February 12, 2012, 06:32 PM ET

Where American Freshman Have Been and Are Going

…Only 58 percent of students starting their first year of higher education last year believe that there is a good chance they will be satisfied with their college. That's a mighty disappointing rate of expectation. Where's the optimism? They have applied and won admission. High school is over, a new chapter of life has begun, new friends and new freedoms, the world is all before them . . . and yet, more than two out of five have meager hopes. That's just one illuminating result of the 2011 American Freshman Survey, which last year got 204,000 entering students to answer a lengthy questionnaire on background, habits, and ambitions. More significant findings:

While in their last year of high school, 88.9 percent of respondents "frequently" or "occasionally" studied with other students. That high rate is a measure of two things: one, the extension of teen social contact in...

Screaming Mimi, the White House Intern

Here’s my new goal: I want to write a tell-all book and be widely celebrated for how well I keep secrets. That’s a trick I’d really love to a master, like sawing the last thin remnants of a reputation in half and having it appear whole. Yes, of course, I’m talking about Screaming Mimi, the JFK intern who decided to wait until everybody was dead (guess daughters don’t count, huh, Mimi?) and write a book with information nobody can prove but that fascinates us all. It doesn’t say much for her, and, I suppose, it says even less about us. Here’s an excerpt from The Daily Mail, one of the places to which she sold the rights. Okay, okay, it says less about me—I’ve been watching the whole thing with open-mouthed horror and fascination, but not as open-mouthed as Mimi was when she was in D.C., apparently. What's getting to me is that otherwise sensible people are claiming ... Read More

February 12, 2012, 11:38 AM ET

Is It Possible for America to Have an Honest Discussion About Government?

The front page of today's Times, in one of a series of fine analytical reports that have cropped up in the wake of Occupy Wall Street (but, to be fair, might well have been in the works anyway), points directly to the dishonesty of the You're-On-Your-Own, Social Darwinist orthodoxy that wholly owns the Republican Party and buffaloes non-Republicans too. The headline: "Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It." This piece is full of illuminations. A few are here:

[T]he poorest households no longer receive a majority of government benefits. A secondary mission has gradually become primary: maintaining the middle class from childhood through retirement. The share of benefits flowing to the least affluent households, the bottom fifth, has declined from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis published last year.

So the ... Read More

February 12, 2012, 10:57 AM ET

Monday's Poem: 'The Date,' by Monica Ferrell

This time we’ll come gloved & blind- folded, we’ll arrive on time. With bees in our hair, with an escort of expiring swans. We’ll appear to out-of-date & out-of-tune violin music, we’ll lie on our side. Wearing rotting lotus behind our ears, musk between our thighs. This time we’ll be tied down. We’ll cry out. We’ll only smoke if surprised by tragedy’s approach, as it noses closer. This time we’ll fall in love with the blood color of the sunset as we’re walking home over the bridge that takes us between here & there. This time we’ll forget how ancient Sarmatian lions go on bearing marble messages for no one who can understand their sarcophagus language, forget sloths who climb so slow they die before mating. We’ll grow improvident & stop believing there was ever such a thing as alone, such a hard nail in the coffin for one. © by Monica Ferrell.... Read More

February 12, 2012, 10:00 AM ET

Why I Am Not Celebrating "Darwin Day"

Charles Robert Darwin, the great English naturalist and author of On the Origin of Species, was born on February 12, 1809. This, then, is his 202th anniversary. Many people will be celebrating what has come to be called “Darwin Day.” I will not be among them, and I doubt Charles Darwin would have been among them either. I certainly would seem a prime prospect. The first paper I ever had published—one that was so bad I will tell you neither title nor location—was on the Darwinian revolution. Some years later, in 1979, I published what I am glad to say was a much better account in my The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw. And since then I have written numerous articles and books on Darwin and his theory and its implications. In the fall, finally, a huge (400K words + 350 pictures) tome edited by me, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Darwin and Evolution, will... Read More

February 10, 2012, 02:01 PM ET

Tim Gunn Is Asexual and Proud

So apparently Tim Gunn, style guru and fabulous fashionista, hasn't had sex for 29 years. And he isn't afraid to say it. On his new show, "The Revolution," Gunn said he was going to say it aloud and not be ashamed that he is asexual.

