As men sometimes complain, they have tended to be overlooked in the great exodus of women from the home into the workforce and other changes affecting women and motherhood during the past 50-60 years. However, higher rates of unemployment among men in a changing economy has recently drawn some attention back to the ordinary male of the species. There is a lot of talk about the un-marriageability of men without secure jobs.
One of the things that is clear from the research that has been done is that working-class men do not readily accept the egalitarian model of domestic life and suffer when they lose the provider role. A new study that explored depression among fathers in the US tends to confirm this. The study shows that unemployment is by far the strongest predictor of depressive symptoms in fathers, stronger even than living with a mother who is depressed.
The few glimpses I have had of video games, courtesy of young relative, have left me with the impression that one needs a very agile mind, able to constantly react to developments in the game and make instant decisions. Does that mean they are good for training children to pay attention?
Not necessarily. It seems to depend on what you mean by “attention”. Some studies have found that playing video games can improve visual attention in the way I have mentioned. But a new study published by the American Psychological Association suggests that they can simultaneously make kids more impulsive and less able to concentrate, or give close attention. In fact, impulsive and inattentive kids tend to play more video games in the first place.
Lead author, Douglas A Gentile, who is a world authority on media and children, says that “most research on attention problems has focused on biological and…
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My “Beyond Satire” meter is, once again, registering in the red zone. I’m not sure why this story made the news; maybe because we’re talking Britain and not India or China.
Women are being granted illegal abortions by doctors based on the sex of their unborn baby, an undercover investigation by The Daily Telegraph reveals.
First of all, being Canadian, it is strange for me to see the phrase “illegal abortions”. My country, to its everlasting shame, has absolutely no legal restriction on abortions whatsoever. It is possible to kill an unborn child right up to the nano-second before delivery – though as legal precedent has shown in at least one case involving incompetent midwives, a baby is actually considered ‘not born’ and therefore a non-person until the umbilical cord is cut, and sometimes, even beyond that. We are very sophisticated and nuanced in Canada when it comes to…
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The Obama Administration has gone nuts. Literally. The czars fiddle with peanut vending machines while Washington burns ever deeper into multi-trillion dollar debt. But oh, it’s for the children. Ron Nixon, at the NY Times:
“The government’s attempt to reduce childhood obesity is moving from the school cafeteria to the vending machines. The Obama administration is working on setting nutritional standards for foods that children can buy outside the cafeteria.”
I’ve written about childhood obesity before, and will end this post with exactly the same conclusions. Repetitive, I know, but what else can one do to combat ever-more ludicrous government meddling and overreach?
“Nutritionists say that school vending machines stocked with potato chips, cookies and sugary soft drinks contribute to childhood obesity, which has more than tripled in the past 30 years. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that about one in every five children are [sic] obese.”
My daughters told me recently that modest clothing is unremarkable in itself, but remarkable in its potential effects. Ironically, the benefit of modest clothing is its transparency, so to speak. Modest clothing attracts attention neither to itself nor to the superficial qualities of the person wearing it. In fact, by not being a distraction or an end in itself, modest clothing allows the character of the person to become more evident.
Indecent fashions tend to reduce the human person to the superficiality of their exposed or accentuated body parts ... saying, in effect, "Look at me, I'm an object. Look at me as an object." On the other hand, prudish clothing... Read more at catholicculture.org
I first heard of this now-viral video when I saw it posted on a political blog (which did not give away the ending), and I started watching out of what was, admittedly, a morbid and unhealthy curiosity-- you know, the kind that makes people watch reality TV. I couldn’t finish; I was just too embarrassed for this dad and his inarticulate rambling. I felt I really had no business looking in on what was essentially a private family matter.
When asked to post on it, however, I had to go back and watch the whole thing, which I did on Facebook, and by then, the ending had been divulged (since there were dozens of response videos posted, some of which read “dad shoots laptop”). So if you haven’t seen this video, allow me to save you from wasting eight minutes of your life: he rambles for seven minutes, and then puts half a dozen rounds of ammunition into his…
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Business as usual. That’s the message from the World Health Organisation following its experts meeting last month to review the safety of hormonal contraceptives where there is a risk of HIV transmission.
A study published in The Lancet last October found that hormonal contraceptives -- particularly injectables such as Depo Provera -- doubled the risk (compared with those not using hormonal contraception) of a woman contracting HIV from her infected partner or, if she is the infected one, of transmitting it to him. The effect was particularly strong for the youngest women - the age-group driving the AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa.
But after a two-day technical consultation among 75 experts from 18 countries, WHO has decided not to review its guidelines on contraceptive safety. It has only re-emphasised the need to use condoms as well.
If anyone is wondering what the row in the United States over a White House policy enforcing health insurance coverage of contraceptives, potentially abortifacient "emergency contraception", and sterilisation is all about -- have a look at the following two posts on the US Catholic Bishops Conference website:
These two six-point summaries make it very clear why the Catholic bishops and other religious leaders, plus some discerning secular writers and others, reject the policy as well as promises of "accomodating" some of their objections, somewhere down the line.
It was always obvious to any sane adult that giving contraceptives to teenagers would do next to nothing to stop them getting pregnant. In fact, contraceptive education and supply to schoolgirls has been accompanied for decades by rising numbers of pregnancies in the UK, making Britain, notoriously, the teenage pregnancy capital of Europe.
Ah, said the zealots, it was just the wrong method. They needed methods that would last months, or years, because teenage girls, you know, they just can’t be expected to take a pill every day.
So five years ago -- perhaps longer -- the government gave the green light to fit girls with hormone releasing implants that are inserted under the skin of the upper arm, The Telegraph reports. So-called sexual health clinics have performed this minor surgery on thousands of girls -- without, of course, consulting their parents. They have been administering the contraceptive jab, as well.
A thought experiment about marriage
24 May 2012
A world in which sexual intimacy could not produce children would never have come up with the idea of marriage.
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1:56:02 PM
As men sometimes complain, they have tended to be overlooked in the great exodus of women from the home into the workforce and other changes affecting women and motherhood during the past 50-60 years. However, higher rates of 
The few glimpses I have had of video games, courtesy of young relative, have left me with the impression that one needs a very agile mind, able to constantly react to developments in the game and make instant decisions. Does that mean they are good for training children to pay attention?
My “Beyond Satire” meter is, once again, registering in the red zone. I’m not sure why this story made the news; maybe because we’re talking Britain and not India or China.
My daughters told me recently that modest clothing is unremarkable in itself, but remarkable in its potential effects. Ironically, the benefit of modest clothing is its transparency, so to speak. Modest clothing attracts attention neither to itself nor to the superficial qualities of the person wearing it. In fact, by not being a distraction or an end in itself, modest clothing allows the character of the person to become more evident.
