"He's not a moron at all. He's my friend."
- Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien's amusing "praise" of our President, as noted in this Salon.com article
Monday, November 25, 2002
Sunday, November 24, 2002
Spectacular Stupidity
Apparently -- get this -- something bad is going to happen to us!
No, we don't know when. Maybe soon?
We don't know where.
We don't know how.
We don't know much of anything about it, actually.
Most importantly, we, your clueless ass-covering government folk don't even have any suggestions of what to do.
Er, no, wait. Be careful! Be cautious! Yeah.
---
Am I advocating that our government keep warnings from us? Not necessarily. But at least they could give us some guidance and actually encourage us to do something useful for ourselves and our neighbors.
For instance, if they had credible evidence that something was goin' down on the East Coast, perhaps they could encourage people in that area to donate blood or plasma. If there IS a horrible terrorist act, we'll be better prepared to help the injured. If not, I'm sure it all can be put to good use anyway.
Maybe our government could take just a teensy fraction of the ridiculous amounts of cash it spends subsidizing big business and upgrade a few thousand ambulances or create salaries for extra emergency personnel.
Sure, all of this would only help AFTER the fact, but at least that's something.
It's a whole lot more useful than the "Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid" crap that's being spewed by various government officials.
No, we don't know when. Maybe soon?
We don't know where.
We don't know how.
We don't know much of anything about it, actually.
Most importantly, we, your clueless ass-covering government folk don't even have any suggestions of what to do.
Er, no, wait. Be careful! Be cautious! Yeah.
---
Am I advocating that our government keep warnings from us? Not necessarily. But at least they could give us some guidance and actually encourage us to do something useful for ourselves and our neighbors.
For instance, if they had credible evidence that something was goin' down on the East Coast, perhaps they could encourage people in that area to donate blood or plasma. If there IS a horrible terrorist act, we'll be better prepared to help the injured. If not, I'm sure it all can be put to good use anyway.
Maybe our government could take just a teensy fraction of the ridiculous amounts of cash it spends subsidizing big business and upgrade a few thousand ambulances or create salaries for extra emergency personnel.
Sure, all of this would only help AFTER the fact, but at least that's something.
It's a whole lot more useful than the "Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid" crap that's being spewed by various government officials.
God's speech serves as valuable reminder
When I read about uprisings and massacres in God's name in articles like this, I'm reminded about a blunt and poignant speech made by God, clarifying his already-pretty-damn-clear "Thou Shalt Not Kill" guideline.
Saturday, November 23, 2002
Girls are pretty, boys are hardy
My blogger friend Jen just posted an insightful essay about Grrlpower and how women and girls are faced with the frustrating perception that femininity and power are mutually exclusive.
Without meaning to steal the female-thunder on this, I'd like to suggest that men face a similar conundrum.
When push comes to shove, we cannot actually be both Strong and Sensitive at the same time (despite this being an oft-requested combo in personal ads). Strong = masculine and manly and decisive. Sensitive = in touch with the 'feminine' site, thoughtful, collaborative.
Can you think of any CEO's who are respected for their strength and sensitivity? I can't. Er, maybe Meg Whitman (of ebay), but... hmm... any males?
Politicians? Hmm. Too often it seems to be stereotypically delineated by party label. Republicans = Strong (security, defense, upholding of paternalistic morals, etc.), Democrats = Sensitive (caring, community, health, etc.)
Why did Republicans sweep the recent elections? We're Afraid; they're Strong. Why have most Democrats become spineless booted-out-office-wimps? Because they failed to see how being characteristically sensitive (feeling our unemployed pain, for instance) could have been balanced against fears of national (in)security.
One day, we'll note that successful CEO's, effective politicians, wonderful potential boyfriends and great parents CAN have a mixture of Strength and Sensitivity.
Until then, though, girls will be girls and boys will be boys. And we'll keep talking and acting past each other, not with each other.
Without meaning to steal the female-thunder on this, I'd like to suggest that men face a similar conundrum.
When push comes to shove, we cannot actually be both Strong and Sensitive at the same time (despite this being an oft-requested combo in personal ads). Strong = masculine and manly and decisive. Sensitive = in touch with the 'feminine' site, thoughtful, collaborative.
Can you think of any CEO's who are respected for their strength and sensitivity? I can't. Er, maybe Meg Whitman (of ebay), but... hmm... any males?
