My cousin was checking something on her iPhone when the Wolvog walked through the room and immediately came over because he is like a moth to flame when it comes to screens.  It doesn’t matter if he is holding the very same device; he needs to see yours too.  Somehow it came up that he had set up his iPod to read aloud passages of text in Siri’s voice.  But he informed us that you don’t have to use Siri’s voice.  You could have a robotic British man or an electronic Australian woman.

“How do you do that?” we asked him.

You go under General Settings and click on Accessibility.  Turn “Speak Selection” on, then tap “Dialects.”  Under English, you can choose from the follow accents: US, Australian, British, Irish, or South African.

I like the British man, but he sounds a little uptight.  Like the sort of guy who enjoys wearing a suit.  Whereas my Australian woman — I call her Kylie — sounds like the sort of person who would be a good travelmate.  She’s fun without being flighty.  She’s a good conversationalist.  She has ideas… I mean, no, she doesn’t actually share any ideas with me since she’s a robotic voice simply reading what I highlight on the screen.  But you can just tell from her voice that there is a lot going on behind the screen.

I really love my phone.

Thanks, Mr. Jobs.

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Speaking of Mr. Jobs, I really want to see the new Steve Jobs biopic.  I’ve heard that I’m one of the only people in the world to say that, but I read Walter Isaacson’s biography when it came out for the Wolvog. (I would read it at night, and then tell him about it in the morning.)  And it sounds as if the movie is simply the book as a motion picture.  So… I’m going.

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August is halfway over!  Amazon chose Measure of Love to feature as one of the books of the month for the entirety of August.  Which is all kinds of cool, and they’re offering it as a $1.99 deal on Kindle.  I’d still love any help in getting word out there about the promotion.  And a massive thank you to everyone who has already Facebooked and tweeted.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “This Is…” (Kmina’s Blog)
• “Trying” (Tales from the Waiting Room)
• “Mind and Heart” (Bébé Suisse)
• “The Tightrope of Life” (It Is What It Is (or Is It?))
• “What Comes” (My Lady of the Lantern)
• “When I Look at Him” (Unparalleled Love)
• “Help, My Sister Had a Baby!” (Here’s that Bad Advice You Were Hoping For)

Okay, now my choices this week.

MissConception has a deeply honest post about how the past doesn’t control her, but it has changed the person she’s become, and that extends to her role as wife.  She admits, “I feel bad about the wife I’ve been for the last couple of years. I feel like I should be ready and willing to get back to who I was, especially with finally reaching my goal of becoming a mom. Shouldn’t happiness lead to more intimacy?”  It’s about seeing the problem but not knowing how to change it.  I love that people chimed in within the comment section.  Blogging lets you know that you’re really not alone.

It Is What It Is (or Is It?) also has a post about marriage.  I was also touched by the raw honesty of this one, especially how she processes that flatness.  And follow up posts are about how blogging about it has moved her toward treating the problem.

The Misadventures of MissOhkay has a post about coming out of the blogging closet with a new site and the way she writes (hint: she is not worried about things).  She writes, “I used to blog because I really NEEDED IT. It was my therapy. I think it was better than the actual therapy I did. Now I blog because I like to blog. I am introspective. I enjoy thinking about things and hearing what you think about things.”  I just love that.

Lastly, The Great Big IF has a post about the research she is doing into various paths of family building.  As she points out, obsessions demand attention.  And her research makes her feel as if there is forward momentum, even if she knows rationally that they’re still far away from starting a donor egg cycle.  I love the end of the post, comparing it to the two ways people approach looking at real estate.

The roundup to the Roundup: My phone speaks to me in an Australian accent.  I want to see the Steve Jobs biopic.  Measure of Love is on sale (and I’d love your help continuing to get word out).  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 9th and 16th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

I think we have found Truman’s carnivorous twin.  People claim that the olinguito, the new species revealed by the Smithsonian today, looks like a teddy bear.  But I say that they look like TRUMAN HARPER FORD!

Check out the picture in that link above (sorry, it’s an AP image, so I can’t embed it) and then look at my sweet Truman Harper below.

Okay, so Truman may be a touch smaller and have a different nose. But other than the fact that Truman lives in my living room and the olinguito lives in the cloud forests of Ecuador? TWINS!

