John Mark Hansen told the story today of Thomas Jefferson, who'd been in France during the Constitutional Convention, asking George Washington about the merits of bicameralism. If you google it, you'll get various versions of the 'quoted exchange,' but essentially it goes like this:

After much discussion around the tea table, Washington turned sharply to Jefferson and said, "You, sir, have just demonstrated the superior excellence of a bi-cameral system by your own hand."

"Oh, how is that?" asked Jefferson.

"You have poured your tea from your cup out into the saucer to cool. We want the bi-cameral system to cool things."

Now, granted I rarely drink from anything as dainty as a teacup and saucer -- my style tends toward the mug or and the mega-mug. I've never found myself tempted to pour my tea or coffee into a saucer to cool it. Even if I were, I can't think that this would be possible without creating a mess. As I imagine it, the pouring onto the saucer isn't the problem so much as the bit of tea that drips down the side of the cup (perhaps the outward-curving lips of the proper tea cup alleviate are better for pouring). Ordinarily, the saucer is supposed to catch that, along with the drip from the spoon (I must be taking this black, else where would I leave that), but I can't set my cup down on that. Now, I've got the tea cup in one hand, which I don't want to set on the white linen tablecloth (no, I don't have one of those) because it will stain, and a saucer of tea, which is so shallow that it probably requires two hands to manage because that tea is spilt with the slightest tilt.

Just how is pouring the tea into a saucer a better idea than having the patience to let it cool a minute or two? (or having a mouth sufficiently desensitized to extremes of heat and spice that you can take it... hmm, what should I make with the other two habanero peppers in my fridge that are a bit much for the Yankee roommate?).

In response to Sara (and Amy and Will):

Stella Gibson pinpoints the real purpose of dating in Cold Comfort Farm (which by a sad misjudgment was omitted from the Observer's list of 100 best books):

"Flora ... dined quietly with intelligent men; a way of passing the evening which she adored, because then she could show off a lot and talk about herself."

So, why does everyone seem to think of dating as an activity that is separable from the particular people involved, for which rules & strategies can be devised? It reminds me of those horrible and misguided tips on how to win friends and influence people that urge you to do things like constantly repeat the name of the person you're speaking to--yuck!

Well, well. Nothing like a little argument on the true Nature and Purpose of Romance, Dating, or Love to get things going. Readers should note that Sara Butler can claim institutional superiority over me here, since she's devoted four years of her college career to trying to answer the question, "What is romantic love and its proper function in human life?". Nonetheless, I think she's really wrong.

Sara writes:

While you can use dating as a means to your own ends, I would suggest that it actually has a purpose of its own, although I recognize this is terribly old-fashioned of me. Ultimately, the point of dating isn't to get laid or have fun or even to discover yourself, but to find a suitable marriage partner. And while I don't think this means that you have to treat every first date with some sort of future-focused gravity, it does mean that dating well requires reference to this end point.

First, there's marriage. A lot of people simply don't want to get married, but don't wish to entirely foreswear romantic contact. Examples might include: A soldier or CIA Agent who knows that she'll frequently be moved from place to place, and would feel guilty disrupting somebody's life by dragging them along (if her emloyers even let her) but would feel even more guilty about asking somebody to sit at home holding a torch for her without knowing if she was alive or dead. Or a man who deeply loves two different women, but could never dream of picking between them. Or somebody with a terminal disease who doesn't want to bond herself "til death do us part" when death is so close around the corner anyway, and she would leave her partner with a much greater well of grief. Or somebody who isn't terminally ill, but who's old enough that death is around the corner all the same. Or somebody who isn't any of those things, but who simply thinks that a marriage commitment is a silly social construct. He might say:

There's only one thing you can really know-- that you love me NOW. At this moment. Don't look beyond. Sometimes a moment seems to contain the whole of beyond inside it-- but that's as close as we come to knowing eternity. It's the only glimpse we get.