Politicians? Hmm. Too often it seems to be stereotypically delineated by party label. Republicans = Strong (security, defense, upholding of paternalistic morals, etc.), Democrats = Sensitive (caring, community, health, etc.)
Why did Republicans sweep the recent elections? We're Afraid; they're Strong. Why have most Democrats become spineless booted-out-office-wimps? Because they failed to see how being characteristically sensitive (feeling our unemployed pain, for instance) could have been balanced against fears of national (in)security.
One day, we'll note that successful CEO's, effective politicians, wonderful potential boyfriends and great parents CAN have a mixture of Strength and Sensitivity.
Until then, though, girls will be girls and boys will be boys. And we'll keep talking and acting past each other, not with each other.
So what do YOU want to read?
You may have noticed that some of my recent blog entries have been more sarcastic than smiley, more political than personal. Perhaps that suits you fine, and perhaps it doesn't.
But worry not! By selecting links on the righthand side under "Bladam Categories" you can read exactly the entries that interest you, whether that be my musings on Dance, strange and wonderful photos, blatherings on travel, and so on.
Over time, I promise to make finding what you want to read even easier. And in the meantime, I do welcome your frank and constructive comments about what you find particular cool and uncool about my blog... contentwise, structurewise, anythingwise :-)
As always, thanks for reading! I write for myself, but I also write for you.
But worry not! By selecting links on the righthand side under "Bladam Categories" you can read exactly the entries that interest you, whether that be my musings on Dance, strange and wonderful photos, blatherings on travel, and so on.
Over time, I promise to make finding what you want to read even easier. And in the meantime, I do welcome your frank and constructive comments about what you find particular cool and uncool about my blog... contentwise, structurewise, anythingwise :-)
As always, thanks for reading! I write for myself, but I also write for you.
Friday, November 22, 2002
Friends and 'keeping in touch'
"Adam," my mom enthused, "You know, I was just talking to Aunt Elli, and -- remember her friends the Bronstiers? Well, their daughter Maura is now living in Oakland! I told Auntie to pass on your e-mail to her. Maybe you two can have lunch or whatever and..."
"Mom, please don't" I politely protested. "I don't need another friend right now. I need to be a better friend to the ones I've got."
My mom, bless her soul, was neither enlightened nor convinced.
"How can you have too many friends?!" she argued, "We're not talking marriage here, for Godsake, Adam, just lunch or coffee..."
I insisted more firmly: No. I felt guilty, but only a little bit.
Making friends is easy. Making GOOD friends is much harder. But maintaining or -- even scarier -- breaking off friendships? That's the toughest.
Rewarding? Hopefully. Frustrating? Often that, too. And sometimes painful along the journey? Yes.
---
My parents have lived in the same city -- actually, the same house! -- for three decades, and have been members at the same temple for about the same length of time. They have pretty much the same (many!) friends now as they did when I was growing up at home, and I am thankful for this, though admittedly sometimes almost envious that their social life is currently more rockin' than mine.
My folks clearly haven't had the same transience of friendships as I've dealt with, though, at least not recently. In just the last 10 years, I've lived and made friends in Evanston (near Chicago), Bloomington (near Indianapolis), Mannheim (in Germany), Boston, and lastly San Francisco, where I live now. Then there are the friends I have who now live in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Costa Rica, and more than a dozen other countries. And no, I'm not counting "Internet friends."
All in all, I count more than 500 contacts in my addressbook. All are 'friends' of various degrees... former work friends, gym buddies, MBA colleagues, that couple I met while kayaking, and so on. To put it in perspective, if I were to contact each of these folks just once a quarter and spend ten minutes in the process, that's nearly an hour a day of just 'keeping in touch'. And while some of these folks can be "hello'd" in under 10 minutes, perhaps, quite a few deserve far more of my time and, yes, my friendship.
That's a lot of dedication per day. That's a lot of dedication in my life. And it's dedication that I have sadly failed in carrying out.
So, unsurprisingly, I've lost friends. Some got married and we seemed to have less and less in common, as we cross-talked about babies and babes, mortgages and job searching. Distance, too, has been a definite issue. Out of sight out of mind may be grossly clich?d, but no less a factor.
