I’ve got a couple things on my plate today; first I’m taking my son to Member’s Night at the San Francisco Zoo and then I’m going to Italy. What that means for me is lots of espresso, gelato, and dark, sexy...er...scenery to gaze at. What it means for the blog is that I’m going to have to neglect it for a few weeks. I will be back to report my adventures on October 6th.
In the meantime I hope you all enjoy the first few weeks of fall and if you’re in the Gulf Coast please take care of yourself and try to stay out of harms way.
Kyra Davis
www.kyradavis.com
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte IN STORES NOW!!!
For The Love Of A Dog--A fun online read!
Moms Of Mystery--An e-newsletter!
Friday, September 23, 2005
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Caution: Tanning May Be Bad For Your Credit
Okay, so this is kind of concerning---federal data shows that last year in Santa Clara County 48% of all the second mortgages that were granted to Latino homeowners making over $135,000 a year were high-interest loans. In comparison only 20% of second-mortgages that were granted to Whites that made that much money or less were high interest.
Please keep in mind that this is Silicon Valley we’re talking about, an area that is not exactly known for overt racism. That’s the problem, it’s not overt, it’s subtle. Even now lenders are claiming that there is no correlation between the interest rate on a loan and the recipient’s race. They say that the interest rates on the loans sited were decided by the credit score of those applying. There’s no real way to verify this since the credit rating of those who got loans in 2004 was not part of the data that was collected by the feds. I might buy the credit rating argument if we were talking about a smaller discrepancy or if Whites with income below $88,000 were getting higher interest rates than Latinos who made $135,000 but that’s not the case. I have a hard time believing that 80% of the White homeowners in the Bay Area have good credit while 48% of their more financially prosperous Latino neighbor’s suffer from a poor credit scores. Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark folks.
We often dismiss racism as a thing of the past or something that only exists in the South. We don’t want to believe that it’s a major factor in the lives of well educated successful people. Sadly that’s not the reality. By the way, in case there are any African American’s who are feeling neglected by this blog please understand; there are so few of us who can afford to buy a home in Silicon Valley that there wasn’t sufficient data available to analyze. However if it makes you feel better it is true that if you were to lump all different kinds of loans together Blacks are almost six times more likely to get a high-interest loan then someone who’s White.
Herbert Hoover’s vice president Charles Curtis claimed that it is virtually impossible to be completely unprejudiced. He was quoted as saying, “Bias and prejudice are attitudes to be kept in hand, not attitudes to be avoided.”
I’d like to think that’s not true but I’m fairly sure that’s wishful thinking on my part. There are some who wonder why so many in the Black community are saying that the situation in New Orleans would have been different if the people who needed to be rescued were White. The reason so many minorities constantly cite discrimination as the basis for almost every social injustice they encounter is that approximately 60% of the time they’re right. Think about it, if you were to go to Vegas and you were told that 60% of the time the roulette ball falls on the number 30 you’d put your money on 30 every single time.
Of course you’d lose 40% of the time and that’s where minorities get themselves into trouble. There are so many real instances of racism that there is no need to fabricate incidents that don’t exist. Sometimes the police are pulling you over because you’re speeding, not because you’re Black, Brown or purple. Every time we scream “It’s because I’m (fill in the appropriate ethnicity)” and it’s not true we end up undermining all the real claims of racism out there. On the other hand the White community should understand that the ball legitimately lands on the racism number 60% of the time so we’re all a little jaded and yeah, we do sometimes see racism when it’s not there just because usually it is there.
I wish I could tell you I had an answer for this problem but if I did I would be running for office not writing chick lit. All I can say is that when the issue of race comes up it might not hurt to consider the above points before you speak, blame, judge or perhaps most importantly vote. And maybe, just maybe we can take our biases in hand and maybe just maybe if we get a firm enough grip we can crush them.
Kyra Davis
www.kyradavis.com
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte IN STORES NOW!!!
For The Love Of A Dog--A fun online read!
Moms Of Mystery--An e-newsletter!
