The Redstar Perspective

UPDATE (10:55 p.m.): Apparently I’m not the only one quitting. HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson is expected to resign tomorrow. Wahoo!!! Ok, now I’m done. Read on.

–

It’s with some sadness and some relief that I write this post: I will not be blogging anymore at The Redstar Perspective. This has been a difficult decision, and I’m still unsure what it means. I may retire this site entirely, or I may resurrect it at an unknown point in the future. I’m still sorting out the details.

Here’s what led to this decision, somewhat in order of importance:

a) It’s time to write my dissertation. After meeting with two of my advisors recently, it’s clear I can finish this thing in the next 12 to 15 months and GRADUATE!!! Especially since the New Year, but generally speaking, blogging has become my primary activity, and an enormous time suck for me. Yes, my stats are SLOWLY growing, and, according to readers, my writing is improving. But, in addition to feeling like I’m losing my way re: the content of this blog (more on that in a minute), I also feel like I’m investing so much time and energy in this blog and not generating the returns I want to get. It’s not ok with me that my readership grows when I discuss the general election, because that’s not my preferred content focus. The hours I’ve been spending on posts about Obama v. Clinton, etc., is distracting me from really focusing on the writing I need to be doing NOW - that is, on issues of social justice, urban recovery and contentious politics in post-Katrina New Orleans. In other words, my dissertation.

b) I no longer feel comfortable blogging without anonymity in the ’sphere. Given where I’m at in my still-emerging career, I’m not ok with folks’ ability to track down my thoughts and opinions on-line.  I regret not blogging anonymously, and any blogging I do in the future will strive for greater anonymity. For someone with deeply personal intellectual interests, the current context of the Democratic primary and the empassioned and often heated on-line discussions of race, racism, gender, sexism and misogyny, privilege and prejudice have left me feeling that the web is an even less safe space to really grapple with these issues. In our splicing and dicing interpretative world, I know my thoughts and perspectives on the primary, on poverty, on my family, etc. are up for grabs for appropriation and re-interpretation. Nonetheless, I plan to remove some of the content from this site, but will leave the rest up for the history books.
c) The RP has run its course. This blog began in part because of my work in New Orleans, because my buddy Jake urged me to blog rather than send long e-mails to everyone I knew about what I was experiencing in the city beginning in January 2006. With this dissertation, my work in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast is coming to a close. This blog has grown from that original reporting, to cover topics of development, poverty, housing, inequality, activism, cities, and politics more broadly, but all of this has been mixed up with odes to my boyfriend, Grey’s Anatomy, and random (hopefully amusing) stories about my childhood and roots. Frankly, I’m not interested in writing a general interest blog that’s a mix of analysis and journaling. I need the latter for my mental health, but I’ll find another outlet. My priority is to examine urban inequality, especially as it impacts low-income women, households, and neighborhoods. This is what I want to be blogging about (and working on in my lifetime), and I know there’s a niche audience who wants more of this. I’ve got all kinds of ideas for blogging, but I need a new and fresh venue. That will come in time.

So there you have it. Just in time for what would have been the second annual RP History Month. I’m still figuring out how to keep my original New Orleans posts and select others on-line and available. I’ll probably make an announcement about that in the future.

If you’d like to stay in touch, please leave a note in comments. That will give me an e-mail address for you (remember, others can’t see it) if/when I launch another blog.

Thanks to all my readers and champions over the last two years, especially NYC Weboy, and other blogging allies such as Professor Zero, DonnaDarko, Pizza Diavola and Pocochina. It’s been fun, instructive, exhausting and mostly my pleasure. I have become a blogger. Look at me.

Until we meet again, I leave you with some highly recommended reading:

Please read this disturbing, enraging and graphic coverage of the brutal rape and assault of a woman and her kids in Dunbar Village in W. Palm Beach, FL, and how you can let the NAACP know where their legal, PR and activist resources really belong.

A pregnant man challenges people’s ideas about gender, sexuality, and reproductive rights. And shakes up the healthcare profession. (H/t Echidne.) Meanwhile, pregnancy discrimination complaints from women reach record levels.

A refreshing comments thread that asks bloggers to cool it re: their election coverage. Instead of all the collective hyperventilating, let’s all check out Insurgent American’s 35-Point Practical Guide for Action. (H/t Corrente.)

