As every good journalist knows, three's a trend. This helps explain why the New York Times's Week in Review article about Farris Hassan, the 16-year old student who traveled to Iraq, also mentions two other male teenage risk-takers from years past as it attempts to weave a narrative that links adolescent derring-do stunts to…
well, it's unclear.

The writer Tamar Lewin (whose articles Gelf has taken issue with in the past), manages to discuss Ferris Bueller, Albert Einstein, a study that contradicts the rest of the article, and multiple stabbings, but fails to come up with anything besides this:

So are adolescent adventurers showing only a reckless lack of judgment? Or could they also reflect a healthy imaginative spirit? Maybe a little of both, psychologists say.

In the end, Lewin comes to the lame conclusion that, "In the end, everyone grows up."

Except that's not true either (see, for instance, these stats from the Annie E. Casey Foundation). Well before the pithy kicker, Lewin quotes Lewis Lipsitt, an emeritus professor of psychology at Brown University. "Look at the statistics," he says, as if imploring Lewin to pay attention. "More young people die of behavioral misadventures than of all diseases combined."