Please keep in mind that this is Silicon Valley we’re talking about, an area that is not exactly known for overt racism. That’s the problem, it’s not overt, it’s subtle. Even now lenders are claiming that there is no correlation between the interest rate on a loan and the recipient’s race. They say that the interest rates on the loans sited were decided by the credit score of those applying. There’s no real way to verify this since the credit rating of those who got loans in 2004 was not part of the data that was collected by the feds. I might buy the credit rating argument if we were talking about a smaller discrepancy or if Whites with income below $88,000 were getting higher interest rates than Latinos who made $135,000 but that’s not the case. I have a hard time believing that 80% of the White homeowners in the Bay Area have good credit while 48% of their more financially prosperous Latino neighbor’s suffer from a poor credit scores. Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark folks.
We often dismiss racism as a thing of the past or something that only exists in the South. We don’t want to believe that it’s a major factor in the lives of well educated successful people. Sadly that’s not the reality. By the way, in case there are any African American’s who are feeling neglected by this blog please understand; there are so few of us who can afford to buy a home in Silicon Valley that there wasn’t sufficient data available to analyze. However if it makes you feel better it is true that if you were to lump all different kinds of loans together Blacks are almost six times more likely to get a high-interest loan then someone who’s White.
Herbert Hoover’s vice president Charles Curtis claimed that it is virtually impossible to be completely unprejudiced. He was quoted as saying, “Bias and prejudice are attitudes to be kept in hand, not attitudes to be avoided.”
I’d like to think that’s not true but I’m fairly sure that’s wishful thinking on my part. There are some who wonder why so many in the Black community are saying that the situation in New Orleans would have been different if the people who needed to be rescued were White. The reason so many minorities constantly cite discrimination as the basis for almost every social injustice they encounter is that approximately 60% of the time they’re right. Think about it, if you were to go to Vegas and you were told that 60% of the time the roulette ball falls on the number 30 you’d put your money on 30 every single time.
Of course you’d lose 40% of the time and that’s where minorities get themselves into trouble. There are so many real instances of racism that there is no need to fabricate incidents that don’t exist. Sometimes the police are pulling you over because you’re speeding, not because you’re Black, Brown or purple. Every time we scream “It’s because I’m (fill in the appropriate ethnicity)” and it’s not true we end up undermining all the real claims of racism out there. On the other hand the White community should understand that the ball legitimately lands on the racism number 60% of the time so we’re all a little jaded and yeah, we do sometimes see racism when it’s not there just because usually it is there.
I wish I could tell you I had an answer for this problem but if I did I would be running for office not writing chick lit. All I can say is that when the issue of race comes up it might not hurt to consider the above points before you speak, blame, judge or perhaps most importantly vote. And maybe, just maybe we can take our biases in hand and maybe just maybe if we get a firm enough grip we can crush them.
Kyra Davis
www.kyradavis.com
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte IN STORES NOW!!!
For The Love Of A Dog--A fun online read!
Moms Of Mystery--An e-newsletter!
Monday, September 19, 2005
Faulty Security
So yesterday my son was “creating a formula.” He does this periodically by mixing together various household substances that I’ve given him the green light to play with. In this case he was mixing together different kinds of juice, vegetable oils and soaps.
“It’s going to be a security system,” he said, “to keep out the burglars.”
I think I may have nodded or said mm-hmm in response; I was engrossed in a Newsweek article so I wasn’t paying very close attention.
Anyway the plan was apparently to mix together all this stuff in his plastic bucket and then put the bucket on top of the gate so when the burglar tried to get in the bucket would fall on him. I know this because while my son was trying to set all this up the bucket fell on his head instead. Suddenly I hear screams; not cries of frustration or the beginnings of a temper tantrum but honest to God screams of anguish. I rushed outside to see my drenched son with his hands pressed against his eyes. “My eyes, my eyes!”
