Maggie's Farm

We somehow lost the original of this post, with its comments. Sorry -

If I see you run through a stop sign once, my tendency - or bias - is to assume that you are a jerk who does things like that all the time.

That's because my bias is about the stability and predictability of a person's characterologic make-up. That bias - if it is a bias - is called Attribution Error in Social Psychology. After all, your wife might be in labor in the car and you don't give a darn what laws you break to get to the hospital before she dumps the kid on the dirty floor of the old car. On the other hand, you could be a jerk who generally ignores rules.

Indeed it is interesting that folks who have not been in intensive psychotherapy or psychoanalysis often tend to attribute other peoples' behavior on their personalities, but to explain or justify their own behavior in relation to external situations and forces. On the other hand, folks who have been in analysis often tend to over-interpret adaptive, occasional, or "out of character" behavior as internally-directed when it might not be. As Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Therefore, when we contemplate our own behavior or the behavior of others, we have to negotiate between the Scylla of Attribution Error and over-interpretation, and the Charybdis of Externalization. Therein lies the art of comprehending psychological reality.

We psychoanalysts, when we are doing analytic work anyway, tend to focus more on what we call "psychic reality" - the inner reality - than on external reality. In an almost pomo sense (although I hate the comparison), we approach what we see and are told as a text or a narrative about where a person's head is, mostly regardless of its objective factuality (except in extreme situations).

Why? Because we are paid to try to understand how people's thoughts and fears and fantasies work in order for them to gain better control over their lives. Your dentist doesn't care about your love life, and we don't care very much about your cavities. Our bias is that, most but not all of the time, a person is his own worst enemy.

How did this whole thing come about? Well, it's the history of Psychoanalysis. Freud realized that not every one of his patients in his Neurology practice in Vienna with psychosomatic symptoms could have been sexually abused as they reported (probably some had been, and some not). That line of thought lead him to the notion of "psychic reality" and the role that unconscious fantasy plays in peoples' lives - in this case, mainly unconscious incestuous fantasies, which he correctly observed were universal despite the taboo.

If you are interested in the story, Peter Gay's Freud: A Life for our Time is a good place to go. Peter Gay underwent psychoanalytic training and psychoanalysis himself at the New Haven (Western New England) Institute, partly, at least, to understand his subject. One hopes, partly to understand himself better, too.

I do not advise reading Freud's work without a guide. It's too easy to misunderstand, and the translations from the German are imperfect in many ways.

(The idea for this post grew out of a conversation with a colleague, who thought that Obama - and occasionally other politicians - successfully apply these techniques. She suspects that Obama has read Greene's best-seller because of his stated awareness of the effectiveness of his mirroring role, but that's not my motive for this post.)

Robert Greene's book, The Art of Seduction, is the sort-of sequel to his The 48 Laws of Power. Greene is a student of the dark arts. Both books are applicable to politics, business, relationships, and daily life - especially by those with sociopathic inclinations. However, reading these books can help one understand how some people approach their lives.

(This has nothing at all to do with Freud's seduction theory, by the way.)

The game, or art, of seduction is, at its core, not mainly about physical sex. It is not about earnest courtship, nor is it plain old trying to get laid. In its most artful form, sex doesn't occur (although it is indeed generally difficult for guys to refuse an appealing offer). The art of seduction is a game of deception and subtle psychological manipulation.  Here's a bit from Ovid on "Promise and Deceive" from The Art of Love:

Don’t be shy of promising: promises entice girls:
add any gods you like as witness to what you swear.
Jupiter on high laughs at lovers’ perjuries,
and orders Aeolus’s winds to carry them into the void.
Jupiter used to swear by the Styx, falsely, to Juno:
now he looks favourably on his own example.
Gods are useful: as they’re useful, let’s think they’re there:
take wine and incense to the ancient altars:
indifferent calm and it’s like, apathy, don’t chain them:
live innocently: the divine is close at hand:
pay what you owe, hold dutifully to agreements:
commit no fraud: let your hands be free from blood.
Delude only women, if you’re wise, with impunity:
where truth’s more to be guarded against than fraud.
Deceive deceivers: for the most part an impious tribe:
let them fall themselves into the traps they’ve set.

