A rather horrifying piece about date-rape drugs being more widespread than thought. Highlighting once again the dangers of getting too close too fast to people you barely know – and leaving your drink unattended. But also of the incredibly bone-headed idea some people seem to have of mixing bizarre drugs they know little about with too much alcohol.

Although all the victims believed they were covertly slipped drugs by their assailants, and met the medical criteria to support such claims, study author Janice Du Mont says they “can’t say with certainty that that was the exact scenario” in every case (drug tests were not included in the CMAJ data).

While many could have “unwittingly ingested a ‘date-rape drug,’ ” she notes others might have “inadvertently contributed to their own incapacitation” by mixing voluntarily ingested pharmacological substances with alcohol.

Du Mont, a scientist at Ontario’s Women’s College Research Institute in Toronto, believes this supports the need for a public awareness campaign that not only warns of the dangers of combining drugs and alcohol, but also educates men that people who are intoxicated are incapable of consenting to sexual contact.

“It should not all be women’s individual responsibility to prevent sexual violence,” says Du Mont.

Look. I understand partying – certainly I remember its most salient features (some of it was even fun). But if you’re a single girl going out alone (or with a “friend” who abandons you the minute a guy gets her attention), then for crying out loud don’t mix drugs and alcohol. If that’s not a recipe for disaster, I don’t know what is. And while most guys I know would not take advantage of a highly intoxicated young woman, I would not want to trust that all the random guys in the random bars are like that. After all, the kind of guy who would take advantage of a highly intoxicated young woman tends to hang out in places where highly intoxicated young women are. It’s so basic it’s threatening to give me a headache. You can have public awareness campaigns until you go blue in the face and it won’t matter as long as young women continue to put themselves in ridiculously obvious dangerous situations. I realize it’s not fun having to police your drink when you go out. But given all that we know about these drugs, what other safe options are there, assuming “staying home watching TV” isn’t one of them?

A long, looooooong piece in the Toronto Star today by “national affairs writer” Linda Diebel on the Liberal leader’s love life. They wonder why newspapers are in such trouble but they shouldn’t, not when they run such admiring, uncritical, adoringly crafted puff. About a politician’s love life. Blech. Like Michelle Malkin would say, we need a drool bucket.

But that’s not what bugs me. Well, it does. But that’s not really the worst. What is particularly annoying about that piece is the absence of any kind of criticism for a somewhat sordid affair (both Mr. Ignatieff and his current wife were once married to other people, and he walked out on his wife of 18 years with whom he had two children to be with Ms. Zsohar) and a complete lack of restraint on the part of the two lovers, who seem very happy to share their personal history with the nation, even the bits that are (and should be) shameful.

I don’t begrudge their happiness or anything. And while I am of the “marry right and marry once” old-fashioned school, I try not to judge those who get a false start too harshly. But golly. The casual way these people describe walking away from marriages like one walks out on a boring movie is quite despicable. And they’re in their 60s… You’d kind of forgive that sort of ditzy bean-spilling exercise on the part of a cute starlet, but coming from adults who ought to qualify as “mature”, it’s just so… icky.

In the most treasured classics, lovers face obstacles, delays and misunderstandings that sweep them to the brink of despair. They come from different worlds, sometimes disliking each other at the outset. With each separation, tension builds, until a final plot twist seals their fate.

On a March 1995 evening, such a twist of plot occurred in the life of Zsuzsanna Zsohar, when the doorbell rang in her Holland Park flat in central London. It’s likely she divined the significance of the moment before answering, being someone who values books like the very air she breathes.

Standing there was Michael Ignatieff, carrying a plastic bag. He’d just done an interview at the BBC and said only, “Can I stay?”

“And, he did,” says Zsohar, now married to the new Liberal leader and living in Ottawa. “He’d made up his mind what he wanted to do. I didn’t make up his mind. He did.”

On a recent afternoon at Stornoway, the residence of the official opposition leader in upscale Rockcliffe Park, she recounts this exhilarating but painful period in their lives. Until that March night, Ignatieff, author, late-show TV host and Canadian expat, lived with his English wife, Susan Barrowclough, and their two children in London. Two years earlier, he was doing a television series on ethnic nationalism, Blood and Belonging, co-produced by the BBC, and it fell to Zsohar, books promotion/publicity manager for BBC Enterprises, to market the accompanying book. Reluctantly.

[…]

As they worked together over two years, she realized he actually was “a nice man.” There was chemistry, but “we broke up because he was married… You go back, you sort it out – I think he sees himself very much as a family man… So we were colleagues, we worked together but we weren’t actually romantically linked. He went home, you know, he lived with his wife and children, and I lived in my own flat.”

