The Art of Digital Flirtation

Nick Paumgartentakes a deep look at the role of new computer media in our romantic lives:

"In 2010, fee-based dating Web sites grossed over a billion dollars. According to a recent study commissioned by Match.com, online is now the third most common way for people to meet. (The most common are “through work/school” and “through friends/family.”) One in six new marriages is the result of meetings on Internet dating sites. (Nobody’s counting one-night stands.) For many people in their twenties, accustomed to conducting much of their social life online, it is no less natural a way to hook up than the church social or the night-club-bathroom line." . . . continue

STTA

• One hardly knows where to begin with such a pervasive topic. Here's a simple question: What role does new social media play in dating or meeting new people generally?

Meatless Mondays

Food writer Mark Bittman considers the broad ramifications of the growing national movement for Meatless Mondays:

"Our insatiable appetite for animal protein is as much of an agricultural liability as it is a nutritional one. We raise and slaughter nearly 10 billion farm animals in the United States every year (and that’s not counting fish or dairy animals.) It follows, then, that a significant percentage of our corn and soy crops are used to feed the animals that give us our much-wanted (and less-needed) protein. The intensive system of animal and crop production that is fueled by our demand for meat and milk and cheese leads to all manners of abuses: animal, environmental, farm-worker — you name it." . . . continue

STTA

• Have you heard of Meatless Mondays? How do you feel about the idea?
• Which of Bittman argues do you find most and least compelling?

Does Language Make Us More Empathetic?

Blogger Andrew Sullivan neatly summarizes a debate between two poets, Yusef Komunyaka and Mark Doty: Does our power to visualize and then feel an experience through language have any real impact on how we act in the real world? . . .  continue

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• We want to believe that our imagination is part of our larger faculty for human sympathy, don't we? But is it? Who you side with in this debate, Komunyaka or Doty?

Should Executions Should Be Televised?

Zachary Shemtob and David Lat, two law professors, re-open a century-old debate:

"Right now, executions are generally open only to the press and a few select witnesses. For the rest of us, the vague contours are provided in the morning paper. Yet a functioning democracy demands maximum accountability and transparency. As long as executions remain behind closed doors, those are impossible. The people should have the right to see what is being done in their name and with their tax dollars.". . .  continue

STTA

• So much of our politics is divided into red and blue, but one wonders if this might be a question that crosses those traditional divide: How do you feel about this question, and how does your feeling relate to your other political views?

15 Wonderful Words With No English Equivalent

"The Global Language Monitor estimates that there are currently 1,009,753 words in the English language. Despite this large lexicon, many nuances of human experience still leave us tongue-tied. And that’s why sometimes it’s necessary to turn to other languages to find le mot juste. Here are fifteen foreign words with no direct English equivalent." - continue

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• Which of these 15 is your favorite? Can you think of other English multi-word phrases that could conceivably be reduced to a single word?

Demands of Monogamy

Melissa Matthes argues against the widespread notion that all desire is good, as long it does not entail "children, pets, incest and the dead":

Her position: "Not because I think we should be policing sexual desire in some draconian, puritan way, but because it is still worthwhile for each of us to explore in more detail how desires are cultivated, why we want what we want, and, perhaps, what is the difference between “real” and “artificial” wants." - More here

STTA

• In many ways, monogamy is as strange as it is normal. One puzzler: Why do so many of us pledge ourselves to it -- and, even stranger, why do many of us (albeit undoubtedly fewer overall) actually conform to its demands?

Can Big Food Regulate Itself? Fat Chance

Mark Bittman's opinion piece in New York Times

"That voluntary guidelines could curb the right to free speech is absurd, but not as wacky as letting the industry set its own standards. Yet that’s what has happened: The Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI), a group of food manufacturers that includes McDonald’s, Burger King, PepsiCo and Kraft Foods came up with its own guidelines defining foods healthy enough to market to kids."  -- More here


STTA

• Here is the primary political battle in the U.S. in a nutshell: Defining or limiting the proper role of government in our lives. Corporations have a clear and simple response: Let the parents decide. Your thoughts?