Minor Thoughts from me to you

Above: "Y'know, Jake, I gotta say... Talking with you and opening up like this really does beat looking at my dad's magazines."

Remember that age-old stereotype concerning what men want to do and what women want to do? You've seen or heard it a thousand times, perhaps even experienced it yourself: the woman wants to talk and get to know the man. But the man, well, y'know, he's just interested in - ahem - one thing...

No longer, Folks. Time.com's Bill Tancer reports:

Currently, for web users over the age of 25, Adult Entertainment still ranks high in popularity, coming in second, after search engines. Not so for 18- to 24-year-olds, for whom social networks rank first, followed by search engines, then web-based e-mail — with porn sites lagging behind in fourth.

Clearly, when seeing a woman naked is less important than social interaction for a college-age man, it's not the Battle of the Sexes that's been lost - it's the War.

What causes poverty in America? Greedy capitalistic businessmen? Unethical financiers? How about marriage?:

For the most part, long-term poverty today is self-inflicted. To see this, let's examine some numbers from the Census Bureau's 2004 Current Population Survey. There's one segment of the black population that suffers only a 9.9 percent poverty rate, and only 13.7 percent of their under-5-year-olds are poor. There's another segment of the black population that suffers a 39.5 percent poverty rate, and 58.1 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor.

Among whites, one population segment suffers a 6 percent poverty rate, and only 9.9 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor. Another segment of the white population suffers a 26.4 percent poverty rate, and 52 percent of its under-5-year-olds are poor.

What do you think distinguishes the high and low poverty populations? The only statistical distinction between both the black and white populations is marriage. There is far less poverty in married-couple families, where presumably at least one of the spouses is employed. Fully 85 percent of black children living in poverty reside in a female-headed household.

It turns out that the poor in America are actually doing pretty well, by absolute standards.

In 1971, only about 32 percent of all Americans enjoyed air conditioning in their homes. By 2001, 76 percent of poor people had air conditioning. In 1971, only 43 percent of Americans owned a color television; in 2001, 97 percent of poor people owned at least one. In 1971, 1 percent of American homes had a microwave oven; in 2001, 73 percent of poor people had one. Forty-six percent of poor households own their homes. Only about 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. The average poor American has more living space than the average non-poor individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other European cities.

Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more cars. Seventy-eight percent of the poor have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception; and one-third have an automatic dishwasher.

That's certainly doing better than me. I don't have cable TV or a dish washer (not until my daughter gets a bit older, at any rate).

I ran across this review of a 1970's JC Penney catalog. Yikes! Not only am I convinced that my generation is richer than my parent's generation, I'm also convinced that we dress better.

Count your many blessings, name then one by one. Start with your closet and dresser.

Why do we from the U.S. sometimes call people "Indian givers"? Is it because a generation's worth of experience with the cutthroat prices of 7-11 and the Holiday Inn have convinced us the term is an oxymoron?

As it turns out, no; in fact, it doesn't even have anything to do with India. According to our totally anonymous but still surely trustworthy friends at Wikipedia,

"The expression 'Indian giver' is based on the belief that Native Americans would lend items to the settlers, in other words, let them borrow necessities. The settlers thought that this was a gift from the Native Americans; hence, they were shocked when the Native Americans asked for their items back."

Which, you have to admit, explains a lot - like, for instance, why after the Native-Americans gave Native America to us walking ghosts over a hundred years ago, some of them have had the temerity to ask for it back. Or, even more brazenly, to be paid for it. I mean, yeah right. As if we didn't do them a favor by taking all that tobacco off their hands; every time the Surgeon General wins a lawsuit, our cigarette companies should counter-sue the whole Cherokee nation.

Sheesh. No wonder the Mormons decided these people are Jews. You're feeling all buddy-buddy and then: ka-ching! Your bill, Sir!

But wait: _The Phrase Finder _ suggests that everything isn't so cut-and-dried as we might like to believe.

"It is more likely that the settlers wrongly interpreted the Indians' loans to them as gifts."