I grabbed him, ran into the kitchen and started rinsing his eyes in the sink all the while cursing myself for not watching him more closely. I wasn’t exactly sure which of his ingredients was in this particular formula but I knew oil was one of them which worried me since we all know that oil is not something that is easily washed away and I suspected that it might have been keeping the soap clinging to his eyes. Of course it was a Sunday (this kind of stuff never happens between 9-5 Monday through Friday when your regular doctor is working) so I paged the pediatrician on call. Less than ten minutes later I get a call back and the doctor tells me that I’m doing all the right things and if he is still experiencing pain in another ten minutes I should go out and buy some saline solution and rinse his eyes out with that. And then without even a hint of sarcasm the doctor says, “When he’s better be sure to compliment him on his creativity. We should be encouraging that in our children”
See this is why so many people feel that the trend of positive reinforcement for children has gone too far. My son at that point was huddled up in a corner crying, (and I quote) “Oh, the humanity!” Clearly the pain he had inadvertently inflicted upon himself made disciplinary action unnecessary but I wasn’t at all sure that congratulations were in order either. I mean okay, alarm bells should have gone off in my head when he started talking about security systems and burglars but since they didn’t I at least have the comfort of knowing that he learned his lesson and will never again put a bucket filled with Dawn and Canola oil in a spot where it might fall on someone’s head. Of course I could have chosen to undermine that lesson by saying, “Hey sweetie, that was a real cool thing you did. Maybe next time you’ll be able to cause permanent vision loss! That’ll get your picture in the paper for sure!”
Anyway, he’s fine now and we’ve both decided that going forward we're going to rely on more traditional security systems.
Kyra Davis
www.kyradavis.com
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte IN STORES NOW!!!
For The Love Of A Dog--A fun online read!
Moms Of Mystery--An e-newsletter!
“It’s going to be a security system,” he said, “to keep out the burglars.”
I think I may have nodded or said mm-hmm in response; I was engrossed in a Newsweek article so I wasn’t paying very close attention.
Anyway the plan was apparently to mix together all this stuff in his plastic bucket and then put the bucket on top of the gate so when the burglar tried to get in the bucket would fall on him. I know this because while my son was trying to set all this up the bucket fell on his head instead. Suddenly I hear screams; not cries of frustration or the beginnings of a temper tantrum but honest to God screams of anguish. I rushed outside to see my drenched son with his hands pressed against his eyes. “My eyes, my eyes!”
I grabbed him, ran into the kitchen and started rinsing his eyes in the sink all the while cursing myself for not watching him more closely. I wasn’t exactly sure which of his ingredients was in this particular formula but I knew oil was one of them which worried me since we all know that oil is not something that is easily washed away and I suspected that it might have been keeping the soap clinging to his eyes. Of course it was a Sunday (this kind of stuff never happens between 9-5 Monday through Friday when your regular doctor is working) so I paged the pediatrician on call. Less than ten minutes later I get a call back and the doctor tells me that I’m doing all the right things and if he is still experiencing pain in another ten minutes I should go out and buy some saline solution and rinse his eyes out with that. And then without even a hint of sarcasm the doctor says, “When he’s better be sure to compliment him on his creativity. We should be encouraging that in our children”
See this is why so many people feel that the trend of positive reinforcement for children has gone too far. My son at that point was huddled up in a corner crying, (and I quote) “Oh, the humanity!” Clearly the pain he had inadvertently inflicted upon himself made disciplinary action unnecessary but I wasn’t at all sure that congratulations were in order either. I mean okay, alarm bells should have gone off in my head when he started talking about security systems and burglars but since they didn’t I at least have the comfort of knowing that he learned his lesson and will never again put a bucket filled with Dawn and Canola oil in a spot where it might fall on someone’s head. Of course I could have chosen to undermine that lesson by saying, “Hey sweetie, that was a real cool thing you did. Maybe next time you’ll be able to cause permanent vision loss! That’ll get your picture in the paper for sure!”
Anyway, he’s fine now and we’ve both decided that going forward we're going to rely on more traditional security systems.
Kyra Davis
www.kyradavis.com
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte IN STORES NOW!!!
For The Love Of A Dog--A fun online read!
Moms Of Mystery--An e-newsletter!
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Miss Me?
Sorry to have been absent for so long, things have been very hectic lately (in a good way). Some recent developments need to be kept under wraps for a little while longer but there is one event coming up that I’m eager to share with all of you:
I’m going to Italy!!!
That’s right, I’ll be flying to Italy in a week to promote the Italian version of my book. I’ll be speaking at the Woman’s Fiction Festival in Matera (an ancient Roman town) and then my Italian publisher is sending me to Milan for some interviews and signings. One of my closest friends will be traveling with me and if all goes as planned we will drink in the sites while sipping Chianti and eating gelato. And who knows, we may even meet some nice tall dark Italian…um…friends.
