PAULA WHYMAN

Curiouswriter and Curious Progeny watched President Obama's speech tonight. Eldest was interested in the explanation of the lending cycle and why it's important to help banks stay afloat.



"It's like the food chain," he said. "If a piece is missing, the whole thing collapses." And then he explained, "When there's not enough food [ie, loans to feed the cycle], you don't want to add more sharks. You need more plankton."



So that's the answer. More plankton, not more sharks. You heard it here.


He beat me at chess, too.

Here's an example of what you can do at Reading Trails. I created this list of classic novels that are among my favorites. You can see that there are some "intersections," some books that appear on other lists, and if you click on "intersections," you'll see those lists. It's not quite done, in that I'll probably add more comments about the books, but this will give you an idea of the possibilities. I don't know why you can't see the comments or descriptions when you click on the books in the widget, but you can see more information if you go to the site itself and view the trail. There are some other things I can't figure out, too, like why can't the site come up with a cover for Madame Bovary? Anyway, what do you think of this? How does it compare with other reading sites (e.g., Goodreads)? I'm curious...

Reading Trails is a newish social networking site for sharing book recommendations. You can use it to create a reading list around the theme of your choice, and then your list gets connected with the reading lists of others whose book choices overlap with yours. You can view other lists for ideas, and create as many lists as you want. There are also open lists that everyone on the site can build. Cool!

I may have mentioned before that I'm a dog person. It has come to my attention over the years that many, many writers prefer cats. Or, even if they don't prefer them, that's what they've got. I'm sorry every time I hear about it. Sure, cats may seem, on the surface, to be the natural choice: They require very little supervision. They don't require the interruption of routine that comes with regular walks. They don't jar you out of a creative trance with sudden random barking jags that occur when a squirrel or a butterfly or a scrap of paper passes the window. They don't conveniently forget that they weigh 95 pounds and try to sit in your lap anyway. They generally don't drool on the keyboard. They mostly don't puddle on the carpet if you ignore their increasingly insistent whimpering and forget to let them out because you're in the zone.



But, IMHO, these are exactly the traits that should recommend dogs to writers. Dogs will get you out of the house and force you to socialize, something most of us, something I at least, need to do so I don't forget to put on clothes now and then and pay attention to those funny sounds that people make all the time. Was that dialogue? you say--Sure, I can do dialogue! No, no, no: Actual speech, not idealized, not abbreviated or punctuated or carefully chosen for the sake of drama. Normal, in-person, human interaction between you and another real person. Dogs are extroverts; they are very good at making introductions. Every writer should have one.



I should have one.



My birthday's coming up...

Maybe you haven't eaten any of those contaminated peanuts yet, but as E.J. Levy points out in a New York Times opinion piece today, what you don't know may or may not hurt you, but it is, well, pretty gross.

Quote of the day, from BusinessWeek online:



"The problem is, we don't know what trajectory the economy would take without the stimulus package," says J. Bradford DeLong, an economics professor at the University of California-Berkeley. "We can't enter a Star Trek-like divided universe in which we compare what's happening with the stimulus versus without it. It's hard to precisely judge its impact."




As Scotty said, "The warp drive's a hopeless pile of junk. The shape the thing's in it's hard to keep it from blowin'." (Episode 35)



In all fairness, DeLong went on to say that, "If interest rates stay extremely low, the plan is definitely working."



Or, as Scotty said in Episode 14, "That was a pretty good gamble."

On the front of the Washington Post business section this morning, there's an article about new cabinet members who received big bonuses when they left their private sector jobs to move to government. There are photographs of six cabinet members and capsule descriptions of their parting compensation packages.



My son, who's in 5th grade, looked at the photographs and said, "Why is there only one woman?"



I was struck by his reaction, because it shows that he has no idea that there might be an imbalance in the number of men and women appointed to these sorts of positions or that, among those women, far fewer would have come from the kinds of corporate jobs that pay in the millions. I personally see this as a positive development. It wouldn't even occur to him to think that women could not do the same jobs as men.



Now, about that deferred compensation... I'm still waiting for mine. Is there anyone whose compensation is more "deferred" than a novelist? I'd like to know.

Check out this funny/sad video from a NASA team. This was an actual work assignment in the agency. It spoofs Law & Order and bad bureaucracy: Barriers to Innovation and Inclusion. Even if you skip around, make sure you view the last couple of minutes.

"The two hardest things about writing are starting and not stopping."



from Stewart O'Nan, quoted this morning by Garrison Keillor

Did everyone else find it as refreshing as I did to hear a U.S. president admit he did something wrong?



"I screwed up," a most welcome shift from the overused Nixonism, "Mistakes were made." Okay, we can quibble with the verb choice, but fact is, it's an active one. Obama deserves full credit for taking responsibility.



This bodes well.

All this time I was waiting for THE CALL. You know the one I mean, the one Democrats in DC have been waiting for for 8 long years. (Like everyone who lives around here, I've been ducking to avoid getting paper cuts from the flying resumes for a few months now.)



And now I learn that you have to cheat on your taxes to get nominated. Oh well.



I may not qualify for a cabinet position, but there's always the social whirl! I'm guessing this new tech-savvy White House is going to use Evite. They're busy trying to cure the recession, and saving paper and postage costs in these tough times just makes good sense. Especially when, apparently, the postal service is going to stop delivering mail altogether.



That reminds me, in light of the proposed changes to the mail schedule, and due to the insecurity of bill-paying on the internet, I've decided to pay all my bills via the "message in a bottle" delivery system. I will simply float the bottles down the Potomac River. The great part is that it won't take any longer than standard mail service.



So, Evites: Can't you imagine the state dinner invitations popping up in the in-boxes of world leaders? They'd have some cool animated champagne bubbles, and the RSVP text will say "Yes, we can!" The EU prime ministers will love it, because before they decide, they can check the RSVP list to see if Putin is coming.



Perhaps the new residents of the White House are not aware that I've been entertained there by two past administrations. I've putted on the WH green, and sharp-elbowed with the best of them to get to the jumbo shrimp platter.



So, let me know if you see "Curiouswriter" on any of those Evite lists--I'm thinking my spam filter might be set too high...