[from Tom Stoppard's Dalliance]

(W)e should ask these questions and think about these things rather than just going with whatever feels right to us. These are questions that matter, however you answer them.

David Berstein blogs on a Wall Street Journal article about an increasing trend among employers to ask applicants for their SATs long after graduation from college." He quotes a colleague:

I find this heartening. The SAT is fundamentally an IQ test. While not the only measure of likely productivity on the job, intelligence is probably the most powerful and robust predictor. In the past college of attendance, major, and grades, while always subject to unreliability, were more powerful indices of both intelligence and other productive inputs than they are now. As these other predictors have become more debased it is good to see that the market is responding.

I, on the other hand, am reminded of that passage of Bloom's where he writes that if a young man wishes to woo a young lady these days, he shows her his LSAT scores. Sigh.

Guest blogger Sara Butler writes "Ultimately, the point of dating isn't to get laid or have fun or even to discover yourself, but to find a suitable marriage partner."

Really? I suppose society has failed to clue me in on to that point. Maybe if I had cable so that I could watch Sex in the City's Carrie go for the Russian ballet dancer, I would have been convinced of this point. But no, such is not the case, I haven't heard anything about that relationship since the NYT first announced that would be the upcoming season's plotline.

Granted, she does admit that she "despair[s] of convincing most people that dating ought to lead to marriage and be directed with that endpoint in mind," but there doesn't seem to be much of a point in writing such lines as the one above unless you to hope to convince someone.

I could understand, and I might agree with her, if she had instead written that the point of dating was to find someone you loved and who loved you. But why must this result in marriage (and what, Ms. Butler, is the point of dating for those people who can't legally marry)? That question aside, I'd say the most powerful argument against marriage is the desire to have no legal, contractual bonds connecting you to your partner: you will stay together because, each and every day, this is the life and future you want, a bond that isn't officially recognized by society or vowed before God or enforcable in court (assuming none will claim you were married at common law).

The objection, I suspect, is that marriage is a declaration before society that two people are a couple. I don't find this very convincing. Etiquette doesn't demand rings, so I'm not sure part of society does. It also remains to be explained to me why I care for society's recognition of my bond with my partner, especially since this word 'society' tends to be used in a way that suggests I don't really have any personal acquaintance with most of the people who comprise it.

Miss Manners tackles an etiquette issue near and dear to my heart:

Dear Miss Manners:

In my third year of law school, I have encountered a potential etiquette problem with an upcoming class. The professor is also a local attorney and, at present, an interim judge. Inside the classroom (as well as outside the classroom), how should I refer to the man: as Professor or as Your Honor?

In the past, other students have gotten around the quandary by calling him nothing at all, and although I find that rude, I don't want to commit a horrible error with a judge I will probably appear before in the future.

Context is important, as Miss Manners is sure you have learned in studying case histories. In the context of the class, your professor's title is "professor." When you appear before him in court, preferably in a professional capacity, but however you may find yourself facing him, the title to use is "Your Honor."

It's Wednesday, which is -- next to Sunday -- the best day for the New York Times. Wednesday features the beloved Dining & Wine Section. [In Chicago my roommate and I subscribed to the weekday Times for several months, but eventually stopped because some very-early-riser in our building kept stealing our Wednesday paper, and convenient access to Wednesday was most of the reason she wanted to subscribe.]

Today's Dining Section contains a piece by Marian Burros on taste-testing fast food salads and other healthy offerings, which is not bad, although Slate covered the salads issue much better three months ago. Then there's the requisite weird-food story, in this case about espresso pasta.

Meanwhile Eric Asimov and friends tasted a whole lot of wines that cost more than half a week of my rent. Asimov's pieces are usually worth reading because of the sense you get that he just really likes doing this stuff:

Wines can be divided into any number of categories — that's part of the fun of tasting. Are they conceptual wines that appeal to the head, or soulful wines that go straight to the heart? Are they earthy wines that speak of their soil and region, or are they airy wines that can transport you anywhere? Are they, as the writer Jay McInerney once asked, Lennon wines or McCartney wines?