As I understand it, the art of seduction in its most evolved form involves becoming a mirror to an innocent or vulnerable female, to engage her narcissism. The mirror is the seducer's tool. The innocent fills in the blank with her own hopes and dreams and fantasies. She cannot know that she - or part of her her unconscious self - is being mirrored: the trick is to engage her into entering an exciting false reality consisting mostly of her own projections and fantasies, and the seducer dances to that music. That mirror becomes the stage for her narcissistic, grandiose, and regressive self. This game is slick, slimy, and rather evil, but it can work.

When the game is played in its purest form there is no consummation: the seducer disappears in victory, leaving the innocent in despair, holding nothing but a cracked mirror. If the seducer falls in love with his mirrored creation, as in Pygmalion and My Fair Lady, the seducer has failed in his game by entering the looking glass world rather than remaining a disengaged puppeteer. 

The chosen victim must be either innocent or vulnerable in some way, because a sophisticated victim might very well be playing her own game - and beat you at it.

The art of seduction, when done "right," is about the enactment of a subtly homoerotic dynamic wherein the seducer guy reflects back an image of the female as she wants to be, or as she regressively is. Thus the best seducers can be those men with "sensitive," "feminine" sides - "metrosexuals," or even the sexually ambivalent, because they are the best at reflecting the feminine.

The classic writings on the art of seduction, besides Ovid, must include Les Liasons Dangereuses, written in 1782 by Pierre LaClos, to which the expression "revenge is a dish best served cold" has been often erroneously attributed.

They must also include Soren Kierkegaard's Diary of a Seducer. That review begins:

His preparatory remarks follow Ovid, the most famous of his literary precursors, when Johannes writes, "the fishing is always best in troubled waters. When a young miss is agitated, one can successfully risk much that otherwise would miscarry." One could also see thematic parallels between this and Laclos' Dangerous Liaisons', although it is uncertain Kierkegaard had opportunity to read that work. He also strikes a major theme of Ovid's Amores' when he writes, "A rendezvous is usually regarded by lovers as the most beautiful moment."

There are even internet communities that teach and practice the seductive arts. Here's one such site. A cursory view of their sites makes the accurate point that success in seduction has nothing to do with a fellow's appearance or background - just his skill at the game. However, for these people online, unlike the classic form of the game, consummation seems to be the trophy. Scoring, but not stupid drunk scoring - deftly engaging the lady emotionally first with the "bold move" carefully planned and timed.

Greene's book goes through the essential tactics of the art, which he lists as the following:

Choose your victim well
Create a false sense of security
Send mixed signals
Appear to be an object of desire - create triangles
Create a need by stirring anxiety and discontent
Master the art of insinuation
Enter their spirit
Create temptation
Keep them in suspense
Use the demonic power of words to sow confusion
Pay attention to detail
Poeticize your presence
Disarm through strategic weakness and vulnerability
Confuse desire and reality - the perfect illusion
Isolate your victim
Prove yourself
Effect a regression
Stir up the transgressive and the taboo - they are exciting
Use spiritual lures
Mix pleasure with pain
Give them space to fall - the pursuer is pursued
Use physical lures
Master the art of the bold move
and
Beware the aftereffects...

Image: Picasso's Girl Before a Mirror, 1932.

We are ramping up to one heck of an angry political season - and it really pisses me off.

I don't mind a little emotion and enthusiasm in a national election. Silly and immature as it may be, it's the American way to idealize candidates and then to devalue them once they have to start making real decisions.

Gov. Palin has been a lightning rod for several reasons. 1. She's the new breed - the "new feminist" - who seems happy 2. She's prettier than Madeleine Albright or Hillary Clinton. 3. It's difficult to attack McCain himself. 4. She's not a representative of the "elite" 5. She's a serious political threat and the other side wants to damage her as fast as possible.

