It has nothing to do with abortion, but that doesn’t mean it’s not interesting. Robert Fulford writes about a particular kind of Canadian bigotry, one I encounter quite often myself. (I’m not a U.S. citizen; I’m just extremely pro-America.)

One day, Brian made a mistake at work, not a big mistake but a mistake. An onlooking colleague turned to another colleague and remarked that Brian was a “typical dumb-ass American.” Another colleague asked him, “Is that the way you do it where you come from?”

No, it’s not that big a deal. But if the co-workers had said this to someone from, say, Saudi Arabia or China, how would we react?

It’s just a fetus, but it remembers:

The Washington Times reports on a study that indicates fetuses have memories:

They weigh less than 3 pounds, usually, and are perhaps 15 inches long. But they can remember.

The unborn have memories, according to medical researchers who used sound and vibration stimulation, combined with sonography, to reveal that the human fetus displays short-term memory from at least 30 weeks gestation – or about two months before they are born.

“In addition, results indicated that 34-week-old fetuses are able to store information and retrieve it four weeks later,” said the research, which was released Wednesday.

________________________

Véronique adds: “In addition, results indicated that 34-week-old fetuses are able to store information and retrieve it four weeks later”

Wow! That’s like, 3 weeks, 6 days and 23-and-a-half hours later than I can! On a good day!

What do they teach them in school in Britain? This:

NHS guidance is advising school pupils that they have a “right” to an enjoyable sex life and that regular sex can be good for their cardiovascular health.

The advice appears in leaflets circulated to parents, teachers and youth workers and is meant to update sex education by telling students about the benefits of enjoyable sex…

The leaflet carries the slogan “an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away”.

Sorry, I can’t find the strength to criticize. I’m too busy laughing.

[h/t Paul Tuns]

_________________________

Andrea is laughing: “Good for cardiovascular health”? What happened to team sports and gym memberships? Or is that too old-school. (I assume they also see sleepless nights with a crying baby and chasing after a two-year-old as engendering fitness stamina.)

Two pieces on the culture for your edification: One on how badly society seems to be educating boys, and the other on the perils of late motherhood.

OK, married people, go ahead and roll your eyes. An Australian study found that it takes a lot more than just love to keep a marriage together. Still, the study came up with a few interesting tidbits, such as:

Children also influence the longevity of a marriage or relationship, with one-fifth of couples who have kids before marriage — either from a previous relationship or in the same relationship — having separated compared to just nine percent of couples without children born before marriage.

That’s a big difference, and I’m tempted to go read more to see if they have a theory that explains it, even though I’m not fluent in Social Scientese (what on earth are “time-varying covariates” anyway?). Anyone wants to indulge my inner lazy person and tackle this for me?

_____________________

Andrea adds: Then there’s this, showing once again (there’s a consensus on this in the science already) that couples who live together before marriage fare worse in marriage. Thought this was interesting:

Cohabiting to test a relationship turns out to be associated with the most problems in relationships,” Rhoades says. “Perhaps if a person is feeling a need to test the relationship, he or she already knows some important information about how a relationship may go over time.”

Don’t know if that helps, Brigitte.

_____________________

Brigitte thinks: That was more or less my guess about co-habitating, but I’m still puzzled a bit about the kids part. I understand that bringing kids from a previous relationship into a new one creates its own set of challenges, but I didn’t think couples who have kids together before getting married would get similar separation rates. I rather thought having kids together was kind of a step up from “testing”, no? And it still doesn’t work? That’s one important piece of paper, marriage is…

____________________

Tanya hates to play Devil’s advocate: however, nearly everyone I know who does not live together before marriage does so because either culturally or religiously, it’s a standard they had set for their lives.  These same cultures/religions also have in common an understanding of enduring through difficulties in marriage.  So I wouldn’t say that cohabitation is the primary earmark for a higher likelihood of  divorce.  I’d venture to suggest that most of those who live together only once married have been given lifelong examples by family/culture/religious community of how to make marriage work.  These individuals are basically far better equipped to face marriage.

____________________

Andrea doesn’t want to nitpick: but does your point Tanya actually detract from the evidence, or merely help explain what we know to be true? Sure, cohabiting couples do so precisely because they don’t have the same cultural/religious standards as those who don’t live together before marriage. That doesn’t change the fact that in most cases, couples live together with an eye to seeing if they could get married, considering it an important step on that road. Would they do so if they knew it decreased their chances of marital success?

___________________

Tanya responds: See, that’s the thing.  It’s not necessarily the cohabitation that decreases their chances of success in subsequent marriage.  I think the cohabitation is a symptom, not a cause, of a generation that increasingly places less value upon marital vows.

There’s this cute song by The Proclaimers that goes: “But I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more, just to be the man who walked 1,000 miles to fall down at your door.” But, really, no one ever walks a thousand miles to fall down at his lover’s door. They’re just words used to express how one feels at that moment.  And it’s how so many our day view wedding vows. “For better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health…until death parts us.” Great lyrics are a dime a dozen.

Simply NOT living with someone before entering into a marriage you are otherwise as unprepared for as the next guy will ensure nothing (I dare suggest).

Especially for those (hi, Vicki!) who are always so quick to complain that access to abortion is still difficult in this here country… Have a look at the Spanish debate:

MADRID – Spain’s Socialist prime minister has irked his natural enemies on the right and in the Catholic church by legalizing gay marriage and instituting fast-track divorce. Now he has hit a raw nerve even among his supporters with a proposal to let 16-year-olds get abortions without parental consent.

Left-wing peacenik European socialists are upset! There’s hope, yet.

George Jonas has a delightful column on the uselessness of men. Enjoy.

Gabor Maté, in the Ottawa Citizen, on why we shouldn’t rush into “full-day learning”:

The child’s brain is programmed by nature to attach, to connect — but it will connect to anyone, whoever is around. And who is around for our kids from an early age? Other kids. In the absence of the nurturing adult, our children connect with one another, a process psychologist Gordon Neufeld has termed “peer orientation.” The result is developmental disaster.

For the first time in history, we have the mass phenomenon of many children being more influenced by their peers than by mature, caring adults. The Ontario day care proposals, which in many cases will extend the time children are away from their primary caregivers, raise the risk of accelerating the destructive processes of peer orientation. Full day early schooling is, potentially, a recipe for peer orientation and its attendant negative consequences.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PHnRIn74Ag]

[h/t]

I’m kidding, of course. There is nothing we could do that’d be half as bad as this.

An Afghan law which legalised rape has been sent back to parliament with a clause letting husbands starve their wives if they refuse to have sex.