Other than that I’ve managed to complete the first three chapters and synopsis of the third Sophie book a few weeks before deadline (yea me!). The second Sophie book (Passion, Betrayal And Killer Highlights) is finished and will be released in May 2006.
As far as the media is concerned, For Me magazine has featured me in their October issue (which you can pick up at Borders) and for you Bay Area gals I’m also featured in Bay Area Parent . Anyway that’s all the news for now but I promise to post again by this Wednesday with a lengthier post.
Kyra Davis
www.kyradavis.com
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte IN STORES NOW!!!
For The Love Of A Dog--A fun online read!
Moms Of Mystery--An e-newsletter!
I’m going to Italy!!!
That’s right, I’ll be flying to Italy in a week to promote the Italian version of my book. I’ll be speaking at the Woman’s Fiction Festival in Matera (an ancient Roman town) and then my Italian publisher is sending me to Milan for some interviews and signings. One of my closest friends will be traveling with me and if all goes as planned we will drink in the sites while sipping Chianti and eating gelato. And who knows, we may even meet some nice tall dark Italian…um…friends.
Other than that I’ve managed to complete the first three chapters and synopsis of the third Sophie book a few weeks before deadline (yea me!). The second Sophie book (Passion, Betrayal And Killer Highlights) is finished and will be released in May 2006.
As far as the media is concerned, For Me magazine has featured me in their October issue (which you can pick up at Borders) and for you Bay Area gals I’m also featured in Bay Area Parent . Anyway that’s all the news for now but I promise to post again by this Wednesday with a lengthier post.
Kyra Davis
www.kyradavis.com
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte IN STORES NOW!!!
For The Love Of A Dog--A fun online read!
Moms Of Mystery--An e-newsletter!
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
To Your Health
On Sunday I ran into a friend who asked me if I had been reviewed by any new publications. My answer was “No, not that I know of.”
I’m so glad I qualified that “no” because guess what book was reviewed in that Sunday’s Chicago Sun Times? Yes, that’s right, Sex, Murder And A Double Latte scored another major placement!
And the good news keeps on coming….
It appears that coffee is good for you! No, this isn’t just wishful thinking on my part. A new study shows that the average American who consumes a mere 1.64 cups of coffee a day (wimps) get the majority of their daily antioxidants from that very caffeinated beverage, a whopping 1,299 milligrams! That’s not to say that’s where Americans should get their antioxidants. Those silly nutritionists think that we should be eating more fruits and vegetables and getting antioxidants from them but since most of us American’s have embraced the Kellogg way of life scientists have resigned themselves to the fact that coffee is our one saving grace.
Furthermore a Japanese study showed that people who drink at least two cups of coffee a day are 50% less likely to get liver cancer than those who abstain from indulging in the beverage altogether. And it gets better! A recent Harvard study showed that men who drink 6 cups of coffee a day lowered their risk of type 2 diabetes by half and women who drank the same amount of coffee lowered their risk by 30%.
These are wonderful discovers. So I think we should all throw our concerns about insomnia and weight gain to the wind and base our diets on coffee and red wine (let’s not forget all the benefits of that wonderful drink) and dark chocolate (which is said to stave off depression, heart disease and lower your blood pressure). If we get sick we can always self medicated with marijuana which is sort of legal here in California.
Now I want to know when they’re going to start studying the positive effects of Absolut Vodka…
Kyra Davis
www.kyradavis.com
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte IN STORES NOW!!!
For The Love Of A Dog--A fun online read!
Moms Of Mystery--An e-newsletter!
I’m so glad I qualified that “no” because guess what book was reviewed in that Sunday’s Chicago Sun Times? Yes, that’s right, Sex, Murder And A Double Latte scored another major placement!
And the good news keeps on coming….
It appears that coffee is good for you! No, this isn’t just wishful thinking on my part. A new study shows that the average American who consumes a mere 1.64 cups of coffee a day (wimps) get the majority of their daily antioxidants from that very caffeinated beverage, a whopping 1,299 milligrams! That’s not to say that’s where Americans should get their antioxidants. Those silly nutritionists think that we should be eating more fruits and vegetables and getting antioxidants from them but since most of us American’s have embraced the Kellogg way of life scientists have resigned themselves to the fact that coffee is our one saving grace.
