The Accidental Post

Life happens when you least expect it. Which is to say that serendipity can be a wonderful thing. Most researchers will tell you, in fact, that many scientific and medical breakthroughs (penicillin, anyone?) were the result of happenstance. The unexpected happened or something zigged left when it should have zagged right, and rather than bemoaning [...]

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The Magic Pill

The pill. So singularly significant, that’s all the ID it needs. And soon, May 9 to be exact, it will celebrate its 50th birthday. And while how much of the change those 50 years have seen can be attributed to The Pill is debatable, it’d be pretty damn hard to deny the effect that little [...]

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Marginalizing Equality

I was being interviewed by a journalism class last quarter when a student asked me if I was a feminist. “Of course,” I shot back. “Aren’t you?” She looked at me, somewhat quizzically. “Well,” she said, “how do you define feminist?” To which I replied, perhaps too glib and maybe even borderline cranky, “A human [...]

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Equal Pay Day: Not as Delightful as It Sounds

Today is Equal Pay Day: and while the name implies equality, the meaning itself is its precise opposite. Working women of the world, brace yourselves, and prepare to be pissed: today marks the day that your salary catches up to your male counterpart’s… from last year. That’s right, as compared to the dude in the [...]

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Salon Chair Wisdom

So I found myself at the hair salon the other day — sans the folder of work perennially tucked under my arm (Trust me, I really did forget to bring it along). And thus I found myself with no other option but to dive into the stack of women’s magazines beside my chair. And hooray [...]

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If At First You Don’t Succeed, Awesome!

What if failure was not only an option, it was the only option? According to a recent article by Elizabeth Gilbert (she of Eat, Pray, Love fame) in this month’s O magazine, we’d all be a lot better off. In fact, “Failure is the Only Option” is the title of the piece, in which Gilbert [...]

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The Race of the Rug Rats

You’ll find good news and bad news out of a new time-use study out of the Brookings Institution conducted by a husband and wife team of UC-San Diego economists. Reporting on the study, New York Times blogger Tara Parker-Pope writes that moms and dads alike are spending more time with their kids than ever before, [...]

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Wherever You Go, There You Are

Here’s a thought, and I can’t remember where I heard it first. Coulda been my mom, coulda been on a vintage SNL “Deep thoughts by Jack Handey” spot. Whatever. The thought? Wherever you go, there you are. I know, I know. At first take, it’s–well, it’s Jack Handy-level deep (and if you don’t know who [...]

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The Trouble with Girlfriends: Quarterlife Crisis, redux

I came across this story in the Philadelphia Enquirer the other day about the new angst of quarterlifers. (I’ve buried the lead once again. But stay with me here.) The story revisited the book, Quarterlife Crisis, written back in 2001, and then went on to enumerate the ways in which the Crisis, thanks to the [...]

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