Category: News

Hace tiempo que quería hacer esta entrada, porque eso de andar tanto por autopista siempre da para ver situaciones curiosas o incluso peligrosas. Y no, de momento no he conseguido fotografiar a algún conductor de la A-52 miccionando (seguro que lo conseguiré…), pero os vuelvo a traer otro ejemplo de cómo no se debe de conducir cuando la climatología es adversa.

La foto que veis al principio no es un juego óptico, es simplemente lo que se veía desde mi coche una tarde de febrero por la A-6 con lluvia intensa, si agudizáis la visión podéis ver como una furgoneta Renault Trafic adelanta a otra, pero hay una diferencia clara, la Trafic lleva las luces antinieblas traseras puestas y la Berlingo no (que está siendo adelantada).

Una furgoneta blanca, con un gran chaparrón cayendo y algo de niebla en el ambiente y tan tranquilo que iba el conductor sin conectar nada más que las luces de cruze, es una situación perfecta para que sufra una colisión por alcance, puesto que iba a una velocidad inferior a 90 km/h. Y la comparación clara de visibilidad la teneis con la Trafic que al menos se le ven las luces e intuyes que hay un vehículo.

Que conste, que cada día estoy más convencido que no sabemos conducir con aguaceros intensos, porque me he topado con varias tormentas y situaciones similares muchas veces y el comportamiento de muchos conductores es irresponsable, lástima que no siempre podemos sacarle fotos y comentarlo.

Foto | David Taboada

Gameloft, developer of downloadable games, announced 10 HD games aimed at higher end Android smartphones (like Sony Ericsson XPeria X10, HTC Desire, HTC Incredible, Motorola DROID, Motorola Motoroi or Nexus One). The catch, however, these games will be sold outside Google’s Android Market and sold directly from their website at $4.99 USD each.

Luckily your favorite Android App Review website will have all the games reviewed soon with videos, so you can virtually try it before you buy it!

The 10 titles include:

• Asphalt 5
• Let’s Golf!
• Assassin’s Creed
• Hero of Sparta
• Gangstar: West Coast Hustle
• Dungeon Hunter
• Real Football 2010
• N.O.V.A. Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance
• Modern Combat: Sandstorm
• Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X

Stay tuned for our reviews soon!

[Via Wired via Gameloft Press Release]

Need a quick and easy place to store your headphones? I’ve been unplugging mine and putting them in a drawer, but I think I like this idea better. The person who sent the tip into Lifehacker suggests mounting a coathook to the bottom of your desk, and then hanging your headphones from the hook. I like the idea, but what if you have a glass desk?

Aside from the obvious problem if you have a glass desk, placement is also key. I’ve got rather long legs and loathe keyboard drawers because they are an exercise in pain. Obviously you’d want to place the hook to the side of the desk instead of the middle, but what about smaller desks? I’m going to do a slight variation on this and use one of those 3M Command Hooks. Best part is, it doesn’t require you do drill a hole in your desk (or wall), and it’s easy to move if necessary.

Devon Burr
Assistant Professor
Earth and Planetary Sciences

Expertise:
Devon Burr is an expert in planetary geology, particularly of Mars and Titan. Her research focuses on understanding the evolution of these bodies as evidenced by their surface features. Burr is involved in investigations into flooding and fluvial (river-related), glacial, periglacial (ground ice) or wind-formed landscapes. She regularly uses data returned by NASA spacecraft missions to other planetary bodies. To support analysis of these remote mission data, she conducts geologic field work on terrestrial analogues, wind tunnel laboratory experiments and numerical modeling.

Expertise Categories: Geology | Planetary Geology | Geomorphology | Mars | Titan | Rivers | Flooding | Astrobiology | Wind Tunnels

Contact Information

Email: [email protected]
Phone: 865-974-6010
Web: http://web.eps.utk.edu/faculty/burr.html

Paulson scooped up tons of bank shares last quarter, continuing a trend we’ve seen for awhile now.

Paulson said back in the fall that Bank of America was a double from there, and that was when BAC was at around $16 per share. The stock is up slightly now, but was up significantly mid-April.

Check out the chart:

Here’s what Paulson bought and sold last quarter, according to his 13F:

Bank of America: ~170 million shares, up from ~150 million for a total investment of $3 billion

CIT Group: ~4.5 million shares for ~$170 million

Wells Fargo: 17.5 million shares for ~$550 million (he bought into Wells Fargo in Q4 and upped his stake about ~$100 million)

Kraft: Paulson sold out completely

MGM: 40 million shares for ~$500 million

Paulson also bought up (he owned some in Q4 too) Lear Corp, the car seat and car power manufacturer we mentioned Eric Mindich bought a stake in last quarter. And he upped his stake in SPDR slightly.