Read Brownfemipower’s WAM conference speech about centering feminist activism around questions of citizenship and the problems this creates for advocating for immigrant women. (How I missed this conference - held at MIT, the irony! - is beyond me.)

Be well, have fun, and stay safe.

If you are a freedom fighter, proud Brandeisian, feminist, or any or all of the above, read this interview with Angela Davis NOW.

Excerpts after the jump.

(more…)

A more-conservative-than-Redstar reader emails to ask why I’m not covering Ahmadinejad’s visit to NYC.  My only guilt over ignoring this story is if by doing so I’m not living up to my legacy as a scholar trained by the American Jewish community (i.e., a Brandeis grad). 

As I wrote to her - and as regular readers can probably gather - foreign relations, foreign policy, and diplomacy are not issues I spend much time on here.  I simply cannot take the macho-heads-of-state-chest-bumping requirement of national politics, particularly as its come to pass under post-9/11 Bush in our so-called “War on Terror.” Indeed, the reason I don’t read the mainstream “progressive” (also, alleged, as far as I’m concerned) blogosphere more often, is because the predominantly male white authors expend an awful lot of hot air on the diplomatic disaster that passes for our foreign policy these days (though I was totally into Yglesias’s post on Olive Garden - who wasn’t, it turns out). 

I tried tonight to read the NYT coverage of Ahmedinejad’s talk at Columbia, but ended up closing the webpage in dismissal.  I remember at Deis when The Justice student newspaper sold ad space to Holocaust deniers, and the backlash that followed.  I just can’t take such charlatans seriously, even though I know that their statements cause very real pain for people.  And though I’m a card carrying member of the intelligentsia, I find obnoxious and smug the empty provocation of a cocooned place like Columbia allowing that guy to come and speak, which does little more than piss people off without providing much legitimate space for productive debate - not least because his sensationalist rhetoric and comparatively weak political power doesn’t give those of us looking to confront the “enemy” much to work with.  (Although, Andrew Sullivan - among others - takes on his denial of persecuting gay Iranians while scoffing at Columbia’s set up.)

Truth be told, if you want to hear me talk about Iran, you’d suffer a conversational mix of its politics from five to ten years ago and my desire to visit it because of its amazing art, history and hot men - all based on my dating an Iranian-American* in NYC on and off for a few months - before I moved into ranting about Bush and our current “mode” of international relations.  To save myself at this bedtime hour the ire that immediately flares up when I think about (or see or hear) Bush, I’ll let Ezra do the talking for me now:

“From [CBS’s Scott] Pelley’s interview with Ahmadinejad:

PELLEY: I asked President Bush what he would say to you if he were sitting in this chair. And he told me, quote, speaking to you, that you’ve made terrible choices for your people. You’ve isolated your nation. You’ve taken a nation of proud and honorable people and made your country the pariah of the world. These are President Bush’s words to you. What’s your reply to the president?

Wow. Pot, meet kettle.”

Now, if we want to talk about keeping alive the history and lessons from the Holocaust, or protecting human rights and preventing hate crimes, I’m your woman.

*Based on these credentials, I’m actually an expert on international and cultural relations.

Slept in this morning for the first time in weeks, after an evening flight home from an intense two days in New Orleans. Slow to get working as I sit on my couch in a fleece and sweatpants.  Apparently I took the sweltering heat with me on Sunday morning and left it behind in the Gulf Coast.

As my mind and soul slowly recover from the whiplash of traveling back and forth between my peaceful New England life and my heated, urgent political organizing work down South, I’m welcomed home by some nostalgic chatter in the Boston blogs.  VA transplant Gift of Green offers a Top 10 list of MA things that stump the locals south of the Mason-Dixon line.  Some of my favorites: the fluffernutter sandwich (invented in Lynn, it seems, and actually I’ve never been a fan of fluff, but it was always in my aunt’s cabinets), the triple decker apartment building, home to generations of Redstar kin…and a bunch of other working-class and ethnic families in Boston, and radiators (though in my two-family house, we had floor vents that opened and shut, that I’d stand on to warm up at the end of a freezing winter school day). 

