Whitney Cummings' Blog

A comedienne with a fascination for feminine hygiene products. Not to be missed.

Why does AA work?

Interesting piece in Wired about Alcoholics Anonymous, describing it as the best available treatment, but still one that fails for more people than it helps. And we don't yet know why.

Visit to a wildlife park in Koblenz

Our host family took us to visit a small wildlife park. I was not able to get photos of any of the several field mice we saw running around, but we enjoyed that: we never seem to find field mice at home. We saw some deer, wild boar, and lots of birds. This was part of our Koblenz exchange program trip.

Wooden playset at the park

Anke with new pup Kira

How the drug war has warped our justice system, by way of poppies

Michael Pollan, the excellent author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, has an article Opium Made Easy that explores the realites behind poppies and reveals a bunch of surprising facts:

• You can buy and plant opium-producing poppies easily...but it's illegal to make opium from them.
• The only reason we don't have poppy farms in the US today is that the government doesn't want it. The government legistlated against it, forcing US drug companies to get the chemicals they still use for drugs from a specific list of Asian countries. This has fostered the idea that that's the only place the poppies can grow...but it's not true.
• You might think that ornamental poppies don't contain much opium. Actually, varieties that are sold ornamentally can contain plenty.
• You can easily make opium tea from homegrown poppies...or poppy seed pods you can buy legally.
• You're unlikely to be bothered for growing poppies...unless you broadcast the facts I've listed so far, such as a fellow Pollan writes about who promoted home opium production and was raided. The government has gone after that guy in a big way.
• The whole thing serves as a big example of how the drug war has warped a lot of justice out of our justice system. And I say this a someone who has no interest in drugs themselves.

Go read it; it'll provide plenty of food for thought.

Department of Defense Contractor Security Evaluations

The DoD now has to publish its reasons for denying or granting security clearances. The results make for interesting reading. I wonder what'll happen when someone compares their rejection with someone else's similar acceptance....I'm guessing lawsuit?

Chloe is Chloe Everywhere

Here's Chloe in front of a decorative vehicle clearly used by gnomes. From our Koblenz exchange program trip.

Koblenz trip: the basic explanation

So I'm posting a bunch of photos from my recent trip, a two-week trip with my ten year old daughter Chloe to Koblenz, Germany. The trip is organized by Summit Elementary School in Austin and the Schenkendorf School in Koblenz, and has been going on for 17 years now.

Koblenz is notable, among other things, for being situated at the confluence of the Rhine and the Moselle rivers. It's densely provided with things to see, having hundreds of years of history and the castles to prove it.

The trip is an exchange program, and this year it was Summit's turn to go to Gerrmany, so our group of 37 Austinites went there and lived with host families for the duration. Most of the travellers were groups like mine: a parent and child. A few took two kids and both parents, and these were typically split, living in two different host family homes.

We were lucky enough to be visiting a family we already knew: the Knopp family had visited us last year.

I'm told that the organizers changed the schedule this year to provide more time with the host families. You should know that the organizers plan a trip of some kind every weekday of the tour. So we gather each morning at the school and get on a bus, typically, to go to some new sight. But we were generally done by 3 or 4pm, returning to our host families...who often then had something else planned for us to do. We didn't get a lot of sleep.

Pro tip: this trip is mostly about foot management. You do a ton of walking. The kids hardly seem to notice it, but maybe that's because they're putting less weight on their tootsies.

Chloe stands below a globe hanging in the halls of the Schenkendorf School. I love this thing. I want to make my own.

A German Truck Stop: Nora Roberts topping the bestseller list

I understand that Nora Roberts writes some high-quality romance novels. Apparently Germans agree. Here's a photo of the bestseller list atop a display of novels at a truck stop. Writing as J.D. Robb, Roberts has the #4 spot, and in her own name she has #9.

It was fun to stop at a truck stop during a road trip. This was the only time we did this during our Koblenz exchange program trip. Highway driving and the truck stop seemed very much like at home, except for this notable difference:  one truck stop contained a coffee counter staffed by a barista who made cappuccino and lattes, and we stopped there to drink a cup, not getting it to go. The whole counter looked like it had been excised from a picturesque cafe and dropped whole into the truck stop.

Maslow's Pyramid Updated

My lovely wife first introduced me to Maslow's Pyramid of Needs a few years ago when she started taking education classes. It made a lot of intuitive sense, and the placement of personal fulfillment at the top makes it a satisfying view of the world.

But that's the part that may be too good to be true, according to this article about researchers exploring a rewrite of the classic formula. Interestingly, they put parenting at the top of the heap.

Maslow's Pyramid Gets a Makeover