Matins

¶ Swedish Paternity Leave. It’s expensive for taxpayers, and inconvenient for employers, but it’s transforming ideas of masculinity. (NYT)

Birgitta Ohlsson, European affairs minister, put it this way: “Machos with dinosaur values don’t make the top-10 lists of attractive men in women’s magazines anymore.” Ms. Ohlsson, who has lobbied European Union governments to pay more attention to fathers, is eight months pregnant, and her husband, a law professor, will take the leave when their child is born.

“Now men can have it all — a successful career and being a responsible daddy,” she added. “It’s a new kind of manly. It’s more wholesome.”

¶ “Belgium will not fall apart because of separatist success” — so says John Palmer in the Guardian. (Real Clear World)

The Flemish nationalists acknowledge that major policy areas such as defence and justice should remain Belgian until they can be transferred to the responsibility of a fully federal EU. Since this is an unlikely development in the near future, the nationalists will, in practice, settle for a further devolution of powers to the regions but within the Belgian federal state. Negotiations to form the next government will be long and difficult. Success or failure will probably come down to the thorny issue of the status of the Brussels region and the extent to which social security should no longer be a matter for the Belgian government but transferred instead to the regions – anathema to the dominant parties of the left in Wallonia.

Most Belgians don’t want to break up the country: point taken. Unfortunately, they don’t want to do much to salve the Fleming-Walloon breach, either.

While We’re Away

¶ It was easier to be wild in the old days. Bright young thing Teresa “Baby” Jungman, proposed to by Evelyn Waugh but turned down because he was already married, died at 102, an observant Catholic from beginning to end. (via  The Awl, sort of)

She was, however, very strict in her adherence to the Roman Catholic faith. Lord Longford was convinced that none of her admirers “got anywhere with her sexually”, and described her as “more like a nun, like a very friendly and fascinating nun”.

¶ Twentieth-Century Best-Seller lists, one for each decade. (Washington Post; via  The Morning News) Top-Ten CEOs in prison. Steve Tobak asks “why they did it.” (The Corner Office)

 Personality Disorder. Delusional, narcissistic psychopaths, call them what you want, it sounds like a no-brainer to me. I mean, most of these folks maintained their innocence to the end. That implies compartmentalization so they didn’t actually feel empathy for those affected by their actions. Denial is a powerful thing. Sure sounds like a behavioral disorder to me. Anyway, there’s no denying that each of these men functioned, and functioned exceptionally, until their issues caught up with them.

¶ Heading north means climbing uphill — according to our mental defaults. (Admit it: learning that the Nile flows north was a real shocker.) (Wired Science)

Volunteers also estimated that it would take considerably longer to drive between the same pairs of U.S. cities if traveling from south to north, as opposed to north to south, says psychologist and study director Tad Brunyé of the U.S. Army Research, Development, and Engineering Command in Natick, Mass., and Tufts University in Medford, Mass. For journeys that averaged 798 miles, time estimates for north-going jaunts averaged one hour and 39 minutes more than south-going trips, he and his colleagues report in an upcoming Memory & Cognition.

Have a Look

¶ Building a re-polarizing bridge from Hong Kong to China. (kottke.org)

¶ Neat signage: “Interventions urbaines et françaises.” (TrendyGirl; via The Rumpus)

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 at 11:21 am.