Two Worlds
(UPI, June 9)  We live in a divided world. The division, however, is not between north and south, East and West or First World and Third World as have been variously suggested since the end of the last World War, but between two different factions, each led by Western, industrialized nations.

The division became obvious during the debate over Iraq. America, Britain and Australia led one side; France, Germany and Russia the other. Each had adherents spread throughout the world. Yet this is not a question of elites disagreeing, as is often supposed. The disagreement is between nations.

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Your Money and Your Life
(Tech Central Station, June 6) In March, I wrote about the controversy surrounding the EPA's valuation of life in their assessment of the economic benefits they think the nation will accrue through adoption of the Clear Skies initiative. In that analysis, I congratulated the EPA for taking the tough decision to adopt a prorated value of life based on the age of those whose health will supposedly improve as a result of the new policy. There have been two developments since that article that show that the controversy then was just the beginning.

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Getting Hitched
(City Journal, May 30) Social-services advocates usually make two arguments against the idea of promoting marriage among poor single-parent families. First, they charge, poor urban communities, where such families disproportionately reside, suffer from a chronic shortage of �marriageable� males�the men are usually young, feckless, and hostile to the idea of marriage. Even those who are potential �husband� material in such communities are chronically unemployed, making so little money that they wouldn�t raise the economic status of the mothers of their children even if they were to marry them. Second, the advocates say, marriages entered into because of a pregnancy or birth are likely to be much less stable than typical marriages. Given these realities, the advocates conclude, marriage promotion among the poor would be futile.

The first two arguments are pure bunk, as a new study from Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation makes clear. ...

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