Cotton-Pickin’ Days

Proof that the whole college application process has made people go completely bonkers. Here’s what 17-year-old Jessica Assaf said in the Wall Street Journal about last year’s 13.5% low acceptance rate at Brown University.

A 14% acceptance rate isn’t a good statistic. If someone said you had a 14% chance of living, that’s nowhere near being reassured.

She just compared getting into college to death!

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From my personal experiences with both the Japanese and Chinese ways of doing things, I think James Fallow has it exactly right:

With usual caveats against sweeping generalization, what this made me think was: Japan is all about the way of doing things. Practice, ritual, perfectionism, as much fanatical attention to the process as to the result. China is all about finding a way to do things. Improvisation, little interest in rules, putting up with whatever is necessary to attain the result.

Now go check out his pictures of plane refueling in Japan vs. China. I couldn’t stop shaking my head in amuseument and dismay. *sigh*

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Stephen and I have been working on his reading using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (mentioned before). The other day, we hit lesson 60 and I thought the accompanying story was odd.

The Man and His Bed

A man had a tub. He said, “I like to sit in this tub and rub, rub, rub.”

Then the man said, “Now I will sleep in this bed.” But a dog was in his bed.

The dog said, “Can I sleep in this bed?”

The man said, “No. Go sleep in the tub.”

The dog said, “I like to sleep in beds.”

The man said, “This dog likes to sleep in beds. So he can sleep with me. But I do not like dogs that bite.”

The dog said, “I do not like to bite.”

So the man and the dog went to sleep. And the dog did not bite the man.

What the @#!

Update: At William’s request, here’s the illustration that accompanied the story. No tub action, thank goodness.

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Great news! Or not….

Latest research shows that breastfeeding does NOT make breasts sag but pregnancy DOES. Not surprisingly, smoking and age also make breasts sag. And not wearing a proper sports bra may also increase “breast sagginess.”

The conclusion?

Women can now breastfeed without fear for the future of their breasts, author and plastic surgeon Brian Rinker said.

Dr Rinker said he decided to carry out the study after many of his patients demanded he “fix what breastfeeding did to my breasts”.

As if I care. Breastfeeding is good for so many reasons that being saggy is the least of my concerns. Not that I’m admitting to being saggy, of course! As Oprah has been saying for ages, a good bra will fix ya.

Clues your bra is the wrong size:

• If your cups runneth over, it’s time to go up a cup size.
• If your cups dimple, it’s time to go down a cup size.
• If you have the dreaded back fat, you probably think your bra is too tight, but you’re wrong—your bra is too big. Wearing the bra lower on your back with a smaller band size will completely eliminate the back fat.
• If your strap falls down, that means your bra band is riding up and you probably need to go down a band size.

Where do you get your bras? (Men, please feel free to answer too if you’re buying bras for yourself or someone special. ) For years, my favorite bras have been the Maidenform Bodymates bra that you can get in a 3-pack at Costco. Comfortable, affordable, supportable.

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Most reasonable women are aware that once you’ve expanded to carry a baby for 40 weeks then give birth to one, your body will never be the same again. And yet some people still think that they should be back to their pre-pregnancy body within three months of childbirth.

News flash: No matter how much you diet or exercise and even if you get back to the same weight or less, your body will never be the same again. The snug jeans you loved will not fit the same, your belly will be looser, your boobs bigger, your feet may have widened, and most everything on your person will shift around to some degree.

Those who think they will be back to the same same after childbirth are going to be those nutters we see who keep at plastic surgery time and again in a hopelessly freakish attempt to retrieve their youth. Good luck to ya! I’ve got far better things to do with my time than moan about my post-baby body.

It’s different. It’s new (to me). But it does what it’s meant to do. Good enough for me.

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Dear Sir/Madam:

I am writing about an incident that happened this morning, 12 September, at 8:40 am. The recycling truck arrived at ***** London just before my family and I were due to leave for work and school. The truck blocked our car so we waited patiently while the team did its work.