But marriage and distance account for only a part of the lost friendship tally. Sometimes people -- or their interests or needs or circumstances -- simply change, and, well, the friendship no longer applies as it once did. In these cases, sometimes it seems preferable to 'pull the plug' rather than watch the friendship slowly, painfully wither... with plodding uncomfortableness hidden under strained and feigned interest: "So, what's new?"
But who can bear to tell someone, "I don't think we should be friends anymore"? With similar wording, romantic relationships can be at least theoretically 'cut clean'. Employers can (and oh so frequently DO) nowadays sever increasingly dysfunctional work 'relationships' at the drop of a hat without even having to bluster through much of a rationale much less an apology. But saying goodbye to a friend for the last time? Who can do that?
"Let's keep in touch," we tell each other. Perhaps we mean it, perhaps we don't. More likely, we simply don't know where we'll be or how we'll feel in 5 years or even 5 months.
Thus, with faded friendships too often experienced and understandably feared, the challenge then becomes more effectively managing the remaining (500+!) friendships.
"Managing." So businesslike. Outlook entries, IM lists, Christmas-cards-or-not, form letters, ad naseum. Oh, for the days of the small village, tighter boundaries, and simpler world!
The answer, then, becomes one constrained by practicalities and too removed from idealism, but nonetheless clear. Prioritize, organize, and balance frequency of contacts with Quality Time. Remember birthdays, if nothing else.
Or better yet, call. In this age of D.I. (Digital Instantaneousness), the phone may seem so anachronistic, especially for us Geek Guys. But it conveys a warmth that cannot be duplicated by anything other than looking into someone's eyes and smiling.
Of equal importance is the concept of letting go. With direct goodbyes not a pallatable option, at least we should drift gracefully, honestly. As tempting as it is to promise future contact ("I'll write!"), 'tis better to follow our hearts before succumbing to conventional politeness.
---
No, Mom, I don't need a new friend. I have too many friends that need my friendship, and they've been waiting too long already.
"Mom, please don't" I politely protested. "I don't need another friend right now. I need to be a better friend to the ones I've got."
My mom, bless her soul, was neither enlightened nor convinced.
"How can you have too many friends?!" she argued, "We're not talking marriage here, for Godsake, Adam, just lunch or coffee..."
I insisted more firmly: No. I felt guilty, but only a little bit.
Making friends is easy. Making GOOD friends is much harder. But maintaining or -- even scarier -- breaking off friendships? That's the toughest.
Rewarding? Hopefully. Frustrating? Often that, too. And sometimes painful along the journey? Yes.
---
My parents have lived in the same city -- actually, the same house! -- for three decades, and have been members at the same temple for about the same length of time. They have pretty much the same (many!) friends now as they did when I was growing up at home, and I am thankful for this, though admittedly sometimes almost envious that their social life is currently more rockin' than mine.
My folks clearly haven't had the same transience of friendships as I've dealt with, though, at least not recently. In just the last 10 years, I've lived and made friends in Evanston (near Chicago), Bloomington (near Indianapolis), Mannheim (in Germany), Boston, and lastly San Francisco, where I live now. Then there are the friends I have who now live in Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Costa Rica, and more than a dozen other countries. And no, I'm not counting "Internet friends."
All in all, I count more than 500 contacts in my addressbook. All are 'friends' of various degrees... former work friends, gym buddies, MBA colleagues, that couple I met while kayaking, and so on. To put it in perspective, if I were to contact each of these folks just once a quarter and spend ten minutes in the process, that's nearly an hour a day of just 'keeping in touch'. And while some of these folks can be "hello'd" in under 10 minutes, perhaps, quite a few deserve far more of my time and, yes, my friendship.
That's a lot of dedication per day. That's a lot of dedication in my life. And it's dedication that I have sadly failed in carrying out.
So, unsurprisingly, I've lost friends. Some got married and we seemed to have less and less in common, as we cross-talked about babies and babes, mortgages and job searching. Distance, too, has been a definite issue. Out of sight out of mind may be grossly clich?d, but no less a factor.
But marriage and distance account for only a part of the lost friendship tally. Sometimes people -- or their interests or needs or circumstances -- simply change, and, well, the friendship no longer applies as it once did. In these cases, sometimes it seems preferable to 'pull the plug' rather than watch the friendship slowly, painfully wither... with plodding uncomfortableness hidden under strained and feigned interest: "So, what's new?"
