Hot Air:

CNN has an interesting roundtable on the case of Jennifer Keeton, who has sued Augusta State University to keep from getting expelled for not repudiating her statements about homosexuality. Keeton expressed her biblical perspective on the subject in and out of class while working toward a degree in counseling, and the school mandated a “remediation plan” that appears to have required her to renounce her Christian doctrine in order to gain a diploma from the school. The school has responded that a bias against homosexuality would disqualify Keeton from certification, a position that would put most Christians in Keeton’s position.

Does this amount to a “thought police”?

Hell, yes, this amounts to a thought police. To deny students the ability to make a living based on their religious beliefs is as wrong as denying students a degree for not believing in the free market or freedom in health care choice. Good for Ms. Keeton for suing.

Lawrence Kane, author of the new book, Blinded by the Night, has let me know it is available now on Amazon. I wrote about the book here.

Blogger commenting problem

A number of you have emailed me or commented about blogger eating comments. No one here has done anything to "offend me" and I almost never delete comments unless I have warned the person several times or the comment is so hurtful or harmful to another commenter that I decide to delete it which is very, very rare. Sorry about the blogger problem. If you are trying to leave a comment, keep trying! Or at least rest assured that I am not moderating them. Hopefully, the blogger problem will be resolved soon.

Is extra weight a turn-off or a turn-on?

Neo-Neocon has an interesting post on the “does it make me look fat?” question. She later mentions a French study that says obese French women get less sex than their male counterparts:

Obese women were 30 percent less likely than “normal” women to have had sex in the last year, but obese men were just as likely to have had one sexual partner in the last 12 months as average guys. Professor Kaye Wellings, one of the authors of the study, summed it up pretty effectively by saying, “Maybe women are more tolerant of tubby husbands than men are of tubby wives.”

I don't know about people who are married but it seems to me in the 20's and younger set, the overweight (maybe not obese) women and girls in the US seem to do pretty well. Guys seem to hang all over the girl spilling out of her jeans with a few extra pounds. I have often wondered if the extra pounds and puffy look signal that the woman is on Depo-Provera or another form of birth control that packs on the pounds. Maybe younger guys sense this and go for girls who look like they put out? This is just a theory.

If male, do you care if a woman is overweight?

"A lot of men would like to be touched more, seduced more. Everyone wants to feel wanted."

I usually avoid stuff like this because it's usually so obvious but I took a look at 9 "harmless" habits that age you (via Instapundit). However, "harmless habit #9 looked important enough to mention to my readers--especially the female ones:

9. You can't recall when you last had sex
Yep, sex feels good and does wonders for your mood, but it's also fantastically great for your health. Research shows that people with active sex lives have stronger immune systems, less pain, a lower cancer risk, healthier hearts, and less stress. The best news: It can even make you look younger—up to 12 years, a study shows.

Act your age: Rekindle the romance between you and your partner. To shake things up, try making the first move next time. "Some women are not active participants in their sex lives," says Pat Covalt, PhD, author of What Smart Couples Know: The Secret to a Happy Relationship. "A lot of men would like to be touched more, seduced more. Everyone wants to feel wanted."

Stuart Schneiderman: Why do women cheat?

Fiction for those who like non-fiction and what is it with vampires?

One of the great things (among others) about being a blogger is receiving advanced copies of books in the mail. Yesterday, Lawrence Kane, the author of such non-fiction books as The Little Black Book of Violence: What Every Young Man Needs to Know About Fighting and Surviving Armed Assaults sent me his new work of fiction, "Blinded by the Night," that comes out soon.

I must admit that I am not much of a fiction reader. As a psychologist, I find truth to be stranger and more interesting than fiction, but I decided to give Kane's book a try. I am still not finished and plan on taking it with me on vacation, but I must say, so far that it reads like non-fiction and held my interest with the intriguing characters. I like the fact that Kane himself is a martial artist, and works in the security field as this insight gives real life to his characters, mainly in the form of officer Richard Hayes who is a Seattle cop.

The book opens with the reader learning about Hayes's life and what is going through the mind of a cop as he works with various predators. This is the stuff I'm interested in. At some point, Hayes goes hunting for a serial killer, and then the book runs more into metaphysical fantasy when he finds out that "the vampire he destroyed was the ruler of an eldritch realm...By some archaic rule, having defeated the monster's sovereign in battle, Richard becomes their king. Now he is responsible for a host of horrors who stalk the night, howl at the moon, and shamble through the darkness."

Now, normally, here is where I would drop out of the book, figuring that the fiction aspects would bore me, but Kane's use of psychological insight and his knowledge of the inner world of cops and martial arts has kept me reading. It's quite insightful and full of information about how this particular cop thinks about violence, which has piqued my interest.

Anyway, I'll stop here and read some more but I do have one question to ask of readers: Why are these darn vampires, like those in the Twilight series so interesting to consumers of fiction?

"Training doesn’t create jobs.”

New York Times: After Job Training, Many Still Scrambling for Employment:

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have enrolled in federally financed training programs in recent years, only to remain out of work. That has intensified skepticism about training as a cure for unemployment.

Even before the recession created the bleakest job market in more than a quarter-century, job training was already producing disappointing results. A study conducted for the Labor Department tracking the experience of 160,000 laid-off workers in 12 states from mid-2003 to mid-2005 — a time of economic expansion — found that those who went through training wound up earning little more than those who did not, even three and four years later. “Over all, it appears possible that ultimate gains from participation are small or nonexistent,” the study concluded.