Half Changed World

Surfing on BlogExplosion, I ran across this post on the Progressive Blog Alliance, asking everyone to post their reasons for supporting John Kerry. Here are my top 3 reasons for opposing George Bush:

1) Ramming through the massive tax cuts at the cost of everything else in the federal budget — education, health care, job training, veteran’s beneits, you name it. The deficit he’s created won’t evaporate when the economy picks up — it’s structural and will cripple the government for years to come, as well as burdening my kids and theirs.

2) Rushing into war with Iraq, driven by pre-existing ideology rather than evidence, and alienating all of our allies in the process.

3) Using all of its power to tilt the regulatory framework in favor of business, with total disregard for the environmental consequences. If you missed this Washington Post story about the proposed regulation they’ve issued on dams, which would let dam owners cut private deals with the Department of the Interior, cutting out the states, tribes and environmental groups, please read it. And then send a comment to oppose the proposed rule (deadline November 8).

Kerry won’t do any of these things, he’s smart, and his voting record in the Senate is consistently progressive.

***

I spent most of yesterday morning going door-to-door for the local Democratic party, putting notices on people’s doorknobs reminding them to vote tomorrow. I’m not sure if it really gets anyone to vote who wasn’t going to, but it keeps me sane to know that I’ve done everything I could. I sort of feel the same way about it as I do about prayer — I don’t believe in a God who changes people’s fates based on the presence or absence of prayer, but I think it’s a valuable thing to do nonetheless.

I’m taking tomorrow off from work. In the morning I’m selling donuts at the elementary school, which is my polling place, raising money for the PTA. We’ve ordered 50 dozen donuts from Krispy Kreme. Then I’ll be doing whatever is needed — probably going door to door again, reminding people to vote and offering rides. And then I’m working the polls until they close. I probably won’t get a chance to blog.

***

I got an email forwarded today that’s from someone volunteering in Florida. He or she wrote:

"My job is to get people to the polls and, more importantly, to keep them there. Because they’re crazily jammed. Crazily. No one expected this turnout. For me, it’s been a deeply humbling, deeply gratifying experience. At today’s early vote in the College Hill district of East Tampa — a heavily democratic, 90% African American community — we had 879 voters wait an average of five hours to cast their vote. People were there until four hours after they closed (as long as they’re in line by 5, they can vote). "Here’s what was so moving: We hardly lost anyone. People stood outside for an hour, in the blazing sun, then inside for another four hours as the line snaked around the library, slowly inching forward. It made Disneyland look like speed-walking. Some waited 6 hours. To cast one vote. And EVERYBODY felt that it was crucial, that their vote was important, and that they were important. "

I’m also moved that people are willing to wait that long — I keep thinking of the photos of the people waiting to vote in South Africa that first year — but am concerned that it’s necessary. I’d love to hear reports tomorrow about how long people wait in different areas; if you’re reading this, why not post a comment?

***

After reading all the polls, I have no idea who is going to win the election. I’m guessing that we won’t know the winner by Wednesday morning; I’m hoping that it’s because they’re still counting absentee and provisional ballots, rather than because it’s going to be decided in the courts. If it goes to the courts, I think a lot of people are going to doubt the legitimacy of the election, whatever the results. And I think that’s bad for the country.

Also on the Progressive Blog Alliance is a call for mass action to protest in the case of "another stolen election." This worries me deeply — particularly since the coalition calling for protests doesn’t define what constitutes "systematic violations."

As Matt Bai wrote in the New York Times Magazine this weekend,

"Before 2000, most American voters generally viewed the political process in much the same way that avid fans view baseball. Yes, the umpire will blow a call now and then, and the manager will kick some dirt around, and he may even lodge a formal protest that has exactly zero chance of succeeding. But baseball fans come to see most of these incidents as isolated quirks. There is an underlying faith that the umpire is an honest broker and that his inability to gauge fractions of a difference (the milliseconds, say, between the time a ball hits a glove and a foot hits a base) is entirely human. Without this faith — if the umpire, say, wore a Yankee cap in Fenway Park — the game would devolve into pandemonium over every close strike. This is very much like what’s happening in states across the country as Democratic partisans vow to prevent a repeat of the last election. The voting process, once presumed to be a reliable, if fallible, arbiter of the public will, is increasingly seen, even by many more sophisticated voters, as a tainted instrument of partisan conspiracy."

