Tuesday, May 05, 2009
On Twitter
I am now impstrump on twitter. Not sure if I'm going to actually use it or not. If someone can tell me where to get a widget, I'll embed the twitter feed in my blog. If not, you'll have to wait until I have enough initiative to google it up myself.
The real threshold between Generation X and Generation Y
I was born on the cusp of Gen X and Gen Y. More timelines tend to put me in Gen Y than in Gen X., but, while I do have characteristics of both, I've always tended to identify more with Gen X.
Reading this article I've figured out why, and figured out where the dividing line between the two generations is.
Gen X was economically aware during the 1990s recession. Gen Y was not yet economically aware. I was (somewhat - enough for these purposes) economically aware during the 90s recession, so I identify with Gen X.
I hadn't given much thought to the economy before the 90s recession. What with being a child and all, I was far more interested in smurfs and ninja turtles. But reality as I knew it was that you have a job for life. My grandparents worked in the same factories for decades, earning enough to support their families. My parents and aunts and uncles went to university and got good white-collar jobs with benefits and pensions that they'd had my whole life. Then, suddenly, just as soon as I reached the age where I read the newspaper, job losses! Good jobs gone forever! Welcome to contract hell! People with university degrees flipping burgers and having to live with their parents! I couldn't see any way things could possibly ever change at all ever (I think we can forgive my 10-year-old self for not predicting the dotcom boom), so I read all this assuming it applied to me was well, and thus came to identify with the Gen. Xers who were currently trying to make their way in that job market.
So initially I was looking at the people in the Toronto Star article and wondering WTF they were expecting income security - they're about my age, why don't they remember the 90s recession? Then I realized, yes, they're about my age, but they're a year or two younger. That's insigificant now, but it was a huge difference back in the 90s. I was a 10-year-old reading about job losses in the newspaper, but they were eight years old at the time and not quite up to reading much beyond the comics. They don't identify with the 90s recession, and are therefore Gen Y. They're experiencing first hand the uncertainty of economic turmoil for the first time in their lives, while the couple of years I have on them made me economically aware enough to lose my recession virginity last time around.
But here's the great mystery of that article:
Why were their grownups telling them this? My grownups tell me that too. They tell me that I'm smart, I have a university degree, I'll have no trouble getting a job. As though I haven't always had trouble getting jobs. As though I (and others like me) haven't had employers who don't want to hire me because they think I'm too educated. As though they don't remember the 90s meme of degrees not being worth the paper they're printed on. What's up with members of the Boomer generation who forget the lessons of the 90s?
Reading this article I've figured out why, and figured out where the dividing line between the two generations is.
Gen X was economically aware during the 1990s recession. Gen Y was not yet economically aware. I was (somewhat - enough for these purposes) economically aware during the 90s recession, so I identify with Gen X.
I hadn't given much thought to the economy before the 90s recession. What with being a child and all, I was far more interested in smurfs and ninja turtles. But reality as I knew it was that you have a job for life. My grandparents worked in the same factories for decades, earning enough to support their families. My parents and aunts and uncles went to university and got good white-collar jobs with benefits and pensions that they'd had my whole life. Then, suddenly, just as soon as I reached the age where I read the newspaper, job losses! Good jobs gone forever! Welcome to contract hell! People with university degrees flipping burgers and having to live with their parents! I couldn't see any way things could possibly ever change at all ever (I think we can forgive my 10-year-old self for not predicting the dotcom boom), so I read all this assuming it applied to me was well, and thus came to identify with the Gen. Xers who were currently trying to make their way in that job market.
So initially I was looking at the people in the Toronto Star article and wondering WTF they were expecting income security - they're about my age, why don't they remember the 90s recession? Then I realized, yes, they're about my age, but they're a year or two younger. That's insigificant now, but it was a huge difference back in the 90s. I was a 10-year-old reading about job losses in the newspaper, but they were eight years old at the time and not quite up to reading much beyond the comics. They don't identify with the 90s recession, and are therefore Gen Y. They're experiencing first hand the uncertainty of economic turmoil for the first time in their lives, while the couple of years I have on them made me economically aware enough to lose my recession virginity last time around.
