Sock
Another book I’m reading that I’ll just quote at length as a recommendation because it speaks on so many levels about things that I seem to care about. Penn Jillette, the magician, is also, I think, one of my favorite observers of life.
CHAPTER TEN Ding Dong The big, modern wrestling match is with puberty. Real scientists make it earlier and social scientists want to make it later. Any science that has the word “science” in it isn’t a science. “Social science.” “Computer science.” If your field is so insecure about its place in science that your field has to sneak the word in, your field is probably not science. Nutrition makes puberty begin earlier and earlier, and do-gooders want it later and later. They say it’s accelerated by pollution and hormones in the water, but the acceleration might just be access to a lot better food. Bunches of girls are hitting puberty at eight years old, and some parents want their kids in school until they’re twenty-five. But we don’t need those figures. Let’s just go with hitting puberty at fourteen and the governent trying to stop you from having sex until you’re eighteen. That’s a long four years. Okay, they say eighteen, but they mean sixteen. That’s a long twenty-four months. They say we’re young and we don’t know.
— Sock, Penn Jillette
