Bob Geldof wrote a fantastic opinion piece in the Telegraph which is worth a read by everyone in the United States. That awful telecom immunity thing has been passed and already signed into law and I find myself incredibly disappointed with Obama for voting for it. But Geldof’s words resonate:

Let us be grand for once, for we talk of great subjects. Ask "what is the point of Britain?" if we so casually give up the liberty which defines this country, its greatest gift to the world.

Still today, 800 years later, Magna Carta resonates: "To no man will we deny, To no man will we delay, Justice and Right." Is that not grand, worthy of your vote? Is habeas corpus to be traduced in one sad moment of political expediency? Do we not clearly deny and delay Justice and Right when we imprison a person for 42 days without charge?.

What existential threat do we face greater than those of the past 800 years? What great terror exists today that not civil war, not world war, nor recent other terrorisms could make our forefathers change the fundamental basis of this state? What is so dangerous that our oldest statutes could be upended for such a ha'p'orth of momentary panic?.

What terrorises the terrorists is our civilisation. What those unthinking fools of fundamentalism fear most are the freedoms our representatives now strip away. This "war on terror" is against Islamist forces that reject the Enlightenment..

How can we ever succeed, if we side with our opponents in rejecting those ideals? Every moment we are spied on by the invisible watchers, every time we are monitored, every time we are logged on databanks, they win. And every time we accept it, we lose.

Stirring words. Every day our “War on Terror” makes us more like them and less like us. Yet the supporters of these acts claim that this is the only way to protect our liberties and our way of life. They must have no sense of irony. You protect liberty by taking it away? Isn’t that exactly the opposite of what “protect” means?

Tags: Politics, liberty, history

Men and women communicate differently. We all know that. Not to overgeneralize (but I’m going to anyway) men tend to ask direct questions based on what we want or need at a specific moment. Women tend to ask questions which seem to be needing honest answers but actually have subtext which, if you are paying attention, you can pick up and realize that it wasn’t actually a question that was being asked in the first place but a request politely phrased.

As an example, let’s use what just happened here a few moments ago. My wife works part-time in retail which means that after she gets home, her feet are killing her. So, I give her foot rubs on those nights. As I started rubbing her feet she asked me, “Do you want to use lotion?” and I answered without thinking, “No, I’d rather not get my hands slimey.” As the words left my mouth I saw that look of immediate disappointment cross her face and realized that I just gave the wrong answer.

And then it struck me. My wife just proved God’s existence.

I’ll explain.

I have often railed at the seeming strangeness of the supposed grand plan. The idea that if you do not subscribe to a particular sect of a particular religion (and woe unto you if you choose the wrong one) then you are doomed forever. The idea that Jesus (or whoever) is sitting in Heaven (or wherever) checking a clipboard and seeing if you filled out every form correctly like some divine DMV seemed absurd to me. I always subscribed to the idea that if you do right by your fellow man, followed the Golden Rule, and were generally fair, kind, and truthful, it didn’t matter at all what you actually believed. It’s a spirit of the law vs. the letter of the law situation. So, the idea that God created people with free will and then got upset if they exercised their free will in a way that displeased God made no sense to me. Why not just create people to always be good and follow a specific path? Why give free will if you’re just setting us up to fail?

And tonight my wife proved God exists. She did exactly the same thing. She could have said, “Please use lotion,” and that would have been all that was needed. I would have said, “Sure thing,” and used lotion. But she asked if I wanted to use lotion which is an entirely different question. She gave me free will and then was upset when I exercised it in the wrong direction.

Now religion makes sense to me. And God is, of course, a woman. And now I know I am truly doomed.

Tags: religion, god, lotion

The other day, as I was driving home from somewhere with Jack in the back of the car, we spotted the neighbors at the end of the street outside with their son, two years younger than Jack, but one of his favorite people to play with all the same. I stopped and rolled down the window to speak to the Mom and Jack rolled down his to speak to his friend. Before I knew it, he was out of the car and running across the yard laughing. She said it was fine and I said I'd be back after I put the groceries away.

As I lifted the bags into the house I marveled at how strange it was that I was not with Jack. I completely trust the neighbors, it's not that. It's just that we've never really done that. We have arranged playdates where we drop him off and come back later, but never anything ad hoc like that.

It got me to thinking about how at his age, 7 going on 8, I was always out by myself. I would wake in the morning and get on my bike and go up and down our street looking for people to come out and play with me. I would come home at lunch and dinner but otherwise filled my days out on my own or with friends. Sometimes we would sneak into the nearby golf course. Sometimes we crawled through the storm drain pipes that lead down to the river. But we never strayed far. I wondered when society changed so much. When did we stop letting our kids out of our sights? When did we become so protective?

If I tell Jack to go outside and play in the back yard (something we rarely did before installing The Fence) he invariably sulks and says that he'd be bored and couldn't we come outside and play with him? Even indoors, if he isn't watching TV, he wants us to play with him.

Today, Ann sent me a link to an article in the Boston Globe which talks to all of this directly. "Sheltered Lives: When did kids stop playing outdoors?" by Jenna Russell talks about the research by Roger Hart, a brit who went and spoke to children back in the day and again today. He is producing a movie about this and I eagerly await its release.

I wish there was a way to give Jack much more freedom yet retain our sense of his safety. Maybe the answer is to let go and allow the greater (possibly perceived?) risk. But then again, knowing what we know about the world around us, I don't think we could do that. I don't really know the answers but this is something I want to raise with our neighbors with kids. Maybe we can come up with something together that benefits all of our children.

Tags: Childhood, playtime

I never do resolutions. I have always found them trite. I tend to resolve to do things when I need to do so and don't need an arbitrary date to get things moving. For example, I began losing weight and lost over 40 pounds from July to December. I'll continue to do so moving forward until I reach my target weight. But, after doing and completing NaNoWriMo and after reading an posting by NaNoWriMo creator, Chris Baty, about a Big, Fun, Scary challenge for the new year, I feel the need to set some goals for myself.

First, are the obvious ones such as continuing to lose weight, eat healthy, and walk every day (or perform some level of exercise). Add to these that I want to read more than I have been the last few years. When I used to commute to work, I had plenty of time to read and did so. Now, I work from home and fill the time with other activities.

The next level up, more at the project level than the daily activity level, has to do with investing and financial management. I'm not posting details as I do not have any yet. I have an idea what I want to do and how to get there and I'll leave it at that.

Finally, at the "Big, Scary, Fun" level is that I want to take up art again and finally learn to draw and do watercolors. This comes and goes over the years but I was inspired by the Hopper exhibit we just saw at the National Gallery in DC and want to make this happen.

So, there they are. I'll post progress reports as I move forward and you are welcome to badger me if I fail to do so. The best way to meet goals is to have someone looking over your shoulder, I find.

Happy New Year!

Tags: resolutions