Join the conversation about this story »

Filed under: Spy Photos, Hybrid, SUV, Hatchback, Land Rover

It was only a matter of time before our army of steely-eyed spy photographers were able to snag a handful of shots of the upcoming Land Rover LRX. Proving once and for all that BMW doesn’t have the market cornered on psychedelic vinyl body wraps, the Indian-owned British SUV manufacturer’s answer to the CUV question was spotted busting a move on public streets. If you can look past the electrified coral reef patterns smeared all over the vehicle’s body work, it’s easy to see that this may be the most interesting thing to roll out of the brand’s tea-drinking consciousness in years.

So far, we know that the LRX may or may not sail under a different name once it lands in showrooms next year. Whatever Land Rover decides to call it, the baby-ute should be available in both front and all-wheel drive flavors. That’s right, we said 2011 will bring a FWD Land Rover to the scene. If that’s not enough to put a twist in the knickers of brand purists everywhere, reports have also suggested that buyers will also be able to opt for a hybrid version.

So why are we so excited? This has to be one of the best-looking, most innovative models we’ve seen from Land Rover since England was still invested in crushing lesser cultures for the good of Queen and country. The LRX isn’t square, isn’t powered by a V8 and will actually attempt to address real-world concerns like fuel economy. Even better, judging from the short overhangs front and rear, the all-wheel drive version will possibly be able to keep up with its big brothers once the going gets off road.

Spy Shots: 2011 Land Rover LRX stays true to the concept originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 17 May 2010 15:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Qualcomm, makers of just about every comm chip in existence, are holding their annual Uplinq conference in San Diego this year and would like to invite you folks to roll on down for a bit of mobile fun in the sun. Check out their site and if you think the event is for you hit the jump for a coupon code to get 20% off.

The first 100 CrunchGear readers who register for the conference will receive a 20% discount off the $375 registration fee – an offer only available for the blogger community. Your readers just need to enter the promo code “CRUNCH123” upon registering (in the Registration Code box) and if they are within the first 100, they will receive the discount.

The registration site is right here and don’t forget your coupon code.

Estabrook Drive will close and portions of Cumberland Avenue and Neyland Drive on the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, campus will be reduced to one lane each way this week.

Construction work on underground electrical and sewer lines will close Estabrook Drive starting today and ending Monday, May 24. One lane eastbound and one lane westbound on Neyland Drive between Lake Loudoun Boulevard and Leinard Lane will be closed from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. starting today and ending Friday, May 21.

Cumberland Avenue between 16th Street and James Agee Street will be reduced to one eastbound lane and one westbound lane starting at 7 a.m. today and will remain closed 24 hours a day Mondays through Thursdays until Thursday, June 17. The lanes will reopen on Fridays and weekends during the construction.

Work crews will be conducting utility work and sewer system upgrades on the closed lanes.

For more information call (865) 594-7242.

Gameloft first demonstrated what they could do on Android with their hit racer Asphalt 5 and now the company is back with a full stable of 3D games. Android fans can now enjoy envy 10 new titles, which many iPhone/iPod users might recognize.

In order to play any of these new games, customers will have to purchase them from Gameloft’s smartphone site. Only Asphalt 5 is located on Google’s Android Market, but we expect the others will eventually show up.

Buyers should beware because several users have reported problems when trying to download and install the games. Gameloft will offer users a refund, but expect to run into some issues. It sounds like Real Soccer 2010, Let’s Golf!, and Asphalt 5 are the only titles working. The list of non-working games includes Assassin’s Creed, Modern Combat, NOVA, Hero of Sparta, Dungeon Hunter, HAWX, and Gangstar.

If you try out any of the games, let us know which ones work and we will update our post with a list of issues.

Potential buyers should also know that many of these games are iPhone ports originally designed to work with a PowerVR graphics processor. This means that they will play better on the Droid (which also uses PowerVR) versus any of the Snapdragon phones (Nexus, Incredible, EVO) that have not been optimized. Users who own first generation Android devices should avoid these games.

Gameloft Android games.

