Family as idol
Jennifer's recent post linking to an article on gender-selective technology started me on a train of thought, or perhaps continued...

It was a dark and stormy night
Of all the post-election posts I've seen, I think my favorite is from Rilina: I began to consider something Tavis...

Abortion and poverty
Joe Cecil and NJL are both citing an article in Sojourners arguing that reducing poverty will reduce abortion. Among the...

Drinking the Italian way
A month ago Chris lamented the prevalence of binge drinking at his college, and I remarked that the Italian teenagers...

The resident aliens vote
Klingons endorse Kerry. Maybe he'll have them over for a bowl of serpent worms to show his appreciation....

I do my part
A little while ago, Joe Guada discovered that as a gay man, he's bringing on the end of Western civilization....

In defense of the mushy middle
Keith at Among the Ruins is ticked off over John Kerry's "incomprehensible" position on abortion. This is what Kerry said...

More deadly than the male
I mentioned recently that, despite the claim that our society finds gender difference to be a passe concept, almost everybody...

Boy/girl
I was really sad to hear about the suicide of David Reimer, a boy who, after a freak accident, was...

Think outside the box!
Although I've been writing about the theology of sex a lot lately, I haven't commented on the whole gay-marriage debate...

A puzzlement
Last week Peter lamented that politics are bumming him out: Well, in addition to the developing Bush going AWOL during...

Comment catchup
Some time ago I left a comment on one of Chris Burgwald's posts, and due to the various distractions never...

Tolkien and Saddam
Yes, I'm catching the opening of Return of the King tonight. Some friends and co-workers and I are going to...

Remembrance
Today is World AIDS Day. Peter quotes from a rousing screed on the subject, plus a link to help you...

Let's play master and servant
One story I missed while I was on break was this flapdoodle over the naming of "master" and "slave" hard...

The measure of man
It seems to be Testosterone Week here at my blog, but I'm still pondering the whole masculinity thing. Once again,...

Erotica
There's a discussion over at Crooked Timber about whether affairs between professors and students should be forbidden. I think Daniel...

Son preference
Kieran Healy recently posted a story about studies suggesting Americans still have a preference for sons over daughters -- although...

Sex and status
There was a passionate exchange recently between Ampersand and Eve Tushnet about gender roles. Roughly speaking, she's for them, he's...

Abusing linguistics for fun and profit
Cinderella Bloggerfeller says today the Edward Said rejects the theory of Indo-European linguistic unity on the grounds that it's "Orientalist."...

Dreaming on
Today is the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. I don't know what to add...

Nor bends with the remover to remove
Eugene Volokh posts on a lawsuit against a new New York high school reserved for homosexual, bisexual and "questioning" students....

Paleontology
John Zmirak apparently Googled up my July 11 post referring to him and left a huge comment in it (scroll...

Adventures in social science
There's been a lot of laughing and snorting lately directed at a Berkeley study that purports to identify the personality...

Vote your conscience
Florida will restore the voting rights of 125,000 felons. I have to say, this business of permanently depriving convicts of...

By any other name
I didn't realize when I floated my lokayata idea that another blogger, Amaravati, pointed out the Sanskrit word adevin. Adevin,...

No new thing under the sun
In my comments to this post, David referred to an article by the philosopher Daniel Dennett, promoting the use of...

That about sums it up
So we've had the Shorter Steven Den Beste, the Shorter Edward Said and the Shorter a lot of other people,...

The marrying kind
Several people have responded to my post about privatizing marriage. Eve Tushnet writes: I worry that Camassia is falling into...

The bonds of matrimony
Eve Tushnet is ticked off at Michael Kinsley for saying the state should get out of marriage. Her work at...

From the Barbary Coast
Cinderella Bloggerfeller has a couple of interesting posts (one and two) about the Berbers, the indigenous people of North Africa....

I know from righteous, I know from sin
I've been thinking the last couple days about politics. Not any political event in particular, but about my own politics....

A separate union
It's interesting to me that Noah Millman and Josh Claybourn, two political and religious conservatives, are both inching toward the...