My Screen Is The Brightest Thing In Cafe Čokl

Which means giant bugs are landing on my screen. Lovely.

I got an assignment today from my boss, which was very exciting. Unfortunately one of the questions I was asked to research ("Could you please find some case law from this court for me?") had a somewhat disappointing answer ("Apparently that court has never actually...heard a case..."). And I have an editing assignment for tomorrow, given to me by two women in the legal advisory department, Tea and Lea (seriously). So it looks like my Slate reading is going to take a hit this week, as is my motivation to work on the non-job-related essay I have to finish for next Monday. Ah, well.

As I was researching for the boss today, Robert the tech guy came in and said he wanted to install software that would require restarting the computer. I had about twenty websites open then and was a little flustered, so he said he could come back later. "Is this afternoon all right?" I asked. "Oh, I have to pick up my wife from the hospital this afternoon, so maybe not." "Oh, ok, sometime later this morning then," I responded. Brilliant response to "I have to pick up my wife from the hospital," I know. Fortunately, when he came in later I was able to try to mend my ways. "So is everything all right with your wife?" I started. "Yeah, it was very all by the book," he responded, using his idioms well but showing very little indication of what had happened. "Did she have an operation...?" I prodded. "No, we had a daughter on Saturday." OH. All good things, then.

While the software was installing its slow self, we chatted a bit about maternity leave in Slovenia. Apparently women get a full year of paid maternity leave, and new fathers get eleven paid days and fifty-two days unpaid but with all of their taxes and social security comped. I feel like I've always thought of paid maternity leave as something of a women's equality issue, but he said that the entire purpose of the Slovenian legislation was to encourage families to have more children. According to Robert, when he was born, there were 30,000 babies born in Slovenia every year, but now that number's down to 18,000. Of the women that do have children, half have only one, and a fair number of married couples decide not to have children. He implied that these couples were choosing a more lavish lifestyle over kids (and his implication was that this choice was about money, not time). I'm not sure if I buy it, but it does seem like countries with solid economies tend to decline in population.

So, speaking of choices related to having kids, I was viscerally annoyed by this Douthat op-ed in the Times today. Part of this annoyance comes from him placing himself in the ideological group that irritates me the most: self-righteous moderates. ("Guys, guys, stop your blind extremism! Let's inject some common sense into this debate and acknowledge that both sides have a point. Let's add a little nuance to our thinking, ok?" Ugh, I could spit.) But part of it is the content. I don't think there's any actual contradiction in saying "abortion is a moral wrong that can be the right choice in extreme cases, where there is an extraordinary wrong avoided through abortion, but it's the wrong choice in all other cases." In theory that's fine. It's just the smell test...every time someone makes this kind of argument, all I can hear is, "Ladies: you break it, you buy it." It's this attitude that is entirely a comment on the moral character of the woman involved and completely divorced from the outcome of her action. There's no feeling of "I'm sorry: I know this isn't what you want for yourself, but we just can't take this life without an extraordinarily compelling reason." It's all about these selfish women willing to toss away their kid for the sake of convenience. It's just creepy.

Oh, and someone (Chayes?) needs to create a play based on the foie gras workers in today's Herbert column. There's something awesomely dramatic about the twenty-two day period of constant, extremely personal force-feeding. (The combination of "ducks" and "extremely personal" has recently taken on a whole new meaning.) And there's something horrifically dramatic about the Depression-era labor conditions. But I think Herbert's got that one covered.