Thanks to everybody who wrote in responding to my most recent cohabitaiton post to point out the wealth of studies purporting to show that couples who cohabitate-then-marry have higher divorce rates than couples who marry without ever living together first. However, no study of this that I have seen yet does a plausible job of controlling for the potentially spurious variables. Put simply, how do we know that premarital cohabitation causes divorce, rather than it being the case that couples who marry straight away are simply stronger couples for social, religious, cultural, economic or personal reasons?

Think of it this way-- we know that decisions about whether to shack up before marriage or not are not distributed randomly across the unmarried population; people in certain economic situations, certain religious groups, and possessed of certain views about the world and the stability of their relationship are more likely to do so than others. Each of those things seems quite likely to also have an effect on the divorce rate, and while it is easy to control for income, church attendance, and denomination, the other equally important variables are hard to control for, and I have not yet seen a plausible attempt at doing so.

It is quite possible that this is simply ignorance, so if readers know of such a study, please pass it along. Until then, I believe the verdict remains Not Proven.

I got my hands on the text of Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll this weekend. The play has received raves in the British reviewing press, and whil I am pretty sure that a great deal is lost in reading it rather than seeing it live, I can say that this is indeed some of Stoppard's best stuff. It will bear several re-readings before I can say for certain how it compares; I'll also probably have to acquaint myself a bit more with both Pink Floyd and the Velvet Revolution, both of which figure prominently. (The basic question of the play is about the relative personal and global importance of liberty, love, and rock music-- sort of like The Real Thing meets Squaring the Circle).

In the meantime, I have been composing an iTunes of every song that gets played during the play. It is far from complete, but at the moment, already the list includes: I'll Be Your Baby Tonight (Bob Dylan), Wouldn't it be Nice (The Beach Boys), Chinatown Shuffle (The Grateful Dead), Break On Through (The Doors), I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (U2), I'm Waiting For the Man (The Velvet Underground), Don't Cry (Guns n' Roses), It's All Over Now & It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (but I like it) (The Rolling Stones), Golden Hair (Syd Barrett alone), and Jug Band Blues, Wish You Were Here, Astronomy Domine & Vera (all by Pink Floyd).

I have no idea if getting the rights to play all of these songs onstage will be terribly easy, making me wonder how many stage performances this play will be able to get; I wonder if Stoppard has negotiated a package licensing deal.