I think this is truly bad for the country. I want Kerry to win, but I think I’d rather see Bush win with 300 electoral votes than see the election disputed in the courts, leaving 40+ percent of the country feeling cheated.

I conclude by pointing out a posting by Robert of Let’s Try Freedom, a conservative blog I found through BlogExplosion. He writes:

"If John Kerry wins, reasonably fair, reasonably square, then he will become my President and I will support him. That doesn’t mean I won’t fight him like the devil on all the many, many things he will do that are wrong and bad; I will. That doesn’t mean I won’t criticize him ferociously and with a partisan growl; I will.

But I won’t declare that he is an illegitimate leader.

I won’t undermine him in front of the national leaders that he has to relate to in order to do his job.

I won’t call him President-Select Kerry if the Supreme Court has to intervene, again, to keep the electoral machinery moving.

I won’t print up bumper stickers in 2008 saying Re-Unelect Kerry.

I won’t, in short, do any of the things that the nauseating anti-Bush left has done in the last four years. I did that stuff with Clinton, and now that I’ve grown up a little bit, and now that I’ve seen what it looks like when the other side does it to my guy, and now that they’ve held up a mirror, it’s a little bit sickening, and I’m more than a little bit ashamed."

I’ll sign onto the converse of that.

I’ve been trying to remember just how it felt last February, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that it was a violation of the state’s constitution not to allow same-sex marriages, when San Francisco started granting marriage licenses, when someone posted online that he wanted to send flowers to the couples waiting to be married and raised over $14,000 in a few weeks. I’m trying to remember just how giddy it felt, and how I cried and smiled at the same time every morning as I read the stories of happy couples in the newspaper on my way to work. (Don’t worry — I take the metro, not drive.)

We’re going to need some of that warmth this week, with measures on the ballot in 11 states that would explicitly ban gay marriage, and with 8 of those going much further, to prohibit essentially any recognition of same-sex couples. The best overview I’ve found of these — with links to the full text of all the amendments — is from the GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) resource kit. As they say:

"On Nov. 2, voters in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma and Utah will consider state constitutional amendments that would ban civil unions, marriage equality and, in some cases, any and all legal protections for gay and lesbian families (and, potentially, other families as well). Three other states — Mississippi, Montana and Oregon — will vote on proposed amendments which explicitly mention only marriage, but which could still jeopardize other basic protections for gay families."

My understanding is that the only state of these where there’s a serious chance of defeating these amendments is Oregon. (The campaign to stop it is discussed at length and with flair at Alas, A Blog.) I think everyone knew that there was likely to be a backlash against those joyous February days, and it’s here now. And there’s a real possibility that it could affect the results of the Presidential election, by motivating the right wing to vote. So I’m hanging onto the memories of that February warmth.

I got an interesting email last week from the Human Rights Campaign, quoting an op-ed by Vic Basile in which he argues that we should consider it a violation of "our bonds of love, trust and friendship" to vote for candidates who support a constitutional amendment against same sex-marriage. I can’t tell from the essay whether he expects people to break off relationships with their family and friends who disagree on this issue, or simply to let them know how much their positions hurt. I can’t agree with the former, but the message was certainly more thought-provoking than the zillions of political emails with pleas for money that have been filling my inbox laterly.

I’d also like to call attention to an interesting argument in opposition to anti-gay marriage legislation by FrumDad, an orthodox Jew who believes that homosexuality is an abomination. But he doesn’t think the government should be making these decisions:

"Every one of us should be incredibly leery of granting broad powers of this sort to the government just because we happen to agree with the particular exercise of that power. Every one of us should understand that the next time that power will be exercised it will most likely be in a manner with which we do not agree, in a manner which will, in fact be directed against us."

I haven’t gotten totally confused by the end of daylight savings time — I know it’s not Tuesday. But I don’t think I’m likely to have time for a book review on Election Day. So, special this week, we have "Tuesday Book Review, now on Sunday!"

The book is She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders, by Jennifer Finley Boylan. It’s a memoir of her life as a maile-to-female transsexual, her attempts to overcome the feeling that she was supposed to be female and of the incredibly loving response of her wife and friends to her transition.

This is not a book I would have picked up just from browsing the bookstore shelves, but a friend recommended it, and I’m so glad she did. It’s very well written — Boylan has written several novels — and a touching love story.

