Unfortunately, it is now too late to read the free online version of Louise Story's NYT report on how many women at elite universities are planning to put their careers on hold in order to be home with their children. I didn't need the YDN to tell me what a big controversy this was among campus women; everywhere from debates in the dining halls to irate mass emails, people have been talking. "I'm not planning to be a stay-at home mom! Maybe some of us are just here to get their Mrs., but nobody I know."

Some are outraged that the piece made the front page. Many feel personally offended, and some have written the author to question her survey methods.

The article adddressed many questions. Is it possible to balance a career and a family? Is it somehow the duty of Ivy League women to go out and conquer the world, and by being stay-at-home (or at least part-time) moms, are they wasting their education?

Personally, I think the whole thing is being blown out of proportion. I admit I was surprised when I read Story's numbers. Nobody can plan that far ahead to know where in their careers they will be when they marry, or whom they will marry. Everyone who gets offended by this claims to have tremendous respect for stay-at-home mothers; yet apparently the thought of spending any time as one attacks their sense of self. It's true that traditional gender roles are not hard and fast, but there are reasons for them that go back to the dawn of time. I do hope to be able to take a little time off when my kids are very young, but I would hope that my husband would make comparable sacrifices.

This strikes me as a very personal decision that is being turned into an almost political issue on campus, fostering nothing but animosity. If I were one of those who had planned to stop working after childbirth, I would not feel comfortable admitting it to some of my fellow students, for fear they would feel I was "taking up someone else's valuable spot at Yale" for nothing.

I think motherhood is a career unto itself, and for those unprepared for it (as most of us students, still dependent on our own parents, are), it seems remote and foreign. Working hard to get ahead is all most Yalies have ever known. I think most of the ire this article stirred up is really due to the fact that it forced us to briefly question exactly what we've been working for.

A minor victory for justice and the left
New York Times: Delay Indicted and Forced to Step Down as Majority Leader

Moral: Enjoy undergrad status while you can!
The blogs Easily Distracted and Unfogged have posted warnings and tips for those about to go to grad school. They're amusing, if daunting, and certainly not to be ignored. I'm getting so old! It's scary.

The Real World
Now Playing: Bach cello suite number 1
Cindy Sheehan was arrested today at the antiwar protest in D.C. When Al Franken came to speak at the Law School on Friday, he said that, while it was stupid and immoral to go to war in the first place, he doesn't believe we should pull out now. He thinks that if we had our act together we could at least make things easier on the Iraqis. According to Franken, they have less electricity there than they did six months ago, and it's unacceptable to leave them in such a state. By invading, we comitted to the long haul -- the so-called Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it. But I think that an infrastructure can be rebuilt through multinational aid; it shouldn't require troops. And as for the insurgency, if we're gone, who will they fight? Yes, we do need to leave.

But Franken was otherwise brilliant on Friday. He pointed out, in one of the randomest analogies I've heard this year. "Asking whether mainstream media has a liberal or a conservative bias is like asking whether al Qaeda uses too much oil in their hummus: it's beside the point." Instead, Franken said, the problems with mainstream media are greed and laziness: glitx at the expense of substance, talking heads as a substitutes fro investigative journalism. Such a good point. But I think there's another component: the press being cowed by the administration. And this element seems to be fading of late; more and more news outlets are not shying away from attacking Bush on Katrina and the war, for example. Maybe this is a turnaround point.

A side note: who the hell gets to name the hurricanes??? It's really too bad we're stuck with a somewhat ditzy name like Katrina to forever signify this diaster. Rita's a little better, but not much. Why not something menacing, or at least regal sounding? Well, there's actually a pretty specific system for this, and there will never be another Katrina: especially destructive hurricanes have their names "retired."

I actually found a hurricane name list, which was entertaining. Some of the most appropriate, "stormy" names included: Isabel, Peter, Victor, Ivan, Arthur, Bertha, Josephine, Humberto. But more often than not the names were really funny. Some, like Lenny, Mindy, and Shary, are hopelessly wimpy, and therefore funny ("Jerry devastates city" sounds like a disappointing Seinfeld show). Then there are those where you know they were trying to choose exotic, random names: Beryl, Gert, Virginie, Ernesto, Fabian, Hermine, Wilma. WILMA! There is a hurricane Erika, too.

I don't know why people live in the south. I really don't. I got really sidetracked just now! Anyway...bring our troops home. Even if they live in Louisiana. And I think the Texans are getting their karma.

