I used to be one of those highly-organized, efficient, neat freaks. My days started at 5:45 a.m. with devotions, breakfast, and a 30-minute workout, after which I got ready for the day and began work. By the time my teacher-husband rolled back in around 4 p.m., my work was finished, errands were run, dinner was cooking, and the house was spic and span. (The later was thanks to a detailed household agenda that assigned specific chores for each day of the week.)

Ever since my daughter was born, however, I’ve struggled to get my groove back. Many days I don’t get around to taking a shower until 11 a.m., I’m behind by two whole Bible books in my devotional readings, and the house more often than not looks very “lived in.” Although the weekly household agenda still hangs on my fridge, judging from the film of dust coating the furniture throughout our home, it hasn’t been followed religiously in months. (Somehow, despite my lack of watering, I haven’t killed any of our houseplants–yet.)

So as we rapidly approach the one-year mark of my daughter’s triumphant entry into the world, I’m beginning to wonder whether I’ll ever get my groove back, or whether it’s time to bid adieu to–perhaps even grieve–my old ways and embrace a new, more reasonable “groove.” Alas, by the time I figure it out, I’m sure we’ll be on to Baby #2, and all bets are off once again.

Do you ever lose your groove–and if so, how do you get it back again?

National Review reviews a new reality show that’s something like Dog the Bounty Hunter meets, well, meets deadbeat dads.  The show is called Bad Dads, where a bounty hunter finds deadbeats behind on their child support and busts some heads, metaphorically speaking. 

Bad Dads is just the latest insult to men and especially fathers who feel, appropriately, that they’ve been maligned and minimized through television programming and advertising. In sitcoms, men are typically buffoons. And fathers, if they exist, are inept and unreliable, while Mom is a paragon of virtue and competence. Television executives and advertisers may profit from such “entertainment,” but who’s having fun? Apparently, women are. Four out of five network sitcom viewers are female.

It might be justice for the families who need that money, but it’s just more injustice to the institution of fatherhood.  But fathers have no one to blame but themselves.  Be a good dad.  It’s hard to do, and not very good television.

Despite losing North Carolina and just narrowly taking Indiana, Hillary Clinton is vowing to press “full speed on to the White House.” Although she remains optimistic, this morning on Good Morning America, political correspondent George Stephanopoulos said “Barack Obama has a lead that can’t be overcome.” He also predicted that more superdelegates will now side with Obama and campaign dollars will dry up in the Clinton camp, further increasing pressure on Clinton to bow out.

But will she? Or is August’s Democratic National Convention going to be one heck of a showdown?

It seems co-ed dorms weren’t revolutionary enough. Now begins the advent of the co-ed dorm room:

In the prim 1950s, college dorms were off-limits to members of the opposite sex. Then came the 1970s, when male and female students started crossing paths in coed dormitories. Now, to the astonishment of some baby boomer parents, a growing number of colleges are going even further: coed rooms.

At least two dozen schools, including Brown University, the University of Pennsylvania, Oberlin College, Clark University and the California Institute of Technology, allow some or all students to share a room with anyone they choose, including someone of the opposite sex. This spring, as students sign up for next year’s room, more schools are following suit, including Stanford University.

And apparently, the co-ed dorm room arrangement isn’t about sex:

Instead, [students and schools] say the demand is mostly from heterosexual students who want to live with close friends who happen to be of the opposite sex. Some gay students who feel more comfortable rooming with someone of the opposite sex are also taking advantage of the option.

“It ultimately comes down to finding someone that you feel is compatible with you,” said Jeffrey Chang, a junior at Clark in Worcester, Massachusetts, who co-founded the National Student Genderblind Campaign, a group that is pushing for gender-neutral housing. “Students aren’t doing this to make a point. They’re not doing this to upset their parents. It’s really for practical reasons.”

Whether it’s for practical reasons or not, some parents like Debbie Feldman–whose 20-year-old daughter is rooming co-ed–aren’t too keen on the idea: “When you have a male and female sharing such close quarters, I think it’s somewhat delusional to think there won’t be sexual tension. Maybe this generation feels more comfortable walking around in their underwear. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

If an individual can join the military at 18, should he/she also have the right to drink?

That’s the question several states are revisiting as they give their drinking laws another look–which is fueling criticism from many who say such a move could have “tragic consequences”:

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, setting the driving age at 21 has decreased fatalities among 18- to 20-year-olds.

Those who have their first drink before they are 19 are significantly more likely to become alcohol dependent, to drive after drinking, and to sustain injuries that require medical attention than those who did not drink before 19, according to data released by Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

What’s your take on lowering the drinking age–Is it a bad idea, or long overdue?

Morning everyone!

Today’s quote is from an author: “Women and cats will do as they please. Men and dogs had better get used to it.”

