I'd encourage people to volunteer at VAs. I wrote a little opinion blurb about it a few years back. When I was a teenager, I volunteered  at VA medical center. It was a very good experience for me. While I didn't learn much about military culture (that improved slightly when I married a  Sailor), I learned a little about the challenges our Veterans face and had an opportunity to interact with a lot of them. I still remember all those homeless Vets sitting on benches outside the hospital. They need our support and to share their stories, to know what they did mattered and that we appreciate them.

I don't think anyone is arguing that the standards wouldn't change. Women who would be eligible for Ranger training would be not be in combat arms. Yes, the qualifications would be different, but women are serving near the front line already. The entire argument rests on an assertion that women Rangers would "dilute its readiness." I think "readiness" is a bit ambiguous, considering the heavy rotation of guardsmen and reservists in recent years. They're ready, but they're also older and beaten up. 

Casey

As I understand it, not all Rangers are combat arms. Medical and supply folks go to Ranger school, do they not? Determining separate units for which women are allowed in the Rangers, but precluding them from combat arms would satisfy your stated argument against women in combat, but still give women the opportunity to pursue their career goals. That's a reasonable policy in my mind and one in which I believe all the Armed Services have adopted. 

Girls aren't strong enough, eh? I'd talk to Darby Nelson. Can you dead lift 350lbs?

"She wants to be able to physically and mentally ready for anything life throws at her, from carrying a buddy in combat to moving a couch. She chose the military because she considers soldiers heroes and wants to give back by doing the same." But the Rangers can't have her. She's going to the Naval Academy. 

And by all means, let's continue to meet our high *readiness* standards by sending reservists and guardsmen on multiple deployments. 

I'm am encouraged reading comments of parents, especially dads. My father was short on giving life skills, but long on handing out big doses of guilt and shame. Growing up, I was jealous of girl friends who had nurturing and supportive fathers, but I'm grateful that I was able to observe what appropriate father-daughter relationships look like. 

I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned the importance of being able to care for a young child, since many daughters will become mothers. I babysat a lot as a teen, and the experience taught me a lot about responsibility. There's a lot to be said for maternal instinct, but it helps to have some familiarity. I didn't have much occasion to care for kids after 21 until I had children myself. It also helped when I realized - shortly after our first child was born - that my sweet husband knew next to nothing about babies. He's a pro now, though. 

I'm a mom to 3 boys, and even though my eldest is 6, I have a framed copy of Kipling's "If" in their rooms. I want each of them to commit it to memory.

My first thought was that it reminded me of the armadillo groom's cake in Steel Magnolias. I find most people's outrage more interesting than the actual work. My reaction is a bit different - I find it a little derivative. I'm sure the artist was trying to make a point about the horrors of genital mutilation and perhaps the industrialized world's complacency concerning the practice. Performance artists using their bodies to project pain and/or sexuality as social or political commentary has been around for decades, but it's still popular. One of my former classmates from grad school hit the "big time" after she moved from photography to performance art. In one work, she had a tattoo artist write (using a needle, without ink) the names of victims of gay hate crimes all over her body.  With each name, a piece of paper absorbed the name written in blood.  Her "Blood Script" was purchased by the Hirshhorn Museum. You can see it and other works here. She was a really nice person, so I don't begrudge her success, but I do wish that high-concept shock art didn't dominate the art world.

None of the designs really blow my skirt up. But here's what I'd do:

1. No more water features or ponds. Maintain/fix the ones that are there. The rats on the Mall are terrible, and more water features will just attract them. Ride a bike through there at night, and they're like speed bumps.

2. I'd also nix any restaurants on the Mall as there are plenty of eateries within walking distance. 

3. Stop chewing up green space. It's called America's "front yard" for a reason. One of the best things about going down there is all the grass. People fly kites, walk their dogs, play hacky sack, play frisbee, and have picnics. People that visit The Mall on vacation usually do a few museums in a compressed amount of time, and they get museum fatigue. There needs to be some visual and physical resting space between the buildings and the bombardment of information therein. 

4. What they do need more of is bathrooms. Maybe staffed tourist centers/bathrooms that are secure. And they must have baby changing stations. 

5. TR is right about Gehry's  Eisenhower memorial proposal. It's an embarrassment. 

You should tune into my husband's new favorite show Duck Dynasty. One episode we watched featured squirrel hunting and the matriarch of the family expressing her enthusiasm for squirrel brains. 

Not to SAHMs, but WAHMs (Work At Home Moms). That has become a more common identification, at least it has on the mommy blogs I tend to frequent. 

Having taught in the public school system as well and at a predominantly black school in a urban, low-income area, I'd agree with your mom's assessment. The climate was one of utter despair. Academic intelligence and education is discouraged by black culture, but in poor areas there's plenty of information black children are expected to know and learn for survival. 

At least he'd have the benefit of personal experience, instead of "data." I live in an area that has a large black population, most are college-educated blacks that left D.C. and moved to the MD burbs to start families. I grew up in a very white homogenous community in TN, and after living here for the past few years, I've found that a lot of the prejudice toward blacks I was taught (mostly passively) growing up was unfounded. My experience my be merely anecdotal, but it's much harder to stereotype a race if you have friends of that race. 

Derbyshire's biggest problem is that he hasn't spent much time around black people. If he lived in my community for a couple of years, I bet he'd change his mind.  Not many African Americans in Huntington, NY, though. 

Tina Fey mentions this to a degree in her book Bossy Pants. The understanding of what is beautiful and sexy is changing. According to Fey, "now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass...the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to achieving this is Kim Kardashian, who was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes. Everyone else is struggling."

The sex tips are less about pleasing men, than using sex to get what you want from them. Feminism showed women that not only were they allowed and encouraged to enjoy sex, but they could use sex to their advantage. Cosmo could put "50 ways to get your man to take out the garbage, do the dishes and share his feelings" on the cover, but we don't want the men to know what we're up to. 

I'll second that this post is main feed material. I was hinting at this very idea a couple of months ago on a thread, but this  is so much more artful than I was. I grew up in a conservative evangelical tradition that made a point of being decentralized. Each congregation was autonomous, to the extent it could be, believing this was a restoration of the intended church model established in the New Testament. My family now attends a community church that we call "Baptist light," but its congregational structure was one of the the things that attracted us. The conceit of established Christian denominations is that they thought that unifying themselves through a centralized leadership would garner more power and influence to lead souls to Christ, but I think it is producing the opposite effect. They've gotten sidetracked, distracted. Christianity began and spread within an empire that was openly hostile to it. It can withstand this current bombardment, if we as Christians follow the example of the Christians of the 1st century and focus on our primary mission. 

I'd love to come, but I'll be picking up my MIL about that time from BWI. Some day I'll make it to one of these. Have fun!