But here's the great mystery of that article:
Generation Y grew up being told that if they were willing to work and study hard they could have it all: well-paying, fulfilling jobs that provided all the comforts.
Why were their grownups telling them this? My grownups tell me that too. They tell me that I'm smart, I have a university degree, I'll have no trouble getting a job. As though I haven't always had trouble getting jobs. As though I (and others like me) haven't had employers who don't want to hire me because they think I'm too educated. As though they don't remember the 90s meme of degrees not being worth the paper they're printed on. What's up with members of the Boomer generation who forget the lessons of the 90s?
Open Letter to "Need Help" in today's Dear Ellie column
From today's Dear Ellie:
First of all, broach the subject with your husband by talking about funeral planning/wishes for after death in general. Do your own wills and plan your own funerals if you haven't already. Bring up Baby Kaylee who was recently in the news to steer the conversation towards organ donation. Then once you're on that, ponder whether you know your own parents' wishes (aging parents, you know) and ask your husband if he knows his mother's wishes.
Then your husband can use the same technique to find out his mother's wishes.
Allow some time to pass and price her wishes to find out whether you can afford them. Then, at a calm and neutral moment, have your husband say to her "BTW, Mom, remember a while back you said you wanted to be buried in a solid gold tomb? Today I just happened to stumble upon how much that costs and there's no way I can make that work. Do you have insurance or pre-planning or anything?"
At this point she should either agree to insurance or take responsibility for pre-planning. And if she doesn't, she has been duly informed that her wishes cannot be fulfilled without some action on her part, so you're off the hook for not doing more than you can afford.
I've been married for three years and am increasingly frustrated with my mother-in-law.
She has a gambling problem and often cannot pay her rent, or her basic bills. She has major health problems, yet smokes and is extremely overweight.
My husband and I help her financially when she needs it, but it's more difficult for us lately. I'd like to arrange an insurance policy for her, to help with the cost of her funeral expenses should she pass away. I feel that due to her careless lifestyle and health problems, she may not be around very long.
No other relatives are in a secure financial position to assist with final expenses. Or they'll refuse, since we're always bailing her out.
How do I bring this up to my husband? How do we talk to my mother-in-law about signing a policy for funeral coverage?
I cannot take one out on her without her knowledge. I feel my husband should be the one to talk to her. When I've mentioned this before, he got very angry and didn't want to discuss it. I'm just trying to avoid a disaster, not looking to make any money off her.
Need Help
First of all, broach the subject with your husband by talking about funeral planning/wishes for after death in general. Do your own wills and plan your own funerals if you haven't already. Bring up Baby Kaylee who was recently in the news to steer the conversation towards organ donation. Then once you're on that, ponder whether you know your own parents' wishes (aging parents, you know) and ask your husband if he knows his mother's wishes.
Then your husband can use the same technique to find out his mother's wishes.
Allow some time to pass and price her wishes to find out whether you can afford them. Then, at a calm and neutral moment, have your husband say to her "BTW, Mom, remember a while back you said you wanted to be buried in a solid gold tomb? Today I just happened to stumble upon how much that costs and there's no way I can make that work. Do you have insurance or pre-planning or anything?"
At this point she should either agree to insurance or take responsibility for pre-planning. And if she doesn't, she has been duly informed that her wishes cannot be fulfilled without some action on her part, so you're off the hook for not doing more than you can afford.
Monday, May 04, 2009
Leaving kids unsupervised
1. An article in Salon mentions in passing that Parents Today now wait for the school bus with their kids instead of the kids waiting at the bus stop unsupervised.
This made me think of Erica.
Erica was a neighbourhood girl a year ahead of me who would sit on the mailbox. She'd climb up on top of the red Canada Post mailbox and sit there waiting for the bus to come. I don't know why, that's just what she did.
