Museum of Natural History

We went to the American Museum of Natural History on Saturday ( and then spent some time in Central Park afterward ). Eventually, I'll post all the photos to Facebook with appropriate captions, but for now, I've just included my favorites in this post. The advantage of posting these on Blogger is that you can get an enlarged version of each photo by clicking on it ( You can actually read some of the museum plaques if you do that ).
All photo credits: My wife Ruth

I swoon for Amanda Terkel

I swoon for Amanda Terkel.

Yes, I said "swoon".

Am I allowed to swoon?

I ask that question not because I'm married ( I think married people can swoon, as long as the swooning is innocent. ), but because I'm a guy. Can guys swoon?

When we think of swooning, we generally think of girls swooning - usually young girls. Young girls swoon over their favorite singers or movie stars. Can a 39 year-old guy swoon? Does that even make sense? Well, I don't know and I don't care. All I know is that I am swooning for the woman below.


Who is Amanda Terkel and why do I swoon so?

Well, Amanda is definitely one of those "Smart Girls with Glasses" that I wrote about in my last blog post. She's a liberal blogger who writes for the blog Think Progress ( There is a link to the Think Progress blog on the right side of my blog page. If you want to go straight to Amanda's blog entries, you can click this link. ).

Of course, as smart and swoon-eriffic as Ms.Terkel might be, I wouldn't have had any idea who she was it wasn't for conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly. I can't stand Bill O'Reilly, but I guess I have to thank him giving Amanda her 15 minutes of fame.

O'Reilly was scheduled to speak at a fundraiser for the Alexa Foundation, a group committed to supporting rape survivors. This wouldn't be a bad thing if O'Reilly was the kind of person who actually supported rape victims, but O'Reilly's is the type of person who often blames the rape victim.

Check out O'Reilly's comments about Jennifer Moore, an 18-year old who was raped and murdered:

"So anyway, these two girls come in from the suburbs and they get bombed, and their car is towed because they're moronic girls and, you know, they don't have a car. So they're standing there in the middle of the night with no car. And then they separate because they're drunk. They separate, which you never do. All right.

Now Moore, Jennifer Moore, 18, on her way to college. She was 5-foot-2, 105 pounds, wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at two in the morning. She's walking by herself on the West Side Highway, and she gets picked up by a thug. All right. Now she's out of her mind, drunk."

So, O'Reilly is clearly a world-class hypocrite. Ms. Terkel called out O'Reilly on this in a March 1st blog post.

O'Reilly responded in a sickeningly ironic way. He sent out two of his henchmen to stalk Terkel while she was on vacation, so they could conduct an ambush interview. You can see the ambush interview in the YouTube clip below.

I think Amanda handled herself rather well considering the circumstances. O'Reilly and his henchmen came out looking like total dicks, and the world was introduced to the oh-so-swoony Amanda Terkel.

So, after I watched a segment on the O'Reilly/Terkel feud on Olbermann's show, I found myself swooning for Ms. Terkel.

Amanda Terkel's smart, liberal, pretty, and has some pretty cool glasses - and that my friends is HOT.

Hey, if young teeny-bopper girls can swoon for their pretty-boy singers, I'm allowed to do some swooning too.

I'll leave you all with one more swoon-worthy image of Ms. Terkel:

I'm Back / Daria / Smart Girls with Glasses

Yep, I B back. I could ramble about the last 30 days a bit, but instead I'd just like to get back to blogging about random topics.

First random topic? Daria. Daria Morgendorffer. Daria from MTV. Daria the cartoon character. SIGH! I had such a crush on Daria back in the day.


Of course, this may not sound too unusual. I'm sure lots of us have had little crushes on cartoon characters "back in the day". However, "Daria" premiered on MTV back in 1997.

I was 27 in 1997.
I was already married in 1997.

And yeah, I love my wife and would never dream of leaving her for a two-dimensional image made of ink and celluloid.

But still ...

Daria! S-I-G-H!!!!!