I bet if we could get an olinguito as a pet, they would be best friends.  And we’d make a Disney movie about them, a feel-good romp through South America.  Just a olinguito and his nearly identical cavy friend, traversing the cloud forest, singing songs about being almost-twins.  Sign up Randy Newman.  Get Pixar on the phone.  Oh yes, this is ON.

This question is part of the GRAB(ook) Club, an online book club open to anyone and everyone.

Throughout the book, a piece of advice — “just ignore it” — is repeated in several different ways.  On page 133, Atticus recommends that Jem tune out Mrs. Dubose when she attempts to upset him.

“Easy does it, son,” Atticus would say.  “She’s an old lady and she’s ill.  You just hold your head high and be a gentleman.  What she says to you, it’s your job not to let her make you mad.”

Of course, we’re not just talking about the impolite, personal remarks.  Atticus is telling his son to ignore the blatantly racist remarks too.

It is advice that is often repeated on the Internet: don’t feed the trolls, don’t react to negative comments, let other people’s baiting roll off your back.  I know I’ve told the twins to ignore bullies in their class.  Ignoring — in other words, not doing anything — seems to be an easy solution that is offered for a variety of situations.

Yet we also see the effects of a town that has ignored its racism and turned a blind-eye to its bullying.  Change rarely comes from people who ignore a situation.

Do you think “just ignore it” is ultimately more helpful or hurtful?

After you answer my question, please click over to read the rest of the book club questions for To Kill a Mockingbird.  You can get your own copy of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee at bookstores including Amazon.

This is a post for the GRAB(ook) Club. Like the idea of a book club where you don’t have to leave your living room? Then read more about the GRAB(ook) Club which holds the book discussion on blogs, a Facebook group, and a GoodReads group.

August’s Book is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. You can jump into the discussion by clicking any of the blogs below (links will appear when the post goes up), or joining the Facebook or GoodReads group (links to those groups are in the information post).

• Stirrup Queens
• Are You Kidding Me?
• River Run Dry
• The Road Less Travelled
• Notes from the Ninth Circle
• The Book Diva’s Reads (on FB)

NEXT STEP: sign up for the September book The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins(discussion on September 12) by leaving a comment below telling me that you’re in, the name and url of your blog, or whether you are blogless and will be discussing on the Facebook/GoodReads groups.

The number of married couples diagnosed with infertility has dropped from 8.5% to 6% according to a new study.

About 6 percent of married women under 45 failed to get pregnant after at least a year of sex without contraception, according to the report. That’s down from less than 9 percent some three decades ago.

The emphasis on married is mine.  It has been a long-standing divide in the infertility community between those who are situationally-infertile and those who are biologically-infertile.  Or rather, the divide comes more at the scientific and political levels; down here in the trenches, assisted conception is assisted conception.  But it’s seen quite clearly in the study itself, which only questioned married, heterosexual couples rather than looking at single parents by choice who also turn out to need IVF to conceive or lesbians who suffer from recurrent pregnancy loss.

In other words, if you’re only asking married couples about their fertility, you’re not really getting a very clear picture of fertility rates since a person can be both situationally and biologically infertile at the same time.  I would have a lot more interest in the study if they looked at individuals.  A fertility study that only looks at married heterosexuals doesn’t really tell the full story despite media outlets reporting to the contrary.

What it comes down to is whether you believe someone who needs assistance to conceive should be counted amongst others that also need assistance to conceive.  There isn’t a clear-cut, black-and-white answer.  We could debate this incessantly, trying to find the boundaries.  It isn’t helped by the fact that such a large percentage of people diagnosed with infertility are considered “unexplained” (nearly 20%).  That lack of why also creates a problem when creating the definition for infertility, and because it is such an amorphous disease at times, excluding populations that don’t neatly fit into the definition is one way of making it specific.

The problem with that is, of course, that (again) people can be a single-mother-by-choice or lesbian who can’t conceive despite numerous IUIs, making them both situationally and biologically infertile.  But those people aren’t counted in studies like this despite existing.

So yes, infertility rates are down amongst married couples.  But that says nothing about whether infertility rates are down overall for individuals.