Obviously, you're not supposed to sit on the mailbox. But there were no grownups around to stop her, so she sat on the mailbox. It was a harmless way of breaking the rules.
A lot of harmless rule-breaking went on at the bus stop. If someone had seen SNL or the Sunday Night Sex Show, they'd tell us all about it. If someone knew a dirty joke, they'd share it. People would apply the make-up their parents said they were too young for. People would eat the junk food their parents had banned from the family home. People would remove the toques their parents had insisted they wear. All against the rules, all ultimately harmless.
We'd also do other things that weren't against the rules, but you just couldn't do in front of grownups. We'd take a "Who's your ideal celeb crush?" quiz in Y&M. We'd bitch about our English teacher. We'd concoct elaborate plans for one of our number to Talk To A Boy. Harmless, not against the rules, but not for the ears of parents or teachers.
The bus stop wasn't utopia. The bullies were there too, and for this reason I wouldn't have minded if it was normal for parents to wait with us. (I wouldn't have wanted my parents there if it wasn't normal, but if everyone else's parents were there - or even if there were just a few supervising grownups to keep the bullies down - I wouldn't have minded.) However, I didn't feel any less safe than at school, and I do see its value as an unsupservised public space for kids.
So this makes me wonder what effect it has on kids to be closed out of unsupervised public space. When they can't sit on the mailbox, how does their adolescent rebellion manifest itself?
2. A Globe and Mail writer blogs about the difficulty of butting out of her kids' post-secondary education.
This makes me think of the value of OAC (i.e. Grade 13).
OAC students were generally over 18, and the OAC courses were managed with that assumption. Students who were over 18 could sign themselves in and out of school rather than needing a note from their parents for every absence. As legal adults they were accountable for their own education, and the teachers actually couldn't talk to the student's parents without the student's permission. As a result of this OAC classes didn't have the custodial element of other classes and didn't presume to be accountable to the parents. (It's possible that the parents of a minor OAC student might have been allowed to go talk to the kid's teacher, but it just Wasn't Done.)
Many students in my school started taking OACs in Grade 12 or even Grade 11 (for various reasons that I can get into if you're interested but are irrelevant to this blog post). I started taking OACs in my Grade 12 year, and becaue I was born in December I was 16 years old when I started my first OAC class. Starting at the age of 16 I had courses where if a teacher was absent, the class was cancelled. Where the teacher wasn't expecting a parental signature on my report card, and wouldn't give a parent-teacher interview without my permission. Where I wouldn't be disciplined for missing class, I'd just better damn well catch up and not accrue 20 unexcused absences. I was still in high school, still living at my parents' (and still expected to be), I just had full legal and personal responsibility for my own educaction.
For one year, half my classes were like this. For the next year, all my classes were like this. Then the next year I was in university, by which time it didn't even occur to me or my parents that they might possibly have any business interfering with my academics.
This may vary for people who are more mature or people who are old for their year, but for me OAC was a valuable transition and a key part of preparing me to take responsibility for my own university career.
This made me think of Erica.
Erica was a neighbourhood girl a year ahead of me who would sit on the mailbox. She'd climb up on top of the red Canada Post mailbox and sit there waiting for the bus to come. I don't know why, that's just what she did.
Obviously, you're not supposed to sit on the mailbox. But there were no grownups around to stop her, so she sat on the mailbox. It was a harmless way of breaking the rules.
A lot of harmless rule-breaking went on at the bus stop. If someone had seen SNL or the Sunday Night Sex Show, they'd tell us all about it. If someone knew a dirty joke, they'd share it. People would apply the make-up their parents said they were too young for. People would eat the junk food their parents had banned from the family home. People would remove the toques their parents had insisted they wear. All against the rules, all ultimately harmless.
We'd also do other things that weren't against the rules, but you just couldn't do in front of grownups. We'd take a "Who's your ideal celeb crush?" quiz in Y&M. We'd bitch about our English teacher. We'd concoct elaborate plans for one of our number to Talk To A Boy. Harmless, not against the rules, but not for the ears of parents or teachers.
