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.

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.

Sunny with a high of 95?

Mr Saletan has an interesting challenge for those of challenging political persuasions:

• "I'm not ruling out water-boarding. But before you tell your pals around the water cooler that it's a vital interrogation tool or that the bastards deserve it, check out one of the demonstrations posted on the Internet, such as the waterboarding of Slate and Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens. You can also read David J. Morris' firsthand account of a water-boarding, published here six months ago.

The same goes for any other violent or lethal practice you countenance from the comfort of your desk. Capital punishment? Watch an execution. Eating meat? Check out a slaughterhouse. Abortion? Peruse the video library or, if the pregnancy is yours, look at an ultrasound. And don't think that opposing these practices insulates you from the same responsibility. If you think capital punishment is never warranted, acquaint yourself with the handiwork of a few murderers. Before you defund international family-planning agencies, meet some malnourished children."

Also, I know Japan is creepy but this guy with a pillow takes it to a new extreme [caution, some medically accurate terminology.] Another tour de force of Japanese culture: RapeLay. "Players earn points for acts of sexual violence, including stalking girls on commuter trains, raping virgins and their mothers, and forcing females to get abortions, according to the group's online statement." Rah rah Captialism!