Archive for November, 2003

I’m shocked. I was listening to The World on WYSO today and I listened to Bush’s speech from England. He actually sounded intelligent. This means one of

1. England makes people more intelligent
2. Bush’s speech writers think Brits are more intelligent and write up to them. Ergo, they think Americans are dumb. (unfortunately probably true.)
3. A British speechwriter rewrote Bush’s speech for the British audience

Whatever the reason, I’m for moving The White House to London.

Its time for a simple title.

I’ven’t gotten my news reading cycle yet. (I read news about once every three or four days, because I read such a large variety of sources it takes me 1-2 hours to get through it all usually.) But, I have caught wind of the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling instructing the legislature to legalize gay marriage within 180 days. With clockwork precision both the Governor of Massachusetts and our illustrious President denounced the ruling, wow that was surprising. Bill O’Reilly of course took on the issue; he has some interesting things to say.

First, it is my understanding that the ruling at hand only affects governmental actions regarding marriage, it does not affect religious institutions directly in any way. As private entities they reserve the right to discriminate, as it should be. Unfortunately many people believe that we should force private institutions to be nondiscriminatory even when they are not accepting governmental money. The right of any group to choose who they associate with must be protected. I will be one of the first to support the right of groups to choose their association. (Well behind the religious righters who are already lining up to fight a nonexistent fight.) I support the Boy Scouts right to prevent gay people from being allowing gay scouts to serve in leadership positions. I don’t like it, but I feel that is their lawful right. We live in a democracy with freedoms. (Just like the people of Iraq to paraphrase a recent line, just forget the US troops occupying and enforcing order.)

Next up, there is this little matter of “preserving the institution of marriage.” I want to get married some day, I’m just working on finding the right man. I am disturbed though that by the time I’m ready it might not mean anything. I’ve written before on a personal case of marriage not being taken seriously. I personally know of a few cases where the divorces almost preceded the wedding. But unfortunately people do not put enough stock in marriage. I honestly believe we do need to educate about marriage, and bash into people’s heads that they are entering into a commitment that supersedes their individuality. (For those of familiar with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine marriage is like a Trill who has chosen to be joined, its not a light decision and it cannot be reversed easily.)

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A quick note about divorce statistics. I have a not so sneaking suspicion that the figure’s we’ve been seeing aren’t lying but the liars have figured them to support their argument. I went looking and found that the government no longer collects detailed marriage and divorce information but I found reasonable set of statistics. At first glance its easy to assume that most marriages last about 7.2 years, but if you look farther you’ll note the “Average length of first marriages which end in divorce” is 11 years. I surmise from this that while there are a good number of divorces, a significant amount of them are from shorter marriages. I’ve got a librarian out finding a frequency chart for length of marriages that end in divorce/death, she needed more time to find it.

Addendum: While I was working on this my librarian came back with a few answers. While I’ve not fully combed through all of them there was one page with an interesting chart. Given that it is from a site named biblenews1.com I trust the statistics are not overly liberal. What shocked me at first was that the divorce and marriage rates have similar shaped lines. The important shift came during 1975 to 1980, where the divorce per marriage rate gained a higher ratio, but since then the percentage of people getting married has been reasonably matched with the percentage of people getting divorces. Wow, where is the crisis?

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Good now that nasty statistical matter is generally over.

Marriage has grown to an unmanageable tarball. There are 1,000 rights and responsibilities at the federal level that come with marriage. This figure surprises me and I would expect it to surprise many married couples, who haven’t looked into the issue. Quite simply this is like the cable or telephone company deciding that everyone must buy their top of the line over $100 package, instead of offering several choices that allows you to get the best fit. There are several broad categories of rights and benefits my (incomplete list) includes:

1. Parental rights (including foster care and adoption)
2. Fiscal rights (bank accounts, employer benefits, life insurance, social security, student loans, governmental loans)
3. Medical rights (you gain the ability to make decisions regarding your spouse if they are incapacitated, right to be at someone’s bedside)
4. Judicial Protections (including right not to testify against spouse, immigration rights)
5. Religious rights/responsibilites (varies by religions)
6. Social recognition of peers

I’ve deliberately chosen different categories than the GAO. The first four categories are rights generally given by the government, the other two are non-governmental and as such I won’t examine them.

