Category Archives: Family/Marriage

Online dating: the physical attraction problem

In order for an online dating service to work, it has to reliably move people past the merely physical and help them perceive their match’s real attractiveness. In a post a couple weeks ago I mused about how the online dating world is plagued by what I guess we’ll call the “physical attraction problem.” I touched of a bit of controversy, both

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Parenting in the age of (runaway) digital media

A newly released report from the Center on Media and Human Development at Northwestern University tells us some things we probably already know and some other things that ought to disturb us a little. Our good friend Dr. Lynn Schofield Clark, author of The Parent App, walks us through the main findings and offers some analysis in a post at Psychology Today, and it’s

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Corporate prison thugs: things getting even worse for the Wierdsma family

Boulder DA: Is it wrong to give false testimony to a federal agency? Thomas Wierdsma: No, happens all the time. We reported a couple of times late last year on the outrageous case of Charles and Thomas Wierdsma. Charles is a corporate prisons executive (The GEO Group) who routinely beat his wife and Thomas, his dad (a GEO Group Sr. VP),  threatened

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Dumb jock? Hardly: Scott Fujita absolutely nails it on gay marriage (and civil rights generally)

If you only read one thing today, make it this. Scott Fujita of the Cleveland Browns reflects on what it means in a society when some people are regarded as “less than” others. A snip: I support marriage equality for so many reasons: my father’s experience in an internment camp and the racial intolerance his family experienced during and after

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Black Friday: America’s new high holy day

Black Friday is under way – has been since midnight, in fact. In many places around the country, retailers started kicking off the festivities at yesterday: over a quarter of Americans said they planned to go shopping on Thanksgiving. Or, as it will soon come to be known, Black Friday Eve. Or Black Thursday, maybe. Want to hear some fun statistics?

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The most important lesson we should all learn from the 2012 election

“You idiot! Get back in there at once and sell, sell!” As we set about the process of compiling and canonizing the 2012 election post-mortem, one thing we keep hearing over and over is how utterly stunned the Romney camp was at their loss. Republicans across the board apparently expected victory – the conservative punditry seemed certain of it – and

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Elections are educational! 14 things we wouldn’t have known without Campaign 2012

Everybody seems to be so negative about campaign season. They hate the ads, they hate the mudslinging, they hate the lying, they hate the candidates. Not me – I LOVE campaign season. Why? Because it’s an opportunity to learn stuff that not only didn’t I know before, but that I’d never learn any other way.

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North Carolina’s Amendment One and America’s youth: more on winning the battle and losing the war

Rachel Held Evans nails it: When asked by The Barna Group what words or phrases best describe Christianity, the top response among Americans ages 16-29 was “antihomosexual.” For a staggering 91 percent of non-Christians, this was the first word that came to their mind when asked about the Christian faith. The same was true for 80 percent of young churchgoers. (The next

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When followers lead, the leaders will follow: Obama supports gay marriage

Here’s what I wrote last night: On the other side of the fence, those of us who genuinely care about freedom and fairness are more outraged than ever. Outrage is motivating, and by the way, polls show that at least half of Americans support equality for LGBT citizens. It’s about six months until Election Day – how much mobilizing do you think

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An important life lesson, courtesy of Facebook and Amendment One

Facebook reminded me of an important lesson this morning. When I was young, I was an idiot. A well-intentioned idiot, to be sure. And in my defense, it must be said that I was probably less of an idiot than most kids my age. But still, I look back on the things I did, the things I believed, the insecurities

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Time to kiss off online dating: a long-overdue farewell to Match.com

Recently I was e-mailed, via Match.com, by an attractive woman (to the extent that profile pictures can be trusted, anyway) named Kathleen. I love that name, and her profile made her sound like someone I’d be interested in talking to a bit more, so I replied. We exchanged a couple of e-mails and I was thinking that maybe I’d like

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Dear Judge Adams: No, it was worse than it looked

“He who spareth the rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him correcteth him betimes.” (Proverbs 13:24) “Withhold not correction from a child: for if thou strike him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and deliver his soul from hell.” (Proverbs 23:13-14) By now, you’ve probably heard about the video of

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