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Backstage Collapsed: Universal Recording and the Architecture of Courtship

A panelist on a recent broadcast conversation made the following argument. Young people across the wealthy world are not having children. Before they do not have children, they do not date. Before they do not date, they do not interact at the dances, the parties, the mixers their parents and grandparents used as the primary infrastructure for finding mates. Even when they show up at such gatherings, they hold the wall, not approaching, not asking, not risking the awkward overture that has been the entry-cost of human pairing for as long as human pairing has been formalized into ritual occasions. The panelist asked why, and answered himself. They are afraid of being recorded. They are afraid that any silly thing they say or any failed dance step or any drunk confession will be filmed and uploaded and used against them by people they cannot identify in advance. So they withdraw. The species, the panelist concluded, cannot continue under such conditions, and the only available remedy is to restrict the technology that produced those conditions.

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The Bare Face as Radical Act

Something changed in the relationship between women and makeup, and the change happened in public. For decades, the beauty industry sold women an escalating arms race of coverage, contour, and correction, with each season demanding new products to fix problems most people never knew they had. The reversal now underway is striking for its specificity: women with access to every cosmetic resource on earth are choosing, on camera and at major events, to show up with nothing on their faces at all.

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Kamala On Men

As Kamala Harris takes the torch from Joe Biden, I am hopeful she can continue to win over those who do not believe a woman can be president. One of the major initiatives of her campaign will be the loss of autonomy for women in the reversal of Roe v. Wade. There is, however, a trap that is being set for her, and I want to bring attention to that trip wire and offer a resolution.

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We Burn Our Women and Children on the Altar of Madness

Over the last few months in the USA — and across the world ashore — it appears we now prefer to burn our women and children on the altar of a consecrated, conservative, authoritarian, religioso, madness! It’s Leda and the Swan now embedded forever in The Marble Palace — and there’s no clear way out of separating alarming myth from tragic reality. Now the majority women don’t control their bodies anymore. Now the minority swans own their bodies.

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Opposites End in a Vacuum of Ashes: Quantifying Human Compatibility

Five Thirty Eight is a new website that uses data quantification to make qualitative evaluations of our human lives.  A recent article concerning people really only wanting to date themselves captured my attention.

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Gender Rules for Crossing the Street

I walk everywhere.  Not needing to have a car is a blessing of living on the East Coast.  Janna walks everywhere, too. Sometimes, we walk together — and therein lies the rub when it comes to combining our love of walking — because we usually have trouble crossing the street.

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The Winnowing Man: Women in Combat

Now that women have finally, and officially, been approved for combat roles in the USA, the Winnowing of Modern Man is now complete — and the dissolution of that manly myth is long overdue.  The harsh and prosecutorial role of men in the history of the world has been to control and temper the overwhelming power of the female form using religion, laws and politics as cudgels for behavior correction.  The forever stain on humankind is the trans-vaginal wand, “clean” women, and forced separation during menses because a woman is considered too filthy to share a bed with her husband as she bleeds.

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Manti Te’o Has a Man Problem

Manti Te’o has a man problem, and I’m not sure he will ever be able to fully resolve that problem and have a great NFL career, or even recover enough from this public “hoax” to live up to the promise of his Mormon upbringing.

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Confessions of a Married Man

Loud Talkers, beware: We can hear you even if we want to tune you out!  I know many Loud Talkers want to be heard beyond the ears of those they are speaking with and that’s why I have no problem relating this overheard conversation between two middle-aged men sitting in a coffee shop.

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Boys and Bananas

I’m bananas about bananas.  I became hooked on them as a child when my grandfather was ill and his doctor told him to eat a banana a day to help naturally boost his potassium levels.  My grandfather was a hardcore Nebraskan who lived a red meat and potatoes diet all his life.  His favorite appetizer was taking a slice of Wonder Bread and spooning three glops of sour cream on it and then eating the whole thing in a single swallow with the same glee a child wolfs down a donut.

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