Usually when you talk about polls in hoops-crazy Indiana and North Carolina, you’re referring to college basketball rankings. But today, all the “polling” talk has been associated with the two states’ important Democratic presidential primaries. Will tonight’s results finally settle it between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, or will the race for the Democratic nomination go on and on? If it continues, maybe they should battle it out on the basketball court and determine the nominee with a game of H-O-R-S-E.

Stay tuned here as the results roll in. …

UPDATE (7:19 p.m.): Clinton leads early in Indiana.

UPDATE (7:30 p.m.): Polls close in North Carolina, and Obama is called the winner.

UPDATE (8:24 p.m.): CBS News calls Indiana for Clinton. … As of 9 p.m., they’re still the only one to do so.

UPDATE (9:15 p.m.): In a speech from Raleigh, N.C., Obama congratulates Clinton on her apparent victory in Indiana.

UPDATE (10:18 p.m.): Lack of Lake County (Gary), Ind., results is what’s keeping networks (other than CBS), AP, and others from calling Indiana.

Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute explains that one of the central problems of K-12 education in America is the romanticizing of it.  Which is to say, the fiction that all children are capable of at least being average, given the right circumstances.  Unfortunately, this idea ignores what some scholars like to call “reality.”

Educational romanticism consists of the belief that just about all children who are not doing well in school have the potential to do much better. Correlatively, educational romantics believe that the academic achievement of children is determined mainly by the opportunities they receive; that innate intellectual limits (if they exist at all) play a minor role; and that the current K-12 schools have huge room for improvement.

This happens to those on the Left and Right, too.

Educational romantics of the Left focus on race, class, and gender. It is children of color, children of poor parents, and girls whose performance is artificially depressed, and their academic achievement will blossom as soon as they are liberated from the racism, classism, and sexism embedded in American education. Those of the Right see public education as an ineffectual monopoly, and think that educational achievement will blossom when school choice liberates children from politically correct curricula and obdurate teachers’ unions.

And then think about yourself, and your children, when you read his closing paragraph:

For the good of our children, educational romanticism needs to collapse, and quickly. Its effects play out in the lives of young people in devastating ways. The fourth-grader who has trouble sounding out simple words and his classmate who is reading A Tale of Two Cities for fun sit in the same classroom day after miserable day, the one so frustrated by tasks he cannot do and the other so bored that both are near tears. The eighth-grader who cannot make sense of algebra but has an almost mystical knack with machines is told to stick with the college prep track, because to be a success in life he must go to college and get a B.A. The senior with terrific SAT scores gets away with turning in rubbish on his term papers because to make special demands on the gifted would be elitist. They are all products of an educational system that cannot make itself talk openly about the implications of diverse educational limits.

Universal education may be a good thing, but not universal curriculum, and not universal expectations.  Justice demands difference.

HT: Arts & Letters Daily

If you read or see the two-part, Pulitzer-prize winning (and scandalous) play Angels in America, which takes place in the 1980s, during the Reagan Revolution, then you’ll get a good feel for how most liberals hated - really hated - Ronald Reagan.  He was everything bad about America, to them.  But now, more than 20 years later, and Barack Obama, new scion of the liberal elite, is calling him a great president.  What happened?  This Newsweek piece proposes to answer the question: Why are liberals finally loving on Reagan?

[H]e understood that you cannot govern this country if you’re a pessimist. Pessimism has always been a strand of conservatism-pessimism about human nature, pessimism about government. […] He said that when the American people are happy, good things happen: they invest, they save, they have children. So he thought that getting America back to cheerfulness was an intensely practical program.

So, that’s one reason.  And it’s a nice thought.  Of course, one can believe in a fallen human nature and be perennially happy.  In fact, one can only be truly happy if one understands the true character of creation, but only if one also understands that all this can be redeemed.  Reagan was an optimist, and a realist.  He was, after all, a man who called evil what it was.  Christians, too, should be optimists.

Hanna Rosin reviewsa new book by Daniel Radosh called Rapture Ready!, a book about Christian pop culture.  The review, and presumably the book, ask the question: Can Christians participate in pop culture and still be good Christians?  And the corollary question is, can Christians make their own pop culture without it being kitschy?

In the ’80s, Christians were known as the boycotters, refusing to see movies or buy products that offended them. They felt about commercial culture much the way a Marxist might: that it was a decadent glorification of money and meaningless human relationships. Then, sometime during the ’90s, when conservative evangelicals started coming out of their shells, they took a different tack. The boycotters became coopters and embarked on the curious quest to enlist America’s crassest material culture in the service of spiritual growth.

A good review and book to read.  Rosin thinks there’s hope for us poor believers, at least for the youth among us.

Raised on iPods and downloadable music, they find it difficult truly to commit to the idea of a separate Christian pop culture. They might watch Jon Stewart or Pulp Fiction and also listen to the Christian band Jars of Clay, assuming the next album is any good. They are much more critical consumers and excellent spotters of schlock. The creators of Christian pop culture may just adapt and ease up on the Jesus-per-minute count, and artistic quality might show some improvement.

But never underestimate the bad taste of good people.