I've had a crush on Daria since the days she was just a bit character on "Beavis and Butt-Head". If I was a cartoon character, I would SO want to date her!


I think it has a lot do with her attitude, and that sly little smile she flashes sometimes ( see the picture above ). It also has to do with how intelligent she is. She's not really depicted as an academic star on the show, but she's got smarts where it counts. She's got just the right amount of cynicism. It's not good if you're entirely cynical, but if you're not at least a little bit cynical in this world, then you are really not paying attention.

Yeah, so Daria's got the smarts, the attitude, those sly/cute facial expressions, and of course THE GLASSES. I love those glasses. There's something about a smart girl with glasses that always gets me. I guess Janeane Garofalo would be a prime celebrity example of this ( I gushed about Janeane in this video ( see photo of Janeane below ) ).


However, I think the "Smart Girl with Glasses" phenomenon is best exemplified by the events of my real life. Those you who read this blog regularly know that I've only pursued 4 girls in a big way in my life. For the uninitiated, those girls are ...

High School Girl #1 ( HSG#1 ) - more info in this video.
High School Girl #2 ( HSG#2 ) - more info in this video.
College Girl #1 ( CG#1 )
My Wife ( Ruth ) - more info in this video.

Now let's look at the relevant stats:

HSG#1 - Wore glasses about half the time when I fell for her.
HSG#2 - Wore glasses all the time when I fell for her.
CG#1 - Wore glasses all the time when I fell for her.
Ruth - Wore glasses about half the time when I fell for her.

HSG#1 - Is now a doctor.
HSG#2 - Was salutatorian of what is arguably the best public high school in the USA ( * see note below ).
CG#1 - Was an engineering student at Cornell with very good grades.
Ruth - Is now a doctor.

( * I'm obviously a bit biased, but one could easily make a case that the high school (Stuyvesant HS ) HSG#2 and I went to is the best public High School in the USA. The student body is selected via a city-wide entrance exam, and only those who score highest are admitted. Considering that New York City is the largest city in the USA, Stuyvesant probably draws from the largest talent pool on a year-to-year basis. If you want more objective proof of how good an academic school Stuvesant is, see the article here. The article is from 1988 ( the year I graduated ). In 1988, Stuvesant had 47 semi-finalists in the national Westinghouse Science Talent Search ( now called the Intel Science Talent Search ). That was more than any other state ( with the exception of New York, where Stuvesant is located ), and it is still an all-time record. So, by at least one objective measure, you could say that Stuyvesant class of 1988 was not only the best high school in the USA that year, but it may have been the most academically talented public high school class in the history of the USA. OK, enough crowing about my school ( Though I am sure my fellow Stuy-alum EZ appreciated that ). You get the point. The Stuy class of 1988 was immensly talented, and HSG#2 wound up with the second-highest grade point average in the class. So yeah, she was really smart. )

So yeah, smarts and glasses are a good combination. I should also note that I don't think my attraction to glasses has much to do with some stereotypical belief that glasses=smart. I just tend to be attracted to girls'eyes, and I think glasses do a great job of framing a set of pretty eyes.

All in all, I think intelligence is a bigger turn-on than the glasses. Heck, if a girl is smart enough, I could find myself attracted to her, even if she isn't heterosexual. A good example of that is Rachel Maddow ( see video here ). Rachel is a Rhodes Scholar, politically liberal, and is pretty in a sneaky kind of way ( you've got to look real close to notice ). I watch her show almost every night at 9 PM. I think she's probably my 3rd favorite politcal commentator ( Chris Matthews is #2 and Keith Olbermann is #1). I watch Obermann almost every night at 8 PM. Olbermann ( a fellow Cornell grad ) started out as sportscaster on ESPN and is now a big-time liberal commentator. He's really smart, and he's also got GLASSES. See where I'm going here? I guess if I had been born gay, I probably would have a crush on Olbermann right now. Defintely got a man crush on him. In any case, do youself a favor watch some Olbermann YouTube clips. Prepare to be amazed!

Yeah! That felt good! I'm back baby!

Rich