happy airwaves

Hey folks--
Just wanted to a) say "hi" in blog-land, and b) invite y'all to listen to my campus radio show, if you're so inclined. It's called Lullaby of Broadway, and it's an all-Broadway music hour (I know! Haven't you been waiting your whole life for this?!), Sundays from 4-5pm, available by webcast on wsrn.swarthmore.edu. My friend Jackie and I co-write it each week, and I haven't had this kind of fun (dj-ing) since the Morning Show. So just wanted to let you know, cause not having listeners is sad, especially when the thought of the possibility interrupts your singing and dancing in the studio :(. So tune in! And tell me what you think.
Thanks!! Much love--

Yeah, I'm posting, shut up

Some of you may have caught wind of the furor that’s surrounded this piece over the past week or so. Recent Columbia J-school graduate Louise Story’s article about elite college grads who want to become full-time moms got slammed by Jack Shafer and several others, forcing her to respond with this defense of her research methods.

I may be biased, because I know the author vaguely (she and I were in Directed Studies together as undergrads), but the vehemence of these attacks is out of line. Sure, she should have been more upfront about how she put her story together, but since when is a profusion of compelling anecdotes insufficient grounds for a trend piece—something that has the aura of fluff by definition? Journalists aren’t impromptu sociologists, and this piece doesn’t pretend to be a definitive academic analysis; it’s intended to get a dialogue going, not pass down a final pronouncement. More than statistics, firsthand observation is the lifeblood of journalism, as Tom Wolfe figured out more than forty years ago. Without it, news stories—particularly ones about social trends—would be little more than dry transcriptions of government agency reports, and the newspaper industry would be in even worse straits than it is already.

In other related news, I have fallen desperately in love with this tortoise. I think I’m going to have 1-800-FLOWERS send him a clover bouquet.

Makin use of my nano

I travel a fair amount and I dig this little project a lot:iPod Subway Maps Check it out, these are a must have if you tend to forget subway routes. It seems that the ipod nano has a shot at getting me to carry pictures in my wallet, heck it's about the size of a few stacked cards.