Of interest for January 11th through January 12th

Of interest for January 11th through January 12th:

• National Endowment for the Arts Report Finds Fiction Reading on the Rise – “Nevertheless the proportion of overall literary reading increased among virtually all age groups, ethnic and demographic categories since 2002. It increased most dramatically among 18-to-24-year-olds, who had previously shown the most significant declines.”
• ‘There’s no stress’: Couple weds at Taco Bell on Yahoo! News – Is this envy I feel?
• Jerry Adler: Are Kidneys a Commodity? – “Cohen is a professor of law at George Mason University who for two decades has been fighting for the right to sell off his major organs—or to buy one from someone else, should he need it. …. Cohen has made his case at length in articles and books, but he can summarize it in a dozen words: “If you pay people for something, they will provide more of it.” This, he says, is as true of body parts as anything else.”
• Organ Trafficking Is No Myth – “Some stories—especially the ones about kidnapped children, stolen limbs and tourists murdered for organs—were clearly false. But it was also clear that slums throughout the developing world were full of AWOL soldiers, desperate parents and anxious teenage boys willing to part with a kidney or a slice of liver in exchange for cash and a chance to see the world—or at least to buy a car. [....] But not all organs flowed from poor countries to rich ones; Americans, for example, were both buyers and sellers in this global market. A Kentucky woman once contacted Scheper-Hughes looking to sell her kidney or part of her liver so that she could buy some desperately needed dentures.”
• First US count finds 1 in 200 kids are vegetarian – “Other surveys suggest the rate could be four to six times that among older teens who have more control over what they eat than young children do.”
• In Obama, many see an end to baby boomer era – “Interestingly, Kennedy is often claimed by boomers to be one of their own, even though he was nothing of the kind; born in 1917, he’d be 91 now. In the same way, many Gen Xers and even Gen Yers like to claim Obama, too”
• “Justices Will Hear Challenge to Voting Rights Act” – “The Supreme Court agreed yesterday to examine whether a central component of landmark civil rights legislation enacted to protect minority voters is still needed in a nation that has elected an African American president.”
• Why so many Americans under 30 are greeting a black president as old news – “It may sound strange to people who lived through the civil rights era, but it’s true: if you were born after, say, 1978, a black president doesn’t necessarily feel like a milestone. It feels like something you’ve seen before. You’ve watched Morgan Freeman lead the free world as the planet was menaced by a comet in “Deep Impact.” You’ve seen Dennis Haysbert, on the TV drama “24,” appearing more presidential for 79 episodes than some heads of state look in real life. And although he has not yet entered the Oval Office in a movie, you can no longer count the number of times that Will Smith has rescued mankind.”