New Gameloft titles include:

• Modern Combat: Sandstorm
• Let’s Golf!
• Hero of Sparta
• Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X
• Real Soccer 2010
• Dungeon Hunter
• Asphalt 5
• Ganstar: West Coast Hustle
• Assassin’s Creed – Altair’s Chronicles
• N.O.V.A. Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance

Though it’s slated for a Q3 launch in Europe and Asia, that doesn’t mean that the HTC Wildfire will be ignored.  Sporting a 525MHz Qualcomm MSM7225 processor, the Wildfire offers a 3.2-inch QVGA screen, 5.0-megapixel camera, Android 2.1 with HTC’s Sense UI, 802.11b/g WiFi, GPS/AGPS, Blueooth 2.1+EDR, and a built-in microSD card slot.  The device offers 900/2100 MHz UMTS/HSDPA support, so it’s a no-go in the US unless you’re using T-Mobile.

At the end of the day, it’s a decent mid-range Android phone.  HTC’s full press release is below.  Anyone giving thought to unlocking one of these puppies and using it as your personal device?

KEEP YOUR FRIENDS CLOSE WITH HTC WILDFIRE

LONDON – 18 May, 2010, 07.00 CEST – HTC Corporation, a global designer of smartphones, today introduced HTC Wildfire™, a new HTC Sense-based Android phone that integrates the most popular social networks to help bring your friends closer to you. HTC Wildfire closely follows the success of the acclaimed HTC Desire and makes the company’s signature HTC Sense experience accessible to a younger audience.

Availability
The new HTC Wildfire will be broadly available to customers across major European and Asian markets from Q3 2010.

Via Engadget

Avatar star Zoe Saldana is in early discussions for the lead role in Columbiana — a upcoming Luc Besson-produced action drama set in Latin America — according to a scoop from The Hollywood Reporter.

The Dominican-American/Puerto Rican actress — whose credits include Star Trek, The Losers, and Death at a Funeral — would play a young Colombian woman who, after witnessing her parents’ murder as a child in Bogota, grows up to be a stone-cold assassin. She works for her uncle as a hitman by day, but her personal time is spent engaging in vigilante murders she hopes will lead her to the mobster responsible for murdering her parents.

The project — directed by Transporter 3’s Olivier Megaton — is expected to begin production this summer..

[JURIST] US President Barack Obama [official profile] on Monday signed into law the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act [HR 3714 materials], aimed at promoting worldwide press freedom and drawing attention to countries where journalists are threatened, harmed, or censored. The law requires the secretary of state to submit an annual report to Congress detailing a description of the freedom of the press in each country, identifying countries where there have been violations of press freedom, and how the governments of the countries violating press freedom are responding to the violations. The law also establishes a grant program aimed at promoting press freedom. Critics of the law claim it takes no tangible steps toward promoting press freedom, but the co-sponsors of the bill indicated the law is a good first step, stating [press release]:

We hope this legislation will help the United States work with other nations to better protect [journalists] serving on the frontlines in the fight for greater accountability and transparency. Freedom of expression cannot exist where journalists are not safe from persecution and attack. Our government must promote freedom of the press by putting on center stage those countries in which journalists are killed, imprisoned, kidnapped, threatened, or censored.

The legislation is named after Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl [JURIST news archive] who was murdered after being abducted in Pakistan in 2002 while reporting on events following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US.

The US reports on press freedom will join those issued annually by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) [advocacy website] detailing the rankings of press freedom worldwide. In addition to their annual rankings, earlier this month, RSF issued a list of threats to press freedom [JURIST report]. Last month, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) [official website] ordered the government of Azerbaijan [JURIST report] to secure the immediate release of imprisoned Azeri journalist Eynulla Fatuallyev, who was jailed on what many international organizations claim are spurious charges. Also last month, many rights groups expressed concern [JURIST report] over a Fiji draft bill that would allow the government to sentence journalists to up to five years in prison for publishing controversial content and require them to reveal sources of information. In March, Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] urged the Cuban government [JURIST report] to allow more freedom of expression and release those jailed for criticizing the government.

Intel is about to join you in the living room — the chip maker is touting its new Wireless Display technology, or WiDi, as a simple way to get content from a computer onto the television in your home. By streaming media over a point-to-point Wi-Fi connection, WiDi removes the need for consumers to physically connect a computing device to a television set with wires, making for a more seamless experience.

The solution isn’t totally wireless, though — in this first iteration, you’ll need a small, Intel-powered box wired to your television set. Think of it like a base station that accepts wireless media from computers and then pipes that content over a cable to your TV. Intel expects that the box will eventually go away because the brains of the receiver can be integrated into future television sets.

