Rock the Casbah is a choice so obvious I'm sure you've thought of it.

The Four Horseman by Metallica (off Kill 'Em all) is another possibility.

Not completely suitable, but I remember hearing "Down with the Sickness" by Disturbed on the radio one night right after the Taliban's lines has broken in Afghanistan and it seemed to fit:

"It seems you're having some trouble In dealing with these changes Living with these changes Oh no, the world is a scary place Now that you've woken up the demon ... in me

Get up, come on get down with the sickness Get up, come on get down with the sickness Get up, come on get down with the sickness Open up your hate, and let it flow into me Get up, come on get down with the sickness You mother get up Come on get down with the sickness You fucker get up Come on get down with the sickness Madness is the gift, that has been given to me"

I'd actually support something like what Chicago requires (or used to, anyway), although at the time it was one of the reasons I decided not to go there. They have essentially a two year standard track for all students, which involves a basic grounding in western history, lit, and philosophy, along with (I think) basic science topics as well.

Their program might not be perfect, but the idea--of using 2 years of college to provide a rigorous base in all disciplines, is certainly a good idea. Most majors could then be accomplished in the remaining two years. The only field that might have a little trouble would be engineering, and even that, it seems, could be accomodated.

And very, very dry. I'm very interested int he area and the people and read mostly non-fiction, but I've already slogged to ahlat in the Treadgold twice, having to put it down for a while to read other things. And I'm not even halfway through it yet.

But I can vouch that it is comprehensive, although there are almost certainly better references if you're mainly interested in the religious aspects. You'll be reading 8 or 9 pages you're not interested in Treadgold to 1 that deals with religion, if the ratio is even that good.

Actually, I'd say the biggest change in marriage in the last few centuries has been the widespread assumption that romantic love is a central and indispensable part of it. To link back to a perevious poster, Montaigne had a wife and daughter, and in 2000 pages of autobiographical, soul-searching writing I think he mentioned them once.

And, although I just got married, I was in the dating scene recently enough, and don't remember I or any of my peers ever being especially confused about things. There is some slight uncertainty about what people expect, but I'm not sure that's such a bad thing, or any different than it ever was.

I dated essentially all professional women, and none of them were awful shrews, lacking femininity or crippled by overweening arrogance. I guess I'm missing any sense of the underlying crisis that the post seems to be talking about. Where is the evidence for all this terrible upheavel and uncertainty, the coldness of professional women? I've been around a lot of them, and don't see it. It seems to me to be a straining explanation to a problem of questionable reality.

"No one with any national clout listens to Southern whiners."

I guess you missed that whole Trent Lott thing, huh? The government is headed up by Southern Republicans that at the least give a hearing to confederate whining, and are perfectly willing to manipulate it to their advantage and kiss up to its proponents, although it's debatable how much any of them actually buy into the resentments they take advantage of.

On the larger subject, I'd say the victomology game is an example of the pursuit of a local maximum. It gives a short term boost to the minority's status and power by demanding at least superficial respect. But it fails to address any underlying complaints and so forfeits the possibility of longer term and more significant advances by playing up racism and resentment on both sides.

Just to stick up for my grad school alma mater, the University of Illinois is a top 10 Engineering school (top 5 in many fields) and is across the board better at engineering than any Ivy League school with the exception of Cornell.

The Ivies are all about the old traditional LAS fields, and law/business/medicine. Low class newby fields like engineering are far less exceptional there, at the schools that even offer such things. If you want an engineering degree, you're better off going to a random Big Ten school than a random Ivy.

I don't have the exact citation, but I remember a few years ago some sociologists did a simple study, which combined two factors. First, with some simple models they showed that small personal preferences could result in self-segregation. (Basically, if whites and blacks each have a small preference for living with their own race, then you get self-organization with the two colors seperating, without any real discrimination.)

Then they interviewd a bunch of people and found that actual preferences were far over the levels needed to produce segregation. I forget the exact numbers, but it was something like "Blacks didn't feel comfortable moving into a neighborhood that wasn't at least 50% Black, while whites didn't like moving into a neighborhood that was more than 30% black." Don't quote me on the numbers, but the basic point is that indiciduals basic preferences combine to naturally result in racial segregation in housing, without any explicit racism involved.

Well, if you assume that blondes are, on a purely physical basis, considered more attractive than brunettes, it follows that blondes will also, on average, be dumber (assuming that brains actually give a woman a selective advantage in finding a mate.)

A slightly dumber blond will have a same chance of winning a mate as a slightly smarter brunette (assuming that the blonde hair gives her an advantage.) Thus, selective pressure will produce a lower mean intelligence for blonde women than for brunette women.

Obviously, this is grossly simplified, and you'd have to add in maternal affects and 2nd or third order inheritence issues (smarter women have smarter kids, which will in turn produce more grandchildren), but I'd say a simple minded sexual selection argument easily explains the dumb blonde stereotype.

Of course, this sort of easy just-so Ev. Psych. argument is immediately and rightly suspect, but I thought I'd at least throw it out there.