Franken also pointed out that Bush flubbed Katrina because he's been off his game for the past few months, due to the fact that Karl Rove "has other things on his mind...like prison." Let's hope.

A Department at a Crossroads
In the strictest sense, I am not affiliated with the Yale Department of Anthropology. Since Archaeological Studies is an "interdisciplinary" major, we don't have our own department; we have a Council. (Kind of like the Jedi. We're that cool.) But, when push comes to shove, most of our professors are bona fide members of the Anthropology Department, so I personally care very stongly about its reputation.

This reputation has dimmed quite a bit of late in the progressive community due to the firing last spring of anarchist professor David Graeber. Graeber, who is appealing the decision, apparently was fired for political reasons. Now the left has adopted Graeber as their martyr in the quest for academic freedom. The well-circulated Counterpunch interview with Graeber has inspired much blog-based discussion.

According to some professors and grad students (especially, I think, the pro-Graeber faction), the department might lose up to six members this year, a"mass exodus" supposedly due to the Graeber decision. This really disturbs me. Perhaps it is too selfish of me, but I don't want to see the institution that trained me suddenly erupt in scandal and chaos at the time when I'm applying to grad schools. A Yale Anthro degree, so recently an unarguable mark of prestige, is at risk of becoming shameful.

If I seem strangely ambivalent about this whole thing, I am and I'm not. (Haha! Meta-ambivalence! Wow, I'm so deep.) I took Professor Graeber's Myth and Ritual course last spring and loved it. I found Graeber to be not only an effective and enlightening professor but also incredibly entertaining, and was shocked and angry to hear what had happened. I signed the petition in his support. Obviously I belong, wholeheartedley in fact, to that "pro-Graeber faction" I mentioned with some implied skepticism above.

Yet there are several things about the pro-Graeber faction, if not its cause, that make me uneasy. First, for reasons I have already articulated, I want the whole scandal to go away, and if I know Graeber, it won't. Secondly, I'm not sure I trust Graeber and his inner circle of supporters to fight this just fight in the most tactically wise way. Graeber has stood up for GESO (Graduates' Excessively Spoiled Organization) in the past, which makes me think his disparaging of the "imperial university" is a bit exaggerated. He claims that there were three or four profs in the department who went after him like bullies. I'm no insider, but I honestly can't think of who any of these people are. I'm fairly confident that none of my profs on the Council were involved, since the subfields of anthropology tend to move in separate circles. But then again, who knows. Maybe I just am too innocent, but I don't want to believe that Graeber was fired for political reasons alone. I guess I'd rather have my opinion of one professor slightly tarnished than that of my whole department.

What does that say about me? I'm not sure. But I'm afraid that this will tear our department apart. If the "mass exodus" does occur, many students will be left without advisors and mentors, many staple classes will vanish, and our education will suffer. It brings to mind GESO's decision to strike right before undergrad finals week last year: protesting at the expense of the greater educational good. If I were David Graeber, I would encourage my collegues who are tempted to leave in outrage to stay at Yale in order to preserve the remaining integrity of the department. If I were the so-called "bully" senior faculty, I would reconsider the decision to fire Graeber in terms of academic freedom but also in terms of its larger impact on their own insititution.

But I'm not any of these people. I'm not even really part of this department. So I'll just sit back, relax, watch the socioculturalists' drama unfold, and be grateful my B.A. will read "Archaeological Studies" on it in 2007.

When I'm perusing grad programs, I have often asked myself, "Why are there so many goddarn Mesoamericanists?" They seem to outnumber Andeanists by 2 to 1 sometimes, and I couldn't figure out why. I think I know one reason now, at least to explain the Mayanists. The ancient Maya script is simply the most beautiful written language I've ever seen. Can writing be cute? Clearly the answer is yes. > Many of these glyphs were not deciphered until recently. They sure are amazing. It even makes Chinese calligraphy look boring.

One of these Mayanists, Marcello Canuto, is a wonderful Yale prof who's on leave in Honduras this year. He came back to visit this week and gave a talk about his huge new discovery. He found a site that people had been looking for since the 1970s, which filled in the gap in a dramatic historical narrative and changes the way scholars will view Maya warfare. At the same time he is engaged, together with conservation groups and the Guatemalan government, in a race to protect these little explored sites in the lowlands from squatters and cattle ranchers' arson. It's a very exciting story both in academic and real-life terms. I want to be him right now.

