links for 2008-05-19

• Manufacturing a Food Crisis - The Nation
• My space (selling outer space) - The Boston Globe
• Has Ireland’s Rising Tide Benefited Its Poor? - Consider the Evidence
• The Fall of Conservatism - The New Yorker
• Teeing Up the Next Mortgage Bust - New York Times
• Four quick takeaways from a subprime conference in Florida - Richard Green
• A Regulatory Agency in Need - New York Times
• Guessing the Online Customer’s Next Want - New York Times

Comments

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/us/politics/19women.html?hp&pagewanted=print

May 19, 2008

Gender Issue Lives On as Clinton’s Hopes Dim
By JODI KANTOR

The senator’s waning bid brings with it a reckoning about what it represents: an incomplete triumph or a sad reminder of why few women run for high office.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/us/19formula.html?hp&pagewanted=print

May 19, 2008

For an All-Organic Formula, Baby, That’s Sweet
By JULIA MOSKIN

Amy Chase started feeding Similac Organic infant formula to her second son, Amos, as soon as he was born in November 2006.

“When I saw the organic at Publix, I bought it, no questions asked,” said Ms. Chase, a self-described “yoga mom” in Atlanta.

Like Ms. Chase, many American parents have rushed to embrace Similac Organic formula, even though it sells for as much as 30 percent more than regular Similac. In 2007, its first full year on sale, it captured 36 percent of the organic formula market, with sales of more than $10 million, according to Kalorama Information, a pharmaceutical-industry research firm. (Similac’s parent company, Abbott Laboratories, does not release sales figures for individual products.)

Parents may be buying it because they believe that organic is healthier, but babies may have a reason of their own for preferring Similac Organic: it is significantly sweeter than other formulas. It is the only major brand of organic formula that is sweetened with cane sugar, or sucrose, which is much sweeter than sugars used in other formulas.

No health problems in babies have been associated with Similac Organic. But to pediatricians, there are risks in giving babies cane sugar: Sucrose can harm tooth enamel faster than other sugars; once babies get used to its sweeter taste, they might resist less sweet formulas or solid foods; and some studies suggest that they might overeat, leading to rapid weight gain in the first year, which is often a statistical predictor of childhood obesity.

Asked about these concerns, Carolyn Valek, a spokeswoman for Abbott Nutrition, the division of Abbott Laboratories that makes Similac Organic, said that sucrose had been approved by the Food and Drug Administration and was considered “safe and well established.” Ms. Valek said that Similac Organic had no more sweetener than other formulas and that prolonged contact with any kind of sugar could cause tooth decay.

In Europe, where sudden increases in childhood obesity are a pressing public health issue, sucrose-sweetened formulas will be banned by the end of 2009, except when ordered by a doctor for babies with severe allergies....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/19/us/politics/19women.html?hp&pagewanted=print

May 19, 2008

Gender Issue Lives On as Clinton’s Hopes Dim
By JODI KANTOR

With each passing day, it seems a little less likely that the next president of the United States will wear a skirt — or a cheerful, no-nonsense pantsuit.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is now in what most agree are the waning days of her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. To use her own phrase, she has been running “to break the highest and hardest glass ceiling” in American life, and now the presidency, or even a nomination that once seemed to be hers to claim, seems out of reach.

Along with the usual post-mortems about strategy, message and money, Mrs. Clinton’s all-but-certain defeat brings with it a reckoning about what her run represents for women: a historic if incomplete triumph or a depressing reminder of why few pursue high office in the first place.

The answers have immediate political implications. If many of Mrs. Clinton’s legions of female supporters believe she was undone even in part by gender discrimination, how eagerly will they embrace Senator Barack Obama, the man who beat her?

“Women felt this was their time, and this has been stolen from them,” said Marilu Sochor, 48, a real estate agent in Columbus, Ohio, and a Clinton supporter. “Sexism has played a really big role in the race.”

Not everyone agrees. “When people look at the arc of the campaign, it will be seen that being a woman, in the end, was not a detriment and if anything it was a help to her,” the presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin said in an interview. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign is faltering, she added, because of “strategic, tactical things that have nothing to do with her being a woman.”

As a former first lady whose political career evolved from her husband’s, Mrs. Clinton was always an imperfect test case for female achievement. “Somebody’s wife,” as Elaine Kamarck, a professor of government at Harvard and a Clinton supporter, described her.

