Want to know what people think? The General Social Survey is for you.
Something I stumbled across:
85.4 percent of respondants (~15,000 people) approve of a man punching another man if he breaks into his house - the most excusable reason.
84.7 approve if a man sees another man hitting a woman.
Defense of a female stranger almost coequal to defending your house from invasion? Chivalry lives (at least as an ideal)!
Friday, July 14, 2006
Thursday, July 13, 2006
For What It's Worth
I have a different gripe than the one that's been typical the past several months.
My car didn't pass smog. The repairs are surprisingly costly, for something that doesn't actually keep the vehicle from running (and which aren't covered by my extended warranty, of course). The costs come at a bad time. The timing, in conjunction with my cross-country trip, couldn't be much worse.
It's all quite frustrating.
But for what it's worth, it's something else to distract me from my primary frustrations.
My car didn't pass smog. The repairs are surprisingly costly, for something that doesn't actually keep the vehicle from running (and which aren't covered by my extended warranty, of course). The costs come at a bad time. The timing, in conjunction with my cross-country trip, couldn't be much worse.
It's all quite frustrating.
But for what it's worth, it's something else to distract me from my primary frustrations.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Gmail
In a (patently silly) conversation through Google E-mail, the word vineyard came up. The following ad appeared on the side of my screen, and made me chuckle:
Vineyard For Sale
Low Priced Vineyard.
Huge Selection!
eBay.co.uk
Vineyard For Sale
Low Priced Vineyard.
Huge Selection!
eBay.co.uk
Reminders
I had been doing pretty good. Life stinks, so you move on, try new things, look on the positive side of things, right? Accept the things you cannot change, and change the things you can like Ty on crack.
And then small reminders come. And a sense of being stuck in the same old scenario returns. Hoplessness. Will things ever change? Wallowing in self-pity is not fun, but oh so easy.
It takes an act of will, of discipline to stop, and I've never been too good at that. To choose not to wallow in that which blunts the edge of reality but does nothing to change it. To accept that things have changed, and get to work rediscovering your place in the world.
I knew on New Year's Eve as I thought about the year behind and the year ahead that things would be different. They had to be. They are different, in ways I had feared more than in ways I had hoped. But time is experienced in an inexorable march, and to spend my time wishing I could go back and change things is a waste.
The new year is now closer than the old. Perhaps that is a fitting metaphor for moving ahead. Travelling paths I fear to tread, with a strength that is not my own, to and end I cannot see is tremendously scary. But simply sitting down and demanding that the world grind to a stop so I can adjust to things is not an option. I can sit, but the world continues to go.
So I accept it: she's dating a presumably wonderful guy who makes her ridiculously happy. I'm left alone with regrets for time and emotions invested in someone who proved to be just like everyone else, wondering what might have been if I had taken other opportunities I instead passed on for her sake. But I didn't, and those too have passed. She was my yesterday: today and tomorrow are all I have to work with.
Where to from here, then? For now: lunch.
And then small reminders come. And a sense of being stuck in the same old scenario returns. Hoplessness. Will things ever change? Wallowing in self-pity is not fun, but oh so easy.
It takes an act of will, of discipline to stop, and I've never been too good at that. To choose not to wallow in that which blunts the edge of reality but does nothing to change it. To accept that things have changed, and get to work rediscovering your place in the world.
I knew on New Year's Eve as I thought about the year behind and the year ahead that things would be different. They had to be. They are different, in ways I had feared more than in ways I had hoped. But time is experienced in an inexorable march, and to spend my time wishing I could go back and change things is a waste.
The new year is now closer than the old. Perhaps that is a fitting metaphor for moving ahead. Travelling paths I fear to tread, with a strength that is not my own, to and end I cannot see is tremendously scary. But simply sitting down and demanding that the world grind to a stop so I can adjust to things is not an option. I can sit, but the world continues to go.
So I accept it: she's dating a presumably wonderful guy who makes her ridiculously happy. I'm left alone with regrets for time and emotions invested in someone who proved to be just like everyone else, wondering what might have been if I had taken other opportunities I instead passed on for her sake. But I didn't, and those too have passed. She was my yesterday: today and tomorrow are all I have to work with.
Where to from here, then? For now: lunch.