Uh... Hm.

Well-

OK. Let's face it, that's possible. Seriously, raise your hand if that hasn't happened to you, y'know? An honest mistake. And it does explain why a race so ostensibly into borrowing didn't invent the library before we did; I was all set to accuse Benjamin Franklin of intellectual theft.

Indeed: if this is the sort of miscommunication that's been going on all these years, I can start to see where some of this Native-American hostility toward us honkies is coming from. How long have we White people just been taking their stuff on the assumption that it's all a gift? How many of those "Take One Free" tables I keep running across on reservations might really just be good old-fashioned tourist traps? Good grief, they probably have an arrest warrant out on me by now.

Fellow members of the Master Race, we need to make this right somehow. There's a lot of healing that needs to go on here, and it's probably going to take us a while to figure how to really iron it all out. In the meantime I suggest we start with small tokens of affection.

Maybe we can name our favorite sports teams in their honor.

Above: A child exhibiting suspicious behavior.

Proponents of raising the U.S.'s minimum age for legal drivers are having a good week, as recent news stories seemingly lend credence to their dire warnings that today's U.S. drivers are simply too young for the responsibility of being behind the wheel.

Reports of a 4-year old in Wisconsin crashing his parents' SUV into their garage might be easily enough dismissed; after all, SUVs are very famously large vehicles, and even your Minorthoughts.com correspondent's father once dented his Baeur-designed beauty trying to park in his basement's limited space. But now we are told that an 11-year old boy has led Louisiana's state police on a high-speed chase, after an officer of the law tried to ticket him for going 20MPH over the highway speed limit (it was 60; he was doing 80).

One can't blame this egregious violation of road rules on simple lack of driving experience. According to police, the child had been driving without incident for a good six months prior to the time of the incident.

March 2, 2005's edition of USA Today pegs the issue as simply one of brain development:

"For years, researchers suspected that inexperience — the bane of any new driver — was mostly to blame for deadly crashes involving teens. When trouble arose, the theory went, the young driver simply made the wrong move. But in recent years, safety researchers have noticed a pattern emerge — one that seems to stem more from immaturity than from inexperience."

Will the age-uppers finally make some headway? They've got opposition; even some parents, traditionally the party-pooping nemeses of teens everywhere, oppose new laws regarding driving ages. After all, children who can drive themselves around are more useful. The previously-mentioned 11-year old boy was dropping off his disabled father at the hospital and heading over to pick up his mother from work when police noticed him.

Over at Winds of Change, the Armed Liberal posts some reflections on patriotism. What does it mean in a post-modern world? Is it worthwhile? Is it distinguishable from mere nationalism? What does American patriotism mean, in a nation that has been formed from one ethnicity after another (and continues to be reformed and remodeled each year)?

Now I've argued on and on that we need an anticosmopolitan liberalism, one rooted firmly in the American Founding if liberalism is going to get any traction here in US politics. I've slagged and been slagged by the usual cast of Netroots characters over this issue, and I'll point out that the Netroots liberalism for all the sound and fury hasn't signified much in the political scene except to - almost certainly - hand the nomination to the least liberal candidate running, Hillary Clinton.

The basis for much of my argument has been the work of John Schaar, a little-known political theorist who happened to be one of my professors. Who I admit I should have paid more attention to back then.

The work I keep pointing to is his work, 'The Case for Patriotism' (excerpted here).

Abraham Lincoln, the supreme authority on this subject, thought there was a patriotism unique to America. Americans, a motley gathering of various races and cultures, were bonded together not by blood or religion, not by tradition or territory, not by the calls and traditions of a city, but by a political idea. We are a nation formed by a covenant, by dedication to a set of principles, and by an exchange of promises to uphold and advance certain commitments among ourselves and throughout the world. Those principles and commitments are the core of American identity, the soul of the body politic. They make the American nation unique, and uniquely valuable among and to the other nations. But the other side of this conception contains a warning very like the warnings spoken by the prophets to Israel: if we fail in our promises to each other, and lose the principles of the covenant, then we lose everything, for they are we." [emphasis added]

This sounds right to me. It's the idea I struggled to articulate last summer, in my posts about immigration.