The bus stop wasn't utopia. The bullies were there too, and for this reason I wouldn't have minded if it was normal for parents to wait with us. (I wouldn't have wanted my parents there if it wasn't normal, but if everyone else's parents were there - or even if there were just a few supervising grownups to keep the bullies down - I wouldn't have minded.) However, I didn't feel any less safe than at school, and I do see its value as an unsupservised public space for kids.
So this makes me wonder what effect it has on kids to be closed out of unsupervised public space. When they can't sit on the mailbox, how does their adolescent rebellion manifest itself?
2. A Globe and Mail writer blogs about the difficulty of butting out of her kids' post-secondary education.
This makes me think of the value of OAC (i.e. Grade 13).
OAC students were generally over 18, and the OAC courses were managed with that assumption. Students who were over 18 could sign themselves in and out of school rather than needing a note from their parents for every absence. As legal adults they were accountable for their own education, and the teachers actually couldn't talk to the student's parents without the student's permission. As a result of this OAC classes didn't have the custodial element of other classes and didn't presume to be accountable to the parents. (It's possible that the parents of a minor OAC student might have been allowed to go talk to the kid's teacher, but it just Wasn't Done.)
Many students in my school started taking OACs in Grade 12 or even Grade 11 (for various reasons that I can get into if you're interested but are irrelevant to this blog post). I started taking OACs in my Grade 12 year, and becaue I was born in December I was 16 years old when I started my first OAC class. Starting at the age of 16 I had courses where if a teacher was absent, the class was cancelled. Where the teacher wasn't expecting a parental signature on my report card, and wouldn't give a parent-teacher interview without my permission. Where I wouldn't be disciplined for missing class, I'd just better damn well catch up and not accrue 20 unexcused absences. I was still in high school, still living at my parents' (and still expected to be), I just had full legal and personal responsibility for my own educaction.
For one year, half my classes were like this. For the next year, all my classes were like this. Then the next year I was in university, by which time it didn't even occur to me or my parents that they might possibly have any business interfering with my academics.
This may vary for people who are more mature or people who are old for their year, but for me OAC was a valuable transition and a key part of preparing me to take responsibility for my own university career.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
Teach me advanced social skills
Sometimes people give me compliments that they don't really mean just to generally lubricate the social interaction. They are compliments that I would appreciate if they were sincere, but I can tell that they're just putting them in there to increase the overall postiveness, like how when giving feedback or critique you think of positive things to say and use them to sandwich the negative.
So WTF do I do with this?
So WTF do I do with this?
Current musical obsession
I like the song better than the video, but the video is good too so I'm posting it.
You're a puppy! Yes you are!
I was introduced to a puppy the other day, and I felt the need to say to him, repeatedly and in a very squeaky voice, "You're a puppy! Yes you are!"
My new goal in life is to do that to some creature that is very clearly not a puppy.
Bonus: the relevant xkcd.
My new goal in life is to do that to some creature that is very clearly not a puppy.
Bonus: the relevant xkcd.
I just had the weirdest dream
I was at my parents' and there had been this giant snowstorm. The snowplows in the area consisted of only a giant scoop, like you'd find on the front of a front-end loader, and the driver would sit on top of the scoop and move the snow around.
As we were driving up the street, we saw this one "plow" trying to dump snow in the ravine. Dumping in the ravine isn't allowed. (Aside: sometimes they put up "no dumping" signs in places where they don't want people to dump stuff. Does that stop anyone, really? Because the general rule for the universe as a whole is "no dumping", so I can't see someone about to dump a load of old tires into a ravine being stopped by a sign.)
So this plow driver sees us seeing him and decides that we're witnesses so he has to kill us. He makes two snowballs and starts stalking us on foot with one snowball in each hand. Despite the fact that we're in a car and there's three of us, we seem to take him seriously. We all got into the house safely, but we knew that the dude with his two snowballs was totally going to come back and get us. Fortunately I woke up to a beautiful spring day before that could happen.
