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A Meme for Sunday

A Meme for Sunday

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Things I’ve done are in bold.
Things I am indifferent towards or actively would like to avoid are crossed out.
Things in normal type face are things I’d like to do.

I got this version from Quod She.

  • Start my own blog
  • Sleep under the stars
  • Play in a band
  • Own a cell phone
  • Visit Hawaii
  • Watch a meteor shower
  • Give more than I can afford to charity
  • Visit Disneyland / Disneyworld
  • Climb a mountain
  • Sing a solo
  • Bungee jump
  • Participate in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony
  • Teach myself an art from scratch
  • Adopt a child
  • Purchase real estate
  • Had food poisoning
  • Visit Parliament / Capital Hill
  • Grow my own vegetables
  • See the Mona Lisa in France
  • Sleep on an overnight train
  • Have a pillow fight
  • Hitchhike
  • Take a sick day when you’re not ill
  • Build a snow fort
  • Hold a lamb
  • Go skinny dipping
  • Run a Marathon
  • Been on television
  • Ride in a gondola in Venice
  • See a total eclipse
  • Watch a sunrise or sunset
  • Hit a home run
  • Go on a cruise
  • See Niagara Falls in person
  • Visit the birthplace of my ancestors
  • See an Amish community (nope, only Shakers)
  • Teach myself a new language
  • Have enough money to be truly satisfied
  • See the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
  • Go rock climbing
  • See Michelangelo’s David
  • Sing karaoke
  • See Old Faithful erupt
  • Buy a stranger a meal at a restaurant
  • Visit Africa
  • Walk on a beach by moonlight
  • Be transported in an ambulance
  • Have my portrait painted
  • Be arrested
  • Go deep sea fishing
  • See the Sistine Chapel in person
  • Go to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
  • Go scuba diving or snorkeling
  • Kiss in the rain
  • Play in the mud
  • Go to a drive-in theatre
  • Be in a movie
  • Visit the Great Wall of China
  • Start a business
  • Take a martial arts class
  • Visit Russia
  • Serve at a soup kitchen
  • Sell Girl Scout Cookies
  • Go whale watching
  • Get flowers for no reason
  • Donate blood, platelets or plasma
  • Go sky diving
  • Visit a Nazi Concentration Camp
  • Bounce a check
  • Fly in a helicopter
  • Save a favorite childhood toy
  • Visit Quebec City
  • Eat Caviar
  • Piece a quilt
  • Stand in Times Square
  • Tour the Everglades
  • Been fired from a job
  • See the Changing of the Guards in London
  • Been on a speeding motorcycle
  • See the Grand Canyon in person
  • Published a book
  • Visit the Vatican
  • Buy a brand new car
  • Walk in Jerusalem
  • Have my picture in the newspaper
  • Read the entire Bible
  • Visit the White House
  • Kill and prepare an animal for eating
  • Had chickenpox
  • Save someone’s life
  • Sit on a jury
  • Meet someone famous
  • Join a book club
  • Lose a loved one
  • Have a baby
  • See the Alamo in person (I might have when I was five, not sure)
  • Swim in the Great Salt Lake
  • Been involved in a law suit
  • Been stung by a bee
  • Ride an elephant

Totals:
Did: 51
No Thanks: 9
Would Like: 40

Misplaced Priorities and the Return of the Repressed

Misplaced Priorities and the Return of the Repressed

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Republican Culture of Corruption: 2007 So Far is a pretty good list – see any themes?

On this Larry Craig scandal in particular, I’m struck again by how destructive it is when people cannot accept themselves for who they are. There is a strange doubling of the personality. People talk about hypocrisy, but it’s worse than that. It’s worse because it’s a deeper problem than just “not walking the talk.”

People who share the traits that you find irritating in yourself are the most irritating of all, aren’t they? I have a nervous giggle sometimes. I used to have to meditate on Scully from X-Files before giving lectures so that I could be professional about it. If I was around someone else who also giggled when they were nervous, it would be an almost unbearable experience. Even now, when the laughter is a softer thing (it morphed away from the Woody Woodpecker/Horshack sound of my childhood) it is still incredibly irritating to me from time to time – and probably to other people, too. I’ve tried to come to terms with this part of me that I personally find so unattractive. I’m still working on accepting it – and I’ve found the more I accept it, the less intrusive and harsh it becomes – and the less it bothers me when others do the same thing. The more I hated it, the worse it became.

I’ve never understood why sexuality seems to be the most important hot-button issue to so many Americans. We’re a schizophrenic culture in that way – Puritan, and yet… the guests on Jerry Springer. When we have a more realistic and healthier view of sexuality, things are better all around. If you track the relationships between power, religion and sexuality…. more on that another time.

Suffice to say, when you deeply reject part of yourself, the part of you that is rejected becomes more and more important – and darker and more looming. I’m familiar with this dynamic in another way too – it’s a really big problem among Jehovah’s Witnesses. More people are disfellowshipped because of sexual behavior than for any other reason, and at the same time domestic abuse and pedophilia are in some ways hidden and protected. It says a lot about the dynamics of belief-systems and their effects on real people.

It’s interesting that so many high-profile “virtuous” people split out to a seamy side. Jungian therapy would be a good thing… get creative about self-integration.

It’s really no big surprise to me that some of the people who are most focused on being anti-gay are actually repressed homosexuals. And it’s no surprise that some of the big “family values” people are so fond of prostitutes. The more stake you have in appearing to be something you can’t really ever be, the more that the parts of you that you can’t accept come back to haunt you – and it’s always in a darker and darker guise. The return of the repressed.