This, then, is the challenge for America. How do we change -- culturally, demographically, and ethnically -- while still retaining that political idea, that commitment to a set of principles that make America, America?

Furthermore, what, exactly, are those principles? What is that idea? What set of principles are we committed to? For that, I think we need to go back to principles set out in the Declaration of Independence and the framework established in the Constitution of the United States.

More on that, in the future.

Here's how I knew I'd arrived back in the R.O.K. this morning:

After passing through "Wonderful Immigration!" (make whatever bizarre face you want, but that is what the sign says), I was almost immediately met by a middle-aged man, quite Asian in appearance, who asked me where I was going.

"Seoul," I replied - which wasn't quite true, actually, but a fair approximation. Like saying you're on your way to Atlanta instead of Mableton.

"I will take you," says he, smiling.

"No thanks," I said. "I'm jumping on the subway."

"Mmmm," says he. Then he points in the direction of a set of descending stairs on my right. Says: "You go down there."

And that is Korea. In the U.S., you find your taxi driver; he or she does not come to you. In Turkey, you will be all but bodily thrown into the vehicle of a driver, whether you want his or her services or not. In Colombia, you will see armored cars waiting to pick up many arrivals. In Ireland, you must find your taxi driver in the nearest pub, put him in the shower, etc. Here, the drivers come after you for your business, but upon being refused, assist without any prompting in helping you reach your destination anyway.

I do like this country. Never let it be said otherwise.

Yesterday, as an example of how languages are constantly evolving, I taught my Writing & Grammar 9 students the origin of the English word "goodbye" (it started life as the phrase "God be with you" - just in case you didn't know).

Now I read an article I'll certainly be sharing with them tomorrow: according to the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages and the National Geographic Society, approximately 7,000 languages are currently spoken on Earth... and one of them disappears forever every two weeks.

Chances are nobody will remember them after they're gone, either, since roughly half of Humanity's languages have never been written down, and are only spoken by 0.2 percent of our world's total population.

The Living Tongues Institute is doing everything it can, of course, to record as many of these endangered lessons as possible before they go the way of the dodo, but it has its work cut out for it. The language of the Native-American Yuchi tribe - possibly unrelated to any other tongue known to Man - is now only familiar to five elderly men. Which actually makes Yuchi five times as well-known as Siletz Dee-ni or Amurdag.

According to the article, the director of the Living Tongues Institute is making a few noises about "the key to getting a language revitalized" being "getting a new generation of speakers", but we all know that's a fantasy. Whatever their historical value, languages thrive only so long as they are practically useful to their speakers. In the new global community developing before our eyes, obscure tribal languages simply have no compelling reason to exist. There's nothing for that.

Nor is there any reason to fret about it, I'll add, though I know that's easy for me to say, seeing as how I'm an American, and so popular is my language that I make a living teaching it to children in other countries. But listen: languages have always died or morphed beyond recognition over time. All that's noteworthy about the phenomenon now is simply the speed at which it is occurring.

Once upon a time, two cultures met and changed each other - or one swallowed the other - over a period of time measurable in hundreds of years. That same effect requires only decades today. We should be thankful for this, since - generally speaking - the evolution of a society has always been dependent upon its taking the best elements with which it comes into contact and allowing the lesser elements to fade away.

Still: I hope the Living Tongues Institute manages to record as many of these endangered languages as possible, in the interests of posterity.

A Toast to Mom and Dad -- The family that wines together, shines together.

Observant Jews, for example, traditionally serve children small glasses of wine during Friday night Sabbath ceremonies. Other cultures also begin socializing children into drinking at an early age--including Mediterranean societies such as Italy, Greece and Turkey (and non-Mediterranean societies such as China).

As for the second, two international surveys--one conducted by the World Health Organization--revealed that these Mediterranean countries and Israel had the lowest binge drinking rates among European adolescents.

