Delia's third black belt pre-screening tomorrow night

Delia is going through the last pre-screening tomorrow night. If all goes well, she'll test for black belt the night of May 30.

Honestly, she's rather unsettled about this one. She had two karate classes that ended in tears this month, and that's making her freak out a bit about this screening, which will be, admittedly, really tough. The obstacles seem to be more mental than physical for her, however, and our senseis clearly believe she is ready.

I think and hope she will pass, but of course we've pointed out that if she doesn't, that doesn't mean senseis think she can't get the belt. Fiona had to go through the screening process twice, and several of the kids screening with her are on their third go-around.

Anyway, wish her courage, stamina, and luck.

Another interesting Jane Austen blog

I've been pointed to by the blog Jane Austen's World (janitesonjames) to another interesting one by Chris Dornan, Peace and Wisdom (I've syndicated it as peaceandwisdom), which Jane Austen's World characterizes as Mr. Dornan's musings about Jane’s novels, politics, and Buddhism. Recently his thoughts have turned mostly to Jane. I was particularly intrigued by his discussion of the standard interpretations of Sense and Sensibility (Elinor=Sense, Marianne=Sensibility) and his suggestion of another reading:

. . . Angela's "'Sense' versus 'Sensibility'" critique is essentially a conservative one, that puts Elinor at the centre of the novel (rightly in my view) but sees the novel as a dialectic between sense and sensibility with sense winning the day. Christina's interpretation, what I would characterise as a liberal critique that is sympathetic to Austen, also sees this as a dialectic between Marianne’s romantic sensibility and Elinor’s prudential sense, with neither quality winning out (or both sisters winning through learning from each other).

Clearly I can’t compress my book into a blog article but I argue in it that Austen designed the book to be misread (other critics have said the same of Emma: see Emma’s Debt to Sense and Sensibility), that the reader has to remain sharp witted to navigate all the twists and turns in the book, just as Elinor does inside the narrative, and we have to follow her. And remember the novel is told from Elinor’s perspective, the first time a novel integrated the narration into the heroine’s perspective (i.e., free indirect speech) in a sustained way. Elinor is at the centre and embodies with Edward sense and sensibility, with the (early) Marianne and Willoughby representing the perverted sensibility and Lucy Steele and Robert Ferrars representing heartless prudence, perverted sense. Of course the only way for the head and heart to work is if they work together.

I've always been interested in this novel, of course, because of my interest in the heart of flesh/heart of stone theme. I'll be keeping a close eye on this blog in the future; it seems Mr. Dornan has some interesting things to say.

Cool chart

Saw this in Get Rich Slowly (get_rich_slowly):

On Saturday, The New York Times published a brilliant chart illustrating the spending of the average American:

New York Times Inflation chart

“Each month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics gathers 84,000 prices in about 200 categories,” the paper writes, “like gasoline, bananas, dresses and garbage collection.” These numbers form the Consumer Price Index, one common measure of inflation. And this graphic makes that information accessible.

This chart is neat for several reasons:

The circle itself represents 100% of the average consumer’s spending. The circle is divided into eight large shapes, each of which is divided further into a number of smaller shapes. The size of each shape represents an estimate of what the average American spends on the category it represents. For example, gasoline is the largest shape in the transportation category.

Each shape is color-coded by the change in prices for that category between March 2007 and March 2008. The three dark red shapes (representing price increases of more than 40%) are all petroleum products. But eggs — with a 29.9% price increase — are close behind.

Hovering over any shape will reveal the category name, the share of spending from the average budget, and the amount by which prices have changed in the past year.

You can use the “zoom in” tool to get a better view of the action, and then drag the chart around to look at different categories. It’s only by doing this that you can see lettuce has its own category, and that the green, leafy stuff has declined in price by 3.2% over the past twelve months.

[The Get Rich Slowly editor continues:] I’ll confess to feeling like a total geek because I spent twenty minutes exploring the different numbers. I even started taking notes and making extrapolations and comparisons.

For example, Americans, as a whole, spend three times as much money on cigarettes as they do on financial services. Actually, because we know that 0.7% of expenditures are made to cigarettes, and because we know that 21% of Americans smoke, then (if my math is right) about 3.5% of a smoker’s expenses go to cigarettes. (Note that I’m not criticizing. At one time, comic books accounted for 7% of my own expenses.)