Ways to be a good Democrat (with apologies to all my readers…)

Found this on Craigslist San Francsico, and it made me laugh (and think). Check this page here for the complete list. I’ll just give you the “highlights,” as it were.

1. You have to be against capital punishment, but support abortion on demand.

2. You have to believe that businesses create oppression and governments create prosperity.

6. You have to believe that gender roles are artificial but being homosexual is natural.

9. You have to believe that hunters don’t care about nature, but loony activists who have never been outside of San Francisco do.

10. You have to believe that self-esteem is more important than actually doing something to earn it.

and this one really made me laugh:

13. You have to believe that taxes are too low, but ATM fees are too high.

I guess this just got me thinking about the places we start in thinking about an issue; I guess if you’re a Republican, you support the death penalty, but reject abortion out of hand?

– regarding my Right Brain File (see this post for an explanation), i guess this just strikes me as a pretty decent example of how facts and ‘truth’ often have little, if anything, to do with each other.

Perception/reality. It’s too late to be blogging, anyway ;)

i hate texting …

… I really do. With a passion; texting strips so much of the essential from a conversation. Half the people I’m ‘close’ to live in another city – my sister, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, childhood friends, old friends, new. It’s not the distance, or the fact I don’t see people every day. I live with my parents, after all, and I don’t see them every day.

So it’s not that.

It’s the slippage, the fact that there’s so much room for error, that so much communication gets lost. It’s easy, after all, to be joking about something face to face, smile to smile – and if you go too far, you back off. If you touch on something you shouldn’t, you let it go. If you’re depressed, they can put an arm around you. If you’re just busy, you can howl “sorry, freaking OUT!” as you rush past – no offense, no foul.

But try this via text with a cell phone while in a car late to work at rush hour? (hah).

And so small slippages become big errors; small misstatements in language can cause estrangement in friendships. We get out of joint, out of reality. My Argentine ex (yes, you!) texts me all the time, and I never know what he’s thinking. It’s like rolling the dice – is this meant to be funny, sexy, hurried, short, is he trying to be mean? How should I respond? Ditto with my sister. Ditto with my dad. Just last week I called a girlfriend I hadn’t spoken with in months, since before the Grand Odyssey – and there wasn’t any slippage. Refreshng! Water under the bridge, yes, of course, but we didn’t spend the first half of the conversation going “hey, did you really mean that..?” or, “no, no, sorry, I was just kidding…”

I didn’t have to guess whether or not she wanted to chat.
So I dunno. Text is so useful for information, for data bursts. “b ther n 10″ or perhaps the occasional heartfelt note “i miss you so much!! come HOME!!” or even the extremely informational “hey dad, thx, ill borrow your car next time ok? :)” But …

but I’m just not convinced it’s communcation.

And the more I think about it, the more I hate texting.

Women: Reason, Rants, Rights, and Responsibilities

There are an incredible number of comments about this article in the NYT:

September 25, 2007, 8:53 pm

A Happiness Gap?

There appears to be a growing happiness gap between men and women. Two new research papers, using very different methods, have both come to this conclusion. In the early 1970s, women reported being slightly happier than men. Today, the two have switched places.

What has changed – and what seems to be the most likely explanation for the happiness trends – is that women now have a much longer to-do list than they once did. They can’t possibly get it all done, and many end up feeling as if they are somehow falling short.

Why do you think men now appear to be happier than women?

With 600ish comments and counting, I’m seeing:

• The blame game (men/women/Bush/society/history/religion)
  • These people are mostly crazy, in my opinion. …
• The no-stress peeps (they see it, but they’ve sidestepped, so why is this such a problem?)
• The WTF?!?!?! folks.
• The arch intellectuals.

I’ll let you figure out which category i fall into :P

.. .. seriously, though, I do believe that one person can’t have/do it all. I’m just not sure this means I should give up my dreams/interests/intellectual abilities to start raising children because i suspect i’ll have wanted to.

My opinion: Compromise, not compulsion or capitulation, ought to rule our lives.