R was telling me about a guy who is taking cat naps throughout his day and working through the night continually. Apparently it is working for him. Since I have trouble sleeping anyway and have developed brain seizures because of it, I don’t even have a desire to try it.

But today he was telling me about the guy’s college. He went for three semesters and graduated with two degrees. Since you have to have 120+ hours I wonder how he did that. Of course, if he went somewhere with CLEP acceptance, he could have clepped out of his freshman year.

R also said the guy would do all his assignments in batches. If he had five math assignments, he’d do them together. (Do math teachers assign lessons like that?) If he had a research paper he’d take the time on the weekend and do it all at once.

I remember the last time I was doing stuff like that. In college I had an assignment that was supposed to be turned in sometime before the end of the semester. I didn’t want it hanging over my head. So for four solid days, whenever the library was open and I didn’t have to be in class, I was in there working on the assignment. This was before computers, so I was writing a lot and reading a lot. And I read exceptionally fast or I’d have had to have many more days. Anyway, when it was done, I turned it in. Bad choice. The teacher didn’t think I could have done a good job in a week. And the writing put so much strain on my arm that I had to carry it around for the next month because it hurt too much when it was hanging at my side.

Now I’m not quite so insistent on getting things done beforehand, though I try not to wait so long that I can’t do them well. And I think that experience is why.

Found at NOLA.com.

The Kireka slum clings to a stony hillside above Kampala, Uganda, home to at least 5,000 impoverished refugees who live in hand-fashioned shelters bordered by outdoor latrines. The hillside is not only home, but work: Strip quarries line its face. Men dig out its larger rocks, while hundreds of women spend their days in stooped manual labor, pounding the rocks by hand into walnut-sized stones for sale as construction material. They earn about $1.20 per day.

So American aid worker Amy Cunningham could scarcely believe it when she was summoned to Kireka last month for a festive celebration in which dozens of women handed over nearly $900 in wages: their gift to victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

via The Buck Stops Here

The problem, as I see it, is that these women who are always poorer than anyone in the US think that they need to give to these folks. It’s not that I am upset that these women are givers. I am not. They just don’t need to be giving to Katrina victims. Maybe the Katrina victims could collect for them.

Note: On of our Venezuelan missionaries, a Venezuelan who lives on $800 a month with his family, sent $400 and I was awed. I am also awed by these women. I just think that sometimes we in America forget how rich our poor are. Most of them. I know that there are some people who don’t have food and clothes, really, who are out on the street through no fault of their own. But for most (99% at least) the government offers options and charities often contribute options as well. Those women working for a buck an hour don’t have options like that. They don’t have FEMA giving them $2000 cards. They don’t have a cruise ship docked to take them in. And I think that we see their giving as an “ahh” moment, not an “oh my goodness, what have they done?” moment. It’s as if you saw someone who was hungry and you gave them an entire month’s salary, or a year’s. I don’t know about you but I don’t have that much money saved and the idea that these people are willing to part with what they need to eat, to give to people who are eating just fine, pops a bubble of illusion.

Matthew Yglesias says that the blue’s are getting better because a blue quarterback beat the Texans. I hate to tell him this, but almost every quarterback, blue or red, beat the Texans.

is the title of an entry on Joanne Jacobs’ site. It deals with a book about women who chose to stay home with their kids. The woman writing the book was dismayed to learn that women with good careers left them to be a mom.

I am a mom. I am also highly educated. And I primarily work at home with my kids. I am employed part-time, but I haven’t always been. Most of the time since my children were born I have been at home with them.

Was that a sacrifice? Yes.

Was it an opportunity? Yes.

Am I looking forward to going back to work full-time? Yes.

Would I do the stay-at-home thing all over again? Yes.

I think that we women do have an incredible opportunity in that many of us have a chance to be at home with our children. The days when they are young and want to hang out with us are fleeting.

My husband would love the opportunity to stay at home with our children. But because his job makes so much more than mine would if I went back to work full-time, he’s still working. I hope that he’ll have an opportunity to do something else when the kids are out of college. (Ten years from now.)

Knowledge is Power has a link to a 911 call in which the grama with the gun shot the intruder and then, during the 911 call, shot him again.

KiP says it’s hilarious.

I was appalled that the dispatcher, who doesn’t know the situation and is only listening on the phone, told the woman to tell her grandmother to stop shooting him. How does she know he wasn’t getting up? That he wasn’t a threat? A woman on a phone, far away from the reality of the situation, should not have been making judgement calls about whether he needed shooting or not.

Knowledge is Power has a link to a 911 call in which the grama with the gun shot the intruder and then, during the 911 call, shot him again.

KiP says it’s hilarious.

I was appalled that the dispatcher, who doesn’t know the situation and is only listening on the phone, told the woman to tell her grandmother to stop shooting him. How does she know he wasn’t getting up? That he wasn’t a threat? A woman on a phone, far away from the reality of the situation, should not have been making judgement calls about whether he needed shooting or not.