Archives › 2006 › February

Betty Friedan and Lesbian Motherhood

Pioneering feminist author and one of the founders of NOW, Betty Friedan, died yesterday at the age of 85. I was a feminist before I (knew I) was a lesbian. I cannot claim, however, that Friedan’s seminal work, The Feminine Mystique influenced me directly. By the time I was old enough to read it, it [...]

Boys, Girls, and Education

There’s been a lot in the media recently about how boys are struggling in the U. S. educational system. Newsweek ran a cover story in its January 30 issue titled “The Trouble With Boys,” and PBS this month aired the documentary “Raising Cain: Boys in Focus,” based on the book of the same name. Some [...]

Xena and Gabrielle Continue to Mystify

Xena and Gabrielle long lived in an aura of mystery, often baffling those who dealt with them. (Not least the legions of fans wondering if the two of them were more than just friends.) The same is true of two distant objects in the solar system, nicknamed—you guessed it—Xena and Gabrielle. Scientists recently confirmed that [...]

The L Word Renewed for 4th Season

This just in. . . . Showtime today announced that it was renewing The L Word for a fourth season, due to premiere in 2007.

Travel

My partner and I just booked ourselves on Olivia’s Grand Caribbean Cruise. This is our second trip with them, even though we’ve never considered ourselves “cruise people.” We typically prefer a do-it-ourselves vacation where we can either mingle with the natives or brave the wilds of nature. Since having a child, though, our time to [...]

Mashups

One of the latest trends in geekdom is creating “mashups,” combinations of data from multiple Web sites that result in a new service for users. The best-known of these are combinations of Google Maps and something else: movie showtimes or house listings, for example. My two-and-a-half-year-old son, showing his attunement to such innovations, has been [...]

Three Quotes

Three quotes to signify yesterday: From last night’s State of the Union address: Yet many Americans, especially parents, still have deep concerns about the direction of our culture, and the health of our most basic institutions. They’re concerned about unethical conduct by public officials, and discouraged by activist courts that try to redefine marriage. – [...]