- Daily Caller - Sen. Inhofe turns tables on global warming ambushers -- and gets it on tape [video]
- John Fund - "What's at Stake in Wisconsin's Budget Battle" "Who's in charge of our political system, voters or unions?"(WSJ)
"Ending dues deductions breaks the political cycle in which government collects dues, gives them to the unions, who then use the dues to back their favorite candidates and also lobby for bigger government and more pay and benefits," Mr. Siegel told me.
- Marcel Dicke and Arnold Van Huis - "The Six-Legged Meat of the Future" (WSJ)
"Insects are nutritious and easy to raise without harming the environment. They also have a nice nutty taste."
- Kay S. Hymowitz - Where Have the Good Men Gone? Hymowitz argues that too many men in their 20s are living in a new kind of extended adosescence. (WSJ)
Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children. Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. This "pre-adulthood" has much to recommend it, especially for the college-educated. But it's time to state what has become obvious to legions of frustrated young women: It doesn't bring out the best in men.
[...] What also makes pre-adulthood something new is its radical reversal of the sexual hierarchy. Among pre-adults, women are the first sex. They graduate from college in greater numbers (among Americans ages 25 to 34, 34% of women now have a bachelor's degree but just 27% of men), and they have higher GPAs. As most professors tell it, they also have more confidence and drive. These strengths carry women through their 20s, when they are more likely than men to be in grad school and making strides in the workplace. In a number of cities, they are even out-earning their brothers and boyfriends.
[...] Pre-adulthood can be compared to adolescence, an idea invented in the mid-20th century as American teenagers were herded away from the fields and the workplace and into that new institution, the high school. For a long time, the poor and recent immigrants were not part of adolescent life; they went straight to work, since their families couldn't afford the lost labor and income. But the country had grown rich enough to carve out space and time to create a more highly educated citizenry and work force. Teenagers quickly became a marketing and cultural phenomenon. They also earned their own psychological profile. One of the most influential of the psychologists of adolescence was Erik Erikson, who described the stage as a "moratorium," a limbo between childhood and adulthood characterized by role confusion, emotional turmoil and identity conflict.
Like adolescents in the 20th century, today's pre-adults have been wait-listed for adulthood. Marketers and culture creators help to promote pre-adulthood as a lifestyle. And like adolescence, pre-adulthood is a class-based social phenomenon, reserved for the relatively well-to-do. Those who don't get a four-year college degree are not in a position to compete for the more satisfying jobs of the knowledge economy. [more . . . this is very much worth reading in its entirety!]
Update 2/27/11 - Wintery Knight does not like Hymowitz's essay! WK links to Captain Capitalism who offers bullet responses, some of which WK reproduces. But then WK goes on to restate his own inimitable and provocative views on marriage that young Christian singles should weigh carefully.