Treats!

Well, Halloween has come and gone and we're all recovering from the sugar shock. There are quite a few bags of candy lying around the house...calling for me. As Rosie O'Donnell said. "How can I sleep when I know there's an Almond Joy one floor below me?" Indeed.

In honor of recent festivities and because I can' t focus on any one thing...I give you:
Yet Another Grab Bag Post.

Wheeeee! Enjoy.

The first thing floating around in my head is the FEMA press conference that wasn't. Good lord. Where to start?

The good people over at FEMA wanted to be sure to project a proactive image (in light of their shameful failure in New Orleans) and decided to inform the public of what exactly they were doing for the California wild fires. This would have been a good thing. We like accurate information, yes? Of course yes.

So they announced a press conference fifteen minutes before it was scheduled to start and apparently didn't know what to do when - surprise, surprise - no journalists showed up in time. So they just staged the whole thing and didn't tell anyone.

Yep, they faked a news conference.

My biggest question here, is not why did they do it. It's why did they think they could get away with it? Do they think journalists in D.C. don't talk to each other? Do they think no one would notice the incredibly softball questions that were being asked or the fact that Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy administrator, knew the first names of at least two of the supposed journalists who were asking the questions. It boggles the mind.

You can read the Washington Post story about this HERE.

Yeah, so that pissed me off.

Then there was this odd bit of advertising. Apparently Heidi Klum has returned to modeling after having her third child. Hurrah.

She signed a deal with Jordache Jeans who turned out this advertisement in the major glossy mags this month. Notice anything missing? (besides her shirt)

My god, what have they done to that poor woman's breasts? She's missing a rather important part of the female anatomy. Kind of the whole biological reason we have breasts and all. I'd be offended but I'm too weirded out.

Does this mean that she didn't breastfeed child number three?

Bizarre ads aside, there has been some cool stuff going on that brightened up my days this week.

Ms. Magazine turned 35 and has put out a very cool fall issue. I highly recommend checking it out. There are the usual incredibly well-written pieces focusing on issues like the wage gap, political involvement and breast cancer research. I particularly loved the piece on Title IX.

Title IX was legislation, passed in 1972 that prohibited sex discrimination in education. It's the reason we now have girl's sports in middle and high schools. It's also the reason we have significantly more female doctors, lawyers, engineers and scientists.

Title IX states,
"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance."

They have a little graph that shows how many women were enrolled in college programs for Business, Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, Computer Sciences, Engineering, Doctoral, Dental, Medical and Law degrees. The first figures are for 1970 (pre-Title IX) and the second are for 2005. Needless to say most of the numbers more than tripled. Very, very, cool stuff.

Now if we could just get paid the same.

That's all I've got for now. I'm going to be shackled to my computer this weekend working on a presentation for my Women, Men and the Media class. I'm analyzing the differences between Cosmopolitan and Bitch Magazine and their portrayals of minority and gay women. Perhaps I will have something fun to post here when I'm done.


Have a great weekend everyone!