Her list reminds me of my own regional “wha???” when I was down in New Orleans two weeks ago.  Dining with a table of Southern women, white and black, young and old, at a nouveau Southern restaurant (the local version of trumped up comfort food places here that charge us $12 for mac ‘n cheese), I responded to a dish incl. turnip greens that the only time I ate turnip was at Thanksgiving, and it was mashed, like potatoes.  Well, me and my bland Irish palate were practically run out of town.  I told them about Whoopie Pies, another New England treat (thanks, Amish peeps??), they were intrigued, though ultimately heads were shaken in pity at the dishes I clearly considered cuisine.

While I head out for a needed long walk this afternoon, the M.A.S. is off to a MA Historical Commission meeting for some networking.  He has his car with him, as the High Holidays commandeer all the parking spaces around his apartment building that sits next door to a synagogue.  As Rosh Hashanah begins tonight, I proudly display my own multi-cultural “roots,” hanging up the pic of a Deis friend’s daughter that decorates the Jewish new year card I receive every year.

L’Shanah Tovah to all my M.O.T. friends and peeps!  May your new year be filled with the delicious happiness of Whoopie pies, fluffernutter, turnip greens and ice cream with jimmies!

According to BostonMaggie’s Levels of Boston Irishness, I’m mint green:

Mint Green: Moved out of the city as a kid. Either has a government job or knows someone who does, especially cops. Likes a pint, but around the age of 30 developed a taste for Jameson’s. MP3 player is full of Dropkick Murphys and The Saw Doctors. Drinks in suburban places with neon shamrocks in the window. Hopes to visit the Auld Sod someday,but is saving for Disney. Might know someone who can get you off jury duty.

I’d venture to say my mint green roots have grown substantially intertwined with the bright blue of Brandeis and the pinstriped New Yorkers I’ve met over the years. This would explain why Zero 7 and Jill Scott crowd out the modern Irish bands in the iPod.  (And let’s not overlook the reddish-yellow tint I’ve picked up from all the foreign spice consumption in my past!). 

As for the drinking, hopefully the Irish bars of Brighton Center will have to suffice. 

Though I’m pretty sure I’m related by degrees to folks who can get you off jury duty.
Via.

My neighbors.

I’m up over at Foresight, taking on class and poverty conflicts in the classroom. 

More to come here on the reunion, gender, kids, and all that good stuff. 

This is one of my favorite phrases of corporate speak, and you’ll forgive me if I do that now while on vacation in Florida (can you imagine this is only the M.A.S.’s third trip here ever?!  The second one being last month with me.  That was to the Gulf Coast - ick; this one is on the Gold Coast - eh.  But don’t let my ambivalence fool you; I know I’d never be a Brandeisian without the generous contributions of the Palm Beach set.)

In my absence, take a look at NYC Weboy this week.  He’s done my homework and addressed the recent scandal behind MIT’s Dean of Admissions resigning.   (He’s also given me the kindest, loveliest shout-out, but that’s not the point here.)  I make a comment on his blog re: the bubble that is MIT, and maybe I’ll get back to that when I’m done basking in the breezy sun with my beau.  However, I just had to share from the NYT evidence of said bubble - note in their reporter attributions:

“Christy McKerney contributed reporting from Cambridge, Mass., and Sara Rimer from Boston.”

Yeah, too bad we haven’t figured out how to bridge that inpenetrable Charles River that separates Cambridge from Boston, and the rest of the universe.  Really helps with bringing research down to a useful level.

As does some needed R&R for the ever over-worked and very privileged graduate student.  And with that, I’m hanging up!

I’m still processing today’s events at VA Tech.  Aren’t we all.  As a current full-time student at MIT, I walked across Harvard campus today for a class, trying to imagine how and where such a brutal event might unfold on either of these campuses I’ve come to know well.  VA Tech police and administration are already under fire for failing to notify the campus sufficiently of the initial two shootings (there’s two jobs  - university president and campus chief of police - that should open up within the year), and no doubt they’ll be living with the guilt and tortorous “what if’s” of their decisions today while we also question their ability to protect the 2,600 acre campus of 25,000 students (of which more than half are commuters).

