Flight 006: Up In the Air

Planes are great for catching up on sleep and reading. I got a refreshing 30-minute nap in the first part of my flight to Atlanta and then started a book called "The Female Brain" that was suggested to me by a friend. It's certainly interesting to read about how dramatically our ever-changing hormones affect our mood and reality. However I couldn't help but feel like the author's classification of how hormones manifest into different female behaviors was a little too stereotypical. Do little girls really naturally gravitate toward socializing together that much more than little boys? Do women really end up in less math & science careers because we have an uncontrollable hormonal affinity for more social occupations? Perhaps I'm just on the light end of the estrogen scale, but I know that I'm pretty happy in my tech profession and still manage to find time to socialize as well. I'm not sure I have any other explanations for the disparity myself besides the typical cultural gender stereotypes, but so far I'm still a little skeptical with the theories proposed.

Here's an excerpt that bothered me, for example, regarding teenage girls: "The hormones that affect their responsivity to social stress are going sky high, which is where they get their off-the-wall ideas -- and clothing choices -- and why they are constantly staring at themselves in the mirror. They are almost exclusively interested in their appearance, specifically whether the boys who populate their real and fantasy worlds will find them attractive." I mean, come on, I remember having other interests outside of looks & boys in high school and didn't feel like I was that atypical. It just seems a little trivializing to generalize teenage girls in this way. Likewise, it also generalizes that boys essentially become mute in high school because "sexual pursuit and body parts become pretty much obsessions."

One passage that I did find really interesting was about how a child's emotional and stress hormone reactions get their earliest shape while still in utero. That means that mothers who are stressed out during pregnancy can pass those traits on to their babies before they've even given birth. It might seem like common sense, but I still think it's both amazing and scary that the nurture process essentially begins at conception.

After reading about 60 pages, I decided to move on to the daunting task of clearing out my Google Reader. I am excited and proud to say that I read (skimmed) over 500 items and am now back at 0! Of course that number will not be at 0 once I land, but for now, I will take great satisfaction in this happily suspended offline moment in time.

It turns out that I happened to be in SNA airport at the same time as my coworker, but we didn't discover it until I'd already boarded my flight! I wonder how often that happens, where I'm in the same airport as somebody else I know but we're just too wrapped up in our Blackberries and destinations to notice.

Speaking of SNA (also known as the airport in the OC), I think I might have found my new favorite airport!
Pros: Onsite Hertz car rental, good selection of food & drink, seating available with electrical outlets, no trams or commuter rails, very clean. It's a well-known fact that one of my favorite foods is tater tots, and the Oasis restaurant inside the airport serves tater tots with breakfast dishes! I heart SNA.
Cons: Just one complaint - I was in the priority boarding line that looked relatively short but it took a really long time to get through because there were few scanners open and they funnel all of the airport/airline staff through the same priority line, which kind of defeats the purpose. I'll have to see how it goes next time before I judge too harshly though.