In The Metaphysics of Envy and Revenge Gagdad Bob offers another perspective. One quote:

...hell hath no fury like a leftist who encounters a female or African-American who doesn't need him. Thus, the high-tech lowbrow lynching of Clarence Thomas and the current unseemly attacks on Sarah Palin. How else to account for the shroud of discreet silence over the John Edwards affair vs. the airing of every possible rumor and smear about Palin and her children?

James Lewis at RCP similarly has Palin and the Narcissistic Left. I do not approve of using shrink terms to put people down, but he does have a point.

Indeed, politics can become a playground for the acting out of our most immature and primitive selves if we aren't careful, or a stage on which we project our internal issues and dynamics. Perspective and reason fly out the window and are replaced by hatred or love or whatever. That's why it can get so sick. In the process, reality, dignity, and even relationships can be lost. 

It's a pity, really.

A quote from this excellent piece about men, which was linked earlier by our NJ and thus doesn't count as a new post during Maggie's vacation break:

As long as men feel marginalised by the women whose favours and approval they seek; as long as they are alienated from their children and treated as criminals by family courts; as long as they are disrespected by a culture that no longer values masculinity tied to honour; and as long as boys are bereft of strong fathers and our young men and women wage sexual war, then we risk cultural suicide.

In the coming years we will need men who are not confused about their responsibilities. We need boys who have acquired the virtues of honour, courage, valour and loyalty. We need women willing to let men be men – and boys be boys. And we need young men and women who will commit and marry and raise children in stable homes.

Unprogressive though it sounds, the world in which we live requires no less.

Saving the males – engaging their nobility and recognising their unique strengths – will ultimately benefit women and children, too. Fewer will live in poverty; fewer boys will fail in schools and wind up in jail; fewer girls will get pregnant or suffer emotional damage from too early sex with uncaring boys. Fewer young men and women will suffer loneliness and loss because they’ve grown up in a climate of sexual hostility that casts the opposite sex as either villain or victim.

Photo: A real man. Atticus Finch.

The "Root Cause" Scam

Norm Geras from Normblog is doing some deep thinking:

The root-causers always plead a desire merely to expand our understanding, but they're very selective in what they want to "understand".

If causes and explanation are indeed a serious enterprise and not merely a convenient partisan game, then it needs to be recognised that causality is one thing and moral responsibility another, though the two are related.

and:

Ever on the lookout for damning causes, the root-causers never go for the most obvious of these. This is the cause, indeed, which shows, by its absence, why most critics of the Iraq war or of anything else don't murder people when they are angry. It is the fanatical, fundamentalist belief system which teaches hatred and justifies these acts of murder. That cause somehow gets a free pass from the hunters-out of causes.

My only disagreement with the article is that it seems to assume that the terrorism apologists are sincere in their positions and postures - which I feel is naive. Thus Norm's great analysis will have no impact on any of the hard Left, reflexively anti-Western readers of the Guardian (in which the piece appears).

After all, what is the "root cause" of the anti-Western reflex of the Left? Whatever it is, it isn't ignorance (except in the young). Intellectual integrity - and even integrity - mean nothing if you can convince yourself that your mission is to save the world via Lefto-Fascism - or just to try to promote yourself! You rise above such bourgeois hang-ups. Just like the Jihadists...hmmmm. Read the entire - link above. And read my piece on related subject on Maggies last week.

"American culture's overemphasis on happiness misses an essential part of a full life." Chronicle. A quote:

A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center shows that almost 85 percent of Americans believe that they are very happy or at least pretty happy. The psychological world is now abuzz with a new field, positive psychology, devoted to finding ways to enhance happiness through pleasure, engagement, and meaning. Psychologists practicing this brand of therapy are leaders in a novel science, the science of happiness. Mainstream publishers are learning from the self-help industry and printing thousands of books on how to be happy. Doctors offer a wide array of drugs that might eradicate depression forever. It seems truly an age of almost perfect contentment, a brave new world of persistent good fortune, joy without trouble, felicity with no penalty.