I’ve been following the story since about 11 am, and I was struck how restrained the tone was as the news unfolded.  I couldn’t tell if that was the nature of breaking news via the internet, versus the intimate hysteria of watching video over and over on tv (until we’re numbed by the repetition).  Or if it was the suspended disbelief given no one was really sure what the f*** happened.  What f***ing chaos, occurring on a campus effectively the size of a small town, and early in the day.  Not unlike those first moments of confusion of 9/11, before word spread and we watched the second chapter of that atrocity unfold on television.  In the VA Tech microcosm, given the delay in alerting students about the apparent “domestic” dispute in the dorms, as the NY Times reported, “few students seemed to have any sense of urgency” as they went about their morning routines.  So horrible.  I remember what it was like to be at Brandeis, when about a dozen student and faculty died over the course of my four years there, including a junior killed in a bus bombing while studying abroad in Israel.  We came to believe there was a black cloud over our community.  I have no idea how VA Tech picks up the pieces from this.  To begin, they need to raze Norris Hall. 

Given the shooter blew his own head off, authorities have to resort to “[tracing] purchase records for two handguns found near the body.”  As The Financial Times is one of the first to report - while U.S. media races to supply us with endless video and first-person coverage of today’s horrors - we will see what this means for gun control laws in this country, if anything.   

My heart and mind goes out to the victims’ loved ones and members of the VA Tech community tonight. 

Turns out I’m not the only Deis grad thrilled to represent such a notorious institution.  The folks over at Universal Hub and in the Deis communities at LiveJournal.com joined me in a virtual wave.  Ever clever, the M.A.S. noted the irony of the home of the Judges producing such an infamous string of graduates.  Right on.

The RP History Month keeps the local love going by showcasing some of the recent happenings around Boston:

The T plans to post bus maps around the city to encourage more riders to take the bus.  Maps - now there’s an idea ahead of its time.  I’m so glad my increased T fare is funding the amazing R&D capacities of the MBTA.  Though, based on experience, I suggest that getting the buses to arrive on time also might go a lot further to increasing ridership.  Just a small suggestion from this urban planner/MBA/irate T passenger.  But yeah, don’t forget the maps.  Now we’ll all have something to look at while we wait.

Though the T’s not the only public agency around here breaking people’s spirits in a slow, grinding fashion.  A recent study reveals that GOP administrations drive Massholes to smoke.  So is it the Yankees that leads us to consume mass quantities of this:

??

Of course, we’re all just trying to take care of ourselves up here, especially facing the winter that will not end. Enrollment in MA’s new universal health care plan is beating projections.  Good news.  Our new pitcher Brendan Donnelly, on the other hand, is beaning batters.  Not so good.  As Donnelly admits, it’s nothing but “antics” and “bad habits” up here.  Anyone know if free psychotherapy comes with that health coverage?

Finally, this is why I wasn’t around to post yesterday.  Beauty and brains!  I’ve got it all!  (Actually, it was more like this.)

How many universities can claim to be the alma mater of three of the only eight women to ever make the FBI’s Most Wanted List?

Bonus Points for you kids looking to pad your resumes by naming all three!

Go Judges!

CAMBRIDGE, MA - On this spring afternoon here, defiantly sunny after yesterday’s snow showers, The RP catches up with a local woman just seen sprinting past an approaching meter maid, to move her car before the ticketing officer reached the expired meter.  The RP noticed the woman, wrapped in a green plaid winter coat and oversized maroon scarf she’d surely like to retire for lighter outerwear by now, as she broke into a run on Mass Ave towards Albany Street where the meter maid was turning from the opposite direction.  The RP reached the corner in time to witness the mysterious, graceful woman move her car one space up and drop four quarters into the new meter.  She then had this exchange with the diminuitive, stocky officer ambling up the street, pausing occasionally to tuck the dreaded orange tickets under cars’ passenger-side wipers:

Meter Maid: “Just a warning…after two hours you have to move your car.”

Mysterious Woman of Grace & Style: “I know, I just moved it!”

Maid: “I saw you run past me.”

MWGS (turned to call over her shoulder, having passed the officer on the sidewalk by now): “I know, I had to beat you to it!”

After this remarkable feat of urban athleticism, we were lucky to catch up with this woman on the street.  She asked not to be identified, given she has several unpaid parking tickets in the City of Cambridge, though she did tell us she is a doctoral student in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies & Planning.  During our conversation, her redhair glistened in the sun, while she clutched her lower back and complained of pain from running in faux-rider boots she bought last fall at a Barney’s outlet in Connecticut. 

We spoke with her briefly about her parking strategies here in the vicinity of MIT on the banks of the Charles River:

(more…)

And no more of that depressing stuff!  I’ve been quiet on the blogging front this week as a) try to reintegrate myself into society, and b) get ready for a visit to my dad and spring training in Florida this weekend.  Go Sox!  But while I resume my web surfing on campus instead of from my couch, the rest of my neighborhood and city tries to recover from one of the more raucous weekends in memory. 