As we were driving up the street, we saw this one "plow" trying to dump snow in the ravine. Dumping in the ravine isn't allowed. (Aside: sometimes they put up "no dumping" signs in places where they don't want people to dump stuff. Does that stop anyone, really? Because the general rule for the universe as a whole is "no dumping", so I can't see someone about to dump a load of old tires into a ravine being stopped by a sign.)
So this plow driver sees us seeing him and decides that we're witnesses so he has to kill us. He makes two snowballs and starts stalking us on foot with one snowball in each hand. Despite the fact that we're in a car and there's three of us, we seem to take him seriously. We all got into the house safely, but we knew that the dude with his two snowballs was totally going to come back and get us. Fortunately I woke up to a beautiful spring day before that could happen.
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Guidance
It recently occurred to me that the vast majority of the career advice/guidance I received as a teenager were given to me not because the adult (usually a teacher) thought the thing they were advising me to do would be a good fit for me, but rather because they had the general idea that more people should do it.
I had teachers tell me I should go to college instead of automatically opting for university - and this even after I'd found the right program for me (which happened to be a university program). I think they were trying to address the fact that a lot of students in general feel like they "should" go to university, like it's the "right thing to do", even if it isn't a good fit. But I'm very well-suited to university, and this should have been obvious to anyone who he taught me (and all these college-encouragers were people who had taught me). Even if I hadn't found my niche in translation, I would have wandered contentedly through university pulling in A's until I stumbled upon linguistics and completed my degree there, then ended up in an on-campus admin job, using my tuition waiver to do graduate work part-time. Not a perfect fit, but I wouldn't know better and it would certainly be better than doing some very specific college program I have no interest in ("Do travel and tourism! You're good at languages!" "Do dental hygiene! It pays well!") But these grown-ups - teachers who had taught me and knew that I was strong academically - just blindly advised me to go to college without a thought to my strengths to mitigate the fact that students in general feel pressured to go to university.
Once I had chosen translation, one of the guidance counsellors kept encouraging me to go to her alma mater. It was not a good fit. The only way a first-year student could get a single res room in that university was to join a religiously-affiliated college (and she knew that I'm an introverted atheist). It was quite a long way from home compared with other translation programs, and I was very nervous about moving out on my own. And, as it turned out, the program was dying. It closed down in what would have been my graduation year. It was, for multiple reasons, the worst of my possible options. And yet this guidance counsellor encouraged me to this specific program over the others because it was her alma mater and I think someone at some point asked her to promote it.
When I was a teenager, it was fashionable to encourage girls to go into engineering. As a girl and a gifted student, I was made to do all these programs to expose me to engineering. The more I did, the more I disliked it. The thing about engineering is you have to make actual real stuff that actually works in real life. I'm not good at that - I'm clumsy and abstract and not terribly physical or kinesthetic. I'm more of an ideas person, which is why I have a blog category called Things They Should Invent rather than having a dozen patents to my name. But they kept "encouraging" me towards engineering, culminating in a teacher telling me (after I already had chosen translation) that I should go into engineering to show other girls that they can do whatever they want. There was no thought given to the fact that it wasn't a good match for me, they just pushed me in that direction because I was the target demographic.
You might be thinking, "So why are you complaining about this? You got bad advice, you ignored it, you found your path." Yes, but I found my path by a total fluke. If life had gone normally, I would have been entirely trusting these grown-ups' advice on how to pick a post-secondary program and find a career. After all, they'd all done it, I hadn't. It's just like how as a teenager you look to your elders to for advice on how to do a job interview or complete a tax return or parallel park. They knew me well enough that they should have seen the unsuitability of this advice (they're teachers who had taught me multiple times - often in very small classes - and supervised my extracurriculars, in a small high school, near the end of my five-year high school career). I trusted them to give me advice that appropriately took into consideration the things that I knew they knew about me. But instead they shrugged off my concerns. You don't want to go to college? That's just because you're biased - college doesn't mean you're stupid, you know! You don't want to go to my alma mater? You should, it's a good school, you know! You don't want to go into engineering? Don't worry, girls can do engineering too!