Smileyface is an abomination. Up here in Yankeeland, a smiling face means that you are probably a car salesman. Keep your inner emotions to yourself.

In the aftermath of the Edwards scandal, I was considering writing a bit about male sexuality, about how it is part of male biology to desire to spread their seed far and wide, into every pretty thing they see. To win, to possess, and to enjoy. 

That drive is just one more thing that makes life difficult for men: these temptations are extremely difficult to resist.

Much stronger issue for guys than for gals - but the desire is not absent in gals either. But that is not exactly new information. Nor is it new information that couples  make attachment committments to each other for rational as well as emotional  reasons, or that humans have religion-guided consciences that elevate them a little bit above monkeys.

Having realized I had nothing new to add to the subject, I'll just post this quote from Ben Stein:

I am sorry that John Edwards had an affair with a campaign worker. But I am not surprised. Men like to have affairs. Men like to have sex with new women. That's just how men are and always have been.

I am not surprised that a major Presidential candidate and former V.P. nominee of a major party had an affair. Politicians are men and they have all of the yearnings and drives that other men have. They do not check their flaws and essential elements at the Capitol cloakroom.

Editor: Since we are exposing today the earth-shattering fact that men are powerfully attracted to charming and seductive females, I thought that Theo image might help drive the point home.

A quote from Ledeen on War and Democracy at Pajamas, and man's endless capacity for evil:

The American Founders knew it: recognizing man’s innate capacity for evil, they designed a system of checks and balances to thwart the accumulation of power by any group, lest the entire enterprise fall into wicked hands.  They knew the battle for liberty would never end, Benjamin Franklin famously warned we would have to fight to keep our republic.

All of this wisdom has been dangerously undermined by the foolish notion that man is basically good, that all men are basically the same,  and that all we need do is to permit history to take its preordained course.  Are these not the tenets of contemporary education?  Are our children not forbidden to criticize “others,” whether of different pigmentation or religion?  Has debate on our university campuses not turned into the moral equivalent of the Inquisition?  And it rests on the sands of a demonstrably false vision of man.  We are not naturally inclined to do good.  Quite the contrary... 

Well, I might quibble with that. Mankind is naturally inclined to do both good and evil, but it is surely naive to expect morality in power politics.

Yet one more manufactured, over-hyped  crisis is being debunked.

Nowadays you can define anything you want as pathological. And this whole new fashionable category of "at risk" silliness expands things to include everybody.

For example, at middle-age I am "at risk" for obesity. Not wanting to be fat, I decided not eat carbs and I do a tough daily workout. It's not too complicated.

Prosperous nations have lots of fat people. More of them than poor nations, although poor nations have plenty of them too. The reason is that humans have a weakness for carbs. Thus being trim and fit is a sign of self-control, but being heavy is a time-honored sign of prosperity.

If you want to see fat people, go to Disneyworld and get grossed out. There are Americans there so fat that they have to ride around in motorized chairs, like King Kamehameha. God bless 'em. The world needs more fatties, in my opinion. It means people have plenty to eat, but I don't like to have to look at them. To be evenhanded, however, I find anorectics even more disturbing.

I happen to feel that excess fat in women is unattractive, slovenly, and unsexy. Somewhat less so in men: some stout men are cool, like Teddy Roosevelt was. Anyway, we have been subject to much brouhaha about obesity in recent years. Big health crisis, etc.

You have surely read the news that being overweight is not such a big deal, from a medical standpoint. Even the WSJ covered the story, amusingly. Obesity - and that means much more than ordinary fatness and pudginess - is often quite benign.

And being overweight is fine, from a health standpoint.

Just like the the AGW fad and all such fads that governments are suckered into, there is fat money to be made from the obesity silliness. Follow the money: you know that somebody always wants some of yours. Careers. Respect. Pensions. Fat City.

