Friday evening roundup

Very smart analysis of Tosh-gate. 

From the same source, very smart analysis of the Skinny Gossip post:

As long as we live in a culture that tells women that being admired and desired for the way we look is merely the normal condition of womanhood, something fundamental to our sex, it will be considered acceptable to evaluate women for their decorative value. As long as it's considered acceptable to pass public judgment on women's bodies, often negatively — to snark on and condemn and make fun of things that are truly beyond an individual's control — in public, then it's open season on all of our bodies. As long as women are in competition with one another to have the "best" body, we all lose. As long as there persists a single, narrow beauty ideal we are all instructed to live up to, none of us will live up to it. This game is rigged. There will always be some critic who can tell us where we are found lacking.

Coddling your kids does them no favors.

David Brooks disses elites, but in an intelligent way.

Look, I'm not a huge drinker (okay, the last couple of months has been an anomaly, but I've still managed to hold onto my phone). I don't need a drunk phone, but I definitely want a less expensive phone to carry around to certain places where there's a not negligible probability of loss or damage.

This article is about overconfidence in the realm of finance, but we were just talking about this analogy for dating: "Overconfident lotharios who ask out every woman they see, and who aren’t fazed when they get turned down, are over time likely to do better than wallflowers who never ask anyone out."

Another topic that has permeated many conversations recently: where have all the men gone? How many times have I heard/said the plea, "man up"?

What women want, sartorially.