An Associated Press article in the Boston Globe, 14 November 2008 begins:

VIENNA – Prosecutors filed a murder charge yesterday against the man accused of imprisoning his daughter for 24 years in a rat-infested cell and fathering her seven children, saying one of the youngsters who died in infancy might have survived if brought to a doctor.

It gets worse.  It gets a lot worse.  Read the whole thing and you’ll feel your grip on reality slipping away with every sentence.  The absolute surrealism of this story – the natural subconscious belief that this surely cannot have happened in the real world – almost makes it seem like this must have been written for The Onion, except nothing about it is even the tiniest bit funny.

I loved the last hours of this election.

First, the pundits nearly pulled muscles trying not to call the election too early, even when the outcome became blindingly apparent.  We heard a lot of hypothetical scenarios like, “Let’s suppose Obama wins California.  Here’s how he might win the election then.”  As it turns out, 61% of California voted for him, and I’m sure we’re stunned.

The lessons of the 2000 election seem to have set in too deeply.  They shouldn’t have jumped on the “victory” button the moment Pennsylvania went to Obama, but they probably didn’t need to wait until California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii all actually closed.

Second, although I generally detest when my neighbors shout “whooooo” from their balconies in the dead of night, watching Grant Park erupt into cheers at the same moment my entire block began to scream “Obama” from their windows portrayed, better than anything that came before, the unifying power of this leader.

Third, I realized for the first time watching Obama’s speech that this election was played “for keeps,” and we have chosen a man to serve as our president for four years.  I’ve forgotten what it’s like to want to tune in when presidents ask to address the nation.  Now we can feel something we haven’t felt in eight years: inspiration.

Erica Noonan reports in this morning’s Boston Globe:

An era when Halloween costume shopping for girls could be confused with exploring a Victoria’s Secret lingerie trunk may be fading.  Girls between the ages of 6 and 14 and their parents seem to be gravitating away from revealing costumes this year.

…

Rachel [age 10] has her heart set on dressing as Hannah Montana, the schoolgirl-rock star character popularized by 15-year-old actress Miley Cyrus. Despite Cyrus’s controversial partially nude photo spread in Vanity Fair magazine earlier this year, [her mother] Britt said she has no particular objection to the Hannah Halloween theme.

But she was thoroughly unimpressed by Target’s $25 version of a costume, a barely-there swath of rayon and matching go-go boots. No way, she said.

In the words of Mrs. Judy Geller on Friends (episode 6-09, The One Where Ross Got High), “That’s a lot of information to get in 30 seconds.”

Let’s start by applauding parents who prevent their preteen daughters from wearing less total clothing mass than their pre-toddler siblings.  Speaking broadly on behalf of men — a gender that’s quite rightly notorious for its adoration of naked and nearly naked women — I’d really rather not find myself handing out Snickers bars to a ten-year-old girl in a “barely-there swath of rayon.”

I lived in Boulder in 1996 — the year that someone murdered six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey and the rest of us learned that even a child in kindergarten could win a beauty pageant.  I was confused then in the same way I find myself confused now.

In the 20 January 1997 issue of People Magazine, Mr. Bill Hewitt wrote:

There was one video that showed JonBenét, who had won a half-dozen pageants, including a 1995 Little Miss Colorado title and a 1996 America’s Royale Miss title, dancing in flirtatious—even provocative—fashion.  Photographs also surfaced of her in heavy makeup more suited to a woman at least three times her age.

Ten years and five months later, we apparently found ourselves reading about Miley Cyrus in Vanity Fair, and seeing her wrapped in a blanket on the second page of the article.  Half naked?  Not really.  Partially nude?  To no greater extent than a girl on a beach in a bathing suit.

It’s a much more artful and much less tacky pose than detractors would suggest, but it’s still reminiscent of something one would find in a men’s magazine.  It didn’t take long to prove that point by unearthing a photo of Ms. Gena Lee Nolin from the pages of Maxim that carries distinct similarities.

Again speaking on behalf of men everywhere, there’s a reason Maxim has roughly the same circulation as Newsweek.  It’s not a bad thing.  I’ll just choose, if any children come to my door tonight dressed as fashion models thrice their age, to keep the door closed and keep the Reese’s to myself.

From the Boston Globe, 22 October 2008:

It is a simple test, but has surprising power to predict a child’s future. A 4-year-old is left sitting at a table with a marshmallow or other treat on it and given a challenge: Wait to eat it until a grown-up comes back into the room, and you’ll get two. If you can’t wait that long, you’ll get just one.

Some children can wait less than a minute, others last the full 20 minutes. The longer the child can hold back, the better the outlook in later life for everything from SAT scores to social skills to academic achievement, according to classic work by Columbia University psychologist Walter Mischel, who has followed his test subjects from preschool in the late 1960s into their 40s now.

I remember failing that test like it was yesterday – sitting there with a marshmallow staring back at me was just too tempting to resist.  In fact, come to think of it… it was yesterday.  I never even took that test as a child!

Blërg!

From the Associated Press:

Monkeys taught to play a computer game were able to overcome wrist paralysis with an experimental device that could lead to new treatments for patients with stroke and spinal cord injury.

The monkeys regained use of paralyzed muscles by learning to control the activity of a single brain cell.

…

[Study co-author Chet Moritz] stressed the approach is years, if not decades, away from use in people.

We can all agree that any progress on a new treatment for paralysis is excellent news, both for paralyzed people and for the scientific and medical communities.

Now, let’s focus for a moment on the fact that we can teach monkeys to play video games.  How long has this been going on?

Please, somebody confirm that we’ve also taught them to post YouTube comments.  It would explain so much…