Archives for 2009

Admittedly, the Bill 34 kerfuffle in Quebec annoyed me. Et voila. The results of an annoyed Andrea and Rebecca, in today’s Post.

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Brigitte is laughing her his little head off: Check this out, from Paul Tuns’s excellent blog (I enjoy most everything except the baseball/football stuff, which I do not get at all):

I read the column this morning at home and when I was standing on the subway I noticed a woman sitting near me reading the Post who glanced toward that article, rolled her eyes and turned the page. I should have gone back to reading my magazine but I decided to open my mouth. I said to her that she when she got the chance she should read the “well-written and thought-provoking article on the ‘abortion distortion’,” to which she replied that “Andrea and Renita [sic] are funny names for men.” I corrected her, “Andrea Mrozek and Rebecca Walberg are co-founders of the ProWomanProLife blog.” The woman said they were a front for men or perhaps men using female pseudonyms. I said it was sexist to believe that political views are determined by biology and returned to my Economist. Further discussion would be fruitless.

I suppose now is as good a time to confess as any: I, too, am secretly a man. The name, the long hair, the reasonably feminine features, the inability to understand why adults should care about baseball? That’s just a front.

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Andrea/Andrew adds: Why should it matter? Gender is a mere construction anyway, a vestige of the patriarchy. Male/female: Cumbersome and unnecessary distinctions.

On a different note, it was bold of Paul Tuns to engage on the topic with her.

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Tanya balks: You’re all dudes? I feel so betrayed. All this time I perceived you both as enthralling, educated, articulate women with a solid foundation for your points of view. And all this time, you were just enthralling, educated, articulate men with a solid foundation for your points of view. I’m outta here!

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Rebecca says: Thank you to Paul for defending our honour. This sort of behaviour highlights one of the ugliest aspects of identity politics: reading out members of a group if they don’t toe the party orthodoxy. It’s not enough to dismiss us as mistaken or unconvincing; we are in fact not really women if we don’t support abortion at the drop of a hat.

In the US, where identity politics are even uglier, black conservatives are described as Oreos, black on the outside but white on the inside, and similar epithets exist for other groups, the intent of which is to put unpopular ideas beyond the pale, and thus avoid engaging them seriously.

Meanwhile, of course, the half-white Obama, who was raised by his white grandparents, is the hailed as the soul of African American authenticity …

One of my pleasures in life is going to Starbucks with Andrea. One secret I think I can share is that Andrea likes her Starbucks coffee super-duper hot. Like burning hot. So when I saw this story, I immediately thought of her. That’s how considerate and selfless I am.

The always informative Spiegelonline has a fascinating article about a pair of German scientists who have developed a coffee cup that keeps coffee at a temperature of 58 degrees Celsius (136.4 degrees Fahrenheit), which is apparently the ideal temperature for drinking hot beverages.

The two men, Klaus Sedlbauer and Herbert Sinnesbichler, got upset because their mulled wine was always either too hot or too cold. They figured there must be a way to retain the heat long enough to drain the mug, and found the solution in something called phase change material (PCM), “a wax-like substance” that absorbs warmth and is used in construction to retain daytime heat and reduce energy use.

Sedlbauer and Sinnesbichler constructed a coffee cup containing little pockets they could fill with a type of PCM that melts at exactly 58 degrees. Once liquidized, it absorbs the heat from the coffee, allowing it to cool to the perfect temperature, and then holds it there by slowly returning the stored heat to the coffee. Once the coffee is gone the material cools and returns to a solid state. (See a photo here).

Oh sure, it’s ugly as all get out. But who cares? If it really does keep the coffee warm…

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Andrea is laughing: Super-duper, extra, extra hot… I like to take the time to stress that with the barista. I like to give them ample opportunity to have me not return my coffee, which I had to do just yesterday. (Wish I could say I was joking…)

I have no idea who Kourtney Kardashian is – I gather she’s famous, but since I don’t watch television I can’t tell you if that’s true or not (I know; I’m hopelessly out of touch, especially when Rebecca fails to keep me updated about this stuff). But that’s not the point. I just wanted to say: Kudos for doing the right thing.

