Miss Kelly

Monday Miscellania

The UK Telegraph recommends these 50 books for summer reading.  I can't imagine "enjoying" reading Things Fall Apart while at the beach.  Does make me want to read A Moveable Feast (Hemingway) and Kim (Kipling).

Also from the UK Telegraph, a neat opinion piece suggesting that we have "misunderestimated" how history will eventually judge President Bush. 

Interesting WSJ article about Project Nur, a college organization that's a student-led initiative of the American Islamic Congress.  Project Nur is an organization for Muslim students who want an alternative to the "hardline dgomatists" and radicals of  Muslim Student Association groups.  Project Nur sponsored the Muslim women's film festival held in Boston last month.  More power to them!

New Books on Marriage, and Sexuality and Spirituality

These two new books look pretty good:

Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance, and Religion on America's College Campuses, by Donna Freitas.   Freitas, a BU religion professor, had an op-ed at the WSJ yesterday on the disconnect between college students' thinking about sexuality and their practices.  Freitas conducted a survey of 2,500 college students on dating, romance and sex:

"Interestingly, most of the study respondents do identify with religious traditions that have rules about sexuality. But, with the exception of evangelicals, American college students see almost no connection between their religious beliefs and their sexual behavior. This radical separation of religion and sex tells us important things not only about the power of the college hookup culture but also about the weakness of religious traditions in the face of it. Perhaps the various church leaders would be interested to know that their young people are longing for the kinds of guidelines and rituals for dating that religion can offer. It might make them more willing to actually explain church teachings on sex and engage the students in honest discussions about how to foster healthy, fulfilling romantic relationships."

I saw this at Instapundit yesterday, Marriage: The Dream That Refuses to Die, by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. 

"Nearly everywhere and at all times, marriage has enjoyed a privileged status as the primary social unit—the essential bond that created alliances between families and a bridge between the sexes. In joining a man and woman, marriage attempted to hold men to collective social standards, including responsibility for the women they impregnated and the children they fathered, while also stringently hedging in women’s sexuality. In short, marriage has always demanded that both men and women sacrifice a considerable measure of individual freedom. In marriage, 'I' becomes 'we,' and 'we' frequently extends beyond the couple to extended family, clan, and society. For these reasons, both political and religious authorities typically have taken great care to present marriage as an institution to which individual interests must be subordinated."

"At the time of her death in January 2007, the celebrated historian Elizabeth Fox-Genovese was worried that these attitudes were in the process of being reversed. In this book, which she was in the midst of preparing for publication at the time of her passing, she argues that marriage is disintegrating under the rising demands that it serve not the good of the whole but the desires of the individual. A union that at one point was used to limit individual 'rights' is now claimed as one right among many. The sexual liberation movements of the last forty years have seriously undermined marriage, argues Fox-Genovese, so much so that the institution seems to face the threat of extinction."

The welfare society has also seriously undermined marriage, as it obviously doesn't require that men are responsible for the children they've fathered, or that women stop having babies from multiple fathers.  More children, more money, bigger apartment subsidy. Who cares who the fathers are?   Who cares about the next generation of deprived children?

Similarly, having children has also become the "right" of individuals, so that many single men and women feel it's their right to have children, whether by adoption or artificial insemination.  What about the right of a child to be raised by two parents in a stable household?

Recommended Book: You on a Diet by Roizen and Oz

I highly recommend one of Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz's books, You on a Diet - The Owner's Manual for Waist Management. It's all the rage, and deservedly so.  The book is packed with lots of easy-to-implement tips* about how to eat in a way that's will help you lose weight.  As the authors say, they want to help you set your body back to its original factory settings.  The incremental changes they recommend are easy to do.  No big dramatic diets, just lots of small adjustments. That and walking 30 minutes a day (which can be broken up throughout the day).  Roizen and Oz really push the walking every day. 

You on a Diet presents fairly detailed explanations of how the body processes what you eat, and it explains the feedback loop that tells you when you're full.  Turns out that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) - found in an incredible number of processed foods - interrupts the satiety signal.  It seems to be true that when you eat processed food, you often don't feel full afterwards.  If it's tasty, I just want to eat more!  While you're at it, check out RealAge, and take the test to see how your body's biological age compares to your chronological age.