“You can juggle a BlackBerry and a breast pump in a lot of jobs, but not in the vice presidency.” With five children, including an infant with Down syndrome and, as Americans learned Monday, a pregnant 17-year-old, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska has set off a fierce argument among women about whether there are enough hours in the day for her to take on the vice presidency, and whether she is right to try. — International Herald Tribune

Why Me? Alec Baldwin’s disappointment, undimmed by success. Alec Baldwin, who stars in “30 Rock,” the NBC sitcom that has revived his career and done nothing to lift his spirits, has the unbending, straight-armed gait of someone trying to prevent clothes from rubbing against sunburned skin. He is fifty years old, divorced, and lives alone in an old white farmhouse in the Hamptons and an apartment on Central Park West—feeling thwarted, if not quite persecuted. — New Yorker

Questioning Question Time. I was pleased to see last week that outgoing Senate President, long-serving Liberal Senator Alan Ferguson (now in the role of Senate Deputy President), gave his view that Question Time is a farce. His view was fairly widely reported. As far as I know, no political commentator questioned the validity of Ferguson’s assertion at all. — Andrew Bartlett

Why I am leaving Guyland. Once the preserve of whacked-out teens and college slackers, this testosterone-filled landscape is the new normal for American males until what used to be considered creeping middle age, according to the sociologist Michael Kimmel. In his new book, “Guyland,” the State University of New York at Stony Brook professor notes that the traditional markers of manhood—leaving home, getting an education, finding a partner, starting work and becoming a father—have moved downfield as the passage from adolescence to adulthood has evolved from “a transitional moment to a whole new stage of life.” In 1960, almost 70 percent of men had reached these milestones by the age of 30. Today, less than a third of males that age can say the same. — Newsweek