I believe that instead of getting the “whole package” you should be able to pick which responsibilities and rights you want. Either of the first three could be entered into independently or jointly. Entering into the judicial protections should require you to have executed either the fiscal or parental rights clause. (To prevent people who are under criminal investigation and single from getting them as a legal shield.) Religious rights and responsibilities of course would be the responsibility of each religion to determine, and they could require entering into the other agreements. Social recognition is just something that will and has come about.

A word about parental rights, they should not be a given. The rights of the child should always come before that of the parents. I will defer to William Irvine’s books, Doing Right by Children and The Politics of Parenting. They are both excellent and accessible philosophical works concerning the history and philosophical responsibilities of parenting.

Finally you could terminate any one of these agreements via legal proceedings, as you currently can do.

But why divide marriage up? I think the best reason is that it makes people aware of what they are getting, and in addition untangles and should clarify the issue, and could reduce divorces. You may love her and want to raise kids and have her make decisions for you, but you want nothing to do with her finances. You could just get medical privileges because your past child bearing age and your finances are set.

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Concerning the predictions that the world is going to depopulate because people have said that:

Marriage is not a lifestyle choice, but a “public commodity,” critical for the survival of the human race, he said, adding that it deserves special supports and incentives.

“If there is no next generation, we are gone, we are dead,” he said.

Honestly he doesn’t understand that nature has made sex pleasur
able, there will always be a next generation, regardless of the state of marriage.

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Okay to wrap up my wandering diatribe on marriage I would like to credit Google for being invaluable in finding information, David Lauri’s blog which got me started, and the digraph “th” which occurs the most of any digraph in this entry. (See for yourself)

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But, I’ve neglected the two most important features of any marriage: love and commitment. Every marriage should have these, even if the government doesn’t recognize them.

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I’m stopping here. I believe I’ve attempted to bite off more than I can chew, so next time I’m going to attack an easier subject like world peace. Or I could sum that up too, “All you need is love”

I’m starting a stock research effort right here, right now. Instead of dealing with pesky numbers, sales efforts, and business plans I’m going to focus on what really matters culture. (Because you know that twenty fifty seventy percent of those pesky numbers can be easily faked.)

I’ve been seeing at least a few emerging threads that lead me to believe culture is the most important thing. Margaret Wheatley in A Simpler Way and Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World argues that our businesses today look like large machines, plodding along moving in cog like motions, similar to how we used to view biology and physics. She suggests we look at recent discoveries in biology and quantum physics and allow ourselves to play and have flexibility. What I’ve read of the cluetrain manifesto they urge us to look at all ranks of the company and open them up and utilize the contacts within and without the company. Quite similar to this is Market Intelligence, a marketing concept that advocates utilizing information at all levels of the organization.

The company in question utilizes none of this wisdom. They have the most structured and hierarchal organization. Half of their documents have “Highly Confidential – Proprietary Information” written on the bottom of them. The people who actually do the work are seen quite frankly as replaceable commodities, despite that they’re the all important glue that brings the service together and delivers it.

Luckily they’re not in ecommerce or something like that, that requires them to pay attention to their customers.

Who are they? What do they do? I won’t tell but I wouldn’t expect those who can’t hear to hear a pin do anything, let alone drop.

I’ve always found it ironic that the day after Thanksgiving is the start of “the holiday shopping season.”" As if to say we’re not really sure everyone thought we were sincere on Thanksgiving, so we’re going to have a frenzy of buying to try to convince everyone we’re really thankful for them.

