Because only younger, fully able-bodied people deserve the rights to sexual expression

Older people and the disabled, children, same difference.

From The Volokh Conspiracy:

Yup, the law (in Massachusetts) would make it a very serious crime — tantamount to child pornography — to make, and distribute "with lascivious intent," "any visual material that contains a representation or reproduction of any posture or exhibition in a state of nudity" involving anyone age 60 or over, or anyone who has "a permanent or long-term physical or mental impairment that prevents or restricts the individual’s ability to provide for his or her own care or protection."
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The operative provisions cover people over 60 and the disabled whether or not they are incompetent.
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Note that the law isn't limited to making pornography for commercial purposes (since the child pornography law that it builds on covers noncommercial child pornography, too). That means that if 60-year-old spouses or lovers — or spouses or lovers of someone who is disabled — decide to photograph each other naked with "lascivious intent," they would be committing a crime

Put aside everything else for a moment. This is basically telling older people and the disabled that they don't have the same rights regarding their sexuality that the rest of us do. They'd be treated the same way as children.

See, but for children, it makes sense. They're not capable of giving legal consent for things like this. It has to do with mental and emotional maturity. Are we honestly going to suggest that a 60 year old lacks the mental and emotional maturity to give consent to his/her partner to take nude pictures or video of them? Or that a 35 year old amputee is somehow less mentally able to consent? How about a blind person?

From my perspective, all this truly does is discriminate against the elderly and the disabled, under the guise of protecting them. In the absence of mental impairment, I see no reason that age or physical disability should be a trigger for a legally-enforced curtailing of sexual rights.

Elite Liberal Arts Schools see lower application numbers, pwned by Ivies, state schools

See, they're pwned because they're 1337.

Not much sense quoting much here, because it's a short article.

Here's my take: The Ivies tend to offer more financial aid, especially to students from poorer families (poorer compared to the stereotypical Ivy student, that is). Beyond that, there's an assumed, almost unquestioned, return on investment to getting an Ivy league undergrad degree. When you get to the elite, non-Ivies, you don't get the same reaction, especially from the parents who will be paying the bills.

The uptick in applications to good (and maybe not-so-good) state schools is obvious. Solid education, a fraction of the price.

What's obscured a bit by this article: two things. One: Yield. Just because applications may still be flooding in to elite (and not-so-elite) private schools, doesn't mean that accepted students will necessarily enroll once they get a look at the financial aid package. My guess is if you're a good but otherwise meh applicant whose parents have guaranteed funds for your college education, it's a good year to be on a waitlist. Two: This year is nothing. Wait 'til next year's application cycle, when the employment shakeout is truly in force. Not only will you see applications drop for the private schools, you'll see openings for sophomores and upperclassmen whose financial backing dried up.

Tuition raises have been outpacing inflation for years now, while bachelor's degrees have become ubiquitous. This may be the point when the higher education system takes a hard reboot. If it does, it's gonna be ugly.

$5 million federal grant to ensure future employment of divorce lawyers

We're not saying "Get married," but, y'know... get married.

A growing percentage of Americans aren't marrying. Federal statistics report 7.1 marriages per 1,000 people in 2008, down from 10 per 1,000 in 1986.

Faced with such numbers, the federal government is funding a $5 million national media campaign, launching this month, that extols the virtues of marriage for 18- to 30-year-olds. The campaign includes ads on Facebook and MySpace, videos on YouTube, spots on radio talk shows, ads in magazines and public transit and a new Web site, TwoOfUs.org.

"We're not telling people, 'Get married,' but, 'Don't underestimate the benefits of marriage,' " said Paul Amato, a Pennsylvania State University sociologist and adviser to the federally funded National Healthy Marriage Resource Center, which is spearheading the campaign.

Research suggests benefits for those who marry: better health, greater wealth, more happiness and improved well-being for kids.

This is ridiculous, in no uncertain terms. Marriage is not for everyone, the same way that having kids isn't for everyone. I am happier married than I would have been single, but even this had very specific requirements to work.

I wanted to get married. The woman I married wanted to get married. We wanted to get married after dating for a certain amount of time, and not before a certain age. We were on the same page as to our desired parenting status (non, for both of us). And those are just what I consider the dealbreakers.

All the potential "benefits" of marriage come with caveats. Namely, they're not evenly distributed to everyone. Just because the "average" happiness score for married people is higher doesn't mean a) it was higher for everyone in the sample; b) it was higher across gender; c) the samples in these studies are representative of all married people (remember, not everyone is willing to be a research subject, and I dare say if it's a marriage study, people who are more happily married are more likely to volunteer); d) they factor in divorced people, who obviously had to be married in order to get divorced.

Plus, they're not only targeting younger people, they're targeting them on Myspace. Seriously, if you're going to get married because a Myspace ad told you to, you should definitely not get married. And you should use multiple forms of contraception. Forever.

Also, if marriage has all these benefits, isn't it cruel for the federal government to prevent homosexuals from partaking in them?

But do they believe in gravity?

So a Gallup poll recently came out, showing that only 39% of people polled believed in evolution, with 25% actively not believing in it. The trends are pretty interesting for education, where there's a continual increase in believers the higher the education level, but no big decreases among nonbelievers until a college degree is attained. The jump in believers from high school or less to some college appears to come directly from the "not sure" category.

The results for church attendance on this isn't surprising, either, where the less frequently you attend church, the more likely you believe in evolution. I'd be really curious to see the data on Catholics on this, considering Pope John Paul II publicly supported the theory of evolution.

Mystery Men was not a documentary

So I'll have my inaugural post be on one of today's larger news stories... Tom Daschle removing his name from nomination for HHS Secretary, due to unpaid taxes. This makes three nominees to pull out, including Bill Richardson for Commerce Sec'y, and Nancy Killefer, who would have been the first chief performance officer. Killefer's announcement also came today, which probably would have been more newsworthy had Daschle not stolen the headline. And this also happens after Timothy Geithner got slammed for his own tax issues, prior to his Senate confirmation as Treasury Secretary.

The thing I don't quite get is how these people think these issues are going to stay hidden. It seems like they're taking Invisible Boy's super power to heart... the problems are invisible, unless someone looks at them. Maybe they figured in the post-inauguration euphoria, nobody would care to look? It's not quite working out that way.

The economy's in the crapper. Unemployment's on its way up, stocks took a beating, and real estate prices are getting hit hard (some places harder than others). Now is not the time to be a politician with tax issues like this. If there is an issue, it will get discovered.