Last weekend was an organic hat trick of debauchery, three days of fun usually designed for an official long weekend where Monday is available for recovery, sitting in traffic, etc.  This year, St. Patrick’s Day fell on a Saturday, with the annual South Boston St. Patrick’s Day parade occurring per usual that Sunday. Add to that a snow storm began Friday afternoon, right around lunch time.  By the time the M.A.S. and  I got back to Brighton mid-afternoon, the Screamin’ Eagles

were out in full effect, moving cautiously down the slippery sidewalks to different impromptu parties, taking special care not to drop their thirty packs of Coors Light, Bud Light, and Busch Light.  When I passed by Roggie’s at 7pm, headed home again after yoga, drunk co-eds were comparing notes on how long they’d been living it up at happy hour, with one young woman whining that she’d only got off work at 5.  I traipsed past them only to run into three dudes crowding the sidewalk, one of them bleating like an antelope I saw on safari in the Serengeti, as his friend reassured him, “we’re sleeping until like, noon tomorrow.”  More college kids crowded the bus stop, this time with their thirty packs resting in the snow, while they waited for the BC bus to come pick them up and drop them around the neighborhood.  Saturday was a repeat of Friday, only with everyone out in their green finery.

(more…)

Fancying myself a rabblerouser, I look around me for guidance and mentors, and even anti-role models.  From my ever growing academic CV, some highlights of contemporary political historymakers (mostly for worse…a sort of political What Not to Wear, if you will):

(more…)

Then there’s the other Reinharz…honestly, this is how our university president wants to be remembered for the bold move of hosting the “apartheid”-quoting former President Jimmy Carter?  Kvetching over the cost?

Hopefully he wasn’t at put out financially after Charlton Heston’s visit in 2000.

As a non-Jewish Deis grad, there’s one topic I try never to discuss.  Too heated.

How dismaying to see this latest turn in the debate. 

That’s about all I can contribute on this one…(…other to say I was never a fan of Shula, who gave me some sensible advice re: my senior honors thesis that I was too young to appreciate then, but whose demeanor nonetheless left me sour on her forever after.)

Readers, please discuss amongst yourselves. 

A somewhat outmoded title, I admit…

…now that I’m part of the M.A.S., I have slightly more faith in the world that there’s good partners out there…

Well, as it turns out, there are, especially for hyper-educated sharp cats like myself.

Of course, I may be getting ahead of myself.  This article on the class gap in marriage rates, uses college education as the marker, whereas professional students like myself might be the outliers here. 

The impetus for this deeper analysis of marriage rates in the U.S. is this piece that ran last week on how more than half of women in the U.S. are living without a spouse.  My beloved grandmother - Marie “Nannie” Taylor - who passed away on Monday night at age 89 (and 8 days), was one of these women.  There is a tribute to her, and my grandfather, deceased 19 years earlier, forthcoming on this website.  Once I can get through the state of shock that’s confined me to my couch and tv for the last 24 hours, I will try to come back on-line here and share with you a glimpse of the feisty, independent woman and quirky, unconventional man that were my maternal grandparents.

Meanwhile, check out NYC Weboy, where my informal blogging partner will certainly take the lead on analyzing the irrelevant SOTU last night, or the latest goings-on at Brandeis, where the school that groomed Abbie Hoffman, Angela Davis, Jack Abramoff and yours truly for public life delivered the latest round of controversy to its energized, activist campus. 

I know, I’m a few days late…I’m a bad Deis grad, and a bad Honorary MOT!

But I’ve been wrapping up - and celebrating the end of  - the semester.

In the spirit of the season, forgive me! 

So,

Happy Hanukah!

From my Community to Yours.

This was a lovely image as I stumbled up the sidewalk last night, laden down with Nordstrom boxes from the Providence mall.  Love the upscale department store, the quality of the items, the quality of the service.  Makes the prices feel worth it compared to waiting endlessly at shabby Macy’s for the salesperson who never materializes, leaving you to wonder if you can’t just find something better elsewhere exhibited by a person who actually turns up to assist you.  (I was wrong to buy in so quickly to the overall department store renaissance, vs. the fortitude of the luxury retailers.  The veteran Wesley correctly tells it like it is.) 

