‘The Outsourced Self,’ by Arlie Russell Hochschild - NYTimes.com
In “The Outsourced Self,” Hochschild talks to love coaches, wedding planners, surrogate mothers, nannies, household consultants and elder-care managers, but also, and with deep empathy, their clients. A majority of these people are middle-aged or near middle age; the main thing is, they’re not young, which means they are not yet used to a virtualized and monetized social existence and can still express doubts about it. Most are women, who have long been the main providers of care, love and charity. Hochschild’s consumers buy hyperpersonal services because they lack the family support or social capital or sheer time to meet potential mates, put on weddings, whip up children’s birthday parties, build children’s school projects, or care for deteriorating parents. Or these folks think they just couldn’t perform such tasks as well as the pros. The providers sell their services because the service economy is where the money is, or because they take pleasure in helping others. Everybody worries about preserving the human element in the commercial encounter. Very few succeed.
See Why We Have An Absolutely Ridiculous Standard Of Beauty In Just 37 Seconds
There is the reason that even when I was in really great shape, wore a size 4, and was healthy, it was never good enough for me. All of my logic and intelligence have trouble combatting what I've seen as "perfect" day after day for my entire life. Well, I want to see more of this. I want to show my daughter, over and over, why the images of so many women she sees aren't realistic. And what I really want is for us to stop turning beautiful women into drawings and passing them off as real.
The College Diploma: Time for an Upgrade? | New Republic
College Diplomas are Meaningless. This is How to Fix Them. Design specs for upgrading the communications device formerly known as the sheepskin
Sexual assault is common among youths, sense of responsibility is not - latimes.com
Nearly 1 in 10 young Americans between ages 14 and 21 acknowledges having perpetrated an act of sexual violence at least once, and 4% of a nationally representative sample of American kids reported attempting or completing rape, a new study finds.
Vladimir Putin signs anti-gay propaganda bill - Telegraph
The anti-propaganda law introduces fines of up to 5,000 rubles ($156) for citizens who disseminate information aimed at minors "directed at forming nontraditional sexual setup" or which may cause a "distorted understanding" that gay and heterosexual relations are "socially equivalent", the official publication of the bill showed.
Arctic sea ice has *not* recovered, in 7 visuals
“And now it’s global COOLING! Record return of Arctic ice cap as it grows by 60% in a year” shouts the astonishingly misleading headline of a story by the Daily Mail’s David Rose. It is true, that compared to last year, Arctic sea ice has bounced back some from its mind-boggling record low in 2012, 49 percent below the 1979-2000 average.
'Hookup' culture on college campuses not all that new - FOX Carolina 21
"We found that college students from the contemporary or 'hookup era' did not report having more frequent sex or more sexual partners during the past year or more sexual partners since turning 18 than undergraduates from the earlier era," Monto said in American Sociological Association news release. Instead, 65 percent of students surveyed in the late '80s and early '90s said they had sex at least once a week in the past year, compared with 59 percent of students surveyed between 2002 and 2010. Moreover, 31.9 percent of the earlier group surveyed said they had more than one sexual partner within the past year, compared with 31.6 percent of students from the so-called hookup era. Similarly, 51.7 percent of the earlier group said they had more than two sexual partners since turning 18, compared with 50.5 percent of the students surveyed between 2002 and 2010.
New research: College ‘hook up’ culture doesn’t lead to more sex - Yahoo News
Contemporary students were less likely than those from the earlier era to say they had sex weekly or more often (65.2 percent compared to 59.3 percent), and were almost exactly as likely as the earlier generation to say they’d had more than two sexual partners since turning 18 (51.7 percent of students in the past compared to 50.5 percent today).
Casual Hookups to Formal Dates:Refining the Boundaries of the Sexual Double StandardGender & Society October 2011 25: 545-568,
BBC News - 'Beer goggle' study wins Ig Nobel award
It is a tradition to throw paper planes onto the stage during the Ig Nobels