A Different World

The dullest campaign ever

The dullest campaign ever

Wednesday is so-called Chick-Fil-A appreciation day. Will you be eating chicken sandwiches or avoiding them?

Wednesday is so-called Chick-Fil-A appreciation day. Will you be eating chicken sandwiches or avoiding them?

I will simply be celebrating my 14th wedding anniversary with my wife and 10-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter.

Why have the teen pregnancy and abortion rates dropped so much? (Hint: It's not because of condoms)

Why have the teen pregnancy and abortion rates dropped so much? (It's not because of condoms)

From the piece: Part of the explanation is that teenagers are waiting longer to have sex. According to federal surveys of teenage girls, 49 percent reported they were virgins in 1995, but 57 percent said they were in 2010. (The trend was even more pronounced among black teens, whose rate of abstinence rose from 40 percent to 54 percent.) However, these modest changes don’t fully explain the dramatic drop in teen pregnancy. So what really changed?

Psychological abuse of children as harmful as physical abuse

Psychological abuse of children as harmful as physical abuse

From the piece: Children who are routinely yelled at, belittled, ignored, or threatened by their parents can develop lifelong emotional wounds as damaging as those caused by physical or sexual abuse. So suggests a new study published Monday inPediatrics. Psychological maltreatment is harder to spot than other types of abuse, and it's hugely underreported, the researchers said. There's no one definition of what constitutes this type of abuse, but it ranges from chronically humiliating or ridiculing a child, to leaving an infant alone in a crib all day, except for feeding or changing.

Myrtle Beach police chief weighs in on gun control debate, reacts to woman who used gun to foil robbery

For a column that will probably be published online Thursday and in print Friday, I asked Myrtle Beach Police Chief Warren Gall a couple of questions about his thoughts on gun control, and about a particular case last month in Myrtle Beach during which a concerned citizen stopped alleged thieves from stealing her neighbor's car. (A story about that incident is here.)

I'm hoping we can continue to have a probing conversation about gun control and gun violence and not slip into the extremes. Gall's responses below, which are unedited except for clarity, should give everyone food for thought, no matter on what side of the debate you fall.

Bailey: Chief, I'm hearing from a lot of readers, in the wake of that Colorado massacre, who believe that if that theater was not a gun-free zone, some armed citizen would have been able to stop the guy from killing so many people. They think the answer is to have more, not fewer, people armed to stop gun violence. What do you think?

Sometimes lying to yourself is a good, necessary thing

Sometimes lying to yourself is a good thing

I can honestly say that self-deception helped me cope with years of severe stuttering and allowed me to advance personally and professionally until I was able to actually deal with the speaking disorder in a more constructive manner. I lied to myself about the impact my speech had on me and others and how much it threatened my future. If I didn't, I would have been overwhelmed.

From the piece: 

Self-deception isn't just lying or faking, but is deeper and more complicated, says Del Paulhus, psychology professor at University of British Columbia and author of a widely used scale to measure self-deceptive tendencies. It involves strong psychological forces that keep us from acknowledging a threatening truth about ourselves, he says.

Believing we are more talented or intelligent than we really are can help us influence and win over others, says Robert Trivers, an anthropology professor at Rutgers University and author of "The Folly of Fools," a 2011 book on the subject. An executive who talks himself into believing he is a great public speaker may not only feel better as he performs, but increase "how much he fools people, by having a confident style that persuades them that he's good," he says.

Conservative economists: Public sector cuts holding down economic growth

Conservative economists: Public sector cuts holding down economic growth

From the piece: 

Earlier we pointed to an article in the WSJ which made the correct observation that it's public sector spending declines that are really holding back economic growth.

This is an idea we've been hammering for awhile. Back in early June, we defended Obama's 'doing fine' comment, noting how private sector growth was much more robust than that of the public sector.

But now the idea really seems to be going viral.

In a blog post over at conservative think tank AEI (!) professor Mark Perry has a post titled: Maybe private sector is doing fine? Growth in post-recession “private GDP” (3%) is above average.

Allan Wilson's factually-challenged defense of South Carolina's voter ID law

Allan Wilson's factually-challenged defense of South Carolina's voter ID law

From the piece: Last week, Attorney General Alan Wilson again denied the U.S. Justice Department’s assessment that South Carolina’s controversial voter ID law unfairly discriminates against the poor and minorities. However, Wilson’s argument at a Heritage Foundation event in Washington, DC was based on “facts that can at best be described as mathematically challenged.

Setting bad precedent

Corporations are saving more and paying people less

Corporations are saving more and paying people less

How would you define sin? How are 'Original Sin' and sexual sins related?

How would you define sin?

From the piece: Through the idea that sexual activity is intrinsically bound up in sin, and must at all costs be monitored and controlled. According to Augustine, pleasure itself is an index of sin. He had a very austere philosophical concept of the human body and how it should behave, were it not for Original Sin. This idea that sexual intercourse is an intrinsically morally compromised activity, and that only procreation excuses it, has lasted down through the centuries – and it gets sounded particularly during American election years! Much of this idea of sexuality and sinfulness being part of the same package traces back in many ways to Augustine.