This makes me wonder how many kids are out there right now receiving completely unsuitable guidance.
The other thing that surprises me now that I think about it is the number of grown-ups who encouraged me to follow their own personal path even though it was unsuitable for me. This surprises me because my instinct is always to guide people away from my own path if I see reasons why it would be unsuitable for them. It would never occur to me when a teenage cousin, for example, is panicking because they don't know what to do with their life to nudge them towards my path on the mere basis that it exists or that I'm familiar with it. So I find it really odd that I've encountered so many people whose instincts in this area are the opposite of mine.
I had teachers tell me I should go to college instead of automatically opting for university - and this even after I'd found the right program for me (which happened to be a university program). I think they were trying to address the fact that a lot of students in general feel like they "should" go to university, like it's the "right thing to do", even if it isn't a good fit. But I'm very well-suited to university, and this should have been obvious to anyone who he taught me (and all these college-encouragers were people who had taught me). Even if I hadn't found my niche in translation, I would have wandered contentedly through university pulling in A's until I stumbled upon linguistics and completed my degree there, then ended up in an on-campus admin job, using my tuition waiver to do graduate work part-time. Not a perfect fit, but I wouldn't know better and it would certainly be better than doing some very specific college program I have no interest in ("Do travel and tourism! You're good at languages!" "Do dental hygiene! It pays well!") But these grown-ups - teachers who had taught me and knew that I was strong academically - just blindly advised me to go to college without a thought to my strengths to mitigate the fact that students in general feel pressured to go to university.
Once I had chosen translation, one of the guidance counsellors kept encouraging me to go to her alma mater. It was not a good fit. The only way a first-year student could get a single res room in that university was to join a religiously-affiliated college (and she knew that I'm an introverted atheist). It was quite a long way from home compared with other translation programs, and I was very nervous about moving out on my own. And, as it turned out, the program was dying. It closed down in what would have been my graduation year. It was, for multiple reasons, the worst of my possible options. And yet this guidance counsellor encouraged me to this specific program over the others because it was her alma mater and I think someone at some point asked her to promote it.
When I was a teenager, it was fashionable to encourage girls to go into engineering. As a girl and a gifted student, I was made to do all these programs to expose me to engineering. The more I did, the more I disliked it. The thing about engineering is you have to make actual real stuff that actually works in real life. I'm not good at that - I'm clumsy and abstract and not terribly physical or kinesthetic. I'm more of an ideas person, which is why I have a blog category called Things They Should Invent rather than having a dozen patents to my name. But they kept "encouraging" me towards engineering, culminating in a teacher telling me (after I already had chosen translation) that I should go into engineering to show other girls that they can do whatever they want. There was no thought given to the fact that it wasn't a good match for me, they just pushed me in that direction because I was the target demographic.
You might be thinking, "So why are you complaining about this? You got bad advice, you ignored it, you found your path." Yes, but I found my path by a total fluke. If life had gone normally, I would have been entirely trusting these grown-ups' advice on how to pick a post-secondary program and find a career. After all, they'd all done it, I hadn't. It's just like how as a teenager you look to your elders to for advice on how to do a job interview or complete a tax return or parallel park. They knew me well enough that they should have seen the unsuitability of this advice (they're teachers who had taught me multiple times - often in very small classes - and supervised my extracurriculars, in a small high school, near the end of my five-year high school career). I trusted them to give me advice that appropriately took into consideration the things that I knew they knew about me. But instead they shrugged off my concerns. You don't want to go to college? That's just because you're biased - college doesn't mean you're stupid, you know! You don't want to go to my alma mater? You should, it's a good school, you know! You don't want to go into engineering? Don't worry, girls can do engineering too!
