Friday Five

Thanks again to Live Journal for reviving this entertaining meme:
1. If you were to have a scholarship created in your honor, what qualities would you look for in applicants (leadership, service, GPA, etc.)?
I would look for two things: evidence of strong intellectual discipline and curiosity – such as teaching oneself a new language or building/repairing a house without help – and proof of overcoming long odds – adoption, physical deformity, recovery from serious illness.
2. Who would be eligible to apply for your scholarship (members of a certain major, ethnic group, sexuality, etc.)?
Women over forty who have never been married and who wish to enter a profession that is predominantly male.
3. Would it be need-based or not? Why?
I think any middle-aged woman who’s never been married would a priori meet a needs test, so it wouldn’t be necessary to explicitly impose such a requirement.
4. What would you call it?
A Second Chance
5. If you made applicants write an essay, what would the topic be?
Instead of a written interview, I’d prefer a presentation on any scientific, technical, engineering, mathematical, historical or political topic.

Numbers

From NPR, A Puritan View Of The Crash by Dick Meyer:
But it wasn’t OK when midlevel, 30-year-old workers in big, corporate investment banks were routinely making over $5 million a year. It wasn’t OK when the top hedge fund operators could make a billion a year.
“In 1960, the ratio of CEO pay at large companies to that of the president of the United States was about 2 to 1. In 2007, it was more than 20 to 1,” wrote Harvard scholars Rakesh Khurana and Andy Zelleke in The Washington Post. “In 1980, executives at large companies made about 40 times what the average worker made. Last year, CEOs made about 360 times more than the average worker.”
“On the NYSE today, the average share is held for less than a year, as compared to about five years in 1960 and two years in 1990,” the authors wrote. “What matters isn’t what the companies are actually doing but the expectation that the shares can be unloaded to a ‘greater fool’ at a higher price. In the prevailing business culture, little has been meaningfully valued by either executives or shareholders beyond the short-term accumulation of wealth.”
The rise of both the financial services sector and executive compensation contributed to a deeper and more important shift in the economy: the growth of income inequality.
Economists gauge differences in income using a measure called the Gini index. According to the U.S Census Bureau, the index went from 0.38 in 1968 to 0.47 in 2006, a rise in income inequality of 24 percent.
In 2004, the top 10 percent of earners made 42.9 percent of all the income Americans earned, accorded to a well-known study by Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. The top 1 percent alone swallowed 16.2 percent of total American income. By the way, to get into that top 1 percent in 2004, you needed to earn $20 million a year or $385,000 a week. Good luck with that.

Outing, First With Cat

I was dreading it, yesterday’s visit to Mr. Fluffle’s vet, but as it turned out, there was no need to anticipate the worst.
His former owner, a friend, and I brought him to the vet a week ago for a check-up and blood work. We got a call a couple of days later that the lab dropped the sample, so I had to schedule a second appointment.
My friend had offered to help me get him in his carrier. This sounds silly, he’s only 15 pounds, but this early in our getting to know each other, he can be unpredictable: the other day, he bit me while I was brushing him.

Continue reading Outing, First With Cat

The Friday Five

It’s back, courtesy of Live Journal.
What activity can you not believe you survived in your childhood?
Hospitalization for not one but two hip surgeries.
What activity can you not believe kids get away with today?
Playing video games constantly.
If you could be anyone else in the world live or dead, who would you choose to be?
Thomas Jefferson – rich, brilliant, successful, lived to a ripe old age (83). Jefferson, obviously, was not perfect: I would like to think that I would have been moral enough to develop an alternative to slavery and would not have committed adultery with Sally Hemings.
A lot of people think they’ve been in love at 15 or 16 years old, do you think you now look back and think you were a stupid kid or do you believe that you were old enough to know what love is?
I think I knew what love was then, but haven’t a clue now!
Do you think it is possible to remain in love with someone you once loved, but haven’t seen in a year?
Of course.

Mr. Fluffles

I will be having a little guest this weekend, Mr. Fluffles and I are going to give each other a try-out.
His owner brought him to the vet today, and I tagged along to ask questions. The vet is doing a blood test for kidney disease, which he told us is the most common problems in older cats. Mr. Fluffles is 14, and could live to be over 20.
The vet said he’s in good shape as far as he could tell from an exam. He has certainly lived in a very good home: his current owner has a degree in agriculture and used to run a farm.
I’ll take some pictures, but in the meantime, he looks somewhat like this: grey, fluffy and markings between the eyes.
He seems to have a very mellow disposition, which suits me very well, and maybe we already have a vibe: on the way home, I stopped at the supermarket and without giving it much thought, picked up two kinds of fish. Cat ESP.

Milton

Recently, I’ve met two interesting, high-profile people who live in Milton, author Suzette Martinez Standring and Laura Fitton, social media guru aka @pistachio.
They live in parts of town different from the one in which I grew up.
In those days, Milton was balkanized: you might visit other parts of town, but your identity was firmly fixed by your address. Which means that even if those interesting ladies and I were in Milton simultaneously, it’s unlikely we would have met.

Continue reading Milton

Mid-Winter

It was so cold that even our hardy town naturalist canceled yesterday’s scheduled walk in the woods.
We had more snow last night and might get more today.
I’m sick of winter, and while it’s only January, this splendid piece of prose from the February page of the 1983 Old Farmer’s Almanac still resonates.

Continue reading Mid-Winter