Social Studies Update

Good news for the social right from the Onion:

An alarming new study published in the International Journal of Sexual Health reveals that casual sex, the practice of engaging in frequent, spontaneous sexual encounters with new and exciting partners, may only provide unimaginable pleasure and heart-pounding exhilaration for, at most, 25 to 30 years.

"People who choose to participate in random, no-strings-attached lovemaking sessions with sexually adventurous strangers should be advised that this type of behavior is only incredibly liberating for the first quarter-century or so," said Dr. Loren Sullivan of Yale University, who coauthored the study on the long-term side effects of living out one’s wildest fantasies on a semi-weekly basis. "Though sometimes it can be longer."

Thank God I’m married now. Time was running out, give or take a decade or two.

The 21st Century “Public Intellectuals”

They make Alias Clio shudder:

[T]he concept of the "intellectual" as a kind of all-purpose expert dates back to a time when far fewer people were literate, when there was much less knowledge to master, and when those few people who were both literate and learned, were much less specialized than they are today, and actually had a hope, even if a remote one, of a nodding acquaintance with all major branches of human learning. That hope is quite out of reach today: who can possibly master all the knowledge even within the narrow limits of their own field, much less those outside it? Thus it seems to me that anyone who claims the role of a "public intellectual" (even if he never uses that phrase about himself), is over-reaching from the start, no matter what he actually tries to say.

And how else would I earn a living?

A Case For McCain?

Win-win for Dems and Reps? Reihan thinks out loud:

Not that this will convince any Democrats, but consider: What if John McCain presided over a very liberal, very Democratic Congress? Imagine that McCain pledges to serve only one term, as Ramesh Ponnuru suggested in March. My sense is that he would try to lower the partisan temperature. In foreign policy, he would return to his Scowcroftian roots: try to achieve "peace with honor" in Iraq, but don’t expand the conflict. To secure continued funding for US efforts in Iraq, and in service to centrist principle, he would make concessions on key domestic issues. Democrats would thus achieve a number of longstanding policy objectives.

What’s in this for Republicans? The public has shifted left. This New Deal in minor key would ratify that shift, and the terrain of partisan rivalries would shift with it. By successfully establishing universal health care as the new baseline, Democrats would give Republicans room to propose popular, market-friendly reforms.