ninme

Bwah hah hah:

Mashable – Facebook Analyzes How Relationship Status Impacts Happiness [STATS]

Facebook already has a methodology for measuring the overall “happiness” of its users. It basically looks at how many positive words people use in their status updates (for English speaking users). This results in the USA Gross National Happiness Index. [...]

Categories: Science and Nature

NYT – Many Successful Gay Marriages Share an Open Secret

As the trial phase of the constitutional battle to overturn the Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage concludes in federal court, gay nuptials are portrayed by opponents as an effort to rewrite the traditional rules of matrimony. Quietly, outside of the news media and [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

WSJ – Married Couples Pay More Than Unmarried Under Health Bill

For an unmarried couple with income of $25,000 each, combined premiums would be capped at $3,076 per year, under the House bill. If the couple gets married, with a combined income of $50,000, their annual premium cap jumps to $5,160 — a “penalty” [...]

Categories: Politics

I was about to tweet this with a comment like, “Gosh, it would be hilarious if it accidentally passed” (and I could see it happening, too, the press ignores it and doesn’t poll on it and everyone, both lonely souls, the married, the sad sack divorcés and the ironic all vote for it):

SF Chronicle – [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

Telegraph – Plans to legalise cohabiting couples are anti-women and degrade relationships, says peer

New rules to give cohabiting couples the same rights as those who get married “retard the emancipation of women” and degrade relationships, according to the chairman of the Bar Standards Board.

Money quote:

She said: “There is nothing to stop [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

What?

Telegraph Blogs – Tim Collard: How the Civil Service sabotages the campaign against forced marriages

As we know, there is a problem in this country regarding forced marriages. Some families, generally originating from the Indian subcontinent, attempt to remove their children, usually daughters, from the UK in order to marry them off to someone [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

Telegraph – Parental discipline ‘key factor’ in giving children best start, says think tank<br/> Parents who discipline their children are giving their offspring the best chance in life, according to a report by Demos, the progressive think-tank.

The report, Building Character, studied data from 9,000 households in Britain to find out what sort of upbringing [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

Well, well, well. It turns out that little vote we Washingtonians (well, not we precisely because I never registered to vote and Peter was somehow listed as “inactive” (uh huh suuuuure)) just had on Prop 71 with the obnoxious “Protect all Washington families” tagline (and “keep the domestic partnership line” tagline on most of the [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

Freedom of religion over at Wheat & Weeds, and curtsy to her too for Freedom of speech:

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to “national security” concerns, has leaked. It’s bad. It says: • That ISPs have [...]

Categories: Politics

A Life Magazine article on Mussolini and Italian fascism (keep scrolling, it’s about half way down at page 31). Opening excerpt:

Fascism is the fightingest word in the world today. To free peoples, it means War and Tyranny. On these pages LIFE presents its less war-like aspects. Americans think of Government [...]

Categories: History

Telegraph – Social services ‘to take baby from teenager deemed too stupid to marry’<br/> A mother-to-be, who was banned from marrying after social workers said she is not intelligent enough, is to have her baby taken away immediately after giving birth.

Kerry Robertson, 17, who has mild learning difficulties, has been told that she will [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

Telegraph Blogs – Jean Sarkozy could be the next Alexander the Great

But this focus on age is very narrow-minded. Since when was there an age limit for people to be capable of doing important jobs? Take Alexander the Great. He took the throne of Macedon when he was 19 years [...]

Categories: Politics

Today’s Peter’s and my first wedding anniversary. I don’t have the top of my cake with me (my mother was going to bring it up but thought it might not survive the trip), nor my dress (not that I’d fit it anyway, yet), but I do have a final bottle of the champagne from the [...]

Categories: Wildcard

Telegraph – Why must we bow to the intolerant ways of Islam?<br/> Jim Fitzpatrick MP and his wife were quite right to leave a wedding because it was segregated by sex, says Alasdair Palmer.

When Jim Fitzpatrick MP and his wife decided to leave a Muslim wedding party after they discovered it was segregated by [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

I find it interesting that I saw these two stories back-to-back:

Volock – Surplus of Males and Runaway (with the Bride-Price) Brides

Thanks to its 30-year-old population-planning policy and customary preference for boys, China has one of the largest male-to-female ratios in the world. Using data from the 2005 China census [...]

Categories: People and Current Events