Several studies have shown that the younger kids are when they start to drink, the more likely they are to develop severe drinking problems. But the kind of drinking these studies mean--drinking in the woods to get bombed or at unattended homes--is particularly high risk.

Research published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2004 found that adolescents whose parents permitted them to attend unchaperoned parties where drinking occurred had twice the average binge-drinking rate. But the study also had another, more arresting conclusion: Children whose parents introduced drinking to the children at home were one-third as likely to binge.

Why do you donate to charity? Is it because you truly want to help others or do you just want to feel better about yourself? For many people, it's feeling better about themselves.

Many people donate hair to make wigs for children with cancer. It turns out that donating money would be better.

Perhaps they would be less adamant if they could visit Ms. Coffman in the Locks of Love office in Florida. Every day the hanks of hair arrive, filling some 10 postal bins, representing the best intentions of donors, but so much of it destined for the trash.

"A check would be easier for me," Ms. Coffman said. "But would the donors get out of it what they do? No."

I think people going on missions trips to build houses in third world countries suffer from the same problem. Ideally, they'd donate a week's worth of pay rather than a week's worth of time. That money would then be used to hire local workers. The money would stretch further, help more homes to be built, and boost the local economy.

It would be a far more generous and effective way to donate. But people wouldn't feel nearly as good about themselves. And, often, that's what really matters.

Now here's a bit of rather uppity salesmanship:

English newspaper The Guardian is currently running an electronic ad (as I write this, you'll find it here) in which it chastises President George W. Bush... for not buying its daily editions.

"US Presidents have always come to us for an overview of world affairs," the advertisement declares solemnly as framed pictures of former presidents of our U.S. of A. scroll by. "...Except one."

The scrolling image comes to rest on an empty frame, marked, of course, with the name of our current president.

"Try our four-week subscription," ends the ad. "(Go on George, it is free!)"

Maybe President Bush gets his daily dose of egomania-flavored yellow journalism from The Times.

Lately I've seen health food on the news more and more. It seems like every week another restaurant decides to drop trans fats from the menu. Mayor Bloomberg is forcing fast food joints in New York City to post nutritional information next to the menus. It's getting harder and harder to find food that can give your heart a run for it's life.

Fortunately, we're still allowed to cook dangerous food at home. Enjoy it while you can. To help you enjoy it, I bring you this recipe. Squirrel Squad Squeeks: Fried Chicken Pizza

Papa and I have pretty much decided that if it's not fried chicken pizza, then it ought to be. Of course, we also had to plan meals to feed the Squad this week, so we just had to develop the Official Squirrel Squad Fried Chicken Pizza. And here it is in all it's glory.

Sure to be a hit for any Friday night dinner. Gentleman -- start your fryers!

As I type out these words, Economist.com (my very favorite news magazine) has up an article concerning the root causes of suicide as a social phenomenon, which includes this statement: "Suicide rates have been rising in India, especially among the young, and over a third of those who kill themselves are under 30 years old."

Let's just all let that sentence sink in for a moment. Then let's all wonder what the writer of this story was thinking when he wrote it. The reporter is inviting us to be impressed that somewhere just over 30% of suicides occur... among people finished with at least 30-40% of their lifespans.

Which might lead those of us not "analytically-challenged" to suppose that suicides are either evenly spread across the spectrum of age in India, or there is actually a low rate of incident among the young in that country. Which would be good! Right?

Psycologist Robert Epstein doesn't like adolescence.

Psychologist Robert Epstein argues in a provocative book, "The Case Against Adolescence," that teens are far more competent than we assume, and most of their problems stem from restrictions placed on them.

The whole culture collaborates in artificially extending childhood, primarily through the school system and restrictions on labor. The two systems evolved together in the late 19th-century; the advocates of compulsory-education laws also pushed for child-labor laws, restricting the ways young people could work, in part to protect them from the abuses of the new factories. The juvenile justice system came into being at the same time. All of these systems isolate teens from adults, often in problematic ways.