This makes me wonder how many kids are out there right now receiving completely unsuitable guidance.
The other thing that surprises me now that I think about it is the number of grown-ups who encouraged me to follow their own personal path even though it was unsuitable for me. This surprises me because my instinct is always to guide people away from my own path if I see reasons why it would be unsuitable for them. It would never occur to me when a teenage cousin, for example, is panicking because they don't know what to do with their life to nudge them towards my path on the mere basis that it exists or that I'm familiar with it. So I find it really odd that I've encountered so many people whose instincts in this area are the opposite of mine.
Things They Should Invent: listen to someone's outgoing voicemail without ringing their phone
The information I need is in this business's outgoing voicemail message. I don't need to talk to anyone there, I just need this little bit of information. However, they are currently open, so if I call someone will answer and I'll have to talk to them, thus wasting both our time.
Why can't they just give us a way to listen to outgoing voicemail without ringing the phone?
Why can't they just give us a way to listen to outgoing voicemail without ringing the phone?
I seem to have awoken into a nightmare
My windows are covered in mosquitoes. There are probably two or three mosquitos per square foot over the entire window area. Fortunately they aren't big or grotesque enough to trigger panic attacks (and I can't see them at all if I take my glasses off), but I'm highly susceptible to mosquito bites so basically I can't go outside right now.
Does this mean the whole summer is going to be like this, or is today a one-day fluke? I don't own any insect repellent because I never go out into the woods or anything. Am I going to need to find a source for that (possibly illegal?) 98% DEET stuff we had when I was a kid just so I can walk around the city without being eaten alive?
(I know the 98% DEET sounds like overkill, but it was a lifesaver. Mosquitoes would come within an inch of my arm and then veer away, like like-poled magnets repelling each other. Considering that I'd usually come back from a day in the woods covered in so many bites I couldn't shave my legs, this was a godsend.)
Does this mean the whole summer is going to be like this, or is today a one-day fluke? I don't own any insect repellent because I never go out into the woods or anything. Am I going to need to find a source for that (possibly illegal?) 98% DEET stuff we had when I was a kid just so I can walk around the city without being eaten alive?
(I know the 98% DEET sounds like overkill, but it was a lifesaver. Mosquitoes would come within an inch of my arm and then veer away, like like-poled magnets repelling each other. Considering that I'd usually come back from a day in the woods covered in so many bites I couldn't shave my legs, this was a godsend.)
Why do parents want their kids to play outside?
This train of thought was inspired by today's For Better or For Worse, but it happened to me all the time in real life and it's a trope you often see in comic strips and other media.
Parents tell their kids to stop watching TV and play outside because it's a beautiful day.
Why do they care? Seriously. Why do they have this need for their child to stop what they're actually enjoying and go through the motions of enjoying the beautiful day?
You often see this in older contexts where the kids don't need to be immediately supervised, so it's not that the kids' presence indoors is stopping the parents from enjoying the beautiful day themselves. In fact, in the comic strip context, the parent most often stays inside while kicking the kids outside. Why?
Parents tell their kids to stop watching TV and play outside because it's a beautiful day.
Why do they care? Seriously. Why do they have this need for their child to stop what they're actually enjoying and go through the motions of enjoying the beautiful day?
You often see this in older contexts where the kids don't need to be immediately supervised, so it's not that the kids' presence indoors is stopping the parents from enjoying the beautiful day themselves. In fact, in the comic strip context, the parent most often stays inside while kicking the kids outside. Why?
Friday, May 01, 2009
Analogy for being incapable of faith
As I've mentioned before, the reason I'm an atheist is because I'm congenitally and inherently incapable of religious faith. My brain just doesn't bend that way.
Not everyone can grok this, so here's how it works:
Think of colourblindness. A person who is colourblind only sees one colour where a person with normal vision sees two colours. The colourblind person simply cannot see the two colours. They cannot be talked into seeing two colours. They cannot be reasoned, threatened, bribed, coerced, seduced or manipulated into seeing two colours. If they're crafty and a good actor, they might be able to put on a good show and convince people that they can see two colours, but the fact of the matter is they can't.
