Comments for Half Changed World

Comment on 2012 books by Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 14:35:48 +0000

Fair question, Jody.

Right now I’m reading Daring Greatly (Brene Brown), and The Victory Lab (Sasha Issenberg), both on the kindle. Looking back at my history, I see I read Feed (Mira Grant), Emerald Eyes (Daniel Keys Moran), IQ84 (Haruki Marukami), Siren of Titan (Vonnegut), An Everlasting Meal (Tamar Adler), and Doc (Maria Doria Russell) all on the kindle this year.

I also bought a lot more kindle books on sale that I haven’t read… (The fact that they don’t take up space has made me completely unable to resist buying books that I think I might want to read some day when they are on sale.)

I get my instapaper docs sent to my kindle, so I’ve also read a fair amount of newspaper articles on the kindle, but I definitely read more paper books than kindle books this year, mostly because I get books from the library. (The library gets some ebooks, but the wait list is generally far longer than for paper books.) And when I get books that I’ve put on hold, I’ve got 3 weeks to read them, so that helps push them up in the priority list.

With both of us working, I could definitely afford to buy more books instead of borrowing them, but I haven’t gotten into the habit…

Jody, you are in library school, right? What’s their attitude towards ebooks these days?

Comment on 2012 books by Jody

Jody — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 13:50:15 +0000

This begs the question: what else did you read on your Kindle? (I’m honestly curious — that might have sounded snarky….)

Comment on Gravy by Writers who write about cancer | Juliet O'Callaghan writes

Writers who write about cancer | Juliet O'Callaghan writes — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 08:17:05 +0000

[...] It includes a number of my favourite authors such as, Margaret Atwood; Anne Lamont; Ian McEwan; and this poem by Raymond [...]

Comment on the welfare waiver controversy by Sheila

Sheila — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 22:59:02 +0000

Once a long, long time ago when I was a teenager growing up on Capitol Hill, I worked in an ice cream shop that was on the corner of 3d and Massachusetts, right in shadow of the Heritage Foundation; we had a flavor called Mozambique that was sort of a spicy vanilla. While Congress was out of session and the folks at Heritage had too much time on their hands, they decided–based on no information whatsoever but the name of the flavor–that we were raising money for the communist regime then in power there. We found this out when people from around the country started calling us in outrage about this fundraising they’d been told we were doing. Facts aren’t relevant when there are people already simmering with outrage about something they’re imagining is happening behind their back: they really *want* to have that outrage confirmed. If it worked for ice cream and communism, how much more readily will it work for a Black president and welfare?

Comment on what’s the story behind declining male employment? by Allison

Allison — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 18:46:31 +0000

I’m still reading, and I’m glad you’re back. Having grown up in the Midwest, I see a lot of truth in what Dave S is saying… the guys who didn’t finish high school thought they could always get work at the steel mill or the paper plant, and when those closed down they really didn’t have anything to fall back upon. My town had more girls than guys finishing high school, which makes me think that the women now have higher job qualifications and more experience in a white-collar economy.

Comment on what’s the story behind declining male employment? by liz

liz — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 14:22:24 +0000

Glad you’re back! I think Dave S. has it right, that it’s the decline of manufacturing jobs here, and the increase of mechanisation of jobs that were formerly done by people, including farming – in which the labor that still needs to be done by hand doesn’t pay enough to support a family.

Comment on what’s the story behind declining male employment? by robin

robin — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 12:48:29 +0000

I’m here, and I’m glad you’re back, and I’m wondering if it has to do at least a bit with declining rates of men graduating from college, too.

Comment on what’s the story behind declining male employment? by dave.s.

dave.s. — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 20:42:08 +0000

I think normal is over. Useta be if you wanted to make tires you did it in Akron and you needed burly people to grab hot stinky tires out of molds and throw them on the cart. Always, those burly people were men. You had to pay them pretty well, because the work was nasty. And, people were policing disability payments/welfare etc., so if you didn’t do SOMETHING (or marry somebody with a job, and keep his house) y0ur life was going to be unpleasant. Now, the tires are made in Ulsan and robots grab them out of the molds. So a whole lot of the semi- and un-skilled work men did is gone, it’s not coming back. Much of the work that’s out there – stocking shelves at Target, delivering auto parts to garages – is done at least as well by women as by men.

Comment on In memory by Liz

Liz — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:20:54 +0000

Amen.

Comment on Do only rich families have at-home parents? by Stay-At-Home Parents and Economic Class – The Envelope Please « ISTP Dad

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 21:06:14 +0000

[...] Halfchangedworld has done some research, prodded by another blogger, and found the numbers used by the US Census bureau to tout a significant increase in the number of at-home parents. [...]