With so many ways to get content on a television these days, WiDi didn’t sound that impressive to me at first. In fact, it sounded almost at odds with the WiGig alliance that Intel formed with Atheros and Broadcom, also an effort toward wirelessly throw content around the home using 60 GHz spectrum. Plus there are already plenty of web-connected boxes on the market today that gather content for home playback.

In our home we use an Xbox 360, an Apple TV and a Roku HD-XR unit to watch media on our HDTV set. About the only thing that Intel’s WiDi functionality would replace for us is the occasional connection of a laptop to the big screen for photos that haven’t yet been transferred to the Apple TV library. But then I noticed an interesting future use case for WiDi — according to statements made by Intel’s CEO, Paul Otellini, last week on an investor call, Intel plans to enable the functionality in smartphones, tablets and other handhelds.

That won’t happen for some time, as WiDi currently only works with the new Intel Core i5 and i7 chips, the ones that also power mid-to high-end laptops and desktops. Intel expects the lower-end Core i3 processor to support WiDi in the near future. Once laptops can wireless push content to a consumer electronics display, the next frontier is a pocketable device — something I envisioned back in 2005 with the iPod and HD playback capability. I didn’t plan for the wireless connection but conceptually, it’s the same idea. Consumers would carry digital content for mobile enjoyment but then seamlessly transfer the experience to a large screen when at home.

But Intel faces a challenge if WiDi is ever to move beyond the laptop. The company can’t put WiDi in handsets until it powers those handsets to begin with. That effort is Intel’s Atom platform, which continues to evolve as a more power-efficient chipset to battle against chips built on the ARM architecture. For that reason, I don’t expect to wirelessly stream content from a smartphone to my HDTV set for at least another two years. Om thinks that Intel will be a mobile loser, and while I agree that the odds are stacked against it in the handset market, a technology like WiDi could provide Intel with a competitive advantage over ARM solutions and open doors in the smartphone market.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

• Slow And Steady, Netflix Pulls Ahead in Streaming Video
• TV Apps: Evolution From Novelty to Mainstream
• Making Movies Mobile

Dale Peterson has got a big horse, a big gun and a big accent to prove he’s ready to win.

Peterson is running in the Republican primary for Alabama Agriculture Commission and he means business.

Check it out:
Click here to see Peterson political ad campaign.

His hard hitting ad is quite literally an overnight Internet sensation, with more than 100,000 hits and climbing, since he posted it last night.

According to Peterson, Alabama is losing over 1,000 farms a year. He claims that this can be prevented by using the commission’s billions of dollars.

“Bet you didn’t know that.” He claims that residents are unaware of this money because the current politicians  –the “thugs and criminals” are “keeping citizens in the dark,” in order to “do whatever they want” with that money.

The campaign add first introduces us to Peterson with a shot of his dog tags and Marines badge resting on top of the Constitution.

“They don’t give a rip about Alabama,” Peterson dramatically says of the incumbents.

But he does. His drill sergeant tone and shotgun in-hand reaffirm his quest to save Alabama and maybe even our country. He vows to “name names and take no prisoners.”

Philadelphia-based national automotive aftermarket and service chain Pep Boys has agreed to pay $5 million in civil penalties for importing and selling Chinese motorcycles, recreational vehicles and engines that did not comply with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requirements. The case is the largest ever brought by the government under the Clean Air Act.

“Equipment imported into the United States that does not meet our pollution control rules is bad for human health and the environment, and unfair to those companies that play by the rules,” the EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance said in a statement.

The supplier of the ATVs and other vehicles, Baja Inc., has also settled with the federal government and has agreed to pay $25,000 in fines.

“Pep Boys strives to be a good corporate citizen,” said General Counsel, Brian Zuckerman. “Unfortunately, in this circumstance, we relied upon our vendors to ensure that their products were compliant. We now take it upon ourselves to ensure that all of our small-engine merchandise fully complies with the Clean Air Act.”

The complaint alleged that Pep Boys and supplier Baja imported at least 241,000 illegal vehicles and engines between 2004 and 2009. The totals sales resulted in 620 tons of excess hydrocarbon and nitrogen oxide emissions and more than 6,520 tons of carbon monoxide emissions, which in plain English is really bad for the environment.

– By: Omar Rana

Source: LATimes

One of our favorite cars just got a little bit better.