Fact is, when I was an intern in NYC, I saw plenty of skinny, athletic guys in their 40s come into the ER and crap out with massive heart attacks. Also, skinny guys with insulin resistance. The reasons to be relatively thin are to be fully functional - and aesthetic. If an American lady wishes a decent sex life, it behooves her to be trim. Not so in some countries, however, where they prefer us gals Biggie-Sized.

Here's a good food story, from the Englishman:

His typical breakfast order from Pete's Grille in Baltimore, Maryland:

Start with three [white bread] sandwiches of fried eggs, cheese, lettuce, tomato, fried onions, and mayonnaise; add one omelet, a bowl of grits, and three slices of French toast with powdered sugar; then wash down with three chocolate chip pancakes.

According to his autobiography, growing up, lunch also consisted of 1 pound of pasta, 2 large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayo and 1,000 calories of energy drinks. Dinner’s another pound of pasta and a whole pizza and 1,000 calories more in energy drinks. No food hang-ups with him. He gets it. Food is fuel, not endowed with magical or evil effects.

What a fat slob he must be, bet he can barely get up from the sofa to get to the fridge, something ought to be done to prevent our youths ending up like him...

Let's all be relaxed and tolerant: being fat is a "life-style" choice. Let them eat cake.

Addendum: At Pajamas, Fast food restrictions fatten government

Here's an answer. Are men's nipples "sensitive"? Yes they are. Gals take note, for when in a playful mood.

There's a book with that title too: Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini

This is a re-post from 2006 -

What? Me worry? - Alfred E. Newman

The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue happiness you'll never find it. - C.P. Snow

Last week, Yahoo News reported this from Britain:

LONDON (AFP) - Some 2,000 pupils at English state schools are to have special classes in happiness under a pilot scheme aimed at cutting depression, self-harm and anti-social behaviour.

"Schoolchildren will take self-esteem classes to raise standards and cut crime," according to the Independent on Sunday newspaper.

"Lessons in happiness are to be introduced for 11-year-olds in state schools to combat a huge rise in depression, self-harm and anti-social behaviour among young people.

"Special behavioural techniques imported from the US will be used from September next year in an attempt to make children more resilient in the face of the pressures of 21st century living."

Gee - d'ya think 21st Century living is tougher than 20th Century living, or 19th, or 18th, or 8th? Please! Life has never been "easier" or "better" in human history, which is why we can waste time and money on such frivolous and immature subjects.

We have posted on the subject of happiness in the past, in Happiness Traps, and The Economists Take on Happiness. It's a subject I dislike writing about, because it is an undefinable word except as a passing emotion: it is much easier to talk about kinds of unhappiness. However defined, though, there is one thing I know for certain and that is that Happiness cannot be taught in school. It is interesting, however, that Britain has become so secular, and so relatively materially comfortable, that they would even consider that happiness might be something that a government could provide along with all of its other wonderful and efficient "services". It sounds like Kim Sung Il. Which reminds me, we ought to do a summertime re-post of our Valentine's Day Manifesto for the amusement of new readers.

In my opinion, self-respect is more valuable than self-esteem; accomplishment and satisfaction are more important than pleasurable ease; the pursuit of happiness is a scam; giving and receiving love, affection and friendship are the finest and only enduring things in life, and Government cannot replace God or defeat human nature.

Even shrinks will deny that they offer happiness as a product. Freud spoke for all of us that psychiatry can, at the best, offer the hope of replacing neurotic (eg abnormal) unhappiness with normal unhappiness. "Life is difficult," as Scott Peck pointedly begins his wonderful and inspiring The Road Less Traveled. There is no way out of that, other than temporary escapist joys like vacations, a tennis game, a book, or a couple of nice glasses of wine. Well, a tennis game can put you through some heavy stuff, I guess: I am halfway through Ian McEwan's Saturday,  which is a sort-of Day in the Life, and the squash game chapter is a minor masterpiece in itself.