So, you weren’t actually romantically linked yet you “broke up”? I know I’ve been away from the dating scene for a while, but, um, how does that work?

When the split came, it caused a frisson in gossipy London town. Ignatieff had mined his family to write about domestic bliss and the joys of fatherhood, and this was too rich to let slip.

“Welcome to the Late Show; I’ve left my wife,” mocked a headline in the Evening Standard, over a story saying:

“The Age of the New Man, it is said, is drawing to a close. Right on cue, his patron saint – the don, philosopher and sensitive novelist, Michael Ignatieff – has fallen from his pedestal. After 18 years of happy marriage in Islington, Michael has up and walked out, setting up home with a lovely young BBC press officer, Susannah (sic) Zsohar.”

The lovely young thing was 48; in September she turns 62.

Zsohar shrugs. “I couldn’t break up his marriage. I wasn’t 20… To a lot of people, it was difficult to understand: If you leave, why do you leave for someone of your own age? Somebody who’s not a bimbo? (I) really didn’t fit the `bimbo’ category. You remember – we were not spring chickens!”

She jokes, but this was no easy time. It was, she says, “a very, very bitter and difficult divorce – difficult because he really walked out – but not on his kids.

“Around that time, Michael actually gave a talk in Canada (about) parents’ responsibility to children. It’s a very interesting piece because it says adults are also responsible for their own happiness. They are responsible for their children’s happiness, yes, but they are also responsible for their own happiness, providing you never leave your children, never abandon responsibility for them.”

Right. You can’t break up his marriage even when you do. And it’s perfectly cool for a father to go live with someone else, as long as he never “abandons responsibility” for his children… Gosh, what self-serving drivel. Could this story be more appalling?

Perhaps you had noticed. I find it hard to resist sharing Stone Soup with our PWPL readers. It’s so… real. Not a fairy tale, no supermoms here, just normal folks in normal-life situations, trying to do their best. And not always managing… But hey, that’s life too. Did I mention I was a big fan?

Phyllis Schlafly, 85, is in hospital after falling and breaking her hip:

Mrs. Schlafly is a dynamo who has carried the grass-roots conservative torch for decades while leading the Eagle Forum and publishing her popular “Phyllis Schlafly Report.” She carried her message to the University of California at Berkeley on Tuesday, where she gave a talk on “Feminism vs. Conservatism.” The California Eagle Forums’ Orlean Koehle reports that while coming off the podium after giving her speech, she missed a step and fell and broke her hip.

I do hope she recovers fully.

But I like this oped, in today’s Ottawa Citizen:

When the Canadian political right finally united in 2003, the unspoken concern was how to merge sophisticated fiscal conservatives with their knuckle-dragging social conservative cousins.

The elegant solution was that smaller government and a strong economy should supercede social issues. Yet post Budget 2009, it’s no longer quite clear that fiscal responsibility is a top priority either, leaving a vision void for many in Canada’s Conservative government. Perhaps they might consider looking to England, where Conservatives are pioneering an approach that is fiscally responsible — precisely because it is socially responsible.

I’ll say. It’s time we got the idea that being in favour of basic social conservative ideas (like, say, preferring marriage to cohabitation and two-parent families to the various alternatives, whenever possible) is a prerequisite to any kind of small-government plan. You just cannot think that a government can be fiscally conservative yet socially liberal – “liberal” in the late-20th-century sense of the word – and be successful. What you invariably end up with is more big government (think Mulroney deficits, then Harper deficits) and no progress on the social-justice front, but a whole pile of new middle-class entitlements. That’s not progressive, that’s not conservative; if you ran on such a platform you’d never get elected. So why are we stuck with it anyway? Because we (and by “we” I mostly mean conservatives and Conservatives) look at the problem the wrong way. We look at numbers and theories, and completely forget to see people.

Much food for thought in Andrea’s piece. If I were you, I’d go read it.

Feminists and pro-women women of the world, unite! Let us join forces and demand an end to this unspeakably ridiculous situation:

It would be bizarre in any country to find that its lingerie shops are staffed entirely by men.

But in Saudi Arabia – an ultra-conservative nation where unmarried men and women cannot even be alone in a room together if they are not related – it is strange in the extreme.

Women, forced to negotiate their most intimate of purchases with male strangers, call the situation appalling and are demanding the system be changed.

“The way that underwear is being sold in Saudi Arabia is simply not acceptable to any population living anywhere in the modern world,” says Reem Asaad, a finance lecturer at Dar al-Hikma Women’s College in Jeddah, who is leading a campaign to get women working in lingerie shops rather than men.