I admit, when Boylan tries to describe why she needed to make the transition, I still feel like I’m blind and she’s trying to describe color to me. She writes about, as a young man, asking women what it felt like to have breasts, and how baffled they were by the question. I share that bafflement. She’s clearly proud of how much she looks feminine, her skills at dressing and wearing makeup, but there are lots of genetic women who don’t look feminine and even as teenagers weren’t especially concerned with their appearance. But any argument I can make, she has already raised, which is disarming.

Boylan writes that she felt she was supposed to be a woman even as a child, but thought that everyone would reject her if she made the transition. So he lives as a man, and marries and has children. And in spite of his loving family, and his successful career, and hobbies he loves, he eventually decides that being a man isn’t something he can live with, and so makes the transition to living as a woman. And the tragedy of it is that having waited so long, his decision affects — and hurts — more people than it would have if he had done it at 25. And the blessing of it is that her wife and children and mother and colleagues and friends respond with love and acceptance. (Her sister cuts off contact.)

There’s one passage from the book that struck me as the heart of the story. It’s after James (later Jenny) has visited a therapist, who tells him that he’s a transsexual and encourages him to live as a woman, noting that it will be easier as he’s young and unmarried. But that’s not what he wants:

"I wanted to learn how to accept who I wasn’t.

"What I felt was, beling a man might be the second best life I can life, but the best life I can live will mean only loss and grief. So what I wanted was to learn how to be happy with this second best life… I still believed that it was a life full of blessings. People can’t have everything they want, I thought. it is your fate to accept a life being someone other than yourself.

"I don’t think this is so crazy, even now. If I could have pulled this off, I would have."

I don’t understand how a life as rich and full of blessings as Boylan describes her life pre-transtion could be unbearable, even if it is "second best," but I’m totally convinced by her writing that she found it so, that she would not have put herself and her loved ones through the difficulty of her transition unless she found it impossible to continue otherwise. I do wonder about what would have happened to Boylan if he had been born 100 years earlier. If he lived at a time when transsexuality wasn’t generally recognized and sex change operations were an impossibility, would he have drunk himself to death while insisting that he was happy? Or would he have been happy, living his life as a man?

TGIF: Thank God it’s Friday. I’m looking forward to the weekend, to hanging out with my kids, to taking them trick-or-treating.

An article by Sue Shellenbarger that appeared in the Wall Street Journal this week, however, raises the question of how parents’ attitudes towards work affect their children. Interestingly, the CareerJournal site carries the article, which talks about both moms and dads, under the neutral headline “Use Caution When Discussing Your Career with Your Children,” while the original WSJ headline was “The Right Way to Answer the Question: Mommy, ‘Why do You Have to Work?’“

The silliest part of the article is the statement that parents are “acting as if they don’t have a choice” when they say to their children “Sorry, honey, I have to go to work.” I say that several times a week, and Schellenbarger acknowledges that she said it too. Actually, most parents don’t have a choice whether or not to work, not if they want to eat. And even if they do have an overall choice whether to work, they don’t have a choice on a day-to-day basis.

Citing the Families and Work Institute, the article includes the statistic that an impressive 69 percent of the mothers and 60 percent of the fathers said that they liked their jobs a lot. I thought it was interesting that the mothers were more likely to like their jobs; my guess is that because of gender roles, women are more likely to be able to take jobs that interest them even if they don’t pay as much, and are also more likely to drop out of the labor force if they’re unhappy. The loss of this flexibility is the hardest part of the “reverse traditional” family arrangement for me.

Shellenbarger emphasizes the gap between the percentage of parents who said they liked their jobs and the smaller percentage (about 40 percent) of children in 3rd to 12th grade who thought their parents liked their jobs. She makes some good points about how people often fall into the pattern of talking about the day-to-day frustrations of our jobs, and rarely about what we like about them, and how this can give children a distorted sense of what work is like.

The article includes a quote from a portfolio manager at a hedge fund who tells his children that he loves his job. Is it too cynical of me to wonder if he’d still love it if it paid $40,000 a year? (I’m reminded of the scene in Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, where the hot-shot trader’s kid asks him to explain what he does for a living. The kid says “so and so’s daddy is a publisher. He makes books. What do you do, daddy?” And the wife jumps in and makes the analogy that he’s passing out slices of cake and whenever he cuts a slice, some crumbs fall off, and he gets to keep the crumbs.)