Furthermore a Japanese study showed that people who drink at least two cups of coffee a day are 50% less likely to get liver cancer than those who abstain from indulging in the beverage altogether. And it gets better! A recent Harvard study showed that men who drink 6 cups of coffee a day lowered their risk of type 2 diabetes by half and women who drank the same amount of coffee lowered their risk by 30%.
These are wonderful discovers. So I think we should all throw our concerns about insomnia and weight gain to the wind and base our diets on coffee and red wine (let’s not forget all the benefits of that wonderful drink) and dark chocolate (which is said to stave off depression, heart disease and lower your blood pressure). If we get sick we can always self medicated with marijuana which is sort of legal here in California.
Now I want to know when they’re going to start studying the positive effects of Absolut Vodka…
Kyra Davis
www.kyradavis.com
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte IN STORES NOW!!!
For The Love Of A Dog--A fun online read!
Moms Of Mystery--An e-newsletter!
Friday, September 02, 2005
Watch Out For The Swing
Anyone who’s ever taken a toddler to a playground knows that you can tell them over and over again not to walk in front of the swing while it’s in use but until that child is actually knocked down by said swing they are unlikely to get the message.
I think our country has been knocked down by a swing. I’ve listened to political leader after political leader say that there was “no way we could have predicted this kind of devastation/situation.”
Excuse me?
Anyone who read my last blog knows that the scientists interviewed by National Geographic predicted it last year and there were other articles predicting this that were published over 4 years ago. Furthermore many meteorologists and climatologists have suggested that it might happen in 2005 and 2006. We were warned. We just didn’t listen.
Once the refugees are evacuated and the water is pumped there is sure to be a lot of finger pointing going on in Washington and that’s probably appropriate since we really weren’t as prepared as we should have been and the powers that be should take accountability for that. However my feeling is that this is more of a societal problem than a political one.
Al Smith (a once prominent politician and Governor of New York during the early 1920’s) once said “The American people never carry an umbrella. They prepare to walk in eternal sunshine.”
I think he had a point. We have it so good in this country. If we wanted to play the comparative suffering game with almost any other nation on earth we would lose big time. Jews in America had to change their last names in order to get jobs. Jews in Europe were massacred. African Americans spent the better part of the last century fighting against segregation. In South Africa Blacks were dealing with Apartheid. We’ve been attacked on our native soil twice over the last hundred years…Israel has been attacked…well to be honest I think they’ve lost count. So we have dealt with hardships but not as much as most. We expect everything to just work itself out. We are under the delusion that being the richest and the strongest translates into perpetually being safe and secure.
But once we get knocked over we do have a tendency to get back up and then we’re pissed; not just because we’ve been hurt but because our sense of security has been messed with. Bad things aren’t supposed to happen to us and we look to our leaders and ask why they didn’t do a better job at protecting us. We have the right to ask the question and we have a right to an answer. That’s the great thing about democracy. That’s also how we ended up with the 9/11 report.
But the problem is that if Clinton or either of the Bush’s had stood up in front of the American people before 9/11 and said, “We need to protect ourselves against a possible but uncertain terrorist threat and to do so we’re going to have to raise taxes and implement security measures that are going to further inconvenience you at the airport,” the majority of American’s would have balked. Sure, we don’t mind donating large amounts of money to those who are in need or who have been hurt but we don’t want to part with little or moderate amounts of money to prevent people from getting hurt. That’s not a tangible enough problem. And if we had been able to prevent 9/11 we would have had some politician on TV saying, “Hey, these guys were going to attack us but we put a stop to it before they were even able to work out all the details of the plan.” And our response would have been, “Oh, that’s nice. Can we let our relatives walk us to the gate now?”
Now people are saying that the money that pretty much every scientific organization (not to mention the Army Corps Of Engineers and the Senator of Louisiana) knew we were going to need in order to deal with a class 4 or class 5 hurricane (which we knew was coming) was unjustly diverted to Homeland Security.