But who can bear to tell someone, "I don't think we should be friends anymore"? With similar wording, romantic relationships can be at least theoretically 'cut clean'. Employers can (and oh so frequently DO) nowadays sever increasingly dysfunctional work 'relationships' at the drop of a hat without even having to bluster through much of a rationale much less an apology. But saying goodbye to a friend for the last time? Who can do that?
"Let's keep in touch," we tell each other. Perhaps we mean it, perhaps we don't. More likely, we simply don't know where we'll be or how we'll feel in 5 years or even 5 months.
Thus, with faded friendships too often experienced and understandably feared, the challenge then becomes more effectively managing the remaining (500+!) friendships.
"Managing." So businesslike. Outlook entries, IM lists, Christmas-cards-or-not, form letters, ad naseum. Oh, for the days of the small village, tighter boundaries, and simpler world!
The answer, then, becomes one constrained by practicalities and too removed from idealism, but nonetheless clear. Prioritize, organize, and balance frequency of contacts with Quality Time. Remember birthdays, if nothing else.
Or better yet, call. In this age of D.I. (Digital Instantaneousness), the phone may seem so anachronistic, especially for us Geek Guys. But it conveys a warmth that cannot be duplicated by anything other than looking into someone's eyes and smiling.
Of equal importance is the concept of letting go. With direct goodbyes not a pallatable option, at least we should drift gracefully, honestly. As tempting as it is to promise future contact ("I'll write!"), 'tis better to follow our hearts before succumbing to conventional politeness.
---
No, Mom, I don't need a new friend. I have too many friends that need my friendship, and they've been waiting too long already.
Thursday, November 21, 2002
Lawsuits -- Greed or Need?
In an earlier entry, I called attention to "yet another example" of an American legal system run absurdly amuck. In this example, a lawyer had sent a cease and desist letter insisting that a journalist stop using his own name in his byline, due to theoretical confusion over the lawyer's similarly named (famous) client.
Of course, it's easy, perhaps too easy to poke fun of ridiculous lawyer-speak and lawsuits, and for much of this, we have only the lawyers (and their misguided / greedy clients) to blame.
Or is it really that simple? An article in the New York Times instead insists that lawsuits are a logical and not-all-that-improper response to a decentralized government.
People have used the tort system to rightfully take on major causes -- product safety, womens' rights, and so forth -- that our American legislature was unable or unwilling to tackle.
As some of you may be aware, I'm a law school graduate myself, and yes, I'm admittedly torn about this. Just as the New York Times article highlights, our tort system is based upon adversarial relationships, which understandably is sometimes neither desireable, efficient, nor fair. But on the other hand, it is true that with our government in the pocket of Big Business, there aren't many other existing means for the common guy to take on, say, General Motors.
All that said, however, I still strongly believe that our tort system is but a bandaid on the sores inflicted by a government which has thoroughly abdicated its proper role as a progressive and reliable watchdog... one with more bite than bark. Americans CAN (and sure, often do) sue large industrial companies for knowingly poisoning the populace, but it'd be so much better if our government actually did its job and protected our health and our environment without us having to fight tooth and nail for this 'privilege.'
Of course, it's easy, perhaps too easy to poke fun of ridiculous lawyer-speak and lawsuits, and for much of this, we have only the lawyers (and their misguided / greedy clients) to blame.
Or is it really that simple? An article in the New York Times instead insists that lawsuits are a logical and not-all-that-improper response to a decentralized government.
People have used the tort system to rightfully take on major causes -- product safety, womens' rights, and so forth -- that our American legislature was unable or unwilling to tackle.
As some of you may be aware, I'm a law school graduate myself, and yes, I'm admittedly torn about this. Just as the New York Times article highlights, our tort system is based upon adversarial relationships, which understandably is sometimes neither desireable, efficient, nor fair. But on the other hand, it is true that with our government in the pocket of Big Business, there aren't many other existing means for the common guy to take on, say, General Motors.
All that said, however, I still strongly believe that our tort system is but a bandaid on the sores inflicted by a government which has thoroughly abdicated its proper role as a progressive and reliable watchdog... one with more bite than bark. Americans CAN (and sure, often do) sue large industrial companies for knowingly poisoning the populace, but it'd be so much better if our government actually did its job and protected our health and our environment without us having to fight tooth and nail for this 'privilege.'
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