The state of the culture

Sometimes it's comforting to live in a down-to-earth safe zone where looniness comes so much later than in other places that we have a better chance heading it off.

Look at me! Look at me! Damn you, you looked at me!

PORTLAND

Well, speaking of being offended.

What a great defense -- the "my affections were not alientated, I was always a cheater" argument. Cynthia Shackelford sued Anne Lundquist, the mistress of her husband Allan, under North Carolina's odd "Alienation of Affection" law for the breakup of her 33-year marriage and was awarded $9 million by a jury:

I hate giving The Journal Gazette attention so early in the week, but its Political Notebook writers brought up something too good to pass on. It seems Gov. Mitch Daniels challenged some reporters' cultural literacy when he said the General Assembly had played defense more than offense in what turned out to be a "Hippocratic session":

Brave new world:

In the 1970s, many U.S. colleges moved from having only single-sex dormitories to providing coed residence halls, with male and female students typically housed on alternating floors or wings. Then came coed hallways and bathrooms, further shocking traditionalists. Now, some colleges allow undergraduates of opposite sexes to share a room.

So, to recap. Some people get upset when customers spit on the floor of their business. Some people are freaked out by the possibility of having to work with men wearing dresses. That means Fort Wayne is an intolerant city. Or something.

When it comes to assisted suicide, most jurisdictions in this country still make it a crime (34 states, including Indiana,  explicitly by aw, and nine through common law).  Three staters (North Carolina, Utah and Wyoming) have abolished the common law of crimes and have no statutes criminalizing assisted suicide. In Ohio, the state Supreme Court has ruled that assisted suicide is not a crime. In Virginia, there is no clear case law, but there are civil sanctions against assisted suicide.

Oops:

Public service advertising campaigns that use guilt or shame to warn against alcohol abuse can actually have the reverse effect, spurring increased drinking among target audiences, according to new research from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.

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One unfortunate aspect of the 24-hour news-gossip-celebrity bombardment is that something we might care nothing at all about