That is, apparently, the subject of Michelle Obama’s latest campaign, asking Americans to drink one more glass of water than they normally would, in order to “make a real difference for your health, your energy, and the way you feel.” This is just odd.  I, and you, too, most likely, have seen the articles popping up every now and again telling us that the need to drink eight glasses of water a day is a myth, that the proper way to judge... Read more

So everybody’s talking (well,instapundit.com for one, and other blogs, too) about and linking to Christina Hoff Sommer’s article in The Atlantic, “How to Make School Better for Boys; Start by acknowledging that boys are languishing while girls are succeeding.”  She summarizes many of the arguments in her book (girls are outperforming boys at all levels of schooling, and going to and completing college at rates far higher than boys), and highlights programs within and outside the United States that have... Read more

Quick lunch break here: instapundit.com links to an article by Hannah Rosin in Slate, The Patriarchy is Dead; Feminists, Accept it. She writes of her experiences speaking about her book, The End of Men, and her audiences’ reaction, wanting her to more angrily condemn such things as the lack of legally-required or state-provided paid maternity leave (remind me to talk about this later), the disproportionately small number of women as CEOs or in Congress, the lack of a female president. ... Read more

So Drudge had a link to this article on the German election, in which the head of the SPD (the Social Democrats, rivals to Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, and historically the large center-left party) poses for the Suedeutsche Zeitung giving the finger. Wow. Even my longtime SPD-supporting husband said yesterday they wouldn’t get his vote this time, were he still in Germany. Now, I’m a big Merkel fan — and I admit that there’s a part of that which is... Read more

So reader “wm13” commented, in response to my post on college-educated folk working non-college-education-requiring jobs, that It depends what people mean by “require.” We hire a lot of paralegals, who do general clerical work (until they quit to go to law school, usually). Nothing they do requires anything more than reasonable literacy and organizational skills, and I’m sure that, say, Laura Ingalls Wilder (or I) could have performed the job on the day we graduated from high school. But we... Read more

“Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit” is exactly what the front cover says, marketing the book based on the author’s reputation and extra name recognition from having had the prior book made into a movie.  But you know what?  I read Seabiscuit and thought it was very well written, and this book is, too. The subtitle is “A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption” and unlike my prior “from the library” posts, I’m not going to give a... Read more

That’s the headline on a Via Meadia post about a Gallup survey (unlinked in the article) in which “four in ten college grads agreed that they don’t need a college degree for the work they do.” The author (is it always WR Mead, or does he have minions to write? — this blog is awfully prolific) suggests that the solution lies in increasing “vocational” type training programs, so that not every career path requires a degree as preparation.  But let’s step back... Read more

Look, I’m not an economist.  I don’t even play one on TV.  But I wanted to set down my 2 cents on the whole “raise the minimum wage” project, to try to work a few things out in my head, as a sort of rough draft. Near as I can figure, the pro-minimum wage hike contingent has two main arguments: 1)  a minimum wage hike won’t do any harm because increases in the wage will increase worker productivity, and 2) to... Read more

In a word, jein. That’s what Germans say instead of “yes and no” (ja-nein — get it?) Bloomberg has an article on IBM’s recent announcement to move its retiree healthcare to a “private exchange.” Apparently, the WSJ has further details on this move, but it’s behind a paywall so I myself haven’t been able to read it, much less link to it. But here are the key points: A “private exchange” is something multiple firms are developing to attract employers... Read more