A link purge (in honor of Stalin's Birthday)

This will (hopefully) be the only time I ever link to a Playboy article, but I couldn't see this on Yahoo! News without finding (to my great relief) that ND did not make this prestigious list (I do note, however, that WSU and UCSB are both included)

The Economic Crisis in a (humorous) nutshell:




If this story doesn't tug at your heartstrings a little, well, not sure what to tell you. "Last August a 26-year-old dancer named Liu Yan was supposed to give the performance of her life at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics."

I skimmed the much-hyped article about the "Death of Christian America" in Newsweek, and didn't find it particularly insightful, but I will (possibly) get back to it at some point.

A couple weeks ago, Father Dailey mentioned this great quote from Pope Benedict during his homily Nationals Stadium last year: "[The challenges of today] call for cultivating a mindset, an intellectual "culture", which is genuinely Catholic, confident in the profound harmony of faith and reason, and prepared to bring the richness of faith's vision to bear on the urgent issues which affect the future of American society...Those who have hope must live different lives!" No, that's not directed at anyone...

Speaking of Catholicism, it's nice to know that the enlightened progressives among us find a use for the Church every now and then...I have to say, the 65-47 Catholic/Protestant split really surprised me.

Lastly, "We can’t say that use of Facebook leads to lower grades and less studying – but we did find a relationship there." Granted, I don't know what the repubalbility of "Science Daily" is, and correlation does not prove causation by any means, it's still gives one a little pause.

Just Dance?

Proving for once and for all (one hopes) the age-old saying about books and covers: Presenting Susan Boyle.

Saletan summarizes a British Medical Journal piece recapping stuff we've heard before, but the numbers bear repeating: 124 boys born to every girl. 32 million more males under age 25 than girls. Why? "Sex selective abortion accounts for almost all the excess males."

Gallup has a treasure-trove of social science polling data on its site, none particularly inspiring. To wit:

• "Attendance among Roman Catholics dropped from 75% to 45%" from 1955 to the present day. "Whatever the causes, it is clear that U.S. Catholics' once-nearly uniform obedience to their church's requirement of weekly mass attendance has faded, and Catholics are now no different from Protestants in their likelihood to attend church."

• In a similar (and I don't think unrelated) vein, "Despite the Roman Catholic Church's official opposition to abortion and embryonic stem-cell research, a Gallup analysis finds almost no difference between rank-and-file American Catholics and American non-Catholics in terms of finding the two issues morally acceptable."

[Click to see full polls.] More probably to come as I come across them.

People.

This sounds like it can be filed in the "Scientific Discoveries that Could Very Well Cause Ethical Headaches Down the Line" category: "Scientists have produced strong new evidence challenging one of the most fundamental assumptions in biology: that female mammals, including women, are born with all the eggs they will ever have...Although much more research is needed to confirm and explore the findings, the work raises the tantalizing possibility that it could someday lead to new ways to fight a woman's biological clock, perhaps by stockpiling her egg-producing cells or by stimulating them to make eggs again."

In other reproductive news, it doesn't get any easier for mothers in China after they do get pregnant - "These and thousands of other children stolen from the teeming industrial hubs of China’s Pearl River Delta have never been recovered by their parents or by the police. But anecdotal evidence suggests the children do not travel far. Although some are sold to buyers in Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam, most of the boys are purchased domestically by families desperate for a male heir, parents of abducted children and some law enforcement officials who have investigated the matter say...“If you have only girls, you don’t feel right inside,” said Ms. Zhen, who has one child, an 11-year-old son. “You feel your status is lower than everyone else.”"

From the Sunday Times: I'm not a big fan of Frank Rich, but I can agree with him in this respect - If there is any good that could come out of this recession, it will be the death, or at least injury, of what he calls the "Money is King" narrative.

Lastly, a few weeks back I brought you the "discrete affair" service. Now you can just drop all pretense with "Seeking Arrangement," a new site for all you sugar daddies/mommies/babies out there.