When it became clear that we might be late, I stepped out of the car to ask the team leader to move the truck a little ways so that we might be able to get out. Instead of responding politely, he said rudely:

“You know we come every week.”

What does he mean by that comment?

Surely we are not expected to leave our house before we need to or otherwise disrupt our normal routine for the recycling team? May I point out that the recycling truck does NOT come at the same time every week. In fact, the time of arrival varies by several hours.

While I appreciate the work of the recycling team, I was dismayed at his unprofessional behavior. I hope that we won’t be greeted in such a way again.

Thank you very much for your prompt attention to this matter,

Dr. Hsien-Hsien Lei

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Last week I started receiving about 10 spam emails a minute addressed to random names at the domain based on my real name. Most looked like undelivered mail notices. I was worried that my primary email at that domain would get blocked as spam but fortunately, that’s unlikely to happen as far as my research tells me.

Here’s the best explanation I’ve dug up from Ask MetaFilter:

What to do about someone spoofing my email?

I would kill the catch all account and only forward the addresses that you actually use. Everything else should either bounce or drop at the server. This will at least minimize the number of bounces that you have to look at.

~~~~~
Agree about the catch-all; it should be disabled. It is also vulnerable to a dictionary spam attack where the spammer simply tries sending email to every word in the dictionary at your domain. I once received over 100,000 pieces of spam in a single day from some spammer who tried this and I had a catch-all in place.

So my catch-all at the domain is now off and hopefully that’s the end of that worry! Hope this helps anyone else who’s encountered the same @#! spam email problem.

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I’ve never worn stilettos in my life. Have you?

NB: Dr. Val has more about wearing stilettos.

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Baby Einstein – bad. TV – bad. BabyPlus Prenatal Education System – good?!

According to the BabyPlus website, for $149 you can buy these characteristics in your baby: better at nursing, better at self soothing, more interactive and responsive, and more relaxed and alert at birth. And as the BabyPlus kids grow, they’d develop earlier, be more ready for school, be smarter, more creative, and independent with longer attention spans.

What a bad mother I am for not having used BabyPlus when I was pregnant. /self-flagellation begins

All you have to do is to strap a speaker to your belly and let it listen to “auditory exercises.”

Your baby can very clearly hear these patterns. She/he learns to discriminate between the sound coming from the mother and those from BabyPlus. In other words, learning has begun. Your baby accelerates the rate at which he or she compares and contrasts information. This process builds your baby’s memory for greater capacity and function throughout life.

I’m constantly amazed that we’re not all a bunch of blithering idiots considering none of our mothers did squat while we were in utero. How could the human race have survived without BabyPlus?

Celebrity Baby Blog tells us that celebrities rave about BabyPlus. And how unfair is it that only those with money to burn have access to such important technology. Of course, that demographic may need every little bit of brain boost it can get. /cue evil laughter

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From Top Idiots:

Idiot # 1

I am a medical student currently doing a rotation in toxicology at the poison control center. Today, this woman called in very upset because she caught her little daughter eating ants. I quickly reassured her that the ants are not harmful and there would be no need to bring her daughter into the hospital.

She calmed down, and at the end of the conversation happened to mention that she gave her daughter some ant poison to eat in order to kill the ants. I told her that she better bring her daughter into the Emergency room right away.

Here’s your sign lady. Wear it with pride.

Here’s my idiot story. For a few years on school holidays, I worked at one of the largest pharmacies in Northern California. A common prescription was for two bottles of Fleet enemas for “relief of occasional constipation or bowel cleansing before rectal examinations.”

One day, a woman came in with an empty bottle in the opened box and asked to speak to a pharmacist. She said that there was something wrong with the enema because she didn’t feel the urge to go to the bathroom afterwards.

The pharmacist asked her how she used the enema.

“I drank it!” she replied.

Oops! Wrong end!! The pharmacist replaced the used enema and carefully explained how to use it. If you’re not sure how to use an enema, read these instructions. (Hint: It goes in the bottom, not the top.)

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