Archive for November, 2007
What Families Want
Tuesday, November 27th, 2007When Steve and I looked for a community to call home, we didn’t go back to our native States–New York and Michigan–because we hated the snow, ice and gloom. We had lived in Southern California, and while it’s delightful when young and single, there was no way in heck we’d live there with a family. So we scouted Arizona (too dry), Colorado (snowy, sunny, overvalued) and at our friends’ behest, Houston (yes Houston), Texas.
Who expects to love Houston, or rather a suburb of Houston? That’s right, no one. But you get here and love it. I’ve had so many people tell me this from every diverse background.
Still, city planners scoff. Houston is spread out. Houston doesn’t have a “real” down-town. Houston is hot, humid, buggy, and miserable in the summer. Houston is a dirty, oil town. Houston is a cow town (this from an irony-disabled Dallas dweller).
City planners are stupid. As Joel Kotkin notes in his Wall Street Journal editorial:
Advocates of the brew-latté-and-they-will-come approach often point to greater Portland, Ore., which has experienced consistent net gains of educated workers, including families. Yet most of that migration–as well as at least three quarters of the region’s population and job growth–has been not to the increasingly childless city, but to the suburban periphery. This pattern holds true in virtually every major urban region.
Here’s what Houston suburbs have: planned communities, good schools, access to culture, jobs, jobs, jobs, cheap housing, etc. Sure single people might like the city. I’m a mom with three kids and I like the city. But I don’t like it that much–not enough to live there.
I want to take my kids for a walk and go to parks safely. I want room. I want a mall within minutes and the grocery even closer. In short, I want the suburb of a big city. And there are lots of people just like me.
City planners need to remember the dull, boring families. We do exist.
H/T Instapundit
Trent Lott Gay?
Monday, November 26th, 2007This is from Perez Hilton, who also was the first to break Castro’s death–only, he’s still alive.
I don’t know his sexual orientation, but I do know he’s got a voracious appetite–for pork. May Mr. Piggy go and good riddance, too!
Getting Out Clean: Part Deux
Monday, November 26th, 2007Since flu season is upon us, I had re-linked to a post I wrote about getting out of a public restroom clean. That re-post garnered this response:
My god, how horrible must life be to go through it filled with such paranoia. How did our species survive for the millenia before we invent antiseptic wipes?
Remember when we were kids? We played in the dirt and mud. We rolled around on the ground with dogs (or whatever farm animals we were raising at the time). We drank from the garden hose that had been lying on the ground for months.
Strong immune systems that have been exposed to and conquered multitudes of viruses over a lifetime are not very susceptible to infection.
I spend all of my free time outside. Camping, hunting, fishing (and the various animal butchering that these activities require) are about as dirty as you can get.
Sure, I wash my hands after using the toilet, and before eating if they look dirty. I even use soap. I have never even given a thought to touching the water faucet or the door handle.
According to my employee record, my last sick day was sometime in 2003.
Evidently, my advice got misconstrued as some paean to obsessive-compulsion. Well, I think it would be wise to revisit the topic but give it a broader foundation.
A person with a healthy immune system won’t get sick. Period. A healthy immune system isolates, kills, eats and then excretes viri, bad bacteria and mutant cells. All these invaders are tricky and do their best to fool the system. When the system is tired, malnourished, or otherwise stressed that’s what happens.
People with strong constitutions are really people who rarely perceive stress or when a stressor is applied to them, they bounce back faster or use the stressor positively. I’m not talking about the strong-silent type who is imploding and the rest of the world sees it when he drops dead of a heart attack. I’m talking about the George Burns type who lives life fully and happily, and enjoys a good cigar now and again, too.
A healthy immune system is built by exposure to naturally occurring organisms in naturally occurring situations. One of the best things you can do for your kid is to let him catch a cold or the flu or some other virus and let him fight it without intervening with medications which short-circuit the immune process. Another way to build it is to walk barefoot. Let the kids play in the dirt, walk in the dirt, get dirty. And an excellent way to build the immune system is to get a dog or three. Animals share many bacteria with humans. Plus, their presence boosts the immune system.
So while I might be a little OCD about getting out of a public bathroom clean, please understand I’m not a general germophobe. Many public restrooms are disgusting petri dishes. The worst are hospital bathrooms where the bugs are supersonic. It is wise to be vigilant in public places while not being hysterical. Remember, stress lowers the immune system.
To stay well while traveling, for example, do this:
- Allow enough time (emotional stress)
- Drink plenty of water (you lose hydration because of recycled air–physiological stress)
- Wash hands after using the bathroom and before eating
- Watch, listen, or read positive something. (boosts immune system)
- Take a shower and a walk after a long travel day. (clean the skin and clear out the windpipes, increase circulation which washes out bugs)
- Drink more water and take water soluble vitamins like a B complex.
- Try to have a good sleep.
- Avoid shaking hands (#1 way bugs are transmitted is direct contact).
You won’t get sick, even if you’re surrounded by choking masses. Boost your immune system.
And still, wash your hands!
