Jaime wrote:

I’ve been reading about (surprise!) Army girlfriends, finances, wives, and widows, but also about the history of women organizing in this country. I also have been checking out the killer (suffocate you by overrunning your lungs) African Army ants. I love to read the Wired blog “Bodyhack”: http://blog.wired.com/biotech/ I heard papers at a conference this last weekend on the following topics: women producing (and not producing) porn, women viewed as fast and loose if they work at call centers in India because it’s a night job, how American media used SARS to exercise some latent racism–making China look backward dirty and stupid. But the most interesting paper was about how men publish more proportionately than women in academia and WHY: women turn inwards when they’re criticized and change while men defend their shit and push on with proposals and applications until they find someone who accepts them. another interesting tidbit on that: men collaborate more, which makes it easier to author more papers. whodda thunk?

So, I think this was a vote for option 2, though prob votes from Georgia should carry less weight as a rule. What are you guys reading? And if anyone wants to get off this list thing, you should speak up rather than cursing us under your breath whenever there’s a message.

Chris wrote:

My current reads:

http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php
The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollen.

This is the same guy who wrote the Botany of Desire, which I know a bunch of us read a while ago but I’m not sure if it was actually a bookclub book. Anyways, really fascinating, scathing description of our modern agriculture industry. If you’ve ever been curious about exactly where your food comes from (it’s all so hidden and convoluted these days) that’s what he tries to find out in the book. Usually stuff like this can get a little depressing, and you don’t want to read it, but I think he’s such a good writer that he keeps using my curiosity peaked so I can’t put it down. If I didn’t have kids I’d have read it in 2 days.

http://www.kwanumzen.com/misc/CompassOfZen.html
The Compass of Zen (by some Korean Zen master).

I found out about this from the Zen center. For some reason I always need to have a zen book that I’m reading. It’s good but thick. I love zen books. They all start out saying “Reading a book won’t help, forget all that you know and just sit!” And then after that there are 300+ pages explaining what Zen is.

The Blind Side: Evolution of the GamE
Good book on football…. oh wait, I was going to read this book but Trevor hasn’t given it to me yet.

Zen books make me itch, too, Brett. I think it’s because it’s all a cluster-fing tautology. The answer is that there is no answer. Things that bring you happiness and connection to other people are the things that make you suffer and so you’re too attached. For me, when I ask, “What do I do,” “Nothing” is not a satisfactory answer. Which means I’m too attached, of course. And round and round.

Also at the conference I went to, there was a paper about women bloggers (diary-type blogs, not political blogs). The author was talking about the support networks these women were able to form online. Someone asked the question I was thinking about blogs are gated economically but also socially. I asked if she thought that blogs were serving as a psychic release valve that was pacifying people into thinking they have a voice. This is opposed to pre-internet when one or more of these women might have gotten pissed off enough to organize rather than letting off that steam in ones and zeros.

Regardless, I’ve been thinking about linking as a gated democratic act. Of related interest, here’s a cool graphic of the web of blog linking (27 million blogs…)
http://nymag.com/news/media/15972/
And a short analysis: “Professional bloggers are, at best, symbiotic parasites.”
http://blog.wired.com/tableofmalcontents/2007/02/parasitology_of.html