“This is a sensitive part of women’s bodies,” adds Ms Asaad. “You need to have some discussions regarding size, colour and attractive choices and you definitely don’t want to get into such a discussion with a stranger, let alone a male stranger. I mean this is something I wouldn’t even talk to my friends about.”

Indeed. I mean, how would guys know the difference between this and this? (OK, so I don’t shop at Victoria’s…)

[h/t Mark Steyn]

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Tanya adds: On my top ten list of weirdest things I’ve ever seen (I keep a regular journal) was a 6’2″ man standing at the entrance of a La Senza.  Clipped to his shirt was his brass nametag:  ABDUL  LaSenza Sales Associate.

I was on Robson Street in Vancouver.  Needless to say, I did not shop for intimates that day.  To console myself, I went to Steamrollers’ instead.

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Andrea adds: I’m never thrilled when men are around in shops like that. The thing is, quite frankly, the men never look thrilled either. It’s awkward all around. (Say, can you pass me a size–No wait… that’s not information our readers need…)

Wow. That’s quite the comment thread we’ve got on Andrea’s previous post. I am delighted with the discussion. Because I’m learning from it, yes, but also because our readers are debating a pretty contentious issue with great clarity, compassion and civility. (We’ve got cool readers.)

One of the things the commenters brought up that I think it worth considering again is that the victim of early inductions are not the mothers so much as the babies. I’ll admit that my first thought when I read that Post article was to think about the pregnant mother in danger of dying. And really, when a situation occurs where the husband or other family member has to agree to early induction to save the life of the mother (these cases do happen; I know of at least two), and has about 41 seconds to make a decision, it’s hard to see it any other way. When the best information available, in an emergency situation, is that the unconscious mother (and baby) will die within the hour if we let nature take its course but the mother will be saved (and maybe the baby as well; in the 2 cases I am familiar with they survived) if we induce, what is a husband supposed to do? I have a hard time believing that what he’s agreeing to is infanticide.

Cases where the choice is between the mother and her baby dying and the mother surviving (maybe the baby, too) are clear to me. These are about both mother and baby. Cases where induction is performed for reasons that are, let’s say, less serious are a lot less clear to me. The mother’s convenience or peace of mind are certainly important, but not nearly as much as the life of another human being, regardless of how difficult it might be due to severe anomaly. I contend that these cases should be about the baby, not so much about the mother.

I don’t know enough about the particulars of St. Joseph’s hospital. I do not know Father Prieur, and I am certainly not qualified to judge whether his actions are properly Catholic or not. I would be curious to know if there is consensus among pro-lifers, and among our readers, with my distinction in the paragraph above. Do most of us agree there can be cases where it’s about both mother and baby?

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Tanya wonders if we’re splitting hairs here: I’m in agreement with early induction for two reasons only.  The first is a situation I was made aware of when I was pregnant.  There are instances when the baby is no longer thriving due to conditions in the womb — not adequately growing or gaining weight due to a lack of nutrients getting to her.  Clearly, early induction here is for the benefit of the baby.

The second instance is based on the health of the mother.  The mother is the life support of the baby.  If she is going to die if she continues her pregnancy, it seems logical that early induction would be in the best interests of both baby and mother.

Even as pro-lifers, are we always analyzing these issues from the standpoint that the child in the womb deserves equal rights to any other human being?  A useful parallel, I’ve found, is the treatment of conjoined twins.  Without question, the medical world attributes both twins with equal rights.  However there are instances where one twin will die and the other will live.  One such case is Jodie and Mary. I’m not suggesting that the actions taken here were ethically irreproachable.  I don’t envy anyone who has such a choice to make.  But the rights of the twins were equal out of the gate, which is more than we can say for most cases of early induction.

What better way to entertain your baby than giving him his very own smartphone? After all, if he’s already got a laptop and camera…

If the LeapFrog toy company has its way, texting will soon join reading, writing and arithmetic as a staple of early childhood eduction. Starting in June, the company will begin selling a BlackBerry-like toy called the Text & Learn. The device is aimed at tots and features a full keyboard, calendar, LCD screen, and texting capacity. The big difference between the $25 Text & Learn and the several-hundred-dollar gadgets for grown-ups that inspired it is that it connects to a fake internet browser where preschoolers can exchange texts with a digital puppy named Scout whose five preprogrammed text messages include “Hi! We’re out of puppy biscuits. Thanks!” and “Let’s meet up later to play some fetch!”

Is it me, or is this a bit creepy?