Tuesday's Chicago Maroon contains the first edition this quarter of my new column. This piece is on the British drinking culture (and mostly just rehashes what I've already said in this blog). The issue also contains a Maroon staff editorial (which I had nothing to do with) making basically the same argument-- that we should give serious thought to liberalizing alcohol policies among college students.

Emily sent me this link a while ago, and I've been meaning ever since to blog on this exciting piece on the future of feminism by Elaine Showalter, the Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Princeton and a pioneer of feminist literary criticism:

Feminist ideas in the US and the UK will not generate another mass movement, and individual enterprise may have to replace collective power in bringing about change. The tactics and messages of feminist and equal-opportunity organisations are wrong for the times; strategies and rhetoric that were appropriate in the 1970s need to be re-examined; expectations have to change; communications need to be improved. Even that anathema of the left, free enterprise, could solve some unfinished business of the last women's movement.

At this point, I blinked, rubbed my eyes, and re-read the paragraph. Did she really just say that? Yes, yes she did, and it just gets better. Check out this astounding sentence: "But the problems facing women now are neither readily addressed through legal action nor sufficiently unifying to override individual priorities." And these two mind-blowing paragraphs:

So where do we go from here? If feminism is to endure in this century, I believe, it will require some very fundamental changes of thinking. In the Women's Liberation Movement, our slogan was "The personal is political". Well, that was a necessary point of view. I remember a meeting of the National Organisation for Women (Now) in 1971, when we were asked to sell our wedding rings and other jewellery to raise money for feminist political campaigns. Feminists then had so little economic clout, so little access to power and capital, that any change had to come from pressure on the government.

The slogan needs to be reversed today. Instead of insisting that all personal problems are political and need to be met by legal change, women can be encouraged to be more entrepreneurial and resourceful, and to take responsibility for coming up with exemplary solutions. Contemporary feminism needs to rethink its leftist pieties, and accept and approve women's real power and leadership - especially in fields traditionally regarded with suspicion or horror, such as politics, finance, business, the media and even the military. Rather than lamenting governmental intransigence, we need an emphasis on finding our own solutions to key problems.

This is pretty big deal. I mean, Ms. Showalter writes for The American Prospect! She is the author of Inventing Herself: The Quest for a Feminist Intellectual Heritage! And she's praising free enterprise as liberating women!

Ms. Showalter correctly recognizes the decline of contemporary feminism. Perhaps the most clear evidence of this is the unwillingness of today's women to label themselves feminists, but feminists still usually try to deny the demise of feminism or at least blame it on a conservative backlash instead of their own outdated tactics and agenda. Rather than adapting, feminists have clung all the more to their belief in the need for collective action, and they have tried to convince women of this need with hysterical scare-tactics. "Roe v. Wade is hanging by a thread!" "Bush is using the Patriot Act to create a theocratic patriarchy!" "Wal-Mart is going to eat your children!" Okay, maybe not that hysterical, but it seems that feminists never miss an opportunity to try and motivate us to collective action by telling us we are victims. And the thing is, most of us don't feel like victims, so most of us aren't motivated.

What's so wondeful about this essay is that Ms. Showalter reminds feminists that women have agency all on their own. For many years now, mainstream feminism has de-emphasized women's agency, telling us that we can't solve our own problems, that we need enlightenment from above and help from the government. But that's just not true. Women are now empowered individuals, and any attempt to address the problems that we still face must start from that principle. It is incredible to hear a traditional feminist say this, and I sincerely hope that her fellow "Veteran Feminists of America" take it to heart.

Come on now, Will, just because he doesn't share your crazy libertarian outlook on life and blind faith in technology, that doesn't mean that Mr. Kass is a fake bioethicist.