The factory system doesn't work in the modern world, because two years after graduation, whatever you learned is out of date. We need education spread over a lifetime, not jammed into the early years"”except for such basics as reading, writing, and perhaps citizenship. Past puberty, education needs to be combined in interesting and creative ways with work. The factory school system no longer makes sense.

Imagine what it would feel like--or think back to what it felt like--when your body and mind are telling you you're an adult while the adults around you keep insisting you're a child. This infantilization makes many young people angry or depressed, with their distress carrying over into their families and contributing to our high divorce rate. It's hard to keep a marriage together when there is constant conflict with teens.

We have completely isolated young people from adults and created a peer culture. We stick them in school and keep them from working in any meaningful way, and if they do something wrong we put them in a pen with other "children." In most nonindustrialized societies, young people are integrated into adult society as soon as they are capable, and there is no sign of teen turmoil. Many cultures do not even have a term for adolescence. But we not only created this stage of life: We declared it inevitable. In 1904, American psychologist G. Stanley Hall said it was programmed by evolution. He was wrong.

He has me convinced. My own experiences reflect this. My parents homeschooled me. By my early teen years, I was ready to get out of the house and start doing more. A mutual friend taught me about relational databases, then offered me a job working for his web startup company. I remember being totally astonished that I had to get permission from City Hall (literally), in order to work at age 15. (Actually, I couldn't work at age 15. I had to wait until I was officially 15½.)

Even at such a young age that policy angered me -- I wanted to work, I wanted to do more, and my parents were supportive of that. The state, however, assumed that I was incompetent and that my parents were exploitative. Thankfully, the waiver was easy to obtain. But it shouldn't even be necessary any longer. Factories no longer thrive on grunt labor. American factories require workers with lots of skill and expertise. Our economy is fundamentally different than it was in 1900. Repealing the overly restrictive child-labor laws would not lead to an increase in child labor -- except in those situations where young adults are hungry for a chance to work.

Ironically, because minors have only limited property rights, they don't have complete control over what they have bought. Think how bizarre that is. If you, as an adult, spend money and bring home a toy, it's your toy and no one can take it away from you. But with a 14-year-old, it's not really his or her toy. Young people can't own things, can't sign contracts, and they can't do anything meaningful without parental permission"”permission that can be withdrawn at any time. They can't marry, can't have sex, can't legally drink. The list goes on. They are restricted and infantilized to an extraordinary extent.

I was also frustrated, as a teenager, by the banking restrictions. I learned to manage my money at a young age. I'm fairly certain that my parents opened my first account when I was 13. Again, I was surprised to find that I wasn't allowed to have my own bank account (my parents were co-signers on the account) or credit card until age 18. I was reasonably mature, I was capable of handling my finances, and I didn't understand why the State insisted on treating me as a child.

If my daughter matures as quickly as my wife and I did, I intend to do everything I possibly can to help her skirt these ridiculous laws and regulations. I'll help her open a bank account, I'll help her get work permits, I'll probably even put her on my credit account -- there's no sense in treating her like a child if she acts like an adult.

Maybe Dan Rather's a better newsman than everyone gave him credit for; his supposedly rude comments about "dumbing... down and tarting up" the news are starting to look prescient.

"Can A Bikini Model Be Made Into An Instant Anchor?" the New York Post asks in a recent news story, and almost in unison, a chorus of (baritone) voices answers: "Why, yes! Yes, she can be!"

A television station in Tyler, Texas has offered itself as the filming site for a new FOX reality show, in which we are to witness the transformation of a bikini model (Lauren Jones) into a TV news anchorwoman. Media watchdog groups, your average bunch of feminists, and the news industry at large are as predictably nonplussed as they were when CNN tried to sell anchor Paula Zahn as "a little bit sexy."