"How is that different from a man buying a young girl dinner?"
Monday, November 26th, 2007What’s a rich, white, middle-aged, single (ostensibly) woman to do?
Hard figures are difficult to come by, but local people on the coast estimate that as many as one in five single women visiting from rich countries are in search of sex.Emerging alongside this black market trade — and obvious in the bars and on the sand once the sun goes down — are thousands of elderly white women hoping for romantic, and legal, encounters with much younger Kenyan men.
They go dining at fine restaurants, then dancing, and back to expensive hotel rooms overlooking the coast.
“One type of sex tourist attracted the other,” said one manager at a shorefront bar on Mombasa’s Bamburi beach.
“Old white guys have always come for the younger girls and boys, preying on their poverty … But these old women followed … they never push the legal age limits, they seem happy just doing what is sneered at in their countries.”
Experts say some thrive on the social status and financial power that comes from taking much poorer, younger lovers.
The good new days: Feminism means women acting out the basest nature of men. It’s something to aspire to!
Beowulf: There Are No Heroes
Monday, November 26th, 2007We have firmly established that I am a hard-core, socially awkward, fantasy-reading,, sci-fi watching nerd. Just wanted to remind you of that while reviewing the movie Beowulf.
Beowulf, oh ye of firm, round, hairless buttocks and impressive, um, courage! This movie strikes me as a satire of all monster v. man films out there rather than a serious treatment of the epic poem. I giggled throughout. Most of the rest of the audience didn’t seem to get the joke.
Everything, and I mean, everything was enhanced in this remarkable cartoon. It was a cartoon. While the characters looked and sounded like Angelina Jolie (naked and gold), Anthony Hopkins (bloated and bulked up) and Ray Winstone (ripped and taut), they were cartoons. Thus, the raters of the movie deemed the fake boobs and butts acceptable for children. I would NOT bring any child under fifteen to this movie, but I’m strict.
If you’re going to fully appreciate the spectacle, see this movie in 3D. You want to be blood-spattered and oozed on, if possible, otherwise it’s not worth it, right? Grendel is hideous beyond all measure. I caught myself examining his skinned arms, filleted jaw, and disfigured head. But even that turned funny. He was like a puss-filled Gollum from the Lord of the Rings.
The emotions conveyed by the animation lacked humanness. They seemed to focus more on Beowulf’s facial ticks and features and he felt the most “real”. Otherwise, the entire picture was an experience, much like the movie 300. There was little emotional engagement. In fact, the movie reminded me of Moulin Rouge and even Chicago to a lesser extent or going to a Cirque du Soleil show, where the story is the spectacle. There is no narrative.
Modern writers eschew a plot for fear it will turn off the masses. It is either the experience (300) or to be preached at incessantly (Lions for Lambs, Happy Feet). Can’t a movie have an engaging story where a hero clearly wins? Oh wait, I remember. There are no heroes.
My only “deep thought” associated with this film came during the very last scene. I leaned over to ask my husband if men, were indeed, so easily mislead. He said yes, but I thought that conclusion to be rather misandric. Surely men exist who wouldn’t be tempted by the likes of a naked demon Angelina Jolie purring false promises destined to be eternal torment.
Was the joke on Ms. Jolie and Mr. Pitt or was the joke on us? I bet the latter. The movie should be categorized as a comedy.
Personal and Ideological Hygiene
Sunday, November 25th, 2007Tis the season to be wheezin’ so I thought it might be helpful to talk personal hygiene. 40% of men regularly don’t wash their hands after using public restrooms. That is just plain vile. For information about how to get out of public restrooms clean, read here. (It’s more challenging that you’d think.)
It might also be a good time to discuss how disease and stupid ideas are spread because they happen the same way. A way to raise brand awareness is called “viral marketing”. Good ideas can spread especially on the web where word-of-mouth is everything. Viral marketing assumes that “influencers” will pass along the idea. And they do, in a limited way (we bloggers like to think in a big way). But what causes more extensive spreading? Big groups of people who don’t use personal hygiene:
Using mathematical models of social networks, Columbia Professor Duncan Watts looked at how behavior or information cascades among groups of people, or what we think of as “going viral.” He found that the people we think of as “influencers” — trusted folks with friends in many different social spheres — don’t really influence many people beyond their immediate community. Watts argues that a much more reliable way to spark trends is by going after a large group of easily-influenced people, even if they don’t have as many friends.
So people, say the Hollywood elite, never wash their ideological hands. They swarm in like-minded groups and whatever disease that’s going around–9/11 was inside job, soldiers are rapists, global warming will kill us all, etc.–gets spread to everyone. That’s how three stupid anti-war movies can come out and make nary a penny. A mental-disease spread.
It is also how a big groups of people can cling to ridiculous ideas. The public has been stressed for some time now. They are disillusioned by the press and the government, and their trust in our leaders like the President, is hammered away at non-stop. The press gives the government almost super-natural power and the populace believes it. This fragile ecosystem is ripe for exploitation. All sorts of ideas fall in when rational thought is pushed out.