Monday, July 10, 2006
Global Domination
I really like this game. Except when I lose, unless I can think of a good excuse to comfort myself with. Among my roommate and our friends, I am expected to win each and every time. When I don't, it is reckoned a failure on my part. Which begs the question - why play? It is a no-win situation, right?
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Genuinely Clever
I must admit, I liked some of the writing in this movie review. A sample:
Anyway, as Jack, Will, and Elizabeth work cooperatively, the makers of "Dead Man's Chest" hurl obstacles in the trio's way with the tenacity -- and undifferentiated agitation -- of shipboard monkeys.
Routine
As I was leaving for work, I turned off the TV as they were starting a story about the shuttle Discovery docking with the ISS. As I walked out the door, it struck me how news that our space shuttle is docking with the space station seemed ordinary.
We have a space station. A permanently-manned outpost whizzing around the Earth something like 7 times a day (remember when just to make it around the Earth was an extrordinary feat requiring years and years of travel?). That's pretty cool, even if it is rather small. Perhaps it is boring because it's just a small outpost - not like a booming port city, but an outpost.
But it is in the nature of exploration for outposts to become larger, growing from a destination to a point for embarking on travel to what like beyond. St. Louis was once the edge of civilization - the Gateway to the West. Now, it's considered Midwest, or even East.
I wonder what it will be like 100 years from now. Probably nothing like we can expect - as I doubt that in 1906 our world today was in the minds of the most incredible visionaries.
We have a space station. A permanently-manned outpost whizzing around the Earth something like 7 times a day (remember when just to make it around the Earth was an extrordinary feat requiring years and years of travel?). That's pretty cool, even if it is rather small. Perhaps it is boring because it's just a small outpost - not like a booming port city, but an outpost.
But it is in the nature of exploration for outposts to become larger, growing from a destination to a point for embarking on travel to what like beyond. St. Louis was once the edge of civilization - the Gateway to the West. Now, it's considered Midwest, or even East.
I wonder what it will be like 100 years from now. Probably nothing like we can expect - as I doubt that in 1906 our world today was in the minds of the most incredible visionaries.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
The Human Body
Is it miraculous, or is it just the human body once again showing it can do more than even the experts think?
Link: Boston Globe Article
Link: Boston Globe Article
Monday, July 03, 2006
Love
I heard it asserted the other night that we cannot love other people save through the power of Christ. I used to take this as a given truth, not being aware of much of the world beyond my church. How, then, could anyone follow any other church, any other philosophy? Should not our love shine forth like a beacon to everyone, a self-evident sign of our identity?
In my experience, my closest friends, none of whom are churched people can be as loving or more loving than Christians I know. All of us were there in a heartbeat when the father of one of our group passed away - arriving before the sun not because we could do much, but to be there. We went to the mortuary with his family. We began the process of getting his effects in order. Mostly, we were just there - and I doubt anyone thought for a moment there was anywhere else we should have been.
My Mormon cousins are kind people whose company I prefer to many other people I know. They offered their homes when my sister and I went to Salt Lake for the NCAA Tournament, and I watched as one spent some noticeable time on the phone trying to help an aquaintance from church find housing in another state.
I am uncertain if we are the sole chalice of love in a cruel and uncaring world. If we are, how is it that so many others imitate it so convincingly? If we are not, what do we make of "all my will know that you are my disciples if you love one another"?
Do we simply love too little? What would the love we ought to have look like? And why don't we seem to have it? I'd love to get your thoughts on this.
In my experience, my closest friends, none of whom are churched people can be as loving or more loving than Christians I know. All of us were there in a heartbeat when the father of one of our group passed away - arriving before the sun not because we could do much, but to be there. We went to the mortuary with his family. We began the process of getting his effects in order. Mostly, we were just there - and I doubt anyone thought for a moment there was anywhere else we should have been.
My Mormon cousins are kind people whose company I prefer to many other people I know. They offered their homes when my sister and I went to Salt Lake for the NCAA Tournament, and I watched as one spent some noticeable time on the phone trying to help an aquaintance from church find housing in another state.
I am uncertain if we are the sole chalice of love in a cruel and uncaring world. If we are, how is it that so many others imitate it so convincingly? If we are not, what do we make of "all my will know that you are my disciples if you love one another"?
Do we simply love too little? What would the love we ought to have look like? And why don't we seem to have it? I'd love to get your thoughts on this.
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