>> Why Regina would consider a robo-marriage. Among her 10 reasons is this one: “Robots are sensitive and responsive.” Also, it’s “The safest sex on the planet.”

>> What happens to a planet dwarfed?. “Anton had a vested interest in Pluto’s planetary nature. He had just completed a report in his science class…. Did the revision of its status mean he could not keep his B+ for a job well done? Perhaps his grade would be demoted to a dwarf grade. He was suddenly feeling like a man without a country, or, in this case, a planet.” (via Utne)

>> Why do we put many Americans in jail?. “Our incarceration rate (714 per 100,000 residents) is almost 40 percent greater than those of our nearest competitors (the Bahamas, Belarus, and Russia),” notes Glenn C. Loury. Some key quotes:

Never before has a supposedly free country denied basic liberty to so many of its citizens…. Despite a sharp national decline in crime, American criminal justice has become crueler and less caring than it has been at any other time in our modern history….

Our society—the society we have made—creates criminogenic conditions in our sprawling urban ghettos, and then acts out rituals of punishment against them as some awful form of human sacrifice.

>> What I think about money. I answer Ten Money Questions on Blogher.

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