I'm a big geek

Yes, this is hardly news. But just how big of a geek am I? Geeky enough to have taken notes in my Ms. magazine during the flight to Boston. I swear, it's like I just can't turn it off. Anyway, here are the things I learned:

Fatal Error: somewhat of a big 'duh' for people working in HIV/AIDS prevention, but this excellent article has some good stats to back up the (seemingly always needing to be reiterated) statement that abstinence only education doesn't work. And that exporting out Christian values translates into lost lives.

Take Uganda, one of the PEPFAR focus countries, which successfully promoted a comprehensive program before PEPFAR, substantially reducing HIV in the country from 15 percent in 1990 to 6 percent in 2002. Since it shifted focus to comply with PEPFAR's A and B guidelines [Abstinence and Be faithful], the incidence of the virus has nearly doubled, from 70,000 new infections in 2003 to 130,000 in 2005.
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"We continue to act as if poor people are stupid people," says Rev. Tutu. "They aren't stupid, they're just poor. They are entitled to make full decisions. [If you provide ABC] and [say] that's all that's available, it's dishonest and it infantilizes those to whom we provide the message."

The Sin of Wages debunks a common myth - the majority of minimum wage earners are not high school kids looking for part time or summer work, "...61 percent of workers stuck to the floor of the wage scale are adult women, and almost one-third of them are raising children."

And lastly, to ask for a raise or not? Debra Katz and Justine Andronici report that "... only 7 percent of first-job-seeking women negotiated their salary, as opposed to 57 percent of men." And does it make a difference? You bet - "Candidates who negotiated increased their starting salaries by 7.4 percent (about $4,000)." So, we should just suck it up and start negotiating, right? Not so fast - "female candidates who ask for higher salaries before receiving a formal job offer are often not hired at all...males who negotiate do not face similar negative consequences."