the ladybug and the lion

On Being A Single.

Some even believe that the pair bond, far from strengthening communities (which is both the prevailing view of social science and a central tenet of social conservatism), weakens them, the idea being that a married couple becomes too consumed with its own tiny nation of two to pay much heed to anyone else. In 2006, the sociologists Naomi Gerstel and Natalia Sarkisian published a paper concluding that unlike singles, married couples spend less time keeping in touch with and visiting their friends and extended family, and are less likely to provide them with emotional and practical support. They call these “greedy marriages.” I can see how couples today might be driven to form such isolated nations—it’s not easy in this age of dual-career families and hyper-parenting to keep the wheels turning, never mind having to maintain outside relationships as well. And yet we continue to rank this arrangement above all else!

This is a long—and a bit long-winded—article from The Atlantic, but the above was an especially interesting idea and one I hadn't come across before. I have no idea how supported it is, but it seems worth considering. There are more lesser-known ideas in the article if you have the time to peruse it. 

The Sheng Nu.

The majority of her talk was devoted not to such timeless aphorisms, but to describing a new conundrum in China: the plight of its sheng nu, or "leftover ladies." In popular parlance, sheng nu refers to women above a certain age -- some say 27, others 30 -- who are unmarried and presumably "left over," too old to be desirable. Increasingly, sheng nu are a topic of alternating humor and alarm for Chinese newspaper columnists, TV sitcoms, reality dating shows, and studies by government bodies like the All-China Women's Federation; according to its 2010 survey, more than 90 percentof male respondents agreed that women should marry before age 27 or risk being forever undesired.

What's most startling about this national obsession with China's Bridget Joneses is that sheer numbers would seem to say it couldn't possibly be so. China has far too few women, not too many. This is a country where 118 boys were born for every 100 girls in 2010, and by 2020 the number of men unable to find partners is expected to reach 24 million. So how could any women possibly be left over?

Full story from Foreign Policy.

Harper's Weekly Highlight.

A Charleston woman observed the face of Jesus on the back of a stingray. “I just kind of thought it looked like a bearded homeless man,” said the woman. “But when I posted pictures on Instagram, one of my friends was like, ‘That’s Jesus.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God! You’re right!’”

—Harper's Weekly.

Welfare Reform.

One family ruled out crime and rummaged through trash cans instead. The mother, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, could not get aid for herself but received $164 a month for her four American-born children until their time limit expired. Distraught at losing her only steady source of cash, she asked the children if they would be ashamed to help her collect discarded cans.

“I told her I would be embarrassed to steal from someone — not to pick up cans,” her teenage daughter said.

Weekly park patrols ensued, and recycling money replaced about half of the welfare check.

Despite having a father in prison and a mother who could be deported, the children exude earnest cheer. A daughter in the fifth grade won a contest at school for reading the most books. A son in the eighth grade is a student leader praised by his principal for tutoring younger students, using supplies he pays for himself.

“That’s just the kind of character he has,” the principal said.

After losing cash aid, the mother found a cleaning job but lost it when her boss discovered that she was in the United States illegally. The family still gets subsidized housing and $650 a month in food stamps.

The boy worries about homelessness, but his younger sisters, 9 and 10, see an upside in scavenging.

“It’s kind of fun because you get to look through the trash,” one of the girls said.

“And you get to play in the park a little while before you go home,” her sister agreed.

—Full story about the negative side effects of the Clinton-era welfare reforms from the NYT. 

On Being Gay In Medicine.

Things really have changed. They have changed in so many places. And for that I am grateful. I have seen the Supreme Court rule that sex between people of the same gender is legal. I have seen gay marriage become a reality in Massachusetts. I have seen more and more states pass laws against discrimination in the workplace on the basis of orientation. I have seen gay youth come out in high school. I have seen gay college students baffled by the obsession of my generation with whether and when to come out and even the need to define ourselves by our orientation. I have seen it and thought back to myself as a young man who wondered why he was applying to medical school when he kept hearing that he would have to choose between being a doctor and being openly gay—and I have felt both vindicated and happy.

Dr. Mark Schuster is the William Berenberg Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Chief of General Pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston. This essay is based on remarks he made as the featured speaker at the Children’s Hospital Boston GLBT & Friends Celebration in June, 2010, and has just been published in the journal “Academic Pediatrics.

The whole thing is worth reading.

A Proverb.

There are three types of lies—lies, damned lies, and statistics. 

GS.

I wasn't a big fan of Greg Smith's NYT Op-Ed. I thought it seemed self-serving and lacked content and I am somewhat disappointed in the NYT for running it. But it has sparked some good. Namely, a great, thoughtful post from Ezra Klein and some hilarious Star Wars-channeling satire.

Taxation.

What a book like Taxing Ourselves would say is the whole “don’t tax millionaires, they’re job creators” point is crap. The idea that people who make a million a year will create fewer jobs or start fewer businesses or any of that if they’re taxed, that’s not right. There is pretty strong consensus in the public finance community on this right now.

But the authors might point out a problem with the Buffett Rule – it’s difficult to tax the top 1% because they’re very able to evade taxes. If you tax people who make a million a year, they’ll hire accountants to avoid taxation. That’s the point of Taxing Ourselves. What we should be thinking about when we tax billionaires is not, “Will it harm economic growth?” I think it won’t. But, “What do we do about the fact that those who earn a million a year are much better than average Americans at avoiding taxation.”

—Jonathan Gruber at FiveBooks.

Happy Valentine's Day!

More here.

Quotes I Like.

It may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct. They are masters too of their own persons, and consequently may govern them as they please. But persons and property make the sum of the objects of government. The constitution and the laws of their predecessors extinguished them, in their natural course, with those whose will gave them being. This could preserve that being till it ceased to be itself, and no longer. Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.

—Thomas Jefferson