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Rebecca adds: The Kardashians are a bizarre clan. Their stepdad is former Olympian Bruce Jenner, who has had so much plastic surgery as to look unrecognizable (is this Michael Phelps in 30 years’ time?) and their only other claim to fame, however tenuous, seems to be steatopygianism. I am happy that she is speaking publicly about choosing not to abort. Does it make me a curmudgeon, though, that she needed her hand held to tell her family she was expecting?

It kan’t be easy koping with parenthood if a frank discussion with your siblings is so daunting.

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Andrea adds: Rebecca, you do know that “can’t”  and “coping” start with “c”? Anyhoo, I heard about this star’s decision to keep her baby and a whole flurry of thoughts went through my head. Why was this agonizing for her? (She’s 30 and must be aware that sex can sometimes lead to pregnancy–even if you are on The Pill.) But then I realized, no, we can’t take this for granted. Our culture is very abortion-friendly. So yes, kudos (with a “k”) to Kourtney for keeping the baby, also for going public with the process.

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Rebecca can’t resist adding to this thread: KK (I really hope her middle name starts with a different letter) on eating while pregnant:

“You know what’s weird? Like, I always thought, like, if I was pregnant I would eat like, McDonald’s or like, Taco Bell all day long or something,” she says. “I’m not craving those things. Like, I’ve been craving, like, cold stuff like frozen yogurt and smoothies and like, I’ve been eating way more fruit then I used to eat before.”

When editors like you, they edit your quotes to make you sound less like a 12 year old.

Oh dear:

The widespread tendency in Brazil for men to remarry women several decades younger–called the “Viagra effect”–is undermining the country’s pension system, researchers warned Tuesday.

The report, by Brazil’s National Social Security Institute, showed that a trend of men in their 60s marrying women half their age was leaving a big pool of young widows collecting benefits for much longer than anticipated.

“The social security system was planned so that the wife receives her husband’s pension for only 15 years or so. With growing life expectancy and remarriages with much younger women, benefits today stretch out over 35 years,” said the author of the study, Paulo Tafner.

I know not every member of the PWPL team agrees with the “show the truth” method of convincing Canadians that abortion is wrong. I do. It’s one method that will change some minds. (And other methods that will change other minds.) Here’s a new video from the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, in Calgary, Alberta.  Have a look and see what you think. I think it’s well done, if a bit long for the YouTube crowd.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl9-MCgmMTg”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl9-MCgmMTg]

For those who’ve been following the debate, here’s the update: Quebec retreats on plans to tighten abortion rules.

Quebec’s Health Minister is under fire for a proposal to tighten rules for private abortion clinics, forcing him to retreat on the politically volatile issue amid calls for his resignation.

Clinics threatened to close and others protested after Quebec said it would impose stringent new guidelines on them.

The guidelines, contained in a new law, would subject the private abortion clinics to the same standards as clinics that perform procedures such as cataract or hip-replacement surgery. Critics say the move would be costly and create a less welcoming environment for patients.

But of course. Abortion is an essential health service, they say. Just not one that requires the same kind of stringent rules as, say, health clinics that remove bits of unwanted tissue from some people’s eyes. It’s all perfectly clear.

And you know who you are, you beautiful women you. That’s not just me saying it, it’s actual science:

However, it’s not just the propensity of attractive women to have more kids that is pumping beautiful genes into the female pool. The fairer among us also tend to conceive more daughters than sons. In a government-backed study of 15,000 Americans, the most good-looking couples were 26 per cent less likely to have boys. Evolutionary psychologists Alan Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa explain this trend in in their 2007 book Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters. In part, the sex of a child is dependent, they argue, on the traits its parents have that are most beneficial to survival. And because being good-looking is a more significant factor in the reproductive success of women than men, it follows that pretty people would have more girls.

OK, now I’m ready for a study that says smarter people are more likely to have boys. Wouldn’t that start a nice fight?

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Véronique – who has 4 very good looking daughters –  is glad to be improving the gene pool. It was nothing at all. Really. You are all welcome.

A study just for me:

Women who drink moderate amounts of beer may be strengthening their bones, according to Spanish researchers.

Their study of almost 1,700 women, published in the journal Nutrition, found bone density was better in regular drinkers than non-drinkers.

But the team added that plant hormones in the beer rather than the alcohol may be responsible for the effects.

Experts urged caution, warning that drinking more than two units of alcohol a day was known to harm bone health.

Me, I like to share a beer with hubby before dinner, and have a small sip of red wine during dinner. I think I’ll keep it up. Cheers!