Why are you sorry?

Hello women! This one is for you!

The New York Times recently published an article titled Why Women Apologize and Should Stop.

How many of you find yourselves apologizing for asking for what you have earned, paid for and deserve? Has it ever crossed your mind that your are using the word 'sorry' as a buffer? Has it become a reflex?

Sloane Crosley, the author, believes that sorry has become a clutch and we couldn't agree more!

Below is an excerpt of the article:

"EVERYONE knows what dirt tastes like. Last week, I ordered a salad at a restaurant and found myself crunching on a shoddily washed leaf. I took a few more sandy bites before explaining the situation to my waiter, apologizing and asking to see the menu once again.

When my second-choice dish arrived, 20 minutes later, it was blanketed in bacon. I don’t eat meat, a dietary restriction for which I was “very sorry.” By the time a plate of edible food appeared, my fork had been a casualty of the confusion. Unable to catch the waiter’s eye, I walked to the kitchen, where I apologized to a busboy.

For so many women, myself included, apologies are inexorably linked with our conception of politeness. Somehow, as we grew into adults, “sorry” became an entry point to basic affirmative sentences."

So what do you say women?! Join us while we stop being sorry!

Look at that Tricycle!

New York Times had an awesome article on how the tricycle was originated. Look below to read the awesome article by Daniel Engber.

In March 1877, James Starley, a sewing-machine maker in Coventry, England, unveiled a strange offshoot of the tricycle. It had one large wheel on the left and two much smaller ones on the right. The rider sat between the wheels, driving with a pair of levers and steering on a crank. A few years later, Starley’s new designs had grown so popular that the queen bought two for herself.

Whereas the history of two-wheeled vehicles starts in 1817, when a German named Karl Drais devised a “running machine” that worked like a Flintstones car, inventors had long been much more forward-thinking when it came to trikes. A watchmaker, Stephan Farfler, built a three-wheeled, hand-powered vehicle in the 17th century, and lever-driven, three-wheeled “pilentums” or “accelerators” were around by 1820. “There were half a dozen kinds of tricycles in Germany and France and England,” says Glen Norcliffe, a geographer and tricycle historian at York University, “but they never really took off. They were prototypes.”

By the 1860s, biking was a mainstream pastime. Huge front wheels made for fast machines, with riders perched unsteadily on top. As the hobby grew more popular, some sought a safer ride — for women and older men. “At first, Starley tried to do this with a sort of sidesaddle penny-farthing, a crablike machine that never worked,” Norcliffe says. “Eventually he decided that he needed another wheel to balance it.” So he produced something more like the old pilentums. Soon Starley had a three-wheeled vehicle that worked with pedals and a chain and rack-and-pinion steering. The boom that he created quickly ended, though. By the turn of the century, both men and women were riding safety bikes, with wheels of equal size and better tires. And the market for bigger, more expensive machines shifted from the trike to the automobile.

The tricycle ended up a child’s toy. It reached its apogee when Louis Marx & Company made the Big Wheel out of molded plastic in 1969. Kids could now sit just off the ground and skid their way around tight corners. In 1974, The Times called the Big Wheel “a fast-moving, three-wheel plastic riding toy that is the tricycle of the throwaway generation.”

Talk about creative! Let us know what you think, leave comments below!

Social Networking in the 1600s

There was an article in The New York Times last week about Social Networking in the 1600s. The article addresses the concern that some people have about today’s social media networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. According to the article, websites like Facebook and Twitter will cost our economy about $650 billion every year.

 

Not only are they costly to keep running, but they, the social media websites, seem to have an effect on our attention spans and tests scores negatively. This is not the first time that social networking has gained a bad reputation.

 

Back in the 1600s, the idea of coffeehouses was imported from Arab. Coffeehouses were a place where people would go to discuss an array of thing including pamphlets, news-sheets, and catch up on gossip.

 

 At the time, an Oxford academic, Anthony Wood blamed the decline in the drive to learn on the coffeehouses, but many great things occurred because of the coffeehouses as well. Isaac Newton had an argument with fellow scientist that prompted him to write the “Principia Mathematica.” Also, everyone, no matter who you were status wise, was able to have conversations with each other.

 

The coffeehouses were something like an "in person Facebook". It is simply something that has changed over time like hand written letters have changed into emails, and how I am writing this blog instead of standing up on a soap box. On the contrary to the beginning of the article, today’s or the old age’s social networking has not put a damper on our learning, it has more to do with the drive of a particular person.

 

What is truly amazing is how things may evolve, but they do not become extinct. Who knew that Facebook existed in a different form hundreds of years ago? Cool, right?

 

This is definitely history repeating itself.

New York City Marathon to Be Shown Live Nationally

From the New York Times:

The New York City Marathon will be broadcast live and across the nation for the first time in nearly two decades, the most significant feature of a new television deal that is expected to be announced by New York Road Runners as soon as Friday.

As part of a five-year deal, the race will be carried for three and a half hours on ESPN2, which reaches nearly every household with cable or satellite television, and for five hours on WABC, ABC’s affiliate in the New York area. WABC will also broadcast the marathon’s opening ceremony and a half-hour preview show the night before the race, which will be held Nov. 4, and ABC will televise a highlight show a few hours after the race.

The NYC Half Marathon in March and the Fifth Avenue Mile may also be televised.

The Road Runners will receive guaranteed payments from the networks and share any revenue generated by the broadcasts.

The race was last broadcast live and nationally in 1993, the last year ABC televised the event. Since then, the race has been broadcast live in the New York metropolitan area by WPIX and, more recently, by WNBC, an affiliate of NBC, which also produced a highlight show that was shown on tape delay. Universal Sports also showed the race to some cable households.

The Road Runners hope that showing the event live across the country on ESPN will attract more runners and sponsors to the club and the marathon, which is already the largest in the country. The race, which had more than 47,000 entrants last year, is expected to expand to about 55,000 runners in coming years.

The NYC Half is expected to accept 15,000 runners this year, 50 percent more than last year.

“The drama of the marathon plays out best live, and it’s seen around the world and in the city, so there was a gap because it wasn’t seen nationally,” said Mary Wittenberg, the chief executive of the Road Runners. “It’s not just the world’s race, but America’s race.”

The marathon is by far the Road Runners’ biggest moneymaker and an economic engine for the city. About half the entrants come from overseas; many bring their families and friends, who spend tens of thousands of dollars in hotels, restaurants and shops.

As the race has grown in size, it has also become more expensive to run. This year, entrance fees have increased about $60, largely because the New York Police Department has started to charge athletic event organizers to recoup its costs for providing traffic control and security.

In addition to an $11 application fee, members of the Road Runners must pay $216 to enter the race, up from $156 last year. International applicants will pay $347 compared with $281 last year.

Will you be watching?