John Stewart of the Daily Show with an excellent interview of President Clinton.

“There is an essential problem with the thesis… [values] have no place in an academic article.” - anonymous reviewer

Oh for the days when intellectuals were (dare we speak the word) advocates allowed to possess values and put forth arguments for action. Francis Bacon, Georges Hebert, Che Guevara, Salmon Rushdie, Rigoberta Menchu, these were people writing on science (natural, political or otherwise) AND values, ::gasp:: in the same breath. OK so lots of people like them were excommunicated, exiled, maimed, killed, but hey those were different times. These days what’s going to happen -the president at best puts you under a federal gag order, and at worst threatens naming you as an enemy combatant destined for Guantanamo Bay.? Ok maybe times aren’t that different. But I digress. (more…)

You might be surprised to hear that most scholars of social organization think that marriageis evolving itself out of existence, or at least out of its social relevance, replaced by things like cohabitation, civil unions and any number of other imaginable secular and non-secular configurations of households. Now maybe this is just a red herring meant to distract us from how relatively slow the academic community has been to join this important yet contentious social discussion (Think of same-sex marriage as the climate change of the social sciences). But can we really sum up all the emotion and debate over this evolving ‘institution of marriage’ into what is really no more than a disagreement over the definition of terms? Yes and No.

The No: Lots of people want to define marriage, but is there or has there ever really been a universal definition? (more…)

When US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned two weeks ago, the most remarkable part of his speech went almost completely unnoticed.

“I have lived the American dream. Even my worst days as attorney general were better than my father’s best.”

To be frank there’s actually nothing surprising or uncommon about Alberto’s sentiment; nobody picked up on the quote because everyone just about everyone that heard it understood perfectly what he was saying. Why? Because they all share a pretty similar idea, which goes something like this: (more…)