Do I feel like less of a person for it? No... I'm a perfectly happy and fulfilled individual."

When a friend posted this on my Facebook wall, one of those really uncomfortable conversations began where I ended up sounding like your conservative grandmother about gay people: maybe it's just a phase, that's wrong, people really should leave that as their own private shame. I hate myself for having this response because if there is one thing I know for sure, it is that human sexuality is messy and not easily locked down into neat little boxes to be checked off on a survey. Why can't some people be happily asexual? Why can't some couples be happily asexual?... Read More

February 10, 2012, 08:29 AM ET

In Praise of Rice and Beans

There are no culinary tours to Costa Rica, and for good reason. So far as I can tell, this small tropical country has nothing special to offer in the way of gustatory delights. Let’s face it, you can’t eat phenomenal biodiversity, mist-shrouded volcanoes, cloud forests, rain forests, pristine beaches complete with warm water, spectacular surfing, and leatherback turtles, a thoroughly nonmilitarized society (when flocks of pelicans conduct their regular flybys, we note that the Costa Rican air force is out on maneuvers), a long and proud history of social democracy, and the world’s happiest people whose national motto is somewhere between “tranquilo” and “pura vida.” But I digress. Now that Frank Bruni is writing (admirably!) about politics for The New York Times, I sense an opening and so: Today I’m writing about food. Not fancy food, mind you, but beans and rice. What ... Read More

February 9, 2012, 11:02 AM ET

More on Dickens

One of the readers of my piece yesterday on Dickens has sent me a list of words that came from Dickens and are now in the English language. These are: Wellerism, from Sam Weller, Mr. Pickwick’s servant (in Pickwick Papers), meaning making fun of clichés often by taking them literally. For example (when serving lunch): "Now, gen'l'm'n, 'fall on, as the English said to the French when they fixed bagginets." Fagin, from the receiver of stolen goods (in Oliver Twist), meaning an adult who instructs children in crime. Fagin is trying to turn Oliver into a thief. Dickens got the name from a friend when he was working in the blacking factory, but the character is based on the real-life fence Ikey Solomon. I suspect most of us today would feel uncomfortable using the term because of the anti-Semitic undertones (not very “under” in the David Lean film, with Alec Guinness as Fagin). ... Read More

February 8, 2012, 03:58 PM ET

Back to Barefoot and Pregnant

Say I am a female Protestant employee hired by a Catholic institution that accepts federal funds (I’m not talking about working directly in a house of worship—I’m imagining a Catholic hospital or university). This institution has advertised for a job, interviewed me, found out I’m Protestant and am not about to convert to Catholicism, and decided they want me anyway. I have the talents they need, so they go ahead and hire me. As part of my employment at this Catholic institution, I am offered health insurance. That’s the American way, right? After all, we have come up with the wonderful system—the envy of the world—whereby we individuals mostly obtain health insurance through individual employers. Up until now, most employers’ insurance plans have covered birth control as part of their plans, mostly with no co-pay required of its employees. But this will change if the... Read More

February 8, 2012, 10:20 AM ET

Thank You, Charles Dickens

Which are your favorite novels by Charles Dickens? For me, there are what I call the Big Four: Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Bleak House, and Our Mutual Friend. I am not trying to justify this list or claim that these are the best (although I would think any list ordering merit would put them high), simply to say that these are the novels that have given and continue to give me the most pleasure. I suspect that if one were to be dropped from the list of the best, many people would opt for Pickwick Papers. It is a funny sort of novel, appearing in 1836, harking back more to the 18th century than forward into the Victorian Era. (The Queen came to the throne in 1837). It is rather shaggy at first, because it was intended merely to give a story to a series of pictures; but then with the appearance of Mr. Pickwick’s servant Sam Weller it takes off and never looks back. My... Read More