Attack of the Lynx! [Part V]

The Economist has a cleverly-written while fairly pedestrian look at the first half-year of the Obama administration. Some choice quotes:

• "An impression is being formed in Washington of a presidency that is far too ready to hand over the direction of domestic policy to Congress; that is drifting either deliberately or lethargically leftwards; and that is more comfortable with lofty visions than details."
• "He has been curiously ill-served by a press short of useful criticism, with liberal America prepared only to debate what sort of water he walks on best, while conservative radio hosts argue over when exactly he became a communist."
• "What should Mr Obama do? He must come down from his cloud and start leading. The House Democrats could be usefully reminded that their present 78-seat margin owes everything to the president’s coat-tails; they are endangering his popularity."

Your faithful Heritage automaton brings you this public service announcement: "One Pill, Two Pill, Red Pill, Blue Pill: Top 10 Reasons Obamacare Is Wrong for America." But seriously, please do read it, even if you disagree with all 10, I think it's really important. It is 1/6 of the American economy, after all, and we all come into contact with it at some point.

In related news, from Rasmussen via Sullivan:


Enough politics.

I found this article from October 2008 in the NYT that raises some interesting questions about both infidelity and social science research: "Infidelity appears to be on the rise, particularly among older men and young couples. Notably, women appear to be closing the adultery gap: younger women appear to be cheating on their spouses nearly as often as men...data show that in any given year, about 10 percent of married people — 12 percent of men and 7 percent of women — say they have had sex outside their marriage."

I've always been a little skeptical of the mega-church crowd (Osteen, Warren, et al) and this Slate piece by Clint Rainey raises some interesting points - "God wants to give you your own home." Sorry, I missed that in my Bible. ("It's not my job to try to straighten everybody out," Osteen famously told Larry King in 2005, adding, "My message is a message of hope.")

St. Paul was awesome and this is kind of even more awesome. "Benedict said archaeologists recently unearthed and opened the white marble sarcophagus located under the Basilica of St. Paul's Outside the Walls in Rome, which for some 2,000 years has been believed by the faithful to be the tomb of St. Paul."

"The girls—all white and middle class—started budding breasts a full year earlier than their counterparts just 15 years ago (the age of menstruation had advanced about four months). While that’s a stunner in itself, the real head-scratcher was that the change in girls’ body weight was minimal and couldn’t account for the difference. Nearly all the girls in both groups were relatively thin...So if fat isn’t resetting the puberty clock, what is?" Two theories are divorce and the media, according to the Double X blog.