I just overheard some coworkers talking about a sale at Penny’s. (My coworkers will always be enshrined as Penny’s sales shoppers, like Johnny from Airplane, “There’s a sale at Penny’s!” Theres a flamer if I ever saw one.) Okay, but what I’m really looking forward to seeing is that abomination of commercialism the Thanksgiving Day newspaper hawking goods sold at a loss to get people in the door. But what is even more amazing is everyone falls for this price kangaroo fest, trying to convince their relatives they are thankful for them instead of spending the precious Thanksgiving Friday off with them.

I for one will not be one of those minion consumers directed by the marketer’s whim. I’ll be visiting with my sister who will be here from out of town.

What am I getting everyone for Christmas if I’m not going to be a marketer’s minion? Its going to be a light christmas, I’m spending $5 to $10 on each family member and making them a gift. (Hey, I’m just trying to make up from last year when my grand idea fell through and I got them nothing..)

Oh, also check out Buy Nothing Day. Its a group that advocates spending nothing on the day after Thanksgiving.

I had a chat with my former roommate from two years ago. He’s an Army “reservist” currently in Iraq.

Nicholas Barnard: Happy Thanksgiving!

Former Roommate: you too

Former Roommate: how are you

Nicholas Barnard: I’m doing well. Just about to go to bed actually, but I’m just working and doing my thing.. Nothing really different

Former Roommate: well good night

Nicholas Barnard: Thank you. You take care of yourself and keep your head up! We’re all appreciative of the sacrifices you guys (and gals) have been makin..

Former Roommate: thank you

Former Roommate: and we are thankful of yall supportin us

Nicholas Barnard: well night..

Former Roommate: night

(I made a few spelling and punctuation corrections)

I struggled when I was typing, “We’re all appreciative of the sacrifices you guys (and gals) have been makin..” I was going to say I am thankful for their sacrifices, but I am not. I am thankful for those men and women from my and previous generations that honor and serve our great diverse nation, but I am not thankful that they are in and dying in Iraq.

While I do have the luxury of hindsight, I feel as if we were sold a false bill of goods. There are no WMDs, Saddam and Osama Bin Laden are still on the run, we have spent a massive amount of money, and we have alienated our allies. We have all paid an uncalculated price, some of us will pay a small price, some of us paying a larger long term price, and finally others have paid the largest ultimate price. I respect and appreciate those in the latter two categories, but not thankful they are where they are.

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Enough politics.

I am thankful for my daily protection from others and the elements.

I am thankful to have a job I enjoy, and provide for those who need my assistance.

I am thankful that I can be me, regardless of social structures.

I am thankful for those that challenge me and push me.

I am thankful for my ability and power to articulate and my wonderful family, friends and coworkers who support me, and make life as enjoyable and interesting as it is.

I am thankful to be here, life is an amazing privilege that we have been granted, and sometimes take for granted.

I am thankful to be.

I’m feeling strangely lonely again…

Holidays Suck, they just do. Thanksgiving was alright. Dad and I went to a movie, then we went to dinner at a restaurant, like two old single men whose wives died and left them together. I’m 23, not 83.

All my siblings have their lives started. My older brother, the perpetually single one, finally has shacked up. So that leaves everyone in my immediate family with the exception of me and my dad either married, or living with their significant other. Everyone’s started their microcommunity.

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I’ve decided I’m taking a vacation to San Francisco. I figure I can do it for inside of $500.00 + 25,000 airline miles, assuming I stay at a hostel, which actually sounds intriguing.

I have this dream that I’ll meet some amazing guy and end up moving out there. Fantasy is so easy and attractive, wouldn’t it be great if life were that way?

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I really want to move out of Dayton. I just cannot justify it, for two reasons.

One, I’m living rent free at my dad’s house. so moving somewhere and paying rent is a untenable idea, given that I owe a crapload of money.

Number Two is so much trickier. I have one really close friend and she is tied here by here mom, husband, and child. We both have the same feelings, we ant me to be happy, but we don’t want to live in different cities away from each other. Neither option will make me completely happy, so I’m stuck choosing the lesser of two evils.

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Holidays just bring all this out, and the worst thing is the elevator holiday music. Bleh. Thats the torturous worst!