Category Archives: Social Commentary

Do You Defile Books?

This post (related to e-books) brought up an interesting subject in comments. There are people who think nothing (and in fact find it necessary) to highlight or make margin notes in books, and there are others (like me) who consider this sacrilege, and would never consider doing such a thing. I remember being in awe of books as a child, and even though they’re now mass produced, and it’s not a rational thing, I still can’t bring myself to write in one (except perhaps to sign it, if I were to write one myself). And frankly, I never found it useful as a study aid, so there was never much pressure for me to do it.

It’s not something that anyone ever taught me, or lectured me about, it’s just a visceral repugnance at the thought. How weird am I (always a dangerous question with this crowd, I know…)?

The comments section is open.

[Update in the early evening]

Look, just to clarify here, I’m not saying that my position is rational, or anything. I’m just curious to see how many share it. It’s really psychology research. I guess I’m wondering if it’s some kind of intrinsic personality trait (like being interested in space) that’s not (obviously) explainable either by upbringing or genetics.

More Of This, Please

The UCLA Alumni Association is fed up with nutty professors. Alumni associations actually have a lot of power in the war to take back academia from the radical left, but they have to care, and exercise it.

[Update on Monday evening]

As Jane Bernstein points out in comments, if you read the fine print, it’s not the UCLA Alumni Association–it’s another group (probably less official) called the Bruin Alumni Association. Kudos to them anyway.

Polywhatever

Glenn thinks that a lot of the current concern about polygamy is an offshoot of the gay marriage debate. I think that’s right, but we need to clarify terms here:

There’s a pretty good argument that polygamy is usually bad for the societies it appears in, producing a large surplus of sullen, unmarriageable young men.

Polygamy per se (a marriage of more than two individuals) doesn’t result in frustrated young men–that would be polygyny (the specific case in which it is one man married to multiple women). It could be balanced out with polyandry (in which one woman has several husbands). Judging by the fact that males are…ummmmm…orgasm challenged relative to healthy females, and the prevalence of porn fantasies (and perhaps real incidents, though I have no personal experience) about one woman satisfying a number of men, and all enjoying it, at least at the time, could in fact be popular if it weren’t for that pesky male imperative to know whether or not your kids are really yours.

But I’m not aware of many societies that have general polygamy–it seems to be one or the other, with polygyny dominating for fairly obvious evolutionary-psychological reasons.

What Do Our Youth Know?

A very disturbing (at least to me) article on the state of higher education:

To be sure, the current crop of students is the most educated and affluent ever. Their enrollment rates in college surpass those of their baby-boomer parents and Generation X, and their purchasing power is so strong that it dominates the retail and entertainment sectors. Credit-card debt for 18-to-24-year-olds doubled from $1,500 in 1992 to $3,000 in 2001, much of it due to the new array of tools, such as BlackBerries, that keep them up to date with contemporaries and youth culture. Students have grown up in a society of increasing prosperity and education levels, and technology outfits them with instant access to news, music, sports, fashion, and one another. Their parents’ experience