Hours, or even minutes, into the winter holidays, the children of Telegraph readers were apparently declaring themselves bored. Writer Nigel Farndale defended boredom and declared war on his family's Wii, blaming a glut of entertainment options for kids unable to distract themselves with any. But the real culprit isn't electronics, it's vacation itself, an interruption and aberration in our very structured lives.

Vacation—especially winter vacation, when one or both parents and extended family, too, are often home with kids and when work schedules may relax to reflect the holiday—changes all that. We're away from our comfort zones of school and work, gym and sports, and, whether it's for a full two weeks or just a few days, we're able to play that Wii or teach the kids chess or put together a few jigsaw puzzles (or all of the above). Days stretch before us, with time for sledding, strolling, and cookie baking, and after a while, some of us—parents, grandparents, kids, and somewhere in between—just might get "bored" too.

Farndale defends boredom for kids, pointing out that it forces them to "daydream, to stand and stare, to use their imaginations." His hope is that more and better boredom will force kids with too many screen options to learn to cope. He gives a break to adults, who may need activity to chase away "ennui and melancholy." But that's exactly what a long winter vacation, no matter how distraction-filled, is for. To provide a little "ennui and melancholy" and to remind us that, even with our games and our phones and our computers, we like the structure that work and school add to our days. Having things to do and places to see make us feel needed and relevant.

As Jezebel's Anna North pointed out, kids who say they're "bored" when they're left to cope with unstructured hours may not really be saying what Farndale so hates to hear. They may be saying "help me learn what to do with myself," and that's a legitimate question, whether you own a Nintendo and dozens of games or possess no toys other than a precious collection of Waldorf dolls. The question isn't "What can I do to distract myself?" It's "Who am I, when it's up to me to choose?" That question may be tougher for kids used to spending their few leisure hours on a regular day with various forms of piped-in entertainment, but then, it may be tougher for those of us whose BlackBerries and iPhones are rarely out of our hands as well.

There are three full days left for many of us this holiday season. Three days to note that itch to get back to our desks and our daily tasks, and three days to remember who we are without them, and to help our kids, bored or not, to learn to make the most of that kind of freedom. Three days, stretched out like an empty field of snow now, but by Sunday night, they'll be utterly gone.

A New Year's gift from Scholastic! The publisher is bringing back The Babysitters Club, the series about a gang of entrepreneurial young girls that more or less taught me how to read. Scholastic is re-issuing the first two books in the 213-title series—you read that right: 213—as well as a prequel. (Outdated references to things like perms and cassette players have been tweaked for the new millennium.)

I, for one, was shocked to learn that all the books are out of print. 'Tis a travesty that demands rectification! (While you're waiting for the re-launch, you can enjoy the comic book adaptations by Raina Telgemeier.)

The which-Babysitter-were-you game was like a preteen version of the which-Sex and the City-character-are-you parlor game. I like to think I was a Kristy with a Claudia rising: bossy, but more into art than sports. And here I'd like to give a shout-out to Ann M. Martin*—how I love seeing that name in print again!—for having such a great, original Asian-American character like Claudia. Did you sob when Mimi died? I still get choked up thinking about it.

Which one were you?

*Correction, December 31, 2009: Ann M. Martin's name was originally spelled incorrectly.

Tags: anne m. martin, babysitters club, books, reading, scholastic

As Hanna wrote in October, Oklahoma anti-choicers discovered a clever new way to rob women of their reproductive rights. Under the guise of policy research, the Oklahoma House of Representatives passed a bill requiring women seeking an abortion to complete a 37-question autobiographical survey, the results of which would be posted on a publicly accessible Web site. Critics of the new measure argue that the first eight questions could easily identify women living in the state’s more sparsely populated rural regions and discourage them from undergoing the procedure out of fear of public shame, harassment, or retaliatory violence.

