Too Direct?

I found a picture today that seems to perfectly illustrate my own preferred way of dealing with problems.  Take a look:

London Bridge Is Burning Down

The madness of the discontented and lazy London youth living on the dole continues.  For three days they have looted, burned, and murdered.  It's frightful and wrong.  I really hope that the mayor or the PM will ratchet up the ROE so the hooligans are stopped and hopefully jailed and fined - and it sounds like that's the plan.  Some citizens want to go further and are demanding that those who participated who are on government assistance lose their benefits - a real let-the-punishment-fit-the-crime smack-down.  I like it!

What are these rioters thinking?  Are they using their brains at all?  A deeper question is: how can such a thing be possible in the heart of the United Kingdom?  Last night, I read an excellent and scathing article that attempts to find the causes for this despicable turn of events.  It was a sober, yet illuminating read - I recommend it.

I say, "Good Luck!" to the London authorities and all the poor folks whose property has been destroyed or stolen.  And I'll be praying for those who have lost loved ones to this pointless and wicked anarchy.

Cute Aliens

Women are a totally different species from men.  This may seem like a bold thing to say, but once this statement is accepted and internalized, it makes for better relationships. 

When you admit and truly believe that your significant other isn't merely incomprehensible at times, but is in fact, a totally different form of life - your perspective and expectations will change for the better. Outside of ridiculous sci-fi TV shows, should aliens land on Earth, no one expects creatures from another world to:

• A) look like we do,
• B) function the same way biologically,
• or C) think the same way we do.

And yet, it is all too common to expect that our girlfriend or spouse will act and think the same way we do despite the wildly different biological, neuro-chemical, and psychological differences that exist between the sexes.  Obviously we all are aware of the first item.  (Vive la différence!)   But it's easy to ignore or overlook the next two items in this list.  Shifting our mindset to see the opposite sex as different in the extreme will help any relationship.  Unreasonable exceptions will go away and cause less tension.

She will never enjoy activities in the exact way you do, because she's an alien.  He will never see things the same way you do, because he's an alien.  She can't see problems and their obvious solutions, because they aren't obvious to her alien mindset.  His communication is bizarre, but that is how his species has always done it.  And that's all OK!  The external physical differences that make us so attractive to each other can be expanded to include all the differences we have.

Revel in the diversity!

Without Warning

I've been reading "Without Warning" by John Birmingham for fun.  It's an intense thriller with plenty of action.  A huge atmospheric event occurs that kills every living thing in a massive ellipsis that covers almost the entire continental USA, half of Canada, Mexico, and most of Cuba.  The event occurs on March 14, 2003 (a bit before the second Iraq War starts) and from this starting point the author just lets events unfold...

My favorite quote so far is when a US covert operative named Caitlin explains what the event really means to her enviro-hippie friend who is somewhat glad that America has gone away:

"Why will the gas run out?  Think of where it comes from, Monique.  Think about what's going to happen there now that the evil global overlord is no longer around to oppress everyone into behaving themselves.  Think about what's going to happen the to evil world financial system now that the planet's greatest debtor nation has winked out of existence and won't be meeting it's loan repayments to anyone.  Think about what happens when you take the lid off Pandora's box and everything that we forgot about history comes spilling out to bite you in the behind.  Do you know how unusual it is, in human history, for children to be able to grow up in a place like this?"  She waved her hands around to take in the city of Paris.  "Never knowing the fear of someone riding over the horizon to steal their family's crops and burn their hut to the ground?  All as a prelude to snatching them up as slaves for the rest of their miserable lives?  That's normality, baby.  That's life as it has been lived by most of human beings throughout most of our history.  That's what I've been fighting my entire adult life, variations on that theme.  That's what America protected you from.  And now she's gone.  And you are all alone in the world.  Except for me." (pp.141-142)

The awesome - this book has it!  If you like a seriously well-researched, geopolitical roller-coaster with a bit of alternate history thrown in, you'll like this book.

The Unasked Question

By now, most everyone has heard the news about The USA's credit rating being dropped from AAA to AA+.  It's bad news.  And as is so often the case, the headlines and airwaves are awash with people pontificating as to Whose Fault It Is^TM.

Do you know the question that I haven't heard or seen yet?  The question that I think makes the most sense to get the answer to?

How do we get our country's credit rating to go back up to AAA?

Why is no one talking about that?  It seems like the most common-sense thing you could do.  I'd like to know the answer to that question myself, so I know what kinds of things to vote for and write my representatives about.  It's a standard rating system - so there should be some kind of qualitative formula that we could look at in order to modify our nation's fiscal behavior to raise our grades.  This isn't some kind of subjective popularity rating from high school.

But, no.  Our nation's leadership is running around the schoolyard screaming about how unfair it is that they got an F in Math and it's all somebody else's fault.  Not a single word about WHY it happened (ask S&P, perhaps?) or HOW they plan on reversing it (comply with the rules relating to debt-to-asset ratios, perhaps?).

It's amazing...  and sad.