Thus, a poll revealing the majority of the U.S. believes a 9/11 conspiracy. It’s insane. It’s unfathomable, but I know far too many people who believe these theories. They look normal yet they carry a pernicious disease and spread it, mostly because they don’t have the critical thinking foundation necessary to navigate this post-modern world.
And it is scary. You can try to rationalize it, as Ann Althouse does, but it’s scary:
Oh, no. What is to become of our democracy if people are so foolish? Grasping for hope, I theorize that people don’t actually go around thinking these things but being polled somehow lures them into agreeing with statements. I’m not saying the poll wasn’t done according to professional standards. I’m just speculating that maybe when people hear a calm, professional-sounding voice state a proposition, perhaps something that they haven’t really thought about, they fall into agreement. (And, yes, I know, it’s pathetic that that’s all I can come up with when I’m grasping for hope.)
The cure for the disease is prevention. Rational thoughts, like clean hands, help halt these diseases.
Cross-posted at John Hawkin’s site Right Wing News.
Flu Drugs Give Children Neurological Problems
Saturday, November 24th, 2007It’s important to remember that the largest concentration of nerve fibers, outside the brain, is in the gut. You do have gut feelings.
Don’t give your kids Flu drugs. Hygiene. Hygiene. Hygiene. Fluids, rest, good nutrition should be enough to help any kid manage the flu.
Today might be a good day to remind you about how to get out of a public bathroom clean.
Howard Out In Australia
Saturday, November 24th, 2007And what is the jubilant USA Today headline? Australia Ousts Conservatives is the Google headline and when you get to the actual page, the paper itself is a bit more subdued: Australia ousts center-right coalition. Such restraint! How about Howard concedes or some such?
They might as well have written, “Ding-dong one of the witches is dead!” Remember how stomach-turning it was to watch Clinton and his minions dancing around to Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow like he was new prom king? Yeah, so do I. If a Dem wins in 08, I expect to feel like this. More here.
Don’t expect any dignity from the press should a Democrat win in 2008. Not that they have much on a good day.
The Church Staggers: Treasure and The Heart
Friday, November 23rd, 2007There are only two things in life: money and love. Right now, the church is hurting on both accounts. As previously discussed, the role of women in the church and what some perceive as the feminist neuterization of male and female roles which results in socialist jargon passing for sermons, empties seats.
It’s all love, all the time in churches but what does love mean? Are there any expectations to demonstrate that love?
That brings us to the other immutable issue: money. Tithing has become an issue in the modern church. People are reading their bibles and rejecting the commonly accepted notion that tithing is required. The Wall Street Journal reports this phenomenon (worth reading the whole article):
The anti-tithing movement has found support in some unlikely places: theologically conservative divinity schools and church pulpits. At Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., professor Andreas Kostenberger challenges tithing in classes on the New Testament. He teaches that if you add up all taxes paid by the ancient Israelites, they exceed 10%, and that in the New Testament there’s no percentage rule. He says pastors perpetuate the 10% figure out of “pragmatism, tradition and ignorance, quite frankly.”
Matthew 6:21 says it all regarding giving:
People don’t have their heart or treasure in the church these days. And they are suspicious of the way their churches are spending money. And in many cases, churches spend selfishly.
For six years, while avoiding any churches because the ones I had contact with seemed filled to the brim with hypocrisy and anything but love, we gave charitably other places. Many charities were still ministries–charities with Christian foundations–but they offered concrete, tangible ministry.
But I can’t help but wonder if the church isn’t just a reflection of the people attending there. Consumed with their own busy lives, many church-goers don’t take time for church, or more importantly, God. Going to church is a way of giving time (these days, a much more precious commodity) to worship and learn and to be filled up spiritually. People are doing this less than they used to, too.
So while some church goers complain about the church’s priorities and selfishness, the same could be said for the members themselves.
If a person has adequate funds, 10% giving back doesn’t seem too much. It seems like a basic contribution not unlike the minimum set aside for retirement.
Ultimately, churches reap what they sow. The Catholic Church has hurt herself, I’m guessing for a generation at least, in the United States because of their scandals. Church pastors are as prone to sin like porn as the rest of the populace. And then there are the church leaders who live secret lives. All these scandals HAVE made a difference in how people, men especially, view the church.
Distrust in authority makes it seem almost unbelievable that a pastor or church board would do this when a member wonders about tithing:
When he objected to his church’s instructions to tithe, Kirk Cesaretti took it up with the church leaders. In response, he received a letter from the pastor and elders of Hydesville Community Church in Hydesville, Calif. “At this time, we believe your concerns do not warrant any change in our church policy or positions,” the letter read.
The letter closed with a verse from Hebrews 13:17: “Obey your leaders, and submit to them; for they keep watch over your souls; as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you.”
When the leaders are corrupt or lazy or sinful, or people may fear them to be, no amount of scriptural brow-beating will get them to give to the church.
The pastors and church leadership would do well to read Malachi 2. Tithing is a secondary problem.