For the 2009 model year, the BMW 3-series sedan and wagon received a minor face lift that included new front and rear lights and a modified trunklid, grille, and front bumper. Inside, the car received the latest version of iDrive and some improved materials. These changes have now been carried over to the coupe and convertible models for the 2011 model year.

Keep Reading: 2011 BMW 335i Sedan – First Drive Review

Related posts:

1. 2010 BMW 335i xDrive Sedan – Quick Spin
2. 2009 BMW 328i / 328xi / 335d / 335xi / 335i / 3-Series Sedan and Wagon – Official Photos and Info – Car News
3. 2011 BMW 3-series / 328i / 335i Coupe and Convertible – Official Photos and Info

The World Bank must systematically address issues of environmental and social sustainability in its mainstream investments.

This post originally appeared on the World Bank blog “Development in a Changing Climate.”

In Copenhagen, donor countries pledged to raise US$30 billion in “fast start funds” and an additional US$100 billion a year by 2020 to invest in reducing emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change. Though the commitments are clear, the delivery is uncertain. By the June UNFCCC meetings in Bonn, countries will need to start drafting a set of decisions on the financial architecture to manage and distribute these climate funds.

By embarking on several climate change initiatives, including an assessment of progress in implementing the Strategic Framework on Development and Climate Change (SFDCC) and the revision of its Energy Strategy, the World Bank has positioned itself to play a role in the management of new climate funds. The Bank already hosts several climate related trust funds, including the Climate Investment Funds. It is the trustee of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and its largest implementing agency. The question is whether the Bank should be entrusted with an even larger role in the future of climate finance. If it is going to gain the political support necessary to make this happen, the World Bank must systematically address issues of environmental and social sustainability in its mainstream investments.

Poverty Eradication and Low Carbon Development

The main challenge for the Bank will be to respond to the needs of developing countries while still promoting scalable investments in low carbon development. In order to do this, the Bank must overcome the mindset that there are inevitable tradeoffs between addressing climate change (and other environmental challenges) and facilitating pro-poor development. In fact, the best route to poverty eradication is low carbon development. Fortunately, there are numerous project and policy interventions that provide synergies between the low-carbon and the development agendas. Helping countries capture those synergies should be the guiding principle of the Bank’s climate work and its future energy sector strategy.

The ongoing energy strategy review offers the Bank a major opportunity to demonstrate leadership and a commitment to change. In 2008, WRI research showed that 60% of financing for the energy sector did not take climate change into account. Also, in 2010 the World Resources Institute released another survey that shows only a limited number of World Bank and other MDB (electricity sector only) loans consistently support sustainable energy investments in developing countries. The Bank now says that 60% of its country assistance strategies consider climate change. Does this signal real change?

A Greater Voice for Developing Countries?

The second challenge will be for the World Bank to embrace changes in its governance structures and procedures in order to give a greater voice to developing countries. This should be done in a manner that ensures efficiency, effectiveness and accountability, but more importantly result in better environment and development outcomes. The key principles to guide the Bank should be:

• Recognition of common but differentiated responsibilities between countries, taking into account national circumstances and the needs of those who are most vulnerable.
• Country ownership of plans that are rooted in development objectives. These plans should be developed with the participation of civil society and non-state actors.
• Provision of incremental financing and technology and financial support to help developing countries leapfrog into low carbon or zero carbon trajectories.

The ability to balance climate change and sustainability objectives with poverty and development objectives is no mean feat. With greater power comes responsibility and developing countries need to demonstrate equal support to climate-friendly approaches. Several are already starting to do a significant part of their share in addressing climate change and are in fact willing to cover part of the costs. A new approach is perhaps overdue in that we explore more ways of “blending” various forms of financing, such as multilateral, bilateral, private, and trust fund monies, in order to help meet the incremental financing required for countries to transition towards low carbon development.

We’ve been covering the new US operation, US Copyright Group. You may recall, it burst on the scene in late March with a claim of having filed 20,000 infringement lawsuits — many of which were over a Uwe Boll movie, Far Cry, despite much of the infringement allegedly occurring before the film was registered at the US copyright office (a no-no for filing a lawsuit). More recently, the company was apparently gearing up to do the same thing over the Oscar-winning movie Hurt Locker.