Well of course it was. America was attacked fairly recently, remember? That was a pretty tangible problem. We were knocked over by a particularly vicious swing and we were trying to change our behavior accordingly. We don’t walk in front of that swing set anymore. We walk on the railroad tracks instead.
Like I said before, I think we have the right to ask our leaders why spending for projects that could have saved lives in New Orleans was cut. But I also think we need to adjust our own thinking. If we want our leaders to be proactive we need to support them in their prevention efforts.
That’s just my two cents. I promise I won’t make every blog about this but considering everything that’s going on writing about anything else would have felt forced and insincere.
Kyra Davis
www.kyradavis.com
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte IN STORES NOW!!!
For The Love Of A Dog--A fun online read!
Moms Of Mystery--An e-newsletter!
I think our country has been knocked down by a swing. I’ve listened to political leader after political leader say that there was “no way we could have predicted this kind of devastation/situation.”
Excuse me?
Anyone who read my last blog knows that the scientists interviewed by National Geographic predicted it last year and there were other articles predicting this that were published over 4 years ago. Furthermore many meteorologists and climatologists have suggested that it might happen in 2005 and 2006. We were warned. We just didn’t listen.
Once the refugees are evacuated and the water is pumped there is sure to be a lot of finger pointing going on in Washington and that’s probably appropriate since we really weren’t as prepared as we should have been and the powers that be should take accountability for that. However my feeling is that this is more of a societal problem than a political one.
Al Smith (a once prominent politician and Governor of New York during the early 1920’s) once said “The American people never carry an umbrella. They prepare to walk in eternal sunshine.”
I think he had a point. We have it so good in this country. If we wanted to play the comparative suffering game with almost any other nation on earth we would lose big time. Jews in America had to change their last names in order to get jobs. Jews in Europe were massacred. African Americans spent the better part of the last century fighting against segregation. In South Africa Blacks were dealing with Apartheid. We’ve been attacked on our native soil twice over the last hundred years…Israel has been attacked…well to be honest I think they’ve lost count. So we have dealt with hardships but not as much as most. We expect everything to just work itself out. We are under the delusion that being the richest and the strongest translates into perpetually being safe and secure.
But once we get knocked over we do have a tendency to get back up and then we’re pissed; not just because we’ve been hurt but because our sense of security has been messed with. Bad things aren’t supposed to happen to us and we look to our leaders and ask why they didn’t do a better job at protecting us. We have the right to ask the question and we have a right to an answer. That’s the great thing about democracy. That’s also how we ended up with the 9/11 report.
But the problem is that if Clinton or either of the Bush’s had stood up in front of the American people before 9/11 and said, “We need to protect ourselves against a possible but uncertain terrorist threat and to do so we’re going to have to raise taxes and implement security measures that are going to further inconvenience you at the airport,” the majority of American’s would have balked. Sure, we don’t mind donating large amounts of money to those who are in need or who have been hurt but we don’t want to part with little or moderate amounts of money to prevent people from getting hurt. That’s not a tangible enough problem. And if we had been able to prevent 9/11 we would have had some politician on TV saying, “Hey, these guys were going to attack us but we put a stop to it before they were even able to work out all the details of the plan.” And our response would have been, “Oh, that’s nice. Can we let our relatives walk us to the gate now?”
Now people are saying that the money that pretty much every scientific organization (not to mention the Army Corps Of Engineers and the Senator of Louisiana) knew we were going to need in order to deal with a class 4 or class 5 hurricane (which we knew was coming) was unjustly diverted to Homeland Security.
Well of course it was. America was attacked fairly recently, remember? That was a pretty tangible problem. We were knocked over by a particularly vicious swing and we were trying to change our behavior accordingly. We don’t walk in front of that swing set anymore. We walk on the railroad tracks instead.
Like I said before, I think we have the right to ask our leaders why spending for projects that could have saved lives in New Orleans was cut. But I also think we need to adjust our own thinking. If we want our leaders to be proactive we need to support them in their prevention efforts.
That’s just my two cents. I promise I won’t make every blog about this but considering everything that’s going on writing about anything else would have felt forced and insincere.
Kyra Davis
www.kyradavis.com
Sex, Murder And A Double Latte IN STORES NOW!!!
For The Love Of A Dog--A fun online read!
Moms Of Mystery--An e-newsletter!
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