Larry Craig insists he’s not gay. It’s implausible, I think, but it’s also a measure of how deeply he rejects himself that he takes such an unwise strategy. On the other hand, it really bothers me that he’s being railroaded not because of criminal behavior, but because of sexual behavior. I find it disturbing that homosexual behavior becomes an automatic witch hunt, and all the joking I see is in very poor taste. Is this really what elections should be about anyway? Look at all of the other issues in the list I linked at the beginning.

It really bothered me at the time that Mark Foley could be claimed to have lost the election for the Republicans – not the war? economic policy? any of the other important issues?

Moms mobilize because their children are exposed to lead paint on their Chinese import toys. Good – great – we need mobilized moms! How about holding this government responsible for cutting the funding for the inspectors? What about the issue of child labor in China? Only American kids matter, then?

People in Atlanta have gotten really, really worked up about Michael Vick’s actions. Yeah, he’s a thug. I wish more American athletes were less like pond scum. Yeah, it’s terrible how the dogs were mistreated. But do we see this reaction to American torture policies? Should we put dogs in the cells so that Americans will care?

Americans are exhibiting more and more hysteria and mob behaviors.

We will only get what we deserve if we can’t stop and think and get our priorities straight.

What greater mockery of the flag?

What greater mockery of the flag?

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In the previous post, I made mention of the language of the sacred. If the government decrees that the flag is sacred, does that violate the separation of church and state?

As may be, it’s actually going to come to a vote in the Senate. We may only be able to sit and watch our government amend the First Amendment to restrict political freedom of expression.

So this seems to be the overall plan – get as much power away from the judicial branch as possible by handing it to Congress and the executive branch. Where Congress isn’t pliant enough, then disempower Congress, and focus on executive power.

The US Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that the First Amendment to the Constitution protected Americans’ right to desecrate the flag as a means of free expression. Interesting – the majority opinion was joined by Scalia.

Back in 1997, Dr. Roger Pilon, Ph.D., J.D broke with colleagues at the libertarian/conservative think tank Cato Institute in his testimony before the Subcommittee on the Judiciary of the House. It’s worth a read – here’s my favorite part:

Sir Winston Churchill captured well that essential feature of our system when he observed in 1945 that “the United States is a land of free speech. Nowhere is speech freer–not even [in England], where we sedulously cultivate it even in its most repulsive forms.” In so observing, Churchill was merely echoing thoughts attributed to Voltaire, that he may disapprove of what you say but would defend to the death your right to say it, and the ironic question of Benjamin Franklin: “Abuses of the freedom of speech ought to be repressed; but to whom are we to commit the power of doing it?”

When so many for so long have understood the principles at issue today, how can this Congress so lightly abandon those principles? It is said by some that the flag is a special case, a unique symbol. That claim may be true, but it does not go to the principle of the matter: in a free society, individuals have a right to express themselves, even in offensive ways. Once we bar such expression, however, Franklin’s question will immediately be upon us. What is more, we will soon find that the flag is not unique, that the Bible and much else will next be in line for special protection.

It is said also that the flag is special because men have fought and died for it. Let me suggest in response that men have fought and died not for the flag but for the principles it represents. People give their lives for principles, not for symbols. When we dishonor those principles, to protect their symbol, we dishonor the men who died to preserve them. That is not a business this Congress should be about. We owe it to those men, men who have made the ultimate sacrifice, to resist the pressures of the moment so that we may preserve the principles of the ages.

After all, free expression and the right to dissent are among the core principles that the American flag is meant to represent. What greater defacement of the flag can there be than to shift its meaning into something that makes a mockery of American values and rights? Freedom of expression is one of the the truest tests of our dedication to the principles that our flag is supposed to represent.

Flag Issue History – Resources

Three countries ban flag-burning – Quick! Who are they?

Iran | China | Cuba

USA’s National Debt

USA’s National Debt

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Interesting to see it from another point of view: this one from the front page of the leading Russian paper (and website) Pravda.

The USA’s National Debt Clock can’t keep up with Bush’s spending – Pravda.Ru
Front page / World / Americas
30.03.2006

The USA’s national debt is increasing by $2.43 billion everyday. People expect the state debt to top the ten trillion dollar mark in the next few years.

A special huge electronic display in New York which shows in real time the size of state debt will not be able to cope with such a high figure. In 1989 the national debt clock was placed in Times Square so that Americans could see how effectively their government was working. At the time the national debt stood at 2.7 trillion dollars.

Yesterday at midday Moscow time the debt stood at $8 369 526 197 055.36. It even rose yesterday by $604 million. If the figures are to be believed, yesterday every American family bore a debt of almost $90 000.

Developer Douglas Durst owns the clock and his father erected it. He hoped to make Americans understand the economy better. The clock worked fine for ten years but in the run up to the new millennium it crashed. In its final moments the clock read that the national debt was $5.7 trillion and that the family share of the debt was $74 000. Durst believed that such a level of debt would not last long and he was right. Within two years the debt had started to grow at an unprecedented rate.

Durst pulled the plug on the clock in 2000, but it was switched back on in 2002 when debt started to once again increase. In 2004 a new model replaced the original clock which was able to express the figure in a shortened term in the event that in the future the debt suddenly started to rise at an unthinkable rate. Now the figure on the clock goes up by $20 000 every second.

So what is to be done? It is expensive being the “light of democracy” in Iraq and Afghanistan, keep revolutionaries at bay and to “teach” the rest of the world how to live their lives.

Anton Struchenevsky, an analyst from management company Troika Dialog says, “Even when the state debt reaches the 10 trillion dollar mark, an economic crisis will not occur in the USA and the dollar will not crash. It is in the interests of the USA’s main creditor, China, to have a stable American currency and protect the American market.”

Komsomolskaya Pravda

Translated by Michael Simpson

Read it again.