Pleasure is easy to pursue - it's like falling off a log. Heroin, I am told, provides excellent self-esteem, well-being, serenity, and happiness, and it is far cheaper, effortless, and far more effective than shrinks, or any other path.

Anyway, some clever Music Man salesman sold the Brits on this thing. My guess is that the kids will take it about as seriously as they take Sex Ed, so they will not be harmed by involuntary government intrusions into their psyches. Hey, teacher - leave us kids alone.

I realize that this is classic blog rambling...I will try to come back to it when I have a little time.

Our Editor forwarded me this 1992 paper by Tooby and Cosmides, The Psychological Foundations of Culture, (here in pdf, without the typos), which he found at Overcoming Bias. I wish I had known about this paper years ago.

It's a dense and scholarly critique of what is known as "The Standard Social Sciences Model." The authors argued that this dominant model is obsolete and failing, resulting in a reactionary anti-scientific movement in the social sciences.

I found it particularly interesting that the authors suggest that the clinging to an obsolete model has more to do with emotion than logic - a "fear of falling off the world." Similarly, they indicate that social scientists are emotionally attached to their blank-slate, meliorative views of human nature (there is no "human nature" - environment is everything, and thus people, culture, and society can be perfected - by them, natch). Their desire to hold on to that illusion causes them to resist many sorts of new information which conflict with their ideas. That is very human, but it ain't science.

Indeed, what goes on in the social sciences would make for a fascinating sociological study.

Dr. Helen mentioned a new book, Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend. Cute titles sell books.

There are indeed evil, destructive, and unimaginably self-interested people out there in the world who behave with "shocking disregard for the people around" them. It's important to be aware, because they look just like ordinary people, and act like them until the chips are down. They only show their true exploitative colors at calculated moments.

The first review of the book at the Amazon link above gives a good sense of what the book is about. I am not recommending the book, just noting that it is an interesting topic.

These usually pleasant - if not charming and seductive - folks build careers and lives by preying on the innocent, the naive, and the gullible. They cannot help it, because they are deranged in a certain sort of inhuman way (which often works effectively in this world). They talk a good game, plenty of them go to church, do good deeds, and get by by wearing a "mask of sanity."

These folks cannot be truthful to themselves or to others, do not give a damn about anybody except themselves, and inhabit a guilt-free zone. Even their intimate confessions are calculated.

Only God can help them. We shrinks do not have the power.

Over the transom. This spoof of my profession is making the email rounds in Shrinklandia:

We of the psychotherapeutic and medical professions feel kindly and respectful towards our clients/patients, and genuinely care about their well-being. Occasionally, however, we will have an impatient or non-therapeutic thought, because we are human, not machines.

These are often best kept to ourselves, of course, but sometimes such thoughts help lead us towards useful comments - when presented constructively. Here are a few client comments (CC) and the unspoken responses (UR) accumulated over the years:

CC: Do you think I should follow my heart?
UR: Yes, I think leaving your wife and kids and running off with the 18 year-old Swedish au pair is an excellent life plan.

CC: Do you really think I should stop drinking this much?
UR: Definitely not. You should keep doing this until your life is ruined and your liver shrinks down to the size of a pea.

Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner is known for his work on mutiple intelligences - the idea that there is not one kind of "intelligence," but up to seven of them.

It's an interesting approach. IQ, which is an individually stable and inherited tendency, likely measures your linguistic and logical-mathematical "intelligences." His books are also on that link above.

Neuroanthropology linked to a speech he gave in Bogota about his personal intellectual history and his views on science and life, Multiple Lenses on the Mind.

Here's a short list of some of the books I recommend regularly:

Surviving Schizophrenia: A Manual for Families, Consumers, and Providers

Surviving Manic Depression: A Manual on Bipolar Disorder for Patients, Families, and Providers

An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Understanding the Alcoholic's Mind: The Nature of Craving and How to Control It

Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care about Has Borderline Personality Disorder

People of the Lie. (by Scott Peck. It's about sociopaths.)