The article doesn’t, however, offer much in the way of advice for the 30-40 percent of parents who don’t like their jobs “a lot.” Should they worry about the example they’re setting for their children? Shellenberger quotes a parent who says telling her child “we need to buy groceries” “didn’t make a lot of sense,” but I think there are worse answers. I don’t think it’s terrible for a child to learn that the way we get money to buy groceries and clothes and toys is to work, and that when you spend money you’re really spending “life energy.”

“Human Equality is a Contingent Fact of History” is the title of an essay by Stephen Jay Gould, originally published in Natural History magazine, and later included in his essay collection, The Flamingo’s Smile. Gould was an elegant writer, and the essay is worth reading in its entirety. (To read beyond the page in the link, increment the page number in the URL by one.)
Gould’s argument is, first, in support of human equality as not just a moral principle but a scientific fact — at least with respect to racial differences. He writes:
“Human races are not separate species (the first argument) or ancient divisions within an evolving plexus (the second argument). They are recent, poorly differentiated subpopulations of our modern species, Homo sapiens, products at most of tens or hundreds of thousands of years, and marked by remarkably small genetic separations.”
But then he goes on to point out that there’s no biological reason why this had to be the case. There could conceivably have been more than one human species, both intelligent, but with meaningful biological differences. How we would have treated each other in that case — what rights and obligations we would have — is a fascinating topic for thought.
I was reminded of this essay upon reading in paper today that researchers have found remains on Flores island of a new human species that they think lived about 10,000 years after the Neanderthals had become extinct. And it ties in with my thoughts yesterday about whether it’s a good idea to base our moral arguments on factual premises.
A small request:
Some of you may have heard about the controversy that erupted earlier this year when someone discovered that when you entered the word “Jew” into Google, the top link was to an anti-semetic site. The response, after a flurry of initial accusations, was a campaign to get people to link the word “Jew” to its entry on Wikipedia, as I just did. This is now the top result of a google search.
Well, in searching for this essay on line, I discovered that the top hit on “human equality contingent fact history” is for David Duke’s official website. Ugh. If you find this as horrifying as I do, please consider providing a countervailing link to the actual essay, like this:
Human Equality is a Contingent Fact of History
or to Gould’s page on WikiQuote, like this:
Human Equality is a Contingent Fact of History
Thanks.
November 4 update:
The David Duke site is no longer the first result on Google — now this site is. Not quite what I had in mind, but at least anyone coming here will be pointed to the full article.

In this week’s New York Times Magazine, there’s a nice article about the 22-year-old daughter of a lesbian couple. They suggest that she’s one of the oldest children deliberately conceived and raised by a homosexual couple (as opposed to having been born before one of their parents came out). This seems plausible to me — I grew up in Greenwich Village, and attended what is probably the only public elementary school in the US that is next door to a gay bookstore, but to the best of my knowledge, none of my classmates had gay or lesbian parents.

However, the part of the article that caught my attention the most was this comment by Judith Stacy, a sociologist who rejects the conventional wisdom that the children of gay and lesbian parents are no more likely to be homosexual than the children of heterosexual parents.

”My position is that you can’t base an argument for justice on information that’s empirically falsifiable in the long run,” she said. ”If your right to custody is based on saying there are no differences, then research comes along and says you’re wrong, then where are you?”

This point has wide applicability beyond the specific question raised in the article. One example that comes to mind is child care. The research at this point is pretty darn inconclusive. There’s some evidence that kids in child care have better cognitive skills, some evidence that they are more aggressive (although within the range of normal kid behavior), some evidence that very long hours of child care in the early months may have negative effects, especially for shy kids. It’s all based on observations, rather than on rigorous evaluations, so anyone who says that they have proof of causation is lying. (For a solid review of the data, my favorite recommendation is Working Families and Growing Kids, by the National Academy Press.)

But let’s say a report came out next week that had solid clear findings suggesting that children who spend their first two years in child care have worse outcomes than children who spend them in primarily parental care. What would we do? Would we ignore the findings, saying that they’re just another way to beat up on working mothers? Would we demand higher quality child care? Would we demand that the government provide childrens’ allowance to enable low- and moderate-income parents to cut back on work? If no possible research findings would change the policies and practices that we support, we should acknowledge that they are based on our normative values rather than on facts.