The rest of us are of course too busy wondering why a marketing move like this is only the basis for a reality show as opposed to, say, an across-the-board status quo in broadcast journalism. I mean, let's face it here: whilst there is doubtlessly much highly-involved, clever investigative work going on behind the scenes every night at six o' clock (or whenever), the actual job of "news-anchoring" is nothing but typical stage performance. If you can read a teleprompter while comfortably looking like you're not reading a teleprompter, well, guess what, you're as qualified to anchor a major newscast as you're ever going to be - which means the only factors that can possibly differentiate you from your competition is your personality and level of physical attractiveness. Such factors are, coincidentally, what we've always hired models, actors, and actresses for.

And if I may speak on behalf of those brave men and women graduating from college with a degree in Theater, they could sure use the work.

The good money's on FOX's critics already knowing this, of course; the thought of Lauren Jones taking to the newsroom isn't just insulting to them, but downright scary, because they know that unless Miss Jones takes a dive and pretends sitting behind the newsroom desk is more technical than it looks (a likely prospect), their nightly hour of fame is in serious danger of being outsourced to people who look better than they do in tight clothes. Oh, they'll still be reporters, sure - they'll just be largely relegated to working from behind the scenes and out in the field. They no wanna.

Like so much of today's journalistic output, this news story is primarily driven by reporters' egos.

Algerian women are slowly doing what women in few Islamic countries are able to do -- they are gaining independence from the men in their lives. I couldn't be happier.

Women make up 70 percent of Algeria's lawyers and 60 percent of its judges. Women dominate medicine. Increasingly, women contribute more to household income than men. Sixty percent of university students are women, university researchers say.

How is this happening? Well, mainly through the laziness and apathy of Algeria's men.

Algeria's young men reject school and try to earn money as traders in the informal sector, selling goods on the street, or they focus their efforts on leaving the country or just hanging out. There is a whole class of young men referred to as hittistes -- the word is a combination of French and Arabic for people who hold up walls.

University studies are no longer viewed as a credible route toward a career or economic well-being, and so men may well opt out and try to find work or to simply leave the country, suggested Hugh Roberts, a historian and the North Africa project director of the International Crisis Group.

Algerian women have been quick to take advantage of the opportunity. They have also learned to use traditional Islamic dress as a tool to further their goals.

Sociologists and many working women say that by adopting religion and wearing the Islamic head covering called the hijab, women here have in effect freed themselves from moral judgments and restrictions imposed by men. Uncovered women are rarely seen on the street late at night, but covered women can be seen strolling the city after attending the evening prayer at a mosque.

As a result, they may be able to do more to modernize Algeria than anyone ever dreamed.

Women may have emerged as Algeria's most potent force for social change, with their presence in the bureaucracy and on the street having a potentially moderating and modernizing influence on society, sociologists said.

Many of today's Algerian women have a decidedly Enlightened view of religion and work.

"I don't think any of this contradicts Islam," said Wahiba Nabti, 36, as she walked through the center of the city one day recently. "On the contrary, Islam gives freedom to work. Anyway it is between you and God."

Ms. Nabti wore a black scarf covering her head and a long black gown that hid the shape of her body. "I hope one day I can drive a crane, so I can really be financially independent," she said. "You cannot always rely on a man."

This is the perspective, attitude, and action that American feminists cannot endure. Rather than violently overthrowing the "patriarchy" and "men's religion", Algerian women are working through religion and the patriarchy to achieve their goals. If they succeed, they can be model to Muslim women everywhere. They will also be another crack in the wall of traditional Muslim barbarism and oppression.

Go, go, go!

Consumer culture seems to be an international phenomenon.

"I just bought it because I like the way it looks, but I'll burn it now as soon as I go home," says Ibrahim Abu Zarif, 20, when told during a pro-Hamas rally that the patch on his left breast pocket says US Army.

These days it seems that everyone in Gaza is wearing knock-off copies of U.S. military uniforms. Of course, as the above quote demonstrates, some people are unaware of exactly what they're wearing. I had to laugh, when I read that quote. Like many 20 year olds, Ibrahim seems more concerned with what's cool than he is with anything else. America is, like, totally uncool so he'll have to burn his uniform now that he knows what it actually stands for. Like a socially-inept teenager caught wearing a t-shirt for a band popular last decade, Ibrahim now has to demonstrate that he really is cool after all.

