Friday Afternoon Video

I finally got around to watching this, so thought I would share. So, for your Friday afternoon enjoyment, here are some startingly and thought-provoking facts to mull over this weekend.

"Did You Know?" is by Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod of shifthappens.


iPhone: Breeding a New Generation of Hackers

The technical savvy of today's kids sometimes leaves me flabbergasted. Yesterday my seven-year-old, who is in a combined second/third grade class at school, said to me,"You know Eli Hernstein, Mom?"

"Sure, he was in your kindergarten class," I said...

Women in Web Design

Jeffrey Zeldman recently announced that "An Event Apart commissioned a fact-finding mission...to find out everything that is actually known about the percentage of women in our field." The numbers are disturbing...

Gender Diversity & Why Men Should Stay Out of the Discussion

I'm just now catching up on the controversy generated by Kottke's post on the lack of Gender diversity at web conferences and Eric Meyer's response (that event coordinators have trouble finding qualified women speakers). The truth is, I'm tired of this old dialogue. I actually don't want to discuss this issue with men at all. Frankly, I feel that men don't really have a place in the solution to this problem, and so I'd prefer to leave them out of the discussion altogether...

A Mother's Prerogative

Although my husband and I aren't particularly religious, our kids attend a Jewish Day School. Recently, I went to pick up the kids in the afternoon as usual, and my 6-year-old's teacher pulled me aside.

"Do you know what your son and another boy were playing on the playground at recess today?" she asked.

Four Months In: We're Still Here, Too

A few months ago when my daughter was four years old, she stood beside my desk chair and asked, "Mommy, where's your wipes it?"

I looked up from the computer screen. "My what, sweetheart?"

"Your wipes it."

Mommy's Feeling Guilty

The other day my four-year-old, who still says "baf" for "bath" and "boke" for "broke," clearly and distinctly asked for a "Kids Cuisine" for dinner. Most dads would simply rejoice at such improvement in articulation. But I, being a mom, am racked by guilt. Have I been working too much? Am I selfishly choosing career over motherhood? Am I neglecting my basic motherly duties? Will she get rickets? Good god, my little one can perfectly pronounce a brandname child's frozen dinner before she can even say "f'ozen."

Leftover Brisket

Since I decided to move my sites over to Dreamhost, I thought I'd give them a redesign at the same time...even though I have a design due to a client this week.

Maybe I'm experiencing some sort of periodic temporary insanity. A type of strange Internet-related premenopausal syndrome or something. Because I actually believed I could do all this and work with CSS for the first time without losing my mind. On second thought, maybe it's a form of megalomania.

Moms Helping Moms

I few days ago, I came across a really friendly site called Internet Based Moms. It's not a design site—seemed to me that most of the moms are running e-commerce sites from home and are fairly new to the web. But the forums are welcoming and helpful, and everyone seems very supportive. For work-at-home moms, we have double reason to need that support. Not only can our jobs isolate us, but having kids can severely cut down on your ability to social and interact with other grownups.

In the Wee, Still Hours

Starting a new business is tough, even if it's one you love. I've been putting in some extremely long hours ever since January, but I hadn't realized quite how bad it's gotten until the other night.

Why Aren't Women More Prominent on the Web?

Speaking of women…I read an interesting quote in Molly Holzschlag's Women Bloggers Just Ain't Good Enough:

Here's a different explanation for why the blogosphere is dominated by white males: because they're the ones producing the best product. Sorry, ladies, but there aren't as many of us engaged in aggressive, competitive opinionizing and nonstop consumption of politics as our male tormentors. --Heather MacDonald