For today’s book review, I’m looking at two guides for stay-at-home dads. One is The Stay-at-Home Dad Handbook, a new book by Peter Baylies, the founder of the At-Home Dad Network; the other is Stay-at-Home Dads: The Essential Guide to Creating a New Family by Libby Gill, which came out a few years ago.

Although the two books cover similar overall territory (making connections with other at-home parents, housekeeping, suriving on one income), there’s an interesting difference between their tones. Gill is somewhat breathless about the trend of at-home fathers, writing things like: "But they’re also pioneers, exploring the frontiers of a family option that’s always been there but is now catching on like wildfire." Her book is aimed at both at-home-dads and their wives, and focuses a lot on the decision to have a father as a full-time parent. Baylies is much more matter of fact about whole thing; he assumes that his readers have already decided to be stay-at-home dads, and simply offers advice to make the journey smoother. Gill argues that most families with an at-home parent make that choice because they think they can do a better job than a paid child care provider; Baylies assumes that they do it because it’s rewarding, even fun.

The most useful part of Gill’s book was the lists of questions for husbands and wives to discuss. In addition to being married to an at-home-dad, she’s a career coach, and it shows. She does a good job of identifying some of the hidden minefields that can show up for what she calls "SAHD/WM" families (the "WM" is for "working mother") and I like to call "reverse traditional" families, especially with regard to money issues, but also about differences in parenting styles.

My favorite part of Baylies’ book is the multitude of real at-home-dads whose story and advice he shares. Whereas Gill’s examples always seem to be made-up composites, Baylies’ book feels like he’s invited you over for lunch with some friends, and everyone’s chatting about their experiences. A good bit of the advice that he offers could just as easily go in a book for stay-at-home mothers — but how many fathers would feel comfortable reading it? My one quibble is that many of his examples seem more suited to parents of older children than those caring for infants and toddlers.

Both books go through a standard calculation arguing how the second income often gets so consumed by taxes, child care, and other related expenses that it hardly increases the resources available to the family. I always find these short-sighted, in that they only look at a point in time, not at the impacts on future earning potential, retirement benefits, etc.

One interesting aspect of the discussion of how to save money in the Baylies book is the inclusion of the money that can be saved by doing major home maintenance, repairs, and improvement yourself. This reminded me of a point that Jennifer made to me after reading The Two-Income Trap. She wrote:

"I was very struck while reading this book about how changes in the economy make a guy’s work around the house more important than ever. When you’re sending half your income to the mortgage, suddenly keeping those gutters cleared and recaulking the tub becomes a big deal. The average American family now keeps two cars instead of one, and we keep them longer than ever before: now the husband who can tinker on the car is a very valuable asset. But when he doesn’t get dinner on the table? No big deal because eating out is almost as cheap as eating at home, and overall a small part of the budget anyway. Can’t mend those torn jeans? Just go get another pair at Old Navy. And when’s the last time anyone’s work clothes got ironed anyway?

Put it all together and the one remaining big cost that is associated with
traditional mom’s work is child care. So I’m thinking my husband — who’s
great with kids, who does his own wiring/plastering/carpentry on our house,
who can fix the family car — is an economic juggernaut!!! "

Immediately after I wrote yesterday’s post on Is parenting a right?, I browsed over to Daddy Types, and read about a book discussed in this week’s New York Times Book Review, called “Should Parents be Licensed?” by Peg Tittle. I think this is a horrifying notion, and wanted to make sure that my post wasn’t read as an argument in support of Tittle.

To go all poli-sci, I reject Solinger’s argument that there is a positive right to be a parent, but I believe that — in most cases — people have a negative right to freedom from government involvement in their reproductive and parenting decisions. Tittle’s argument, as far as I can tell from this column she wrote in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, is that we shoudn’t recognize this negative right either.

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Tittle is right that if we worked at it, we could develop a “contraceptive vaccine” that could be administered routinely and reversed at will. And let’s assume further that it could be proved not to have lasting effects on either the reproductive health of the people who receive it or on the well-being of the children they eventually conceive and bear.

