“They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.”
–Ernest Dowson
“With great power, comes great responsibility.”
–Uncle Ben Parker, “The Amazing Spider-Man”
By Mumia Ali: The past year in particular has seen a frenzied debate in the public square, impacting on mating in the United States: street harassment, “Yes Means Yes” laws, the supposed date rape epidemic on the college campus, just to name a few; and all of this comes at a time when marital rates overall in the country are at all-time lows, out of wedlock births are at all-time highs and there are singletons of both sexes than at any other time in American history. Much has been and will continue to be said and written about all of this; but what has been missing from the cacophony are some hard evidence that the tectonic plates that undergird human mating in America have been shifting at a seismic rate. Oh, to be sure, there have been scholars and pundits like Andrew Hacker, Kay Hymowitz, Hanna Rosin and Charles Murray, who’ve all given their takes on the matter; but it wasn’t until “Date-onomics”, written by journalist Jon Birger, that we have an incontrovertible guide to the relations between the sexes in the 21st century.
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Date-onomics: How Dating Became a Lopsided Numbers Game …
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