Gender roles effect Valentine's Day

So I came across this article today and was confused. The article itself is a mix of feminism while at the same time claiming that feminism is wrong. Don't believe me read this:

But for good or for bad, it presents a new challenge to the enduring American way of romance -- the one that no matter how evolved we think we've become, keeps turning up in song and story.

(Really, can it get any harder for those breadwinning women -- working long hours to help support their stay-at-home or less-moneymaking men -- to find the energy for a candlelit dinner, a quick change to a lacy negligee and an evening of unbridled romance?)

Yes that's right she claims in two paragraphs that the feminist movement has done great things for women while insisting that women must retain the classic role in relationships. She continues on later saying this:

If you caught any of this year's Super Bowl commercials, you saw a surprising representation of how conflicted men are (at least TV-commercial men) between feeling like traditional car-loving, pants-wearing tough guys and emasculated, moisturizing purse holders for their ladies.

Um, I don't know where she has been but for as long as I can remember Super Bowl commercials, and men all over the US, have been making similar jokes. When I first started dating my now fiance my friends gave me crap for not spending as much time with them as I used to. Would they do the same thing if they were in my position, sure, but that isn't going to keep them from giving me a hard time about it.

I love my fiance but she is very much her own woman and I would have no problem with her being the money maker in the family. I think that Miss Spencer is trying to force us into gender roles that are no longer a necessity. What is wrong with a woman treating her man to a fancy dinner? How about while the woman is at work all day the man is at home preparing dinner for the family so it is on the table when she gets home. Romance goes both ways and most of today's relationships were built on the idea that both parties are equal and bring different things to the table in the relationship.

No Miss Spencer romance is not dead or dying, as you seem to be implying, in fact it is still going strong. All that has happened is that the roles in the relationship are not the same that they were in the '60s and '70s and may in fact be stronger!

NASA and the future of Science

So I should have blogged about this about a week and a half ago when President Obama first unveiled his budget. Anything dealing with the President and the budget will be perceived as political so I am going to have to flirt a fine line here I know.

So when the President unveiled his budget for this upcoming year one of the major programs taking a hit was NASA's attempt to return to the moon and then their eventual plan to go to Mars. Now while I understand that this is a trying economic time, I am a grad student after all, these programs risk doing damage to the number of young kids who we are drawing to science.

Let me explain my reasoning. In the 1960s the US had one enemy who was in one place, the USSR for those of you who don't know/remember/really should go take another history class. Well in the early '60s President Kennedy challenged the American people to get safely to the moon and return to the Earth. This challenge was not taken lightly by the American people and the scientists of the US and in 1969 we DID land on the moon, no matter what some people might have you believe. This inspired many of the people growing up at that time, my parent's generation, to have an interest in science and while not always a complete understanding they were at least interested and respected it.

In the '70s NASA's budget was cut we had accomplished our mission why do we need to keep funding this mission. This continued until the 1986 Challenger disaster in which more money was briefly increased in order to increase the safety of the shuttle missions. Finally through the '90s and 2000s anytime that it seemed that some budget needed to be cut it came from NASA and in many ways this is one of the causes of the Columbia disaster in 2003, wow has it really been 7 years.

I mention this because the current leads in science were brought up during the prime of NASA's space exploration. This most likely led to them going into and being interested in science. While many of these scientists are still young enough to do research there has been a fall off in the number of students being interested in science and this will be visible in the number of researches in mine and future generations.

So why did I mention the new NASA budget cuts? Simple these return trips to the moon and eventually to Mars would draw people into science that may not have been interested in science the same way the original trips to the moon brought people into science in the '60s.

Do I understand why the President did what he did? Yes, we need to keep ourselves safe etc. Do I have actual solutions? Make space feel more open to private companies. Privatization will make the technology cheaper to get into space which then NASA and universities etc can use to get themselves into space to open it up to scientific exploration. Cutting the funding to these programs however is not the way to do that and will probably set NASA back more than the year that the actual budget will financially effect. As with the space shuttle disasters cutting money now will cost us more money later! I welcome every one's comments tell me how wrong I am or how right I am or whatever you have to say.