Glimpses from the paper

:: No decrease in abortions when illegal – study

Found this an interesting article. While I do not really agree with the practice of abortion, the reality is that people will chose to have an abortion (as this article states), whether it is legal or not.

The findings presented here indicate that unrestrictive abortion laws do not predict a high level of abortion, and by the same token highly restrictive abortion laws are not associated with low abortion incidence.

:: There's more to academic research than hitting the search button

I found this to be quite an interesting article about the impact of the internet on research.

:: Generation Q.

I thought that this was an interesting article outlining a little more about the current crop of college students in the US (and perhaps here too); though I’m not sure it needs to be limited to the students.

I am impressed because they are so much more optimistic and idealistic than they should be. I am baffled because they are so much less radical and politically engaged than they need to be.

“Generation Q” — the Quiet Americans, in the best sense of that term, quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad.

America needs a jolt of the idealism, activism and outrage (it must be in there) of Generation Q. That’s what twentysomethings are for — to light a fire under the country. But they can’t e-mail it in, and an online petition or a mouse click for carbon neutrality won’t cut it. They have to get organized in a way that will force politicians to pay attention rather than just patronize them.

Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy didn’t change the world by asking people to join their Facebook crusades or to download their platforms. Activism can only be uploaded, the old-fashioned way — by young voters speaking truth to power, face to face, in big numbers, on campuses or the Washington Mall. Virtual politics is just that — virtual.

“Courage.” That is what real activism looks like. There is no substitute.

:: 9/11 President (Prime Minister)

While there is the focus on how the global community has change since Bali, or New York, what is often not spoken about, is who we are, and perhaps what should not change.

:: Keeping it all together in the iAge

Are we writing the obituary for the Album?

The album demands something very different of the listener than the iPod. It wants your time and patience. Great albums have ebb and flow, and even dud tracks. But they are made up, as rock writer Paul Williams put it, of songs that like to be listened to together. Something essential is lost when the album is broken up — and this is mostly what the iPod does.

NB: I have to admit that I often leave my mp3 player off shuffle, and listen to an album from track 1 through.

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