them. (Jan., 1821, to Moore)
Aristocrats : For what were all these country patriots born? To hunt, and vote, and raise the price of corn? (The Age of Bronze, stanza 14)
Aristocratic Education : He learned the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery, And how to scale a fortress – or a nunnery. (Don Juan, canto 1, stanza 38)
Critics : A man must serve his time to every trade, Save censure–critics all are ready made. (English Bards and Scotch Reviewers)
The Dead : I have seen a thousand graves opened, and always perceived that whatever was gone, the teeth and hair remained of those who had died with them. Is not this odd? They go the very first things in youth & yet last the longest in the dust. (18 Nov. 1820, to John Murray)
Hate : Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure. (Don Juan, canto13, stanza 6)
[link]