Even if the technological capability to make this work existed, I still wouldn’t want the government deciding who does and who doesn’t get to have kids. Tuttle dismisses this as an argument about “the potential for abuse,” even as she acknowleges that she’s “seeing a theocracy coming ever closer.” What she doesn’t seem to get is the notion that even if I could be guaranteed that the government would use my standards to decide who gets to parent (which is highly unlikely), I don’t want this to be a decision for the government to make.

Tittle’s response is that we, as a society, have already accepted government involvement in parenting decisions under certain circumstances: we take children away from their parents when they have been abused, and we require adoptive and foster parents to go through extensive screening and training. (Tittle says that people seeking access to “new reproductive technologies” are also required to go through screening and counseling, but I don’t think that’s a government requirement; I think it’s because the clinics are afraid of being sued. Does anyone reading this know? And do fertility clinics ever turn away people who have the money to pay?)

So what’s the difference? My answer is that when a child is being placed for adoption or foster care, the government has already gotten involved and is responsible for the decision. It’s qualitatively different from having the government get involved in regulating the conception and upbringing of every single child.

I’ve been struggling with this topic for a few days, since I read the interview with Rickie Solinger on the Mothers Movement Online website. I’m going to touch on some issues that are highly sensitive, and I know there’s a risk of hurting or angering people, but I think the question is too important to ignore in the interest of politeness.

Solinger is the author of a book called Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States. In her interview, she makes a convincing argument that the rhetoric of "choice" gives little protection to poor women, who are often criticized for their choice to have children when they do not have the financial resources to support them. Thus:

"Making “good choices” about whether or when to become a mother— a concept, Solinger notes, that “evokes women shoppers selecting among options in the marketplace”— is an opportunity reserved for women with the right combination of social and economic resources. Women without some or all of these assets— a degree of maturity, a good education and/or marketable job skills, work that pays a living wage, a husband or another dependable source of supplemental income— can only make “bad” choices by expressing their sexuality and fertility."

Moreover, the focus on choice provides an argument against public intervention in everything from child care, to college costs, to supporting part-time employment; if everyone is entitled to make their own choices, why should society rescue some people from the consequences of those choices?

Solinger therefore argues that "women must have the right to reproduce in order to be full persons accorded full rights of self-determination." Recognizing such a right would have lots of repercussions. Solinger argues that it would encompass "the right to raise one’s child with access to the basic elements of a dignified life, such as decent food, shelter, physical safety, health care, and education." It would also presumably guarantee access to fertility treatments.

I just don’t think I’m willing to go that far. I have two main objections to the idea of an inherent right to parent:

First, I think Solinger comes dangerously close to suggesting that those who are physically unable to reproduce, or who choose not to, are less than full persons.

Second, and more importantly, I think viewing parenting as a right has the effect of treating children as a means to an end. I reject the notion that people who aren’t willing or able to care for their children have a "right" to have them anyway. And I’m very uncomfortable with some of the surrogacy and donated-egg arrangements that people are using to have children these days, because it seems like the parents are putting their own desire to have some biological relationship with their child ahead of the child’s best interest. And as Being Daddy wrote in his wonderful Unhip Parent’s Manifesto: "Having a baby is not about you. Get over it."

(I recognize that it’s easy for me to say this, not having had any fertility issues. I’m willing to listen to your counterarguments. And I’m not arguing that my queasiness is a basis for making public policy.)

Thought I’d take a few minutes to comment on the services that I’m using to run this blog.

I’m hosted on Typepad, which is the hosted service from the creators of Movable Type. I’m coming to the end of my 90-day free trial, and I’m definitely going to continue with them. I wanted a service that would let me blog without having to get elbow deep into HTML, and it does that, without any hassle at all. I haven’t fiddled much with the layout, but you can, and my friend who uses a screen reader tells me that it works well for her.

The only thing that I’ve been less than thrilled with is the statistics and referrals page, which only tells you how many page hits you’ve gotten, and makes no attempt to tell you how many visitors you’ve had. So I’ve signed up with StatCounter, a free service that provides more detailed tracking. I know there are other services that do this, but this is the first one that I found that I could figure out how to implement with Typepad.

I’ve signed up with BlogExplosion, which is a service designed to help you increase the traffic to your site. The idea is that the more you surf other members blogs, the more they get sent to visit yours. I’m somewhat dubious as to whether any of the people sent to my site are staying around for more than the required 30 seconds, but it’s been fun to play with. I find it quite fascinating to see what people feel compelled to blog about.