Another analogy that might work: if you're monosexual (I know some people don't like that word but it is le mot juste in this case), think about the prospect of being sexually attracted to the gender you aren't sexually attracted to. You just can't, can you? You could fake it, sure. You could even look at someone of your non-target gender and see intellectually why someone might be sexually attracted to them. But you just can't actually feel it yourself. Similarly, I can fake religion, and I can see intellectually why a person might engage in, say, Judaism or Buddhism. But I just can't do it for real myself.
What I'm still trying to figure out: are there actually people anywhere who can truly change their faith on demand?
Not everyone can grok this, so here's how it works:
Think of colourblindness. A person who is colourblind only sees one colour where a person with normal vision sees two colours. The colourblind person simply cannot see the two colours. They cannot be talked into seeing two colours. They cannot be reasoned, threatened, bribed, coerced, seduced or manipulated into seeing two colours. If they're crafty and a good actor, they might be able to put on a good show and convince people that they can see two colours, but the fact of the matter is they can't.
Another analogy that might work: if you're monosexual (I know some people don't like that word but it is le mot juste in this case), think about the prospect of being sexually attracted to the gender you aren't sexually attracted to. You just can't, can you? You could fake it, sure. You could even look at someone of your non-target gender and see intellectually why someone might be sexually attracted to them. But you just can't actually feel it yourself. Similarly, I can fake religion, and I can see intellectually why a person might engage in, say, Judaism or Buddhism. But I just can't do it for real myself.
What I'm still trying to figure out: are there actually people anywhere who can truly change their faith on demand?
I wonder if people and pets ever have personality conflicts
You know how sometimes you just don't get along with a person? Like even if you're both doing your best to be as friendly and civilized as possible, they just grate?
I wonder if this ever happens between people and their pets, like you get a new pet and bring them home and find that they just grate?
I wonder if this ever happens between people and their pets, like you get a new pet and bring them home and find that they just grate?
Post your hand cream recommendations here
I'm looking for a hand cream that soaks in quickly (because I'm always at the computer) and lasts a long time so I don't have to keep remoisturizing every couple of hours.
Anyone have any recommendations from personal experience?
Anyone have any recommendations from personal experience?
I wonder if there are acquaintances within large families
When I think about large families - like families with 8 or 10 or 12 kids - the thing that baffles me the most is that I can't imagine how someone could be emotionally close to that many people. For the kind of closeness where you're dependent on each other and you can't lie to each other and they truly have the ability to hurt you, I can't do more than five or six people max.
So within these large families, there must be relationships that are closer and relationships that are less close. So I wonder if any of these are acquaintance relationships? Kind of like someone at work whom you have nothing against but just don't ever end up talking to very much.
So within these large families, there must be relationships that are closer and relationships that are less close. So I wonder if any of these are acquaintance relationships? Kind of like someone at work whom you have nothing against but just don't ever end up talking to very much.
Things They Should Invent: minimum usefulness requirement for advice articles
Have you ever noticed that advice articles in newspapers and magazines very rarely contain advice that you haven't already heard of or don't already know? There are whole articles that give you no new information whatsoever!
There should be a manadatory minimum usefulness requirement for these articles. They should survey random people (random people within the target audience is fine - I get that the same advice might be new and useful to the readers of Seventeen but old hat to the readers of Cosmo), and ask them how much of this advice they did and didn't already know. If the article doesn't meet a minimum percentage usefulness to a minimum percentage of the population, they have to send it back and come up with something better.
There should be a manadatory minimum usefulness requirement for these articles. They should survey random people (random people within the target audience is fine - I get that the same advice might be new and useful to the readers of Seventeen but old hat to the readers of Cosmo), and ask them how much of this advice they did and didn't already know. If the article doesn't meet a minimum percentage usefulness to a minimum percentage of the population, they have to send it back and come up with something better.
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