Still, many credit Mrs. Clinton with laying down a new marker for what a woman can accomplish in a campaign — raising over $170 million, frequently winning more favorable reviews on debate performances than her male rivals, rallying older women, and persuading white male voters who were never expected to support her.

“She’s raised this whole woman candidate thing to a whole different level than when I ran,” said Geraldine Ferraro, a Clinton supporter and the first woman to be the vice-presidential nominee of a major party, contrasting her own brief stint as a running mate in 1984 with Mrs. Clinton’s 17-month-and-counting slog.

Ms. Goodwin and others say Mrs. Clinton was able to convert the sexism she faced on the trail into votes and donations, extending the life of a candidacy that suffered a serious blow at the Iowa caucuses. Like so many women before, she was heckled (in New Hampshire, a few men told her to iron their shirts) and called nasty names (“How do we beat the bitch?” Senator John McCain was asked at one campaign event).

But the response may have been more powerful than the injury. In the days after Mrs. Clinton was criticized for misting up on the campaign trail, she won the New Hampshire primary and drew a wave of donations, many from women expressing indignation about how she had been treated.

And Mrs. Clinton seemed to channel the lives of regular women, who often saw her as an avenging angel. Take Judith Henry, 67, for whom Mrs. Clinton’s primary losses stirred decades-old memories of working at a phone company where women were not allowed to hold management positions. “They always gave us the clerical jobs and told us we didn’t have families to support,” she said. At a rally last month in Bloomington, Ind., she sat with her daughter Susan Henry, 45, a warehouse worker, who complained that her male colleagues did less work and made more money than the women did.

Decades after the dissolution of movement feminism, Mrs. Clinton’s events and donor lists filled with women who had experienced insult or isolation on the job. Moitri Chowdhury Savard, 36, a doctor in Queens, was once asked by a supervisor why she was not home cooking for her husband; Liz Kuoppala, 37, of Eveleth, Minn., worked as the only woman in her mining crew and is now the only woman on the City Council....

[anne]

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/05/sexism_in_science_and_engineer.php

19 May 2008 09:04 am

Sexism in Science and Engineering
By Matthew Yglesias

Study finds pervasive sexism in the fields of science, engineering, and technology. * This goes to show, of course, that women don't succeed in the hard sciences due to their lack of innate aptitude for putting up with discrimination and harassment. Or something like that.

* http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/15/fashion/15WORK.html

[kthomas]

anne, the "Manufacturing a Food Crisis - The Nation" article really slams US subsidies.

What might you recommend, in terms or protecting staples like grain (corn, etc.) from such dramatic spikes in cost?

[kthomas]

there's definitely sexism in the science fields, particularly in mine. There are very few women in my line of work (voice engineering), but those who are in are indeed very talented, and on average, smarter than thier male counterparts, myself included.

I can't imagine it staying that way for too long. When I attended the UC Davis Science and Engineering graduation last year, it was clearly dominated by women (and asians).

Times are a changin'!

[anne]

K Thomas:

"When I attended the UC Davis Science and Engineering graduation last year, it was clearly dominated by women (and Asians)."

Interesting; Asian students are from my perspective everywhere evident in the natural sciences, especially as graduate students while I am noticing Eastern European women as well in the natural sciences. Biology-neurobiology-biochemistry attract women who are often actually pointing to medicine.

[anne]

"What might you recommend, in terms or protecting staples like grain (corn, etc.) from such dramatic spikes in cost?"

I am much in favor of domestic subsidizing of farming in developing countries to encourage excess food production, relative food independence, and to cushion large rural populations that have long been and will continue to decline as the young invariably become urban migrants.

I will read the article shortly.

[kthomas]

"Biology-neurobiology-biochemistry attract women who are often actually pointing to medicine."

True, because those were the gals who helped me pass BioChem!

[The Baron]

Of course we all need to realize the NYT had two articles queued up to run at this time. With Obama clearly in the lead it was time to trot out the "Sexism: Alive and Well in America" article. Had the roles been reversed, they would have run the alternate "Racism: Alive and Well in America" piece.

With the two leading candidates being who they are, there was no possibility of Caucasian Males being let off the hook when they are oh-so-easy to vilify.

[kthomas]

"there was no possibility of Caucasian Males being let off the hook when they are oh-so-easy to vilify." Then vote for Sen. Obama, and let the Causasian Male be free (of vilification)!