Blog Posts by Lylah M. Alphonse, Senior Editor, Yahoo! Shine

Women in the U.S. military are barred from the front lines and direct ground combat, thanks to a long-held belief that female soldiers suffer more serious combat-related stress and post-deployment mental-health problems. But the Pentagon may have underestimated the women who serve: According to a new study, women warriors may be as resilient as men.

The ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq make it difficult to keep female soldiers completely out of harm's way: More than 200,000 women have served in those two wars over the past 10 years, many in positions that put them at risk for gunfights and other combat situations. About 750 women soldiers have been wounded or killed in combat since 2009.

"I know what the law says, and I know what it requires, but I'd be hard pressed to say that any woman who serves in Afghanistan today or who served in Iraq over the last few years did so without facing the same risks of their male counterparts," Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the Joint

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This week, Japan confirmed that three of the four reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant experienced full meltdowns after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami there. Trace amounts of radiation have already been found in milk from Washington State and California. And now, a new study warns of another side-effect that hadn't even crossed our minds: In the past, fewer baby girls have been born world-wide because of nuclear radiation from power-plant leaks and bomb tests.

Not just hundreds fewer. Millions fewer. Could enough radiation spread from Japan to the United States to affect parents over here?

Left to nature's own devices, males naturally outnumber females by a little more than 5 percent, so for every 1,000 girls born, there are about 1,056 boys. In countries where sex-selective abortion is practiced, though, boys outnumber girls by a greater margin, leading to a lack of potential mates when young men are ready to marry. (The latest census data from India shows

Read More »from Japan admits 3 reactors melted down. How will the nuclear radiation affect our families?

Artist Aelita Andre at work in her studio. (Photo: Screengrab/YouTube)It's amazing what a little kid can do with colored canvases, glue, pipe-cleaners, pompoms, plenty of paint-and the understanding that she won't get in trouble if she makes an enormous mess. The question is: Is she just playing, or deliberately creating art?

Aelita Andre's parents, both artists, are certain that their daughter is a bona fide Abstract Expressionist painter. The Australian girl has been crawling around on canvases since she was about 9 months old, according to her dad Michael Andre, and she made her first piece of authentic art just a few months later. Now, at the ripe old age of 4, she's got her own show in New York, "The Prodigy of Color" at the Agora Gallery in Chelsea. And she just sold three of her paintings for a cool $27,000.

On the one hand, her work seems like joyful play of any random 4-year-old. ("Blue! Yay, Blue!" she exclaims in a video, gleefully getting as much paint on herself as she does on her canvases.) But her parents and some art critics insist

Read More »from 4-year-old Aelita Andre gets her own NY art show, sells paintings for $27K

This is a vacation? Sarah Palin talks to reporters about Paul Revere during a June 2, 2011, When 10-year-old Piper Palin muttered "Thanks for ruining our vacation" while in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, last week, it was hard to tell whether she was talking to the media or to her mom.

Sarah Palin's "One Nation" tour of historic American landmarks is being billed as a fun family vacation, with stops at historic spots all over the country. It sounds like an old-school family road-trip, except that:

• Fans are invited to follow along with her trip on Sarahpac.com, her political action committee's website, and encouraged to submit requests for her appearances.
• Judging from the photo and the on-the-bus interview with Greta Van Susteren of Fox News-and in spite of the fact that she says "It's not a publicity-seeking tour"-the former vice-presidential candidate doesn't seem to be trying to avoid the media. (Piper, however, looks less than pleased.)
• The trip is being paid for by her political action committee (which is perfectly legal, by the way, since she hasn't declared

Read More »from Sarah Palin's 'One Nation' tour: Is a working family vacation really any fun?

Photo: ThinkstockThanks to Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Edwards, and now Anthony Weiner, infidelity has been making headlines-and people are reexamining their own relationships.

The Pew Research Center recently found that 40 percent of Americans think marriage is becoming obsolete. Another recent Pew study found that Millennials (people age 18 to 29) say they think that being a good parent is way more important than having a good marriage.

Once considered an imperative of sorts, traditional marriage is getting a second look-and research suggests that it may be coming up short. Instead of considering themselves to be happily married, some people are discovering that they're only "semi-happy," and their quest for fulfillment can lead them to extramarital affairs and divorce.

A semi-happy marriage is one of low conflict, low passion, and low satisfaction. "One minute, you love the stability and contentment. The next minute, you think it's not the right marriage, and there are flaws in the marriage that

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Bobby Bradley, 9, holds the crown line of his new ultra-light hot air balloon as he watches it inflate at a launch site near Tome, N.M., in May. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)Another entry in the "We're Sooooo not Helicopter Parents" category: On Sunday, 9-year-old Bobby Bradley of Albuquerque, New Mexico, became the youngest trained pilot to take off and safely land a hot-air balloon by himself.

His parents, Tami and Troy Bradley, have both been licensed hot-air balloon pilot since they were teenagers (him: 16, with his first solo flight at 14; her: 17), and they were confident that their son would be fine. Bobby's balloon is a custom-made ultra-light version, with a scaled-down, light-weigh basket, and he has already logged more than 30 hours of airtime with his dad in a standard hot-air balloon. In fact, the day before the big flight, his mom told the Associated Press that she was more worried about "him needing to go to the bathroom" than she was about her third-grader being at the mercy of the winds.

"I'm afraid of heights," he told a local TV station, "but I'm not scared when I'm up in a balloon."

"I will have my GPS, two radios," he added. "It's

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Are male writers inherently better than female ones? V.S. Naipaul, the winner of the 2001 Nobel prize for literature, says he's sure that they are.

During an interview at the Royal Geographic Society earlier this week, Naipaul (author of "A House for Mr. Biswas") was asked if he considered any woman writer to be his literary equal. He replied: "I don't think so." Women, he said, have a certain "sentimentality, the narrow view of the world" that makes their writing inferior to that of men. "And inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing, too," he added.

Oh, yes he did.

We understand not being able to relate to some writers. And we understand how some people could even find entire genres unappealing. Of Jane Austen, whose work has certainly stood the test of time so far, he said that he "couldn't possibly share her sentimental ambitions, her sentimental sense of the world." So he's not a fan of "Pride and Prejudice" (nor,

Read More »from VS Naipaul says women writers aren't as good as men. Can you tell the difference?

Rihanna during a performance for NBC's Grammy-winning artist Rihanna, who made headlines in 2009 after being beaten up by her then-boyfriend, singer Chris Brown, has infuriated anti-violence groups with the video for her latest single, "Man Down," in which a woman guns down the man who assaulted her.

The video, which debuted on BET earlier this week, opens with the red-headed R&B star grimly looking out from a darkened doorway, revolver in hand. She scans the crowd, raises her hand, and shoots once; a man walking by collapses, blood spurting from his head, as everyone else panics.

Watchdog groups, including The Parents Television Council, Industry Ears, and the Enough Is Enough Campaign, are condemning the video for encouraging victims of sexual assault or domestic abuse to retaliate with violence.

"'Man Down' is an inexcusable, shock-only, shoot-and-kill theme song," Paul Porter, co-founder of Industry Ears, said in a joint statement.

"Rihanna's personal story and status as a celebrity superstar provided a golden

Read More »from Is Rihanna's 'Man Down' video too violent? Or have critics missed the point?