If the Middle East weren't so deadly serious, it would be truly hilarious.

KTPB, the radio station of Kilgore College, is being sold to a Christian music broadcaster. The radio station plays primarily classical music. Local lovers of the arts are outraged over the sale, enough so to form a group dedicated to saving it: Save Our Arts Radio.

Amidst all of the hand-wringing over the decline of classical music radio, a few interesting facts emerge. First, Kilgore College is selling the station because it can no longer afford to run it:

The school, a junior college in this town of 11,000, has been increasingly strapped financially, and the money it was using to subsidize the station "” about $125,000 a year "” was better put toward educating students, officials said. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting provides about $85,000 a year, and donations amount to $80,000.

Secondly, while these citizens may be vocal in their support of the station it appears that loud voices are the only thing they have contributed:

Mr. Holda (Kilgore's president) also pointed out that the station has a meager 650 members. "People want things, but they don't want to pay for them," he said. "It's not unique to the arts."

Supporters of the station see it differently. "It's a public trust," said Otis Carroll, a prominent Tyler lawyer and a leader of the group trying to save the station.

Ah. So. Here we have a station, enjoyed by many apparently, that has been largely supported by tax dollars and subsidies from the local college. Residents are now outraged that their primary source of culture and sophistication is being sold. It seems to me that the biggest problem is that few of these residents have been putting their money where their mouths are. They sure talk big about the value of the station, but they haven't backed up those words with financial support.

Excuse me if I don't weep for their loss.

[tags]taxes[/tags]

Getting married in college is something that most people are advised against. It's an advisement that comes with good reason: school work is uniquely stressful, the first year of marriage is uniquely stressful, and finances (one of the biggest drivers of divorce) are stretched doubly tight. Still, some people do decide to get married while in college.

The Wisconsin State Journal ran a nice article about this, yesterday.

After about one and a half years of marriage, UW-Madison student Claire Hanschke and her husband, Tim, a recent graduate, finish each other's sentences like a seasoned married couple.

Both are comfortable in their new roles and say they have benefited from marriage. But being a student and a spouse can be difficult, others say.

"I've learned a lot about myself after getting married. I've really started to think about why I do the things I do," said Tim Hanschke, who says he doesn't feel as though he missed out on single life in the dorms.

Alexandra Hambright Solomon, a couples therapist at The Family Institute at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., said maturity is key in determining whether a couple is ready to marry.

Students such as Janisch, who marry at a much younger age than the national average, may be ready for it if they're psychologically prepared for the challenge.

For the past six years, Northwestern has offered a "Marriage 101" course, which Solomon teaches with other couples therapists. Their goal is to teach students how to create healthy, long-lasting relationships.

Similar classes, including one at Edgewood, called "The Psychology of Intimate Relationships," are popping up across the country, many aimed at reducing the divorce rate.

I'm glad to see that some people are choosing to get married at a younger age. Frankly, waiting for "the right time" can often be an exercise in futility. There is always a pressing reason why marriage should be put off. But if it's put off too long and too often, it may never come to pass. I'm even happier to see that colleges are starting to offer marriage preparation courses. While I still recommend pre-marital counseling through a local church, it is good to see colleges truly preparing students for the real world.

Sometimes it's possible to take lawn care a bit too seriously:

A man who neighbors say was devoted to his meticulously kept lawn was charged with murder in the shooting of a 15-year-old boy who apparently walked across his yard.

Charles Martin called 911 on Sunday afternoon, saying calmly: "I just killed a kid."

Police, who released the call's contents, said Martin also told the dispatcher: "I've been harassed by him and his parents for five years. Today just blew it up.

Of course:

Joanne Ritchie, 46, said [the boy] was known as "a good kid," but she always also considered Martin to be friendly.

Everyone is friendly, until they point a shotgun in your direction.