Great Minds Think Alike
On today's Fafblog!, Giblets laments, "Every day Giblets sees more and more signs of a fatally stupid universe which stubbornly refuses to obey his commands." I hear you, Giblets. I hear you.

Oh, if you don't find Fafblog unfailingly hilarious, you don't belong in my universe either.

Cuteness is the best medicine.
Ok, I just realized the last post was really rather vicious. Maybe even too harsh. I felt bad. So here you go.
A cute kitten.

Feel better? Good.

We can dream, can't we?
So here we are, folks, the moment of truth, when you find out how long your existence will be permitted on this little spherical madhouse we call Earth once my ascendancy to the vaulted position of Arbiter Of All Things has been achieved.

To solve the dire problem of world overpopulation, I would immediately implement a program of Intelligent Design. Simply put, if you're intelligent, you can stay in my design. Otherwise, you get erased, or in today's computerized world, "Moved To Trash."

This week, getting booted off the island are:

1. Bush voters. If you voted for Bush in 2000 but not in 2004, you'll last another week, maybe. If you voted for him twice, well, it was nice knowing you. But not that nice.

2. Religious fundamentalists of all persuasions. If you think I'm going to hell just because I don't agree with you, well, you're going there first.

3. Anyone who believes in the potential legitimacy of Intelligent Design (meaning creationism, not this program) as a viable alternative to evolution, or just doesn't believe in evolution period. Gone.

4. Anyone who asks me, "Oh, you're an archaeologist? So do you, like, look for dinosaurs?"; "Why do you have class on Saturday?", or "Doesn't it suck not living in your college?" Gone.

5. Racist, sexist, homophobic, classist, ageist, or weightist people -- you're gone. If you only hate stupid people, however, I just might offer you a cabinet post. Speaking of which, I don't want a cabinet. I want a commode.

6. If you read less than 5 works of literature or scholarship per year, you're gone.

7. If you're of middle class background or higher but have never been to a museum, you're gone.

8. If you're of middle class background or higher and scored below 1000 on the SAT, you're gone.

9. If you're liberal or moderate but can't seem to stand your ground against the above willfully ignorant lunatics (Alan Colmes, I'm looking at you), you're useless to the cause. Bye.

10. If you can't say "nuclear," I'll teach you how to say nuclear.


This concludes Round One. Join us next week for another installment! In the meantime, sleep well and enjoy the newly-unoccupied space around you. Especially you two in Kansas. Lots of breathing room there, I bet.

Ahhh
I'm supposed to be finishing my stats homework, so I'm blogging. Logical? Certainly not. Typical? Of course.

I'm not going to DC tomorrow to lobby and Save The Arctic!! because I'm sick and I need rest. Oh well. To tell the truth I've had it with activism. I'd rather have adventure. I'm already dying to go to Machu Picchu next year after seeing the sweet new exhibit in the Peabody.

Also, speaking of the Peabody, Jeff Quilter from the Harvard Peabody (which is all Anthro/Archaeo) is coming tomorrow. One good perk about not going to the rally. Ooh I want to go to Harvard so bad! And Chicago. I just remembered that Indiana Jones went to Chicago. But then again, he wasn't technically a very good archaeologist. And he didn't exist. Details.

But Harvard...well. Harvard is the second largest purchaser of renewable energy among U.S. universities. Yale doesn't even make the list! PresLev is supposed to make some important energy decisions this month regarding the proposal we Climate Campaigners helped develop...there I go again. Activism. Bleh. I think activism made me sick. That's whay I can't go activate at the rally tomorrow. Fair enough.

What's really important for college students to be doing? We're still in training for our world takeover. Why jump the gun? We should learn as much as we can right now and THEN, when we're ready, go impact society. All these youth spending more time out carrying signs than they do studying are prematurely cutting off their potential as influential citizens. I mean, it's like eating cookie dough instead of waiting till the cookies bake. Cookie dough expands, people. That's why you put it in tiny balls on the sheet so they don't all run into eachother when they're baking. Similarly, our minds will expand as we're baking in the college oven. Then we will be ready to provide the planet with all our nutritious goodness while the doughpeople who learned how to protest in college will still be protesting and never properly learn how to think.

When there's a chance at really solving a problem rather than just pushing back certain doom (as will be the fate of any noble endeavor while Bush is in office), I'll get off my butt. Till then, it's cookies for me.