First post ever. Maybe the last?

I fully suspect this to become one of the millions of abandoned blogs that now litter the internet. But maybe that won't happen for a while.

To start out with, two public radio-related things that have been bugging me:

• Capitol Steps New Years Show This year one of the local broadcasts of the show got interrupted for the breaking news that Saddam Hussein was about to be hanged. That was freaking annoying. Still, before the broadcast got cut short, they had a parody of "Love Potion no. 9" where Vladimir Putin was singing "Polonium 209." Extremely funny song, but I was wondering this: All the news reports I've seen say that Alexander Litvinenko was killed by radiation from Polonium 210. Was the CapSteps' use of the number 209 simply poetic license, or did their lyrics choice have any scientific merit? I vaguely remember learning about radioactive decay and half lives in high school chemistry. It seems at least plausible that Polonium 210 decays into Polonium 209 and that the radiation that made him sick was simply the emission of whatever subatomic particles are let out in the process. But is this complete bullshit? Probably, but still, I'd like to know for sure.


• Bob Edwards Weekend One of my local stations recently started carrying the show, and I was just listening to it. He's a smart guy, and he interviews smart, interesting people, and he's got a very soothing voice, so it's a great program to have on in the background. Today he had on the author of This Book. As I was half listening to the show she said something that made me yell at the radio. To paraphrase, she was talking about Louisa May Alcott (or Margaret Fuller. like I said, I wasn't paying too much attention.) and saying how much she charmed Thoreau and Emerson with her intellect. Because this was the first time they'd met a woman this smart--one who could talk to them like a man. Nowadays, apparently, there are a lot of really smart women like that, but back in the 19th century, there weren't.
  
  I'm going to give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume she misspoke, but to state the obvious, of COURSE there were plenty of intelligent women in the 19th century. There just weren't too many of them hanging around Ivy League universities, feeling comfortable enough in their own social standing to risk societal ostracism (with likely dire financial consequences) by engaging in arguments with their male intellectual equals.
  
  What pissed me off so much though, is that I think people actually believe what the author said. I think people actually accept that the reason the vast majority of "Great Books" we read in schools are written by dead, European males is because they were the ones doing all the important thinking of the time. Maybe now things have changed and women and minorities can be intellectuals, but before, they just. weren't. smart. enough. And the fact that this obviously intelligent woman had unconsciously internalized this absurd misogynist nonsense has me a little worried.