This time the abortion foes’ savvy subterfuge backfired. In order to prevent the law from taking effect, the Center for Reproductive Justice filed a temporary restraining order and launched a lawsuit alleging that the bill’s wide-ranging provisions violate the state’s “single-subject rule,” which prohibits prospective laws from addressing more than one issue. Although all of the clauses of House Bill 1595 pertain broadly to the subject of abortion, the Center argues that the creation of a brand new job for the Department of Health and the seemingly random inclusion of a ban on gender selection render the initiative invalid. An Oklahoma district judge recently decided to extend the restraining order until Feb. 19, when the court will rule on the merits of the case.

Despite the preliminary success of this dilatory tactic, some feminists lament that the Center’s complaint attacks the legislation on procedural, rather than substantive, grounds, and does not address the fundamental affront to women’s health and privacy. Even if a judge tosses out the new law, there is nothing stopping lawmakers from drafting a similar, more narrowly focused bill. Defeating the law on substantive grounds should not have been difficult. As some have pointed out, the purported goal of gathering information is bogus at best, as the data would be inappropriate for academic research. Moreover, the identifying details in women’s responses likely qualify as “protected health information” under HIPAA and cannot be made available to the public. Perhaps most importantly, publishing this kind of data tacitly incites vigilantism by Christian fundamentalists. In Operation Rescue country, women identified as abortion recipients don’t simply risk losing health coverage—they risk losing their lives and livelihoods.

Tags: abortion, law, oklahoma, Oklahoma abortion law, reproductive rights

DoubleX is starting a new partnership with The Washington Post Magazine. Each week our contributors will argue over a certain question, and we invite you to join in. This week: When a male celebrity perpetrates violence against a woman do his female fans have a responsibility to turn their backs on him? Can you love the performer and hate the person? Forgive and forget once his next project is released? Or is supporting an abusive celebrity's work akin to supporting his violent behavior?

Nina Rastogi: I think this is the flip side of “love the sinner, hate the sin”—it's completely possible to love the art and hate the artist. (That's different, of course, from loving the art and excusing the artist, a la Roman Polanski.) At the same time, it's impossible to avoid having our experiences as viewers or listeners or readers colored by what we know about an artist's personal life. If you can't hear a Chris Brown song without cringing or getting enraged, by all means, stop listening to him. But I don't think there's anything hypocritical about buying a ticket to his concert and then spending the next morning, say, volunteering at a domestic abuse center.

Claire Gordon: I struggled with a similar question as a major Woody Allen fan, given his marriage to Mia Farrow's adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn. In a lot of Woody's oeuvre he casts hot young leading ladies 30 years his junior as onscreen loves, which always seemed to me sexually unsavory and shameless—especially when the man hit 70. I still bought a Woody box set and watched it last holiday season. It was awesome. If we boycotted every artist who behaves unethically, our lives would be pretty desolate. The fundamental problem is that we live in a culture that normalizes violence to women; punishing individual perpetrators with a pocketbook protest seems more like self-punishment than effective political action.

Amanda Marcotte: If we couldn't separate the art from the artist, most of us wouldn't enjoy much art outside of Jane Austen's. Enjoying someone's art is no more endorsing every bad thing they've done than is working with someone whose politics you hate. That said, I understand why some feminists wish to make an exception for rape and domestic violence. Rapists rape and wife-beaters beat because they get public support even in the face of their crimes. We want to do a small part for creating actual shame for men who abuse women. But it seems to me that conflating the art and the artist is counterproductive. We'd do better to say that Chris Brown (or Roman Polanski) may make fine art, but they need to be doing so from prison.

KJ Dell'Antonia: I'm intrigued by the double standard that exists between entertainment and politics, although I don't think it's unreasonable. Governors Sanford and Spitzer, you're out. Ditto John Edwards: Career over—we can't trust you, and you're clearly blackmail material. A liability. But although there may be fresh new implications for his face on the Wheaties box, Tiger can still hit a golf ball, Chris Brown will still take the stage. I'm not interested in either, but then, I wasn't interested before. The lesson seems to be: if you're a guy who finds the siren song of his nether regions to be more important than anything else (and I presume you know who you are), avoid politics.

Photograph of Charlie Sheen and Brooke Mueller by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images.

Tags: celebrity culture, Chris Brown, domestic abuse, roman polanski, Woody Allen