I hate Providence Place, like I hate Cambridge Side Galleria.  Pay-to-park (I’m sorry, didn’t I just give you all my $$ inside?), tall and narrow three-story malls that make you feel like you’re always walking from the dept. store anchors back to the escalators in the middle, or to the food court tucked in the opposite corner 2 flights up from where you’re standing outside the Gap.  Is there anything more depressing than sitting alone in a food court, gulping a lemonade or diet coke with a nasty $8 faux panini?  Gross.  Too late I discovered the Nordstrom cafe hidden in the children’s section, with ample, leafy salads just calling to my now slightly nauseated self. 

But I took care of just about everyone for the holidays.  While buying myself a pair of shoes, the checkout guy noted that I must “really love a lot of people,” I had so many packages.  I told him my friends “keep bringing babies into the world.”  If only it weren’t so fun buying kids clothes, I might be bitter about this.    Plus, it’s a feminist challenge each time in these stores to find some gender “appropriate” clothes without succumbing to the shackles of pink v. blue. 

But this week, we’re all about the blue:

Happy Hanukah!

This post is mostly a balm for Monday morning lethargy and resistance to being back in the office.  I was relatively quiet in the blogosphere last week, due to grading midterms up through Friday at 2pm.  Given my hazy understanding of my readership, I’ll refrain from gossiping too much about the experience.  What’s the appropriate length of time before I can declassify such thoughts? 

And I was gloriously off-line all weekend in NYC.  Another wonderful trip for the M.A.S., though we’re exhausted (and aging more rapidly than ever) after 3 nights of solid drinking.  We’re an impressive duo…is one way to look at it.  In vain resistance to the aging process, I strutted around this afternoon in one of those mini denim skirts much more appropriate for 21 than 31 year olds.  I’ve got the legs for it, but certainly not the comfort level to cruise around MIT campus in such a tiny number.  That’s ok, was nice to be a little arm candy for the afternoon!

Saw some of my Deis girls and their adorable daughters - we had a laugh at realizing the natural progression from being a tattle-tale (which I once was) to blogging.  And attended a baby shower Sat night where the one newborn in attendance was passed around among several moms-to-be who tried to pretend they weren’t practicing for what was to come.  Don’t worry ladies, you’re naturals! 

And now it’s dark at 5pm and my eyes are barely open at what’s really 12:45 am.  It’s going to be a long week of detoxing and needing sleep…Monday morning comes too soon!

I have been the same height for the last 17 years, but my weight has fluctuated by about 30 pounds over that time.  Newly tall as a freshman in high school, one of my teachers told me I had chicken legs.  (Inappropriate?  Perhaps.)  In my mid-twenties, I lost 15 pounds in two weeks after I broke my back, unable to eat from a combination of meds, pain, and a week’s stay in the hospital after major surgery.  Though I gained it back over time, I lost 10 all over again during my first year at MIT, our opposite, high-stress version of the undergraduate’s “Freshman 15.”  Looking back on my college years, I like to joke that my diet consisted of large roast beef subs from New York Deli and a lot of weed. 

Although, that doesn’t give the rest of my snacking its due.  My buddy Aaron, an undisputed champion in the weight fluctuation game (he likes to beef up, abruptly slim down, and then run the NY Marathon), likely played a large part in putting Waltham’s Bagel Depot out of business, when he used to con the night shift (after the Depot’s ill-fated move to run 24/7 down the street from Brandeis) into giving him dozens of free bagels.  Nothing like heaps of scallion cream cheese at 3 am after a heavy night of drinking.

Then there were wings in 17 flavors from Wings Express.  Just as I insisted on keeping up with their drinking, smoking, and general heckling, at least once I gorged on wings with Aaron and his fraternity brother (and our buddy) Levine, part of a deliberate stoned chow-down one Sunday evening in late summer.  (I joke that I’m anti-sorority, but that if I was a guy, I’d be president of a fraternity.  Instead, I’m stuck with the title of AEPi biddy.  How ironic.  And classy!)

As you can see, this is more concerted orgy than mindless eating, the latter being what a professor at Cornell finds is key to the problem of America’s obesity.  This whole article made me chuckle, but the impetus for this post was his following comment about research subjects:

“It’s easy to find undergraduates to participate, but with the guys nothing makes sense because they all eat like animals,” he said.

I’m sayin’.