Leon J. Podles :: DIALOGUE

You Tube has given show-off adolescent males further motivation to engage in spectacularly self-destructive behavior. Teenagers have filmed themselves wearing a protective suit in a bathtub full of fireworks and throwing a flaming basketball soaked in gasoline – with predictable third-degree burns as the result.
 
In Spanish island resorts the sport of balconing has become popular.. [...]

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The Pope welcomed a gathering of altar servers in Rome. As John Allen notes: 

First, for the first time this year, the female altar servers in attendance outnumbered the males. According to organizers, the balance was roughly 60-40 in favor of females. The official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, pointed to the turnout as a symbol of [...]

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Nicholas Kristof has an article in the New York Times (The Boys Have Fallen Behind) about the growing alienation of boys from education and about the consequent decline in their academic achievement. This decline is disguised by the fact that the people at the top of most professions are still male; but under them the [...]

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Patrick Welsh, who teaches in the Washington D.C, school system, has diagnosed the problem of poor academic achievement among black students: Making the Grade Isn’t about Race. It’s About Parents.

“Why don’t you guys study like the kids from Africa?”
In a moment of exasperation last spring, I asked that question to a virtually all-black class [...]

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Boys have a hard time in school. Teachers like the way girls sit still in school and don’t fool around. Boys are much too fidgety. My son Charles tried out school for one day; he complained for a week that his legs hurt him from sitting all day in class. When the principal asked [...]

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As I noted in my book The Church Impotent, the Christian churches and the schools are both female oriented, and boys, especially blue-collar boys, do not like to go to them.

In Quebec, the Montréal Gazette reports
It is mainly boys who drop out and in Quebec, they are mostly French-speaking. Before coming to power [...]

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The NYT article on the Calvinist and ultra-masculine Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill Church in Seattle is not too bad. Driscoll, by rejecting the prissiness of much of evangelical America, has some success in reaching rough young men with the gospel.
 
The theological analysis in the article uses stereotypes. Calvinists believe in total depravity – but [...]

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 One would think this sign is superfluous: 
 No esta permitido nadar - is not allowed swimming
But this guy tried to climb on the iceberg:

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I think this is for real, unless Sascha Baron Cohen has a new persona.   TAZ interviewed two Kok-Boru players in Kyrgyzstan. The sport was, for reasons that will become clear, outlawed when the country was part of the Soviet Union. My translation:   
TAZ: Herr Taigashkaeb, what goes on in Kok-Boru?

Ruslan Taigashkaeb: Two teams with four players [...]

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