The story of amphetamines since their discovery to their current enormously popular use - including in the military. From Life in the Fast Lane, in Chronicle of Higher Ed.:

The war bolstered the confluence of medical and commercial interests that made amphetamine the first antidepressant. The British and American forces adopted speed because it made soldiers more confident, despite authorities' knowing that by 1941 the German military had sharply curtailed its use of methamphetamine (a slight variant of the drug) because of its addictive qualities. The Allies administered the drug as a morale booster, notwithstanding a charade that the drug counteracted fatigue better than caffeine (two years of testing actually found amphetamine no more effective).

The drug helped win bloody, pivotal battles such as El Alamein and Tarawa. But the military's embrace of speed had serious side effects. An entire generation of young men had been turned on to the new pharmaceutical. There is evidence that the sanctioned use of amphetamines promoted drug abuse not only in the service but presumably after the war, too. That pattern repeated itself during the Vietnam War, when the military again distributed enormous quantities of amphetamine to American troops.

Speed is powerful stuff. Read the whole thing.

I have no problem whatsoever with physicians easing terminal peoples' path out of life with merciful doses of morphine, but I have great problems with the Brave New World of government rationing of medical care, and the hustling of people into death to save money as they seem inclined to do in the UK, Canada...and in Oregon.

Dr. Bob discusses. One quote:

We have, at last, arrived. The destination was never much in doubt — once the threshold of medical manslaughter had been breached, wrapped as always in comforting words of compassion and dignity, it was only a matter of time before our pragmatism trumped our principles. Once the absolute that physicians should be healers not hangmen was heaved overboard, it was inevitable that the relentless march of relativism would reach its logical port of call.

In my view, easy abortion was the first big step in the direction of removing the annoying inconvenience of a human life. Perhaps it would be most expedient - or utilitarian - to do us in the minute we stop paying income taxes...assuming our function is to serve the "common good." Or at the moment of our birth, because it is certain that we will become expensively ill someday.

And when it comes to medical treatment in general, I like TigerHawk's idea much better than any governmental idea. WallMart! Just as long as I have my own doc who knows me and cares about me first.

Addendum: Father of Canada's medical system rejects what he created. "Woops. I goofed. So terribly sorry."

Part 2 of the Pew study of religion in America has been issued. It shows that there is a lot of non-dogmatic religious thinking going on, which is no surprise really. An excerpt from the piece on the subject in the CSM:

On some basics, the American faithful are much alike. Ninety-two percent believe in God, including 70 percent of those not connected with any religion. Three-quarters believe in life after death, and 79 percent believe in miracles.

Prayer is a widespread practice, in which 75 percent engage at least weekly and 58 percent daily. Thirty-four percent say they have experienced or witnessed a divine healing of an illness or injury.

Yet divergent perspectives coexist within many traditions. In regard to the conception of God, 60 percent of Americans believe in a personal God, while 25 percent believe in an impersonal force or universal spirit. Eastern Orthodox Christians split 49 to 34 percent on this question, while Muslims divide evenly, 41 to 42 percent. Among Jews, 25 percent believe in a personal God and 50 percent in an impersonal force.

Something I stumbled on: My worst date ever. A fairly bad date, but if that's his worst, I won't worry about him too much.

My best first date was a blind date. (Future) hubbie picks me up and takes me sledding at night in New Hampshire. 12 degrees (F). Had his toboggan tied to the roof of his old wreck of a Jeep, and a six-pack of beer on the back seat. You just had to like the guy. Tall, dark and handsome too, with plenty of interesting quirks. 

I guess it was a test of my gumption, but, to his credit, the toboggan on the steep hill made me end up holding on tight to him - a total stranger (well, with the introduction by a close family friend). But it did feel pretty good.

Only the beer was wrong. For nightime sledding, brandy is the thing, but he was a poor student at HBS at the time.