A-B-C...Easy as 1-2-3

Interesting links that I've found when I was supposed to be working here in DC.

As a young, "hip," car-less Metro-loving (except for the fare increases, WMATA!) urbanite, this report on driving from The Atlantic a while ago rings true. "In 1978, nearly half of 16-year-olds and three-quarters of 17-year-olds in the U.S. had their driver's licenses, according to Department of Transportation data. By 2008, the most recent year data was available, only 31 percent of 16-year-olds and 49 percent of 17-year-olds had licenses, with the decline accelerating rapidly since 1998." Other interesting fact about growing up in America: Teen girls are now drinking more than teenage boys.

In Robot News: Creepy stuff from Japan - I guess since none of their citizens are having babies, they need to think outside the box? Actually, with this NYT interview with a robot, maybe we can robots of all ages (and to be honest, the conversation reported sounded a little more interesting than talking to some people...)

A heartwarming obit about a Chicago couple that lived their whole life together. Would that we could all be that lucky...And a more creepy story about cryonics fanatics that will live their lives with their partner - and then some.

More links: How a miracle 3-point-shot saved lives, from Sports Illustrated. Recommended...Stereotyping people by their favorite websites - Funny if you spend a lot of time on the Web.

The rest of the piece is pretty standard, but this paragraph from David Brooks today blew me away:

• "Democrats also passed a financial reform law. The law that originally created the Federal Reserve was a mere 31 pages. The Sarbanes-Oxley banking reform act, passed in 2002, was only 66 pages. But the 2010 financial reform law was 2,319 pages, an intricately engineered technocratic apparatus. As Mark J. Perry of the American Enterprise Institute noted, the financial reform law is seven times longer than the last five pieces of banking legislation combined."

And then for anyone who enjoys playing with Google translator as much as I do, this new translator is for you.

Attack of the Lynx! [Part VI]

Some of these are a little older than others, but all caught my interest at some point so you will be interested too :)

• Baby dies because parents are too busy playing video games.
• 6-year-old becomes youngest girl in Oregon history to commit suicide
• Woman sues Canadian company for sending her phone bill...which reveals her secret affair.
• Was the 20th Century the Playboy Century (How Hugh Hefner Changed America)?
• Perhaps related, the lefty Daily Beast gives you 15 ways to predict divorce.
• Trenchant analysis from The Atlantic: What happens when the so-called "Best and Brightest" fail?
• And what does it say about our country when 20 percent of American atheists profess a belief in God?? (Or our polling, as the case may be.)
• And on two lighter notes to end, check out where ND ranks on the most expensive season tickets in college football.
• And how do you see colors? :)

Google is treating me badly so I'm not sure if this got published or not...Apologies if I bore you with my repetition.

Post-Christmas Sale

From The Economist: "In 2008 37% of government workers were unionised, nearly five times the share in the private sector (see chart), and the same share that was unionised 25 years earlier. Over that period, the share of unionised private-sector jobs collapsed from 17% to 8%...As a result, public-sector workers are spoiled rotten."

William Deresiewicz in The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting question: We live at a time when friendship has become both all and nothing at all...Romantic partners refer to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend. Spouses boast that they are each other's best friends. Parents urge their young children and beg their teenage ones to think of them as friends. Adult siblings, released from competition for parental resources that in traditional society made them anything but friends (think of Jacob and Esau), now treat one another in exactly those terms. Teachers, clergymen, and even bosses seek to mitigate and legitimate their authority by asking those they oversee to regard them as friends. We're all on a first-name basis, and when we vote for president, we ask ourselves whom we'd rather have a beer with. As the anthropologist Robert Brain has put it, we're friends with everyone now. Yet what, in our brave new mediated world, is friendship becoming?" The answer is lengthy, but worth reading, if only to open your mind that what we view as "friendship" is fairly modern invention.

From Reuters Japan: A government study researching teen pregnancy says that "Teens who skip breakfast as middle school students tend to have sex at an earlier age than those who start the day with a proper meal."

And Dave Barry's take on 2009 is hysterical, as usual. Love that man.

Quote of the month:

Courtesy of David Brooks's piece "Cellphones, Texts and Lovers" in today's NYT:

• "In today’s world, the choice of a Prius can be a more sanctified act that the choice of an erotic partner."

And he's absolutely right.

XKCD has too much time on its/their(?) hands, but the result is pretty epic: Movie Narrative Charts.

Also, I came across this letter in the National Archives museum and thought it was amazing. Read it and laugh at how some things never change: "If you do we shall just about die."

Ha

Economic Downturn Hits Scholastic Sports

SOUTH BEND, IN -- Shrinking endowments, funding reductions and fewer anticipated enrollees are forcing many colleges and universities to curb development plans and reassess operating budgets. From well-heeled Ivy League schools such as Harvard and Dartmouth to large public institutions such as the California State University system, many schools are facing difficult financial decisions stemming from the nation's economic standstill. But nowhere is the downturn being felt more acutely than in the world of university sports...At the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana--a school renowned for its football and other athletic programs--administrators are looking at fresh ideas to keep sports solvent. "We have been, for the last few decades, financially very stable in the operation of our sports programs" Notre Dame university spokesman Dennis Storin said. "But the landscape is changing, and we will need to adjust to the realities of the current economic climate"....

• Reduce operating costs of football game days. Notre Dame typically spends upwards of $10.5 million to host a Saturday football match. The cost of electricity and lighting alone is "significant" according to a university spokesman, "especially later in the game, when the skies darken and we need to turn on the more than 50,000 field spotlights." On the table is a proposal to move all game starting times to 11:00 AM on game day, so that they will finish in the daylight. An earlier start time would also be necessary to mitigate the increased number of "television timeouts" the department is planning in conjunction with host network NBC, another key source of revenue for the program....
• The school's marching band, the Band of the Fighting Irish, could be merged with the walk-on program, and band members/tackling dummies could be deployed for a dual purpose. "I don't see why we couldn't have the piccolo section also simulate, say, the Michigan defense for practice that week," said Weis. "They're about the same size."


Nice. Happy Belated April Fool's Day. Busy in DC - A massive Weekend Update may be coming. If you're lucky. Eat your vegetables.

Wow

Haha the Internet is awesome: PMSBuddy.com I'm not sure if I'd ever need it, but it's good to know somebody's got my back...