During that time, we noted that US Copyright Group claimed that it had gone from having one ISP cooperating to “75%” of ISPs cooperating. This was a surprise, because years back, ISPs had been reluctant to cooperate with similar efforts. So the numbers seemed questionable. Either way, apparently Time Warner Cable is not at all interested in working with US Copyright Group. Instead, TWC went to the court to protest US Copyright Group’s efforts:

“Copyright cases involving third-party discovery of Internet service providers have typically related to a plaintiff’s efforts to identify anonymous defendants whose numbers rank in the single or low double digits,” wrote the cable company. “By contrast, plaintiff in this case alone seeks identifying information about 2,049 anonymous defendants, and seeks identifying information about 809 Internet Protocol addresses from TWC….”

“If the Court compels TWC to answer all of these lookup requests given its current staffing, it would take TWC nearly three months of full-time work by TWC’s Subpoena Compliance group, and TWC would not be able to respond to any other request, emergency or otherwise, from law enforcement during this period,” said the filing. “TWC has a six-month retention period for its IP lookup logs, and by the time TWC could turn to law enforcement requests, many of these requests could not be answered.”

Pretty interesting, given Time Warner Cable’s connection to Time Warner, which you would think would make it a bit more open to working with US Copyright Group. The article at Ars Technica also notes that Comcast and Cablevision also aren’t thrilled about US Copyright Group’s subpoenas. That’s three of the largest ISPs out there, so I’m curious about the 75% of ISPs who are supposedly “fully cooperating.” It sounds like that claim is about as legitimate as many of the original filings over infringement on a work who was not registered at the time of infringement.

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Conservatives have ideas, and it’s silly for liberals and moderates to claim they don’t. So let’s take a look at this article on some “innovative and controversial” ideas in the conservative movement.

First: taxes and babies. Robert Stein argues that the tax system is unfair to parents. “Once a country adopts an old-age pension system, it creates an
implicit bias against raising children,” Stein says. “Once a country gives everybody
access to everyone else’s kids’ money, it undermines the natural
economic incentive to raise kids.” To remedy the problem, Stein would quadruple the child-tax credit from $1,000 to $4,000, and make up the money by moving upper-middle income tax payers into a higher tax bracket.

Is it good policy to encourage families to save up to $12,000 a year by having three kids? I don’t know. But it’s a little weird to me that we’re talking about increasing the money rewards for American-born babies while also talking about spending billions to plug up the borders in the South; and profiling Mexicans in Arizona; and watching brilliant college grads leave the country after their visas expire. Countries with old-age pension systems need large tax bases. If we are legitimately worried about too few people paying for our expensive retirement plans, we should consider that immigrants are people, who work for money, whom we can tax.

Second, there’s this idea for the government to promote marriage by building advertorial billboards and punishing folks who want to divorce a spouse against his/her will:

[UVA Prof. Bradford Wilcox] proposes federal funding for public-service announcements and
other social marketing to promote marriage, modeled on anti-smoking
campaigns.

And to discourage divorce, he says, states should change marriage
laws so spouses who are being divorced against their will and have not
engaged in abuse or adultery would be given preferential treatment by
family courts in determining alimony, child support and custody of
children.

This is a little confusing. There’s a debate about whether married couples face a tax penalty (which can happen when two people of similar wages get hitched) or a tax benefit (couples with disparate incomes often see a tax break). So the tax system might provide uneven incentives to marry. But why promote marriage above cohabitation in the first place? Why promote it with billboard ads? Why encourage spouses to remain in unhappy marriages by tipping the scales against them in court? And if marriage really is “a kind of economic cooperation, a form of social insurance,” as Wilcox argues, why deny it to gay couples?

What’s bothersome is not merely the specter of government-sponsored marriage billboards. It’s strange that conservatives would spend considerable energy pushing couples to marry and reproduce when the evidence suggests that late marriages often last longer and allow both partners’ work skills to reach maturity. Jon Rauch wrote a fascinating column on the topic of red and blue families that looked at how marriage ages, childbearing rates and political ideologies meshed with culture in the 21st century. Read the whole thing. But these were striking paragraphs:

[For blue state families] early family formation is often a
calamity. It short-circuits skill acquisition by knocking one or both
parents out of school. It carries a high penalty for immature marital
judgment in the form of likely divorce. It leaves many young mothers,
now bearing both the children and the cultural responsibility for
pregnancy, without the option of ever marrying at all.

New norms arise for this environment, norms geared to prevent
premature family formation. The new paradigm prizes responsible
childbearing and child-rearing far above the traditional linkage of
sex, marriage, and procreation. Instead of emphasizing abstinence until
marriage, it enjoins: Don’t form a family until after you have finished your education and are equipped for responsibility.

Surely, cheering couples onto the alter isn’t the federal government’s job.