top

Is it wrong to use your sex appeal?
Well, not if you’re hungry

Is it the only reason you should use it?
Probably. Because you know, if women could sleep their way to the top there would be many more women at the top.

-Gloria Steinem
(from an interview with RussiaToday.com 3/3/2009)

hey spendy

"The problem is us. The problem is not the banks, greedy though they may be, overpaid though they may be. The problem is us... We've been living very high on the hog. Our living standard has been rising dramatically in the last 25 years. And we have been borrowing much of the money to make that prosperity happen."

-David Beim, Columbia

sexy economics

The Power of the Pill: Oral Contraceptives and Women's Career and Marriage Decisions

by Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F Katz*

---- Abstract -----
The fraction of U.S. college graduate women entering professional programs increased substantially around 1970 and the age at first marriage among all U.S. college graduate women soared just after 1972. We explore the relationship between these two changes and how each was shaped by the diffusion of the birth control pill among young, single college educated women. Although the pill' was approved in 1960 by the FDA and diffused rapidly among married women, it did not diffuse among young single women until the late 1960s when a series of state law changes reduced the age of majority and extended mature minor decisions. We model the impact of the pill on women's careers as consisting of two effects. The pill had a direct positive effect on women's career investment by almost eliminating the chance of becoming pregnant and thus the cost of having sex. The pill also created a social multiplier effect by encouraging the delay of marriage generally and thus increasing a career woman's likelihood of finding an appropriate mate after professional school. We present a collage of evidence pointing to the power of the pill in lowering the costs of long-duration professional education for women. The evidence consists of the striking coincidences in the timing of changes in career investment, marriage age, state laws, and pill use among young single women. The connection between changes in the age at first marriage and the pill is further explored using state variation in laws affecting young single women's pill access. We also evaluate alternative explanations for the changes in career and marriage.

*Published: Goldin, Claudia and Lawrence F. Katz. "The Power Of The Pill: Contraceptives And Women's Career And Marriage Decisions," Journal of Political Economy, 2002, v110(4,Aug), 730-770.

Source: National Bureau of Economic Research $5

what lovely people

Have you complimented anyone today?

holiday cheer

renewable resource - gratitude

"We are all walking around with an amazing resource: gratitude. It helps us express and enjoy, appreciate, be thankful and satisfied with a little effort. We all have it, and we need to use it to improve our quality of life."

- Steven Toepfer, Kent State University

clear enough?

"I promise you this: When I am president, any governor who's willing to promote clean energy will have a partner in the White House. Any company that's willing to invest in clean energy will have an ally in Washington. And any nation that's willing to join the cause of combating climate change will have an ally in the United States of America."

-Barack Obama
to the Governors' Global Climate Summit in Los Angeles
11/18/08

remember to kick in

line in the sand

modern prophet

Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: "What were you thinking; why didn't you act? " Or they will ask instead: "How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?"

Al Gore
Nobel Prize Acceptance 12/07

fight to the death for marriage equality

there IS a cure, they just haven't found it yet

ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis)

1,000 grandmothers

"Getting worn out is better than getting rusted"

-Amma

the task at hand

yours for $12 (or more)

"These high-quality, union-printed American Apparel shirts are part of a huge campaign to register 500,000 young Obama voters in swing states before Election Day."
- from moveon.org

wheel of future

"Both the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) and the Space program are vital if the human race is not to stultify and eventually die out. Together they cost less than one tenth of a per cent of world GDP. If the human race can not afford this, then it doesn't deserve the epithet 'human'."

- Stephen Hawking, Sept 2008

they can be really scary, you know?

Buy it HERE

missing you terribly

"The massive, frustrated energies of a mainly young, disillusioned electorate that has long since abandoned the idea that we all have a duty to vote. This is like being told you have a duty to buy a new car, but you have to choose immediately between a Ford and a Chevy. "

-Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, Hunter S Thompson (1937-2005)

a real class act

"Real change comes from having enough comfort to be really honest and say something very uncomfortable."

-Michelle Obama

pay up, suckers