Springtime at work,originally uploaded by HBS Marketing.

I’m a firm believer in equal rights. I agree that every pregnant man has the right to an abortion! (This is the safe, legal, and very, very, very rare kind.) Or, not to give birth if he doesn’t want to. His body isn’t the property of his wife or his girlfriend. She shouldn’t be allowed to force him to carry the pregnancy. Nor should she be able to leave the child destitute if he makes her a mother before she’s ready.If I ever knock up a guy, and he decides to have the baby, I solemnly pledge to pay my child support on time, in full, every month. Even if I don’t want to be a mother. And yes, even if he told me he couldn’t get pregnant!

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

There are all manner of things in this world that baffle me, but a few stand out — usually physics-related. I attribute that total density and inability to comprehend all things physics, my slapshot chess skills, my poor driving ability and my teenage rebellion to Dad, who, being a physics guy, tried to instill in me a love for the staples of life: math, physics and chess. And then foolishly attempted to teach me to drive the family Thunderbird. And by the way, it was his faulty gene pool that resulted in a daughter born without depth perception. I would have preferred his nose. Somehow quantum physics, Shrodinger’s cat and rebellion against authority are intertwined in my head and intersect in one concept: parallel parking.These are subjects that I will never question in public. I may say aloud that the cat is alive, but secretly know it’s dead. I accept that the extra dimensions of string theory need to be curled up, silly (but don’t really understand why). Like saying we live in a “Democracy” — I’ll call it that because it sounds so pretty, but really, does that make any sense at all? I prefer to pay extra to park in a garage when I hit the Big City because someone might hit my new Prius if I park on the street. And the last time I questioned physics was in a group discussion amongst a pack of flight attendants on a long delayed Eastern airlines flight from Lima, Peru to Miami in the late ’80s.I had fallen under the influence of the now most dangerous professor in America, erstwhile Cranky English Literature 101 Canon Explaining TA, at the University of Virginia, had tossed my full-ride ROTC (Marine Corps) scholarship to the winds (and so went my tuition — ooops, that depth perception problem). What to do with myself for 8 months before the next school year began? Staying home and spouting my newly formed opinions about the world would surely eliminate any possibility of parental support. I wanted to travel, I was fearless and accustomed to the uniform, I thought I could speak Spanish and French (after all, it was on my resume), and I had no funds.Coffee, tea, or milk? Abrocharsen sus cintarones, por favor! Welcome to Eastern Airlines, non-stop to Cali, Columbia, Port au Prince, Haiti, San Salvador, Lima, Santo Domingo, Caracas! Oh, and of course, there was Boston, new home of The on again, off again Boyfriend. Non-stop it was!As were the complex intellectual discussions. Music, art, literature, and … my downfall: physics. Late at night, coming home from Cali, we stood in the blue light of an L1011 galley and struggled with a question: if the airliner were cruising along at speeds averaging 800 kph, and one of us intentionally leapt into the air, would that person be instantly slammed up against the bulkhead at rapid speed?

We froze. I started to laugh, tensed my muscles and prepared to leap. And I still don’t know if it was the oh so intentionally tight Christian Dior skirt (“Ladies, uniforms are designed to be close-fitting. Otherwise, in an unplanned or hard landing, your clothing would be instantly ripped from your body, and you would no longer be seen as an authority figure in the rescue operation!”) or the same mind-numbing fear that grips me everytime I face down a parking spot, but something stopped me.I didn’t want to die that way — not before my 21st birthday. and not in Coach. But many years later, thanks to my dear friend — The Boyfriend who became the Colleague and is now neither — who told that tale at a Boston roofdeck cocktail party, that violent shattering of carefully coiffed flight attendant against the bulkhead was merely a whisper against the wall of humiliating laughter from the cadre of well-educated, well-heeled folks who tell business persons and politicians alike what to do.That’s why I just don’t get why ice is slippery, I don’t parallel park, and I’m not asking any questions — out loud.

The Tower of London has decided to keep its famous ravens indoors to protect them from bird flu. Special aviaries have been created for the six birds within one of the towers of the fortress on the Thames.Legend has it the Tower of London will collapse and the kingdom will fall if all the ravens leave.The Tower ravens - named Branwen, Hugine, Munin, Gwyllum, Thor and Baldrick - are said to be getting used to their new surroundings.The Tower’s Yeoman raven master, Derrick Coyle, said: “Although we don’t like having to bring the Tower ravens inside, we believe it is the safest thing to do for their own protection, given the speed that the virus is moving across Europe.”We are taking advice on the vaccinations against avian flu, and in the meantime, we will continue to give our six ravens as much care and attention as they need.”EU farm ministers are meeting in Brussels to discuss the spread of the virus, which has now reached France.UK ministers said it was still not necessary to lock up Britain’s 20m free-range poultry, despite some experts backing it.

Within a large concrete room, hewn out of a mountain on a freezing-cold island just 1000 kilometres from the North Pole, could lie the future of humanity.The room is a “doomsday vault” designed to hold around 2 million seeds, representing all known varieties of the world’s crops. It is being built to safeguard the world’s food supply against nuclear war, climate change, terrorism, rising sea levels, earthquakes and the ensuing collapse of electricity supplies. “If the worst came to the worst, this would allow the world to reconstruct agriculture on this planet,” says Cary Fowler, director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, an independent international organisation promoting the project.

Mine is hewn out of a mountain on an island and has chickens, too. Or maybe it’s more like a boat shaped like a floating Conestoga wagon.

Too much analysis can confuse people about how they really feel. There are severe limits to what we can discover through self-reflection, and trying to explain the unexplainable does not lead to a sudden parting of the seas with our hidden thoughts and feelings revealed like flopping fish. 

That’s psychologist, professor and author Timothy Wilson’s conclusion in Don’t Think Twice, it’s Alright (New York Times, December 29).  I especially like the following reference:

Self-contemplation is a curse / That